Frank Spignese's short book of poetry, "The Great Flood," comes with an audio CD of Frank reading pieces from the collection. I delved into the book first and then listened to the CD. Maybe I should have done it the other way around. Frank's voice booms out in the live recordings, the audience adding comments and encouragement, laughter and applause. It's the right milieu for this poetry — performance not contemplation, the voice not the mind.
Written mostly in free verse, the majority of the pieces fuse rhyme and rhythm with spontaneous, breath-driven lines. The subject matter switches from terrorism to squishing frogs, from next-door neighbors to statistics on rape in Japan, and from jazz to baseball. Geographically, the poems are set in Tokyo and Boston with Bangkok thrown into the mix.
Influences are apparent but not overwhelming. The ghost of Allen Ginsberg haunts the pages — the idea of inspiration as breath, the repetitions, the inclusion of politics within a personal setting. Three poems entitled "Bobby's Kitchen" bring the "Things To Do" poems of Ted Berrigan to mind; and for "I Remember Edgar Henry" — a poignant yet funny tribute to a dead friend and fellow poet — Joe Brainard's "I Remember" is an obvious forebear. Along with these Beat and New York School poets, the other writer hovering drunkenly in Frank Spignese's pantheon is Charles Bukowski; the poems — and the live readings — have a similar beery bravado and in-your-face matter-of-factness.