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Oh, for the democratization of poetry! For the populace, for the youth, for the wild boys and girls of every generation! Let us celebrate direct emotion, purity of expression, raw feeling represented with the rawest of words. Let us celebrate New York, with its Beat Generations, its midnight cafés, its solid and sordid history of every type and era of class revolution. And let us not forget the individual artists and activists who spend their lives keeping New York's perpetual revolutions alive.
Anne Lombardo Ardolino, known on the Internet (where she manages EastVillagePoetry.com) as Anntelope, embodies this spirit: in her presence, in her life, in her songs and art, and particularly in her poetry. In I Can Sing Fire, her first book, we see what she's been working on for decades: an aesthetic that is base but never banal, crude and sophisticated, and counterculture in a way that embraces the poetic tradition. In short, she's brought us a book which is pure rock 'n' roll.
You'll find I Can Sing Fire is an easy read: it slams through you like a concert, leaving you pumped for more art, unable to distinguish words from action. You'll find that you keep returning to it. Despite it's immediate clarity, it can't be called simple: there's enough here to pull you back many times over.
I Can Sing Fire contains twenty-six poems by Anne Lombardo Ardolino and cover art by Clayton Patterson.
I can sing fire
I can speak in over fourteen different colors
I can paint with words
that
which could never be seen
by the naked eye
such as
black rainbows at midnight
trees that can dance without moving
smooth black leopards
wearing smooth black spots
running through a white night's light moon
their shadows of a weightless blond silence
hanging like vapors beside them
and so then why am I not a poet?
just because
I never use words
like scintilla
or iota
but tell me why
is it even necessary
to be so fucking ar ti cu late?
I know how to bleed in the dark
without making a sound
without spilling a drip
oh
you don't like blood
how it flakes when it dries
but this is my poetry
and I only feel obligated
to mention
that it stains.
all pink and wrinkled
puckered as if for a kiss
ah but don't be fooled
Whenever Marty spoke
rainbows whirled
bright flames curled
like peacock plumes
from his tongue
on the walls he passed
he cast
stained glass
shadows
of every color
he climbed the Indian rope
where he learned from magicians
how to weave red poppies
between the letters of his words
but perhaps breathing life
into the un enchanted
who could not understand
finally taxed the poor man
now who will there be
to cook dinners of roses
for the spiritually homeless
God's un chosen people?
Now who will there be
to sing musical speeches
that the tin ears can hear
for once in their song-less lives?
Now who will there be
to make the promise
that some-day
God WILL say
to the souls that lay
in hell
"Okay—time served—you can come home now."
What people are saying about I Can Sing Fire:
"Anne Ardolino has the authentic voice of a woman who has survived the life with intelligence and wit. She has listened to the sounds of life and now is our chance to listen to her."
—Jerome Poynton, literary executor of Herbert Huncke
"Anne's poetry sing songs it 's way thru the dark alleys of sin-stained reality. Brightly-colored words from deep in the jungle of the mind. Striking images forged in furnaces of trancended pain. Anne give voice to truths that are rarely heard and almost never available for reading."
—Penny Arcade, author of Bad Reputation
"If Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, Anntelope's poetry is for those who have already been there: haunting and brutal but also tenderly redemptive—Sylvia Plath meets Mary Oliver—her poems flicker and gleam in the dark like switchblades, or candles..."
—Alan Kaufman, editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and author of Jew Boy: a memoir
"Pure Anne Ardolino is the Joan of Arc of the Lower East Side riding her charger on the hot steamy summer streets on a perpetual vision quest. She is seeking the growing strength of her words woven through the silken veil of her life and times. She is a complex woman with a powerful voice who should be heard."
—Jeremiah Jay Newton, editor of The Letters, Diaries and Drawings Of Candy Darling
"Anne always seems to hit a home run with her poetry. She's down to earth and reaching for the heavens at the same time. Anne has survived a life on the fringes and come back with literary treasure. Buy this book—you won't be disappointed."
—Jason Stuart Ratcliff, author of The Books of Angelhaunt and Rites of Passage
Anne Lombardo Ardolino lives in the East Village area of New York City. She became addicted to narcotics at age fourteen, and left home to sell magazine subscriptions when she was sixteen. Later she was a folk singer, singing for donations in little coffee houses throughout Greenwich Village and working as a hooker to support her addiction to heroin, cocaine, and speed. Anne quit using narcotics in her forties, and has been clean for over fifteen years. An animal advocate, she works in a pigeon rescue group. Anne paints and writes, and is the editor of EastVillagePoetry.com.