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5.

seem inelegant
noticeably
“just right”
insanely large
surprisingly
fancier
a little damp
more windy than wet

89.

your inner child
becomes tedious
calling out your name
for the hundredth time
rain follows you
the most magical
non-existent
rain

All three poems above also appeared in Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem (Vol.XXXII, No. 2, 2022).

Hallelujahs, raincoats and slickers for 100 Umbrellas.  

“Like going out in Wisconsin weather with a different umbrella every time, when you read Ron Czerwien’s 100 Umbrellas, you never know what’s going to befall—or fall on—you next. After Erik Satie died, they found more than 100 umbrellas where he lived (those ’brellas being the inspiration for this book)—inexactly the kind of surprises these delightful and precisely surreal poems deliver. For example, the 35th umbrella ends: 

with the mouth and teeth of a dragon
time
does exactly
what they advertise

while the 36th begins: 

whatever plans you had
imagine
Budapest’s clouds
wrote this

 In fact every “umbrella," with its 8 "umbrella ribs" (lines), plies Satievious whimsy, but being Czerwienian, they do more than that. Wry and spry as Satie's gymnopetry, they also slyly remind us of the world we're in. As in this excerpt from #12:

of all things transparent
rave
it’s a windshield! it’s an election!

This interplay of wit and playfulness with what is serious about existence calls to mind the feeling I get when I read Brautigan. But the work here is uniquely Czerwien’s. Sometimes the darkness (the sun’s evil twin?) breaks through, as in #33, a poem that uses the technique of repetition of the focus (line-ending) noun to great effect, ending with this classically Czerwienian couplet:

this particular option
will do quite little to protect you 

—which also displays Czerwien’s attention to what can carry a poem further than one might expect, for I have never, I think, seen a better use of the word quite. 

It is great fun to write about these poems; greater fun is reading them, for above all, they are good clean serious poetic fun. I suggest reading them not just aloud but out loud while heeding the line breaks in order to catch the rhythms of the poems, which suggest to me the different ways rain (as agent for the external world we inhabit?) patters on or pelts an umbrella, for, oh yes, these poembrellas are real, made in and of the world—decorations against the harshnesses, finely crafted instruments of musical (or, per Satie, phonometric) delight … in short, they are and could only be Ron Czerwien poems. I love ’em!”

—Steve Timm's most recent book of poems is Rule of Composition (2022, Bananaquit Press). He and his wife, Shari Bernstein, live in Madison, Wisconsin.

“Ron Czerwien’s new book, 100 Umbrellas, is a wonderful collection of surreal and absurd poems. Czerwien is a master at this style of poetry, along the lines of Charles Simic. You may not think of craft when you hear surreal and absurd, but these are finely tuned eight-line poems meant to be read in order. Representing snapshots of contemporary living they are more insightful and entertaining than anything you’ll read on Twitter or any social media where there are over 100 daily disappointments to brighten everyone’s newsfeed. The wind and the rain blow through these poems, and an umbrella doesn’t offer much protection especially when it's blown inside-out or left at home. But, as these poems sadly point out, there are many truths you can choose from like dresses or wallets in a thrift store. Or we can always plan to change our conclusions. It is true that you still don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but this collection may offer some insight. Because who hasn’t gotten bitten by a futuristic meteorologist.”  

—Lynn Patrick Smith is a singer/songwriter as well as a poet. His latest poetry collection is These Little Scenes from Fireweed Press.