Smoking At The Gas Pumps . Review By Todd Cirillo

Soma Publishing  

To start off with, Smoking at the Gas Pumps (Soma Publishing, 2018) is a killer title and one that creates a clear and clean visual for the reader; that is both intriguing and entrancing with a shot of danger. This is also accomplished, to the same effect, in the best poems of John Patrick Robbins’ latest book. Not every poem accomplishes this, but that does not mean it is not a wonderful collection from a relevant force in modern poetry. It simply means that his barroom, drinking alone, I don’t get along with people, poems have been widely written about and received their rightful praise in many other reviews. For me, the most powerful poems in this book are the ones when the poet allows the poem and experience to just be alone on the page, much like the writer may have been when he wrote it. This allows the story, the emotion and the core feelings to shine through naturally. Most importantly, they are poems of connection. They are poems such as: Exit Wounds, People are Different, Writers are Worse, Already a Stranger in the Making, We All Eventually, Burbank, Role Reversal, Escape Route, Crack is Cheap, So was She. 

What sets these and others apart is the vulnerability Robbins allows to take over the poems. What makes them most interesting and enthralling is that, though the subject matter may be the same as his barroom poems, the style with which he lets the poems flow give the reader a direct arrow shot to the heart. In these poems, Robbins does not tell the reader what to do, how to live or what his life is like…he shows them. He lets the images lead the reader. That is where a connection occurs. The poems let us feel how alone he really is in a life lived like “time capsules of poor choices.” No matter how tough many of the poems are, the toughest have the most tender connections between their subjects; he and his mother (We All Eventually), he and a lover in bed at the end of love (Crack is Cheap, So was She), the theft of a book by a critic (People are Different, Writers are Worse) or is just an observer (Burbank). 

In these particular poems he writes the simple lines where his talent and the entire poem come together as in, “she whispered in my ear/are you okay?/I’m alive sweetheart how about you?/better now/“ (Crack is Cheap, So was She) or “some things were never meant to be taken away/I love you mom/sincerely your son.” (We All Eventually). 

I recommend buying this book, wholeheartedly. It is good to have Smoking at the Gas Pumps out in the poetry world, a welcome addition of honesty, guts, and grit where John Patrick Robbins “captured the stories one glance at a time” and wrote them down for all of us to connect with.

--Todd Cirillo, poet, publisher, Six Ft. Swells Press

"The news is bad today, in America and for America. There is nothing good or hopeful about it--except for Nazis, warmongers, and rich greedheads" HST