GAS Featured Poet: Bart Solarczyk

Bart Solarczyk is a lifelong resident of Pittsburgh, PA. Over the past forty years his poems have been published in print & online in a variety of magazines, journals, anthologies, broadsides & chapbooks. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry including his most recent book, Carried Where We Go, available from Redhawk Publications on Amazon.  

 

An Old Man Being Me 

  

If I must be an old man 

this is how I’ll be: 

  

what I see in the mirror  

pain & goodness in my heart 

the poison I breathe 

& the shit that passes through me 

  

wounded ducks in a row 

beer in the backyard  

a dead wife plump with memories 

& no new wife required 

  

television as white noise 

poems plastered to that frequency  

a mouthful of green fog 

stay hungry, exhale slowly 

  

limping but still moving 

reading then forgetting  

sleeping in a chair  

dreaming ghosts are people  

  

going to the doctor 

going to the doctor 

going to the doctor 

& sometimes there’s good news 

  

what lives behind my eyes  

backflipping pages 

no hero, no ascension  

just an old man being me.  

  

  

  

Sun & Leaves 

  

This is fucked up 

I have cancer 

  

I’m cold 

& my ass hurts 

  

through the window  

a world away 

  

a golden sun 

warms green leaves 

  

but in here 

I have cancer 

  

it’s fucked up 

I watch the window 

  

sun & leaves 

my ass hurts 

  

I’m cold. 

  

  

  

4 Haiku  

  

not quite there- 

preparing for 

my sponge bath 

  

  

ten-thousand 

kindnesses 

& grief still wins 

  

  

driving to the doctor - 

wounded city framed 

in morning’s windshield  

  

  

wings to dust -  

the nothing  

we become  

  

  

  

School Prayer 

  

Bullet holes 

in blackboards 

  

kids & cops 

& killers 

  

America please 

stop it with the guns.  

  

  

  

Write It Down 

  

Write it down 

so you know 

it really happened 

  

write it down 

to bring truth 

to a lie 

  

write it down 

like a Valentine 

love me 

  

while the air 

is still sweet 

write it down.  

 

A Review of Bart Solarczyk’s TILTED WORLD (Low Ghost Press 2019) by Heidi Blakeslee

 Bart Solarczyk lives in Pittsburgh PA with his dog & cat. Over the past thirty-eight years he’s published poems in a variety of litmags & anthologies. His work has recently appeared in Big Hammer, Street Value, Live Nude Poems, Rasputin, Winedrunk Sidewalk, The Pittsburgh Book Review, River Dog & Roadside Raven Review. He is the author of nine chapbooks. Tilted World is his first full-length collection of poems.

When diving into this copy I thought, hmm, “Tilted World.”  Could he mean like, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?” Were bats indeed flying over the windshield?  Or perhaps just that everything in our society is askew?  After reading half the book in one go, I think it might be the former.  I don’t know.  Alcohol, poetry, and smoke have long been bedfellows, and frankly Solarczyk’s work makes me hope they stay that way.  

    Solarczyk’s poetry is a nod to Alice’s little white rabbit with alcohol standing in as the Jabberwocky. We follow him in and out of paisley rabbit holes.  While there, he shows us gritty and honest things.  He shows us quirky things, as in his poem about his daughter eating Lunchables, “My Strange Daughter.”

    Some of the poems are sparse, abrupt, and jarring.  Other poems delivered a depth of thought about the ugly side of life that I didn’t know I was craving.  Although some of the work is playful, there is a bleaker side to some of the lines.  Still, they satisfied the corner of my brain that longs for oddity and edginess. Solarczyk is very much a writing-man’s poet, dedicating a poem here or there to other prominent writer friends.

    His truths about how a body gets through life with the aid/horror of drink and how a mind gets through life with the balm/curiosity of cannabis play prominently throughout.  I enjoyed “Tilted World” because Solarczyk’s meticulous “real deal” writing captivated my interest right away and held it through the entire work.  I had no idea where I was going next and I loved that.

    If you’re in the mood for some imaginative lines from the gut, true poetry, give “Tilted World” a read.  You’ll be glad you did.

Tilted World

For every pair of mismatched socks

there’s a blind man happy to oblige

for every sock lost in the dryer

there’s a weary amputee

I walk in peace, I mean no harm

still the crow shits on my head

such exquisite balance

requires a tilted world.

Hear a review and reading by Bart in GAS video show #3.