Guile and Beer

So David J Thompson has a new book. It’s called Guile and Beer and it’s a hybrid, half photography and half poetry. The photos capture sights only locals know and the poems are tightly constructed narratives in his signature even paced conversational rhythm that makes you feel you’re tooling around in a beat up, noisy Chevy from the outskirts of one small town to another with Chet Baker turned up. When you stop at a bar or diner you overhear folks talking and somehow making their way through everyday lives as they keep wishing for the past or future and fighting off the resignation that it will be no better than their present...with just enough wry humor. You hear about the narrator’s new girlfriend, Popeye, Olive Oyl and her big feet, what’s been doing with Tarzan, Jane, Boy and, maybe my favorite part, what it was really like to hang out with Jesus and why as much as you may want him to come back and save your ass, you’re never going to see him again.

- Tony Gloeggler

David Thompson's poetry and photography are quiet rather than flamboyant or polemical, yet are chockfull of wit, irony, and humor. They make a pinprick in that kind of art that says "admire me" rather than "enjoy me." In his poems, the craft is apparent in his subtle sense of sound and gift for economy of phrase, but the poems retain a feeling of spontaneity and freshness. They are not so achingly well-crafted that you can almost hear the door slam shut when they finish. They have the openness, say, of a Tony Gloeggler or Gerald Locklin poem. His new book Guile and Beer is one of the best I have read this year. It deserves your attention.

- Don Winter