Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire by Justin Karcher & Ben Brindise

EMP, June 2018

83 Pages. $12.00, paper.

Book Review: Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire

by Justin Karcher & Ben Brindise

If there was ever a collaboration of two writers who’ve bled the heart of Buffalonian poetry, those two souls would be Justin Karcher and Ben Brindise. In Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire, their depictions go beyond the realm of Rustbelt landscape and become something else entirely, something magical and death-defying. Like so much of their work, …Fire is a bridge that connects the personal with the societal.

Ben Brindise

Picture an advertisement for Buffalo. Then picture that advertisement doing something polar opposite to its goal: telling the truth. Ben’s use of imagery and reference is a personal billboard of perspective. Each poem is written in tribute to lost places, people and things that exist within self-reflection. One of the best examples of this comes from the poem, “to burn a tree from the roots up”:

“sometimes I take walks

I don’t post about on facebook

or write into poems

around a city I should know more about

but don’t

I think about kicking the corner stone

of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s childhood home

see how loose it is, see if I can really

leave a scar on this city.” [5]

In just this stanza alone, readers can catch a glimpse at these attempts: attempts to bring solace to one’s detriment. Another poem in sync with this theme is “7 a.m. in buffalo”:

“...I have this feeling that if I close my eyes

and let go of the wheel

I’d end up crashed into something that someone

would have taken a picture of

and hashtagged

#thatssobuffalo

the flames would eat up the rust

on the side of my car

and in my dying moments

I’d think about some weird metaphor

for the steel industry…” [30]

The poem goes on to connect a personal soliloquy with local headline news. Ben’s poetry is more of a fist fight between perseverance and submission, and there are no wins, or losses – just constant draws.

Justin Karcher

If there has ever been a poet who has embodied the spirit of Buffalo, that very spirit would be exhumed from Justin Karcher. His work, much like Ben’s, bridges a similar gap between personal soliloquy and local headline news. The imagery in Ben’s work is more powerful in its use of simplicity, but Justin pours in two or three tanks worth of aesthetic exhaust fuel into his.

Justin pieces together the reflection of environment from one’s own existential crisis. Whether it’s joining him in smoke circles outside of a gutter punk house show, Delaware Park strolls involving conversations between stars and people, Justin makes sure you’re not only reading with him, but exploring with him. The third poem in Justin’s section, “your melancholy is straight out of an Edith Pilaf song”:

“…and yet there are nights I want to remember

nights I want to kiss you in the glow

of the Buffalo State Hospital

where the phantoms of psychosis are held down

by the giants of memory

where birds of feelings

are always crashing into invisible windows

and their little bodies Hindenburg out of the sky…” [41]

In a way, Justin dabbles in bruised hometown fabulism, a language that throws a haymaker with every line. Another poem on point with this is “picking fruits off the sick future”:

“...but it was just the smell of lilacs from a nearby bush

she told me lilacs remind her of the south

of growing up as a military brat

of these gilded manors as big as the sun

ladies who would apply lipstick to the dirt

to make it pretty

I looked at her straight in her stoned eyes

and told her we’re always on our hands and knees

always trying to glamourize the world beneath our feet…” [46]

Whether it’s favoring or praying to fire, each section is a culmination of constant tending before a fire burns away the life of words. From beginning to end, every poem is just another attempt at survival through a wasteland conjured from beautiful, desolate observation.

This review originally appeared in Spider Mirror in August 2018.

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