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John J. Trause is from New Jersey and works there as the director of the Oradell Public Library. He is the founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, and hosted and curated the monthly reading series for many years.
Like the ancient Colossus of Rhodes that straddled a harbor, John straddles the Hudson attending and participating in poetry readings in New York City. His work, Latter-Day Litany was staged Off-Off Broadway there.
I think John J. Trause is an essential poet, one of those responsible for the flow of poetry from one place to another. A classicist and a pop gossip, he riffs off of Andy Warhol superstars, French folk songs and even Catullus. I get a kick out of reading his poems. What’s enlightening is fun. I think you’ll agree when you hear him read in the Vimeo below. Enjoy.
John J. Trause reads some poems
This is “John J. Trause reads some poems” by Don Yorty on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
Mrs. Dildoway in Bond Street
Mrs. Dildoway said she would buy the dildos herself.
Diddling away the hours in idle diletti in prep for her party
(strap-on, that is), the help helping themselves to helpings
of pasties and pastries galore, bakers’ dozens of delight,
forcemeat, puddings, mincemeat, meats, ices,
while Clarissa stepped off the kerb and saw the contrail
of a jetliner spewing spume across the midmorning sky
as a water main broke with a bang and a burst of wetness,
Big Ben banging its broad bells in thunderous vibrato,
and she thought of George and Gerald, Emma and Vita,
and Nessa cleaving to Clive and the Turkish delight
(rose and mastic) the colonel brought from the Dardanelles
to Hammersmith that summer she melted in the garden
and wanted to throw herself out an upper-storey window,
and she heard the report on the wireless in the shop
and that it would be the talk of her party,
the tubular crophead hurtling headlong
from a window, her bobbed head dead on a railing spike,
oh, now death enters my party as guests enter
and dildos enter and depart the nether parts, post-prandial,
for there she was, wet, and she exclaimed.
No, He Didn’t!
Did he or didn’t he in his freak offs,
did Diddy with dildos and baby oil,
guns and drugs,
mother, jugs & speed,
diddying off,
hey diddle diddle,
seedy stuff, speedy,
sex trafficking,
sexing
boys and girls, guys and dolls,
refuting coercion and rufies under two roofs?
No, he didn’t!
Yes, he did.
Shit, I have the word “dildos”
in my last two poems.
The Box of Torrone will be published by Unsolicited Press. Here is the pre-order link on their website:
THE BOX OF TORRONE – Unsolicited Press
The Box of Torrone is a singular collection of poetry that unwraps six distinct flavors of Italian nougat-each one linked to a different city in Italy, each one a doorway to memory, place, and emotion.