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Cuttings from the Tangle
For nearly three decades, Richard Buckner has been traveling the byways of America, often alone and with little more than his guitars and notebooks. Now he’s sharing what he saw, felt, and found.
Long admired for his impressionistic and elliptical lyrics, Buckner has more recently found himself pulling off the road to furiously write longer, fuller pieces. Here is a collection of his story-like poems gathered by haunting the public and private fringes of fifty studies wrung from thin motel walls and passing hallway echoes; from exchanges overheard between happy hour and closing time; from casually caustic conversations in junker parking lots and hash house booths; and from lost opportunities and vague chance meetings―but also from distant narrators caught staring off to recall what refuses to be forgotten.
he’d swallowed her youth
in sips so small she wouldn’t notice
until it was eventually
but-remembered on dark afternoons
With titles such as “One More Last One,” “Everyone is driven unknowingly to their urges,” and simply “Work,” these are Buckner’s singular reports from a revelatory road.
reappraising
past decisions in renewable review,
demanded by the weight
of explanations that can still determine
what drove you elsewhere then,
now with no- where left
to wait.
Black Sparrow Press is proud to bring this remarkable debut work of prose-poetry to readers.
“During a career spent crisscrossing the country, Buckner has seen plenty. In all those hotels between here and there, at those bars and truck stops and lounges, he would sit and listen . . . Buckner puts that power of observation to good use.”―NPR’s Morning Edition
“ Cuttings from the Tangle is not the work of a road-weary musician dabbling in another form. This book confirms a truth hinted at all these years in the language of his Buckner is a writer.”― Literary Hub
Long admired for his impressionistic and elliptical lyrics, Buckner has more recently found himself pulling off the road to furiously write longer, fuller pieces. Here is a collection of his story-like poems gathered by haunting the public and private fringes of fifty studies wrung from thin motel walls and passing hallway echoes; from exchanges overheard between happy hour and closing time; from casually caustic conversations in junker parking lots and hash house booths; and from lost opportunities and vague chance meetings―but also from distant narrators caught staring off to recall what refuses to be forgotten.
he’d swallowed her youth
in sips so small she wouldn’t notice
until it was eventually
but-remembered on dark afternoons
With titles such as “One More Last One,” “Everyone is driven unknowingly to their urges,” and simply “Work,” these are Buckner’s singular reports from a revelatory road.
reappraising
past decisions in renewable review,
demanded by the weight
of explanations that can still determine
what drove you elsewhere then,
now with no- where left
to wait.
Black Sparrow Press is proud to bring this remarkable debut work of prose-poetry to readers.
“During a career spent crisscrossing the country, Buckner has seen plenty. In all those hotels between here and there, at those bars and truck stops and lounges, he would sit and listen . . . Buckner puts that power of observation to good use.”―NPR’s Morning Edition
“ Cuttings from the Tangle is not the work of a road-weary musician dabbling in another form. This book confirms a truth hinted at all these years in the language of his Buckner is a writer.”― Literary Hub
112 pages, Hardcover
Published December 8, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 6, 2022
Richard Buckner has been one of my favorite musicians since I first saw him in 2000 at Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club in Kansas City, Missouri. He was touring behind his new album, “The Hill,” in which he’d set the poems from Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 “Spoon River Anthology” to music. (We should have known then he had grander artistic intentions.) I saw him every chance I could, which was often, as he seemed to come through Kansas City every six months or so over the next few years. The music was always strong, but it became increasingly clear that he didn’t much enjoy performing for people — or maybe just Kansas City crowds, who certainly weren’t the most reverent. In any case, he eventually turned to house shows, which, though I haven’t seen him at one, is probably the perfect setting for him and his music.
All of that to say, I’m a fan. I’m guessing that’s how most of us found our way to “Cuttings From the Tangle,” Richard Buckner’s first book of poetry — or “non-fiction clippings in prepared formations” as the book’s back cover reads or “story-like poems” as Black Sparrow Press states on their website. Call it what you want, but my first, unadorned thought when I’d finished was, “Wow, what a pile of shit.” That’s probably unfair, and it’s why I didn’t open up the review with that line without a little context. It’s also relative: one man’s shit is another’s Shinola. Buckner certainly has a way with words. These poems are evocative, the language sinewy and seductive (e.g. “the thicket between subtle / inference and stealthy intention / standing silently-being / mere stresses spit out / smooth as grits piecemeal-sporked / with a margarine nipple melting / to mask the coarse-grain bite”). But they’re also abstract and obtuse, impenetrable beneath a stream-of-consciousness, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style that throws a lot down on the page but never gets past “feel” to meaning. In short: there’s balls but no heart. “Cuttings From the Tangle” reads like the ramblings of a misanthrope, up too late on cough syrup and Camels, pounding away at a typewriter in the window of a shabby walkup in Midtown U.S.A., bemusing, bemoaning, bewailing — but never loving — all us sinners and this thing we call life.
All of that to say, I’m a fan. I’m guessing that’s how most of us found our way to “Cuttings From the Tangle,” Richard Buckner’s first book of poetry — or “non-fiction clippings in prepared formations” as the book’s back cover reads or “story-like poems” as Black Sparrow Press states on their website. Call it what you want, but my first, unadorned thought when I’d finished was, “Wow, what a pile of shit.” That’s probably unfair, and it’s why I didn’t open up the review with that line without a little context. It’s also relative: one man’s shit is another’s Shinola. Buckner certainly has a way with words. These poems are evocative, the language sinewy and seductive (e.g. “the thicket between subtle / inference and stealthy intention / standing silently-being / mere stresses spit out / smooth as grits piecemeal-sporked / with a margarine nipple melting / to mask the coarse-grain bite”). But they’re also abstract and obtuse, impenetrable beneath a stream-of-consciousness, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink style that throws a lot down on the page but never gets past “feel” to meaning. In short: there’s balls but no heart. “Cuttings From the Tangle” reads like the ramblings of a misanthrope, up too late on cough syrup and Camels, pounding away at a typewriter in the window of a shabby walkup in Midtown U.S.A., bemusing, bemoaning, bewailing — but never loving — all us sinners and this thing we call life.
December 6, 2020
I read this book aloud in my front room while drinking beer. By the end, I was slightly tipsy and had a sore throat. Still, it was my best experience with poetry.
April 22, 2026
Richard Buckner has made some of my favorite songs ever, so I was excited and curious about this book of poems. Despite it being a short book, it took me a long time to get through them all. I enjoyed the experience of reading them (and sometimes reading them out loud, as instructed). Similar to his music, I connected to some poems more than others. They are strange, fragmented, evocative, obtuse, only quasi-scrutable, sometimes completely impenetrable, scraggled, fevered, word salady, tonal, patient, musical, sometimes purely aesthetic, and more. Cuttings from the tangle indeed. Not sure at all what it all means, but I enjoyed the experience. A tough hang at times, but every now and then one grabs you. I'm glad I have it on my shelf and can crack it open from time to time. I have connected differently with his songs over the years, hearing them from different angles, and I feel like I could re-read these poems at a different point and have a completely different experience.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews