the paper road Reviewed

Personal Profile and Review by Hillary Marzec,
editor, translator, author and Chicago architecture historian

"The form of his [Albert’s] poetry is the salve on the wounds of its themes.”.₁
Hillary Marzec, The Finer Point - Editing and Translation
 

Albert, a poet from Chicago where he currently lives as a retired entertainment journalist and local broadcaster, wrote for magazines such as Timeout Chicago and similar online publications like Concierge Preferred, and Fortune 500 company Reed Business Inc. His main topic became music, and still is when he’s not busy writing essays or dabbling in songwriting...

​

"Albert's poetry [on the other hand] is threaded with whimsy, a form of "notes to self" that offers the reader surprising relief from the poems’ often traumatic subject matter.  Playing unapologetically with phrasing and cadence, and indeed eschewing more traditional poetic structuring, his poems have an identifiable rhythm and voice of their own – a storytelling format that laces despair with hope"

– such as in "North Stars," when he ties his own stylized bow at the end to the emotive affect: "even north stars get lonely / stuck like the sparrow who does not migrate / quiet and alone, on a telephone wire beneath an overcast sky - blocking the stars beneath / meaningless words racing between his feet clasped over meaningless wire / in a universe that has yet to be so vast.”

Collectively it forms a respectful, dutiful ministry by means of sharing both some of his darkest shame, self-deprecating guilt, and deeds that would otherwise be kept deep inside the bowels of a writer's conscious. Dignifiedly tucked within are keys to often mutually exclusive values that are made evident through comic relief; often in the form of dark humor, and direct approaches at sharing the madness of living these dualities... despite being somewhat askew, it is a relief from the tragedy; and a balance of what is topical, and what is figurative. He gives the disenfranchised the narrative he feels they deserve and is a fly on the wall to the different lifestyles he had parallelled. While many of them are rooted in impoverished subcultures of which he is drawing on his own experience from, his sympathies and compassion reaches further, in poems like “Vultures," which references violent physical and sexual abuses that he's powerlessly witnessed but juxtaposes the theory that vultures, in real life, are not antagonists but are a holy breed of creature that respect their prey and all life by waiting for their spirits to rise before descending.

Also "tucked within" are philosophical questions you can tell he hopes his audience do or will ponder. Albert structures his own backbone by relying on his writing - attempting to survive by means of his own unique mantras and values often sculpted from them instead of the opposite - which somehow, despite being unstable, convinces the reader that this subjective ethics are righteous; at least for him, and perhaps even relies on the contradictions that lie within.

​

"Albert’s poetry grapples with the very human themes of love, faith, and humanity itself, and his childlike preoccupation with time travel hints at a deeper longing for a past that he can clean up, fix, and recreate. He seems urgent to fix himself and do better, and indirectly suggests others do the same, but often desperately searches in the enclaves of his own despair for a magic answer.
 

Clearly inspired by W.H. Auden and Billy Collins, and with the tone of a more sensitive Charles Bukowski, Albert details his own past trauma (and misadventures in life) in order to engage the reader’s base emotions in his project.  Touching on homelessness, severe poverty, loss, and life at the margins, he describes a world most of his readers will have never known, much less considered. He puts them face to face with it, lulling them into this world with a graceful rhythm and purposeful diction. The form of his poetry is the salve on the wounds of its themes.₁

Albert’s poems are infinitely accessible to a variety of readers: everyone can relate in some way to the humanness in each line.  His writing style is more spoken-word than structured pentameter, and the simplicity of his narrative style belies the gravity of his themes.  It reads well; moreover, it reads out loud well.  And as T.S. Eliot said, ““Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”  Albert’s poetry puts us in communication with him, and by extension, with each other.  For it is in this awareness of an “Other” – and the potentially very different, very dark experiences of an “Other” – that we are reminded of our fragility and strength, as well as our ugliness but overcoming, and overwhelming, beauty."

​

"" - Hillary Marzec, The Finer Point