Mister Martini

A good poem can be compared to a good drink - both will leave you with good taste, both will leave with something to reflect on, and both will leave you the slightest bit intoxicated. "Mister Martini" follows this analogy and reflects upon the relationship between father and son, the journey from youth to facing death, all written in a beautiful style by prolific poet Richard Carr. "Mister Martini" is a grand acquisition for any community library poetry collection and for lovers of poetry as a whole - highly recommended. Organ: He wanted his eyes cryogenically preserved/in separate tanks,//his friends among the organ farmers, untrustworthy and powerful.//Martini displayed in a bell jar, the hollow pupiled olive, whitening with age.

If the adage, "good poetry listens to itself" is true, then Richard Carr's poems are all ears. In his collection Mr. Martini, the intelligence of the poetry matches in brilliance the music. Consider the "Martini designed by Vivaldi / who runs his finger around the rim / to hear it play." Like his deck of cards once connected by suits and numbers then cut and reconstructed, the mathematics of his poems add up to a royal flush of image. He destroys, "carefully," our expectations of how each poem may finish. When we expect the tang of olive, Carr gives us breezes, moonlight, and blood. So often in poetry, craft ultimately betrays imagination, works away the power of image for the sake of craft. In nearly three decades of working as a poet, Carr has now blended the powerful concoction of resonant imagination. Sip each poem in Mr. Martini and discover how each poem plays off the other, yet each can stand on its own. Be warned, however, that as easily as one martini may follow another into drunken revelry, these tart poems may intoxicate and linger.