Vital Reading
Manifest Density
Poems by Eddie Kilowatt
by John Hughes

In this batch of easily-swallowed poems, Eddie Kilowatt declares his affection for women, Johnny Cash, baseball, women, beer, early morning hours on the prowl and women. He’s horny for life and, as such, he’s a sort of a poet of the people.

Early on, Kilowatt writes that at one particular 12:20 a.m. moment, he “realized Johnny Cash and I were kin—in our hearts.” That altogether sympathetic realization is proven true throughout the book by the style of Kilowatt’s writing. He writes with great passion and conviction, and the simplicity of his language conveys its own elegance. Nobody ever accused Cash of being Sonny Rollins – a master of subtlety – and no one will accuse Kilowatt of being Pablo Neruda or Czeslaw Milosz. These poems are as straightforward as any you’ll find, but the cost of their simplicity is that they sometimes fail to evoke much depth. The language is never awe-inspiring. The charm is in the honesty.

One lovable poem is called “fraud.” It begins with the following stanza: “Alice was right/when she/called me a/wannabe/blue collar boy/she had me caught completely.”

The poem continues from there to expose Kilowatt’s easy job: “I was ashamed of my cubicle,” and concludes “I had the grit in my voice/but not the cold in my lungs/or the sun/baking my shoulders burnt/to back it up.”

This poem, and another called “the position I never interviewed for,” which describes Kilowatt’s playing baseball with a boy hungry for a father figure, show Kilowatt’s best potential. The world has enough writers in the traditions of Hank Williams and Jack Kerouac – womanizing bohemians extolling the desire for ego gratifications and pleasure. What Kilowatt touches with his better poems here is a sensitive core beneath the bluster. He wants more than Hank Williams ever dreamed of wanting.

Eddie Kilowatt's "regular guy" verse neatly sidesteps the hazards that befall many like-minded writers. He's literate but not verbose, and down-to-earth without coming across as a vulgar, cut-rate Bukowski.

-The Onion AV Club
3/30/06