Summary
One question that occurs throughout Freeze & Thaw is what and how much one should wish for, which is not a "lite" consideration. In "Redundancy," [Richard Sale] speaks of things he does and does not want: "I don't want Reason, don't want / even one reason, not even ten / good reasons. Want a heap / of hypotheses and then some. / . . . Don't want it all made clear to me / when I have (Hoo, Lord!) / crossed the bar." If allusions to 19th-century literature and medieval philosophy crop up from time to time, along with a bucking horse and "the tail end of a Texas August," the poem entitled "Vibrating Crystal" evokes a more "postmodern" image as it pokes fun at a typical can't-do-without offer that comes in the mail uninvited and highly presumptuous. In this "found poem" that reports the terms of the offer, Sale explodes the notion that we need more than we already have. Not only does the offer include the speaker's own "one-hundred-dollar / Four-Million-Year-Old / Vibrating Crystal," which has been "gemologically classified and / is a power stone treasure" and is being held for him in the company's " security and Safekeeping Div. / in Safe Deposit Vault #565 / under [his] personal registration file 37A," but he will receive in addition, just for the $19 he's to send for covering "shipping, jewelry handling, / insurance, and certification processing," a free "special edition of / Crystal Power News which tells [him] how . . . / to gain money, love, and happiness." After finishing with his account of the contents of the offer, the speaker concludes with this comment: "They don't know I already have / all the money and love I want / and how close their Crystal letter / comes to making me perfectly happy."
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Clowning Around with Junk Mail
Clowning Around With Junk Mail Freeze & Thaw By Richard Sale Incindio Press 78 pages, $15.00
In his new collection of poems, Freeze & Thaw, Richard Sale refers to himself as having gotten, "with the stretching of the years," the reputation "if not of wit, at least of clown." As a Texas poet, Sale has certainly played the fool for quite a while, and his uncommon humor (especially unusual among the state's poets) has grown ever more impressive and salut...See the full content of this document
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