OUT OF HIS CHILDHOOD

I don't know if you are familiar with the poetry of Ronald Baatz. He's one of my favourite American poets, if not at times my very favourite, having written a few poems that could stand alongside the best of anything by the poets Don Hall anthologised in his sainted volume of modern American verse. Well, now he's got a new chapbook out (relatively new). It's on Mark Weber's Zerx imprint (see links) and it's split with Mark: one half of the book features lighter poems on a range of themes by Weber, then you turn it over and the other half is a poem cycle by Ronald about his father's battle with Alzheimers. Tremendously moving it is too, without once descending into mawkishness or self-pity. He's just telling you his story, not asking you to feel sorry for him OR his dad. And it's stylistically a little different too, presented more like ordinary speech, without the illuminated images we associate with Ronald's short or longer writing. Good! It would have been a little creepy, writing something so personal with that kind of sophisticated polish. Shows Ronald is a poet of great range, as if we didn't know that already.