reviews

Midwest Book Review
Two Dogs and a Cigar
Tom Snyder
Lone Willow Press
P.O. Box 31647, Omaha NE 68131
no ISBN $7.95 chapbook at 39 pages

It’s always a pleasure to discover a chapbook from Lone Willow Press in the mailbox. Their featured poets are diverse in style and voice, but all singularly accomplished in their own way. Tom Snyder’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals, and he edited the Duckabush Journal for several years. Snyder writes with wit and insight, and occasionally a moving intensity I felt inadequate to demonstrate in review.

His skillful use of metaphor was clearly demonstrated in the first poem, as in this stanza from “O Bird”:

whose throat bleeds
music, who draws religion
from a stone and sings
like water flowing….

Even the mundane subject of an unmowed lawn becomes special in Snyder’s hands, as in this excerpt from “Poem in Need of Eighty Acres”:

Meanwhile, their grass declares victory.
Dandelions flower and cloud, big as seagulls.

My initial response after reading “Death of the Elwha” was stunned silence. In this poem, Snyder names those responsible for killing off giant salmon due to greed and stupidity. Rivers rich with salmon since time began were dammed without fish ladders. Snyder’s poetic treatment of the aftermath is powerful:

Dams built in defiance of the law.
So the legislature changed the law to allow hatcheries,
rag factories, and accepted more dams
without fishways —
killers of the wild runs
on the Cowlitz, Chehalis, and White Salmon.

Mother of all, the Columbia, choked by dams and silt!
It is done, I have named them…a story
instead of a song. A long rope of
words and ghosts
to hang them.

Snyder works wonders with the commonplace. In “A Better Day”, he breathes new life into a quiet day:

Red wine, almost chewy, softens
the afternoon to a pleasant deformity.

And the simple truths of nature become his focus in “Snoqualmie Song”:

Little streams
of light
fall to their senses
and become the forked fingers of time.

The world rolls like a heavy stone
from the cave of your heart.

Whether memorializing nature, governmental deceits, or inhumanities perpetrated by the rich and powerful, Snyder manipulates words in delightful ways. The thirty poems in this chapbook are prime examples of his craft.

Laurel Johnson

“This collection has the impact of a belly laugh erupting from the center of the earth. Tom Snyder invites us to enjoy some kind of cosmic joke. He explores his world and his many emotions, including righteous indignation, without sounding arrogant or self-important. He leaves dignity behind, a blanket that’s too heavy. To have “been there, done that” is the only preface of a tall, tall tale. These poems are just plain delightful.” —Marjorie Power, author of The Cave Poems, & others.

“Tom Snyder says in “Dear Editor” that his regular method of writing “is to become thoughtless as hell and let it rip.” His poems’ earthy immediacy and vitality vindicate this imaginative submission. They are shot through with vivid metaphor and shimmer with alliterative music: “the beach / punctuated by its clams,” “a tree’s green candle,” “wide as everywhere and always bewildered,” (of cows), “rain pounds down like horses.” And, of course, the poems in TWO DOGS AND A CIGAR are far from “thoughtless.” In fact, they offer hard-earned awareness and wisdom; they are full of dawning light.” Clif Mason, author of Knocking the Stars Senseless, and others.

“Tom Snyder’s work perches somewhere in the brilliance separating white light from a migraine and mad ramblings from poetry. There is not a single page in his collection that does not delight and surprise.” Jason Ranek, author of The Crossing, and others.

“Snyder’s poems are a treasure trove of wit, humor and honest emotion. He is in possession of a truly unique and wide-ranging poetic voice. A welcome addition to the shelf of any lover of good poetry.” Eric Hoffman, author of This Thin Mean.