e pit ap h (collected poems 2002-2005) available now.
"John Thomas Menesini is a lyricist turned satirist, a descriptive poet turned Beat, and a
protest writer with a strong intimate tone. He is outraged by contemporary mores and makes no bones
about it (and maybe takes no prisoners). He uses the body and body parts as a medium for outrage.
He has a good wildness." -James
Liddy
[Menesinis] cynical, sometimes scathing verbal imagery is loaded with social commentary and often
has the flavor of a Lenny Bruce monologue. -David Zuchowski (US)
"Menesini has the ability to zero in on the precise qualities of a given moment with the
heart-stopping accuracy of a Zen master. With his remarkable talent for le mot juste, he is able to
find solace in the burning breast of a menthol cigarette, or the grace in a desiccated turd."-Jason
Price Everett of The Circle (US)
"Defies categorization and is both challenging and disturbing. His work is more
iconoclastic in the way it subverts or defies superficial rationalization; the
harsh realities portrayed here may not be evaded or dismissed. I found his work
frightening and imaginative and I recommend it for that reason."-Peter Day of Iota Poetry Quarterly
(England)
"Menesini's paranoid, scathing, cynical ramblings would unnerve the most stable of souls, yet
somehow his most depressed and depraved observations still manage to retain an air of
wisdom." Adam Reese (Ireland)
"A fine job of showing the raw and awesome power of the native poetic voice. Generally speaking, the
poet has an innate grasp of rhythmic device, which lends a subtle and compelling flow to much of his
work. Some of the lines bleed poetic truth, especially ones bearing more complex imagery or language
runs." Absinthe
Literary Review (US)
"Poetry at full throttle, pounding out a loud beat, like teenage screams." -NHI Review (England)
Review by Joseph L Flatley-DEEK Magazine (US) 2005
The Last Great Glass Meat Million
by John Thomas Menesini
Six Gallery Press.
The Last Great Glass Meat Million is best read as an artifact from a nondescript western
Pennsylvania town - the kind of place that used to be known for fruitful coal mines; the kind of
place where the people have no power beyond their back yard. This is the kind of place where very
little ever moves, as suggested in the language Menesini uses. The imagery here is dense; it sits on
the pavement like a tired engine block.
"A friend of mine," John told me, "a friend of mine who is a genius and who lives in Toronto and is
a dogmatic pile of shit screwed me in my fucking asshole because he had a great huge fucking problem
with the fact that there were so many similes in my goddam book because I was like, 'like, like,
like, like, like like like.' "
Johnny swears that his book, and his work, is apolitical. Some would argue that describing "the
aftermath of an explosion," as he puts it in part one of his book, is in itself a political act.
Johnny wouldn't hear of it:
"An artist must be apolitical. Every fucking time you put something down on paper, you're exposing
yourself: this is me, and this is all my dirtiness, so therefore our necks are all on the block."
But if we're all upfront about our dirtiness, wouldn't it make the piety police inconsequential? We
all have our dirty thoughts, we all have shame going back to toilet training..
"Yeah, but there's still gonna be too many bad writers, regardless of that, wasting too much time
trying to publish bad things. Maybe they should spend time gardening, or becoming stewards for, I
dunno, air vessels, and maybe they should be, I dunno, digging holes."
The second part of the book moves from images of the artist's youth (and a preoccupation with junk,
with garbage) to images of a youth dissolving, or trying to, in an almost mystical way.
"I call it cryptic," Johnny explains. "You call it mysticism - the whole thing that permeates the
second half of the book. You don't have the fucking advantage of being on a mountain top or being in
a monastery; you have to scrub dishes but yet you have these fucking heavy ideas in your mind, so
you have to write them down, you know.
"I wasn't trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. I wasn't trying to create these riddles that
the passerby, that people wouldn't get, I was just, like, trying to communicate things in the way I
saw 'em, in the language that I knew, you know? No big scene."
(I was stupid with drink when I did this interview, I forgot how to talk firstly, and b) I crapped
my pants big-time.)
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