Review by James Bourey The Black Shamrock Magazine: Issue 1 Edited by John Patrick Robbins

First, some full disclosure. Mr. Robbins was kind enough to include a few of my poems in the inaugural issue of The Black Shamrock Magazine. And I am very pleased to be included in this fine collection of poetry. Okay, on with the review.

The cover of this magazine, white text against a black background with a photo of a mysterious and attractive woman, might lead one to think about those old pulp-fiction detective books. But this is a collection of poetry not short stories. However, many of the poems here tell stories. And many of them are “noir-ish” in nature. The collection is certainly on the dark side of daily existence. 

John Patrick Robbins is a poet, fiction writer, editor and publisher. He specializes in raw reality, unfiltered stream of consciousness poems and stories, and he has a penchant for finding writers on the fringes, far from the academic main stream. He is editor of the online journal The Rye Whiskey Review. He is also associated with other online journals such as The Dope Fiend Daily and Under the Bleachers. When selecting authors for the first edition of this print magazine he went to authors he knew from these other venues. Bruce Hodder, Todd Cirillo, Daniel Wright, Mark Antony Rossi, Ryan Quinn Flanagan, Scott Simmons, Janna Grace, Matt Amott, David Boski, Remy Boucher, Alyssa Trivett, Dennis Moriarty and Julie Valin are contributors, along with Mr. Robbins and yours truly, to The Black Shamrock: Issue 1.

The poetry presented in this issue is always clear, always accessible. It is free from pretense and free from airy sentiment. Many of the poems lack polish. But none of them lack intensity. Humor is present but it is usually wry and a bit harsh, sometimes self-deprecating. Many of the poems are about struggles; struggles against being lost, struggles for respect, struggles in love and loss. And many are about losing those struggles.

Warm Beer, Cold Dude by Alyssa Trivett tells of a single encounter in a life that seems to have many similar trips to taverns. Some stand-out lines show how a nearly cliche subject can still be fresh and original:

Even the frost stumbled in drunk

as the creaky door finally shuts.

His hand felt like a grave,

or the brick collection

in my grandfather’s garage.

For a touch of dark humor, we find Happy Valentines Day by Scott Simmons which begins:

You’re like the herpes sore I can’t get rid of

The poem is only three lines long but it still has an interesting twist at the end.

The poets represented in this magazine are from many different places but, as we learn from their biographies, they all seem to have a life on the internet where they publish a great deal of their work. Yet that common bond does not mean that they have lost their individual voices. Alyssa Trivett has a gentle worldliness that is very appealing. John Patrick Robbins has a storyteller’s sensibility as he explores dark places and broken people. David Boski is reminiscent of Charles Bukowski as he creates strong lines with a touch of harshness in his observations. Matt Amott offers brief poems full of irony, even in an oddly touching tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Every poet in the collection has something different to offer and yet the poems are assembled in such a way as to give a cohesive feel to the whole.

As I read this book I was mostly reminded of the days when I first started paying attention to poetry, many years ago. At that time, I was enamored of the poems of the Beat movement. Those artists were not greatly respected by the academic world. They operated on the fringes of conventional society and they wrote without fear. Sex, drugs, hard times, social issues were all subjects that came under their purview. The Black Shamrock Magazine brings back that attitude and those concepts. It’s well worth the price of admission.

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Jim Bourey is an old poet who divides his year between the Adirondack Mountains and Dover, Delaware. His chapbook “Silence, Interrupted” was published in 2015 by the Broadkill River Press. His work has appeared in Mojave River Review, Paddock Review, Gargoyle and the Broadkill Review and other journals and anthologies. He was first runner up in the Faulkner-Wisdom Poetry Competition in 2012 and 2016. He has served as an adjudicator for the Poetry Out Loud competition in Delaware. In his North Country months, he is active with the St. Lawrence Area Poets and has taken part in Art/Poetry projects in Saranac Lake.