Spring Flowerings: noir, funerals and verse

 

By C.S. GILBERT

 

Key West has a new Queen of Noir, a title earned by E.R. Warner’s new novel, “Rock Bottom.” The back cover invites readers “to get lost in the underworld of Key West, a world inhabited by pedophiles, drug traffickers, and the Cuban Mafia.” They’re not kidding. And while the Culture Vulture has encountered almost none of that world in my twenty-plus years of residence and community involvement, Warner makes it ring terrifyingly true.

 

The plot, and particularly the character development, unroll slowly at first but the present tense narration from the points of view, alternately and sometimes overlapping, of both main characters, the self-depracating, sell-out physician, Doc, and the vulnerable teen, Tessie, soon gather speed until the climax rushes in with the force of a locomotive. The last several chapters are almost impossible to put down.

 

If this book goes into a second edition—which it well may—we have some design, diction and editing tips to offer. In the meantime, it’s recommended as a gritty and exciting read.

“The Funerals of Key West” by Edgardo Alvarado-Vazquez offers a more ambitious work, a multi-media literary collage of Key West history, culture, murder, mayhem, journalism, gay and lesbian civil rights, and the fascinating, fictionalized, but painstakingly researched, multi-generational story of the Cuban-American Zuniga family, 1898-2020s.

 

The author, who is better known as an academic, graphic designer and poet (this is his debut novel), has created an interwoven series of stories, most of which can stand alone, illustrated them with photographs and embellished the work with everything from a standard dedication and foreword to an additional Dearest Reader letter citing Miguel Cervantes and Man of La Mancha. Flowing from that is a Preface poem titled A Cautionary Tale About Key West.

At what the reader might imagine to be the end comes the 2020s Epilogue, a Post Script that is yet another story and finally an eclectic section of poems, texted dialogue and Acknowledgements, including an hilarious exchange of letters between the canine character, Newton the poodle, and the movie star Lassie.

 

The Table of Contents and gratitude to Anne McKee appear in the final pages. (E.R. Warner, too, received a grant from the Anne McKee Artists’ Fund for her novel.)

 

“Funerals of Key West” is a literary buffet. Nibble or gorge yourself at will. Alvarado will be speaking at the Fleming Street library’s Cafe con Libros series finale on Tuesday, April 7, with coffee and goodies at 9:30 and the program beginning promptly at 10 a.m. April, not incidentally, is Narional Poetry Month.

 

Longtime Key West Poetry Guild moderator (more than a decade into the late 2000s) Allen Leonard Meese has published a remarkable collection of verse in a charming, handbound volume, signed and numbered, titled “Drifting in Paradise: RoadMap to Reality, Essential Existential Poetry.” He is also author of the Viet Nam era novella, “The Abel Mutiny.”

 

The new book also contains several seemingly autobiographical short short stories and repeating illustrations on the theme of birds in flight. Thematic integration weaves from wistful loss to philosophical acceptance to the title of the last chapter, Serenity.

 

The final poem, however—one of many examples of the poet’s special gift for describing nature—is a call to action titled Gunmetal Blue: “On gunmetal blue nights of high starry skies/when the very ozone smells of incense/and you ask what you’ve done/to deserve all this/beauty,/ . . ./The answer comes/’What will you DO?’ Gotta love it. For details contact him at allenmeece@gmail.com.

That’s all for now. Gotta fly!

 

 

 

 

 

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