Only the Dead Know Albany by Alan Catlin

Reviewed by Christopher Vera

ISBN 978-1-934513-11-8
sunnyoutside, 2008

Judging from Alan Catlin’s new poetry chapbook there’s an unreported infestation of living dead shambling and groaning their way through Albany, New York. Only the Dead Know Albany is a collection of 20 poems in a clean saddle-stapled chapbook that describes Catlin’s experience working in and moving through the seedier sides of town along its back streets, dark alleys and public transportation. Through his observations, he captures for us readers a few brief moments in the lives of the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the down-trodden.

The poems flow seamlessly together into a parade of underworld characters who come out after dark and scratch the insides of their cardboard boxes by day. It’s hard to tell whether Catlin loves or despises the homeless and criminal characters of this collection perhaps because he recognizes that so many are also victims, sometimes by their own undoing or unhappy inertia.

This underworld Albany Catlin observes is a harsh one, as we learn quickly in his opening piece, the title poem of the chapbook:

…the side alleys, cock-fought
streets, high-stake crap games
decided by a blade and a motorcycle
chain, brass knuckles and steel-toed
boots…

In “Safe at Home,” we observe just how like zombies some of the inhabitants of Albany can be, as Catlin spies a woman on a bus trying to avoid a wino by

…moving farther and farther
away from his newly dead
and drained breath that
reeked of formaldehyde…

and again in “Zombies for Loose Change,” when the reader realizes that perhaps Catlin feels both pity and loathing simultaneously as he brings to life for us these sometimes terrible, sometimes tragic creatures.

…Their needs are endless,
black holes of desire sucking
everything nearby inside…
…It’s what they do
instead of living like other people
and there’s no way around it.

While Catlin’s poems successfully paint a dark world of comparison worthy of reading, not all the poems hold this magic. There are several clichéd turns of phrases (including a few dated references to “The Man”). Some of the poems could use a little more editing, focusing less on the grit and grime of this world to find deeper language that brings out the poet’s characters, motives and meaning. But in all, perhaps these few non-fatal flaws can be forgiven by readers as we scour the chapbook as if it were a field observer’s report, an effort to inform us of Albany’s stagnant epidemic.

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Prick of the Spindle Poetry Editor Christopher Vera is fascinated by the foundations of our universe: the natural, unnatural, the supernatural, the fantastic. He explores these elements in his poetry and looks for it in the writing of others. His work has appeared in Ship of Fools, Apex and Abyss, Heliotrope, Mobius, the Magee Park Poet’s Anthology and others. He is earning an MFA in Creative Writing through National University in San Diego, California. He can always be found at www.mysticnebula.com.

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