Poetry Review: No Time for Dancing is a short collection, 15 poems over 24 pages, from the Acme Poem Company Chapbook Series by Willow Springs Books. Valuable as it contributes to the scant legacy of lost and virtually forgotten American surrealist poet, Adam Hammer (1948-84). No one else did what he did, finding the humor in surrealism and the absurdity in our society. American Surrealism at its most incisive, with a coagulating drop of Dada. The little we have includes a chapbook from 1970, On a Train, Sleeping from Barn Dream Press and Pym-Randall Press, containing 10 poems, one of which ("Paul Jumps Every Day") is included here. Next is his only full length work, Deja Everything on Lynx House Press, which included four pieces from his 1970 chapbook. Deja Everything gave full expression to his one-of-a-kind, no-one-like-him vision, and I've reviewed elsewhere. Then we have this posthumous and penultimate collection of 15 poems published in 2010, No Time for Dancing, which is volume 1 in the Acme Poem Company Chapbook Series. One of the poems contained herein is the "Acme Poem Company," which notes that said company does not offer various services: "repairing parachutes ... french lessons to raccoons ... putting out forest files ... poison pez letters ... kneesocks for the deaf ... minnow euthanasia." There you have a forest taste of Adam Hammer. I don't know when these poems were written, before or after Deja Everything, but they have less of the exuberant humor of that work, and instead present a darker, more bitter, intense, and personal, almost at times a confessional reality. Poem titles include "How Does It Feel to Be a Nun?", "Old Couple about to Die," "Ponies Exploding in Springtime," "Fun With Death." The piece entitled "As An Intellectual" proceeds to its first line "I'm a total flop," then adds "I preface a few words with 'neo-' and 'quasi-'/ And am immediately offered a promotion." The poem "The Ocean of Wire" concludes: "You are playing/ a game of darts/ with gravity,/ and you are losing." The title poem ends "The studious mitten./ No time for dancing./ A cello is a disaster/ to a dead person" (which last two lines popped up before in Deja Everything). The collection ending poem, "It Was Night," perhaps the best in the book, begins "we were in love/ i guess/ dull evening antelopes/ moaned in the distance/ or maybe they didn't/ who cares/ we were in love ..." and goes on until "it was nice/ we got buried in lava/ that was nice/ we were very close/ we were very nice." Hammer also notes that "In France, children use their own eyelids as sails" and "What this country needs is a collie in every glove compartment." And one of my favorites:
"Gee, it's spring
And all the little deer
Are shivering in their little deer-socks
It's time to unwrap
The kittens
Whose lips are to gauze
What minnows are to springtime ... ."
Surprisingly, there was a later sighting of Hammer's work. Six of his poems were published in the Winter 2013 (33.1) issue of the impressive literary journal, Pleiades. One of which, "As Like," was selected for inclusion in the esteemed The Best American Poetry 2014. The same issue of the magazine also contained a revealing essay by Christopher Howell, "(Re)Introducing Adam Hammer," telling us a more about this lost but not-quite-forgotten poet. "Not quite forgotten," because although there are few reviews of Hammer's work on Amazon, those that are there rave ecstatically. No Time for Dancing is a welcome and valuable addition to what we know of Adam Hammer, and gives hope that more will surface of a writer who was like no other, who created poems that were individual and unique beyond cliche and influence, lost in the wide desert of American poetry. [5★]
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