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Friday 22 December 2017

Words Ripped From A Soul Still Bleeding - Billy Lamont (2017)

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Words Ripped From A Soul Still Bleeding - Billy Lamont
Infinity Publishing
Published 13th November 2017

I am not a literary mastermind by any stretch of the imagination (you only have to check for the bad grammar, poor punctuation and no doubt dubious spelling on this blog to confirm that! 😀) and I'm probably not that great at writing reviews (Amazon recently refused to publish one of mine because I didn't stick to their script), but if there is one thing I know and that's Poetry! Not like Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Dante etc (I'm not that well educated you know but I have read more books than a certain sitting President! 😉)

Okay, so the Poetry I happen to know about often has a musical backing but hey it's still poetry! (You can understand why Amazon refused to post a review of mine because I've already departed a little from the subject!) Billy Lamont sometimes has musical backing so therefore I can say with all honesty that I am really trying hard  to stick to the script!

New York Still Has Its Poets!

New York is known for its Poetry. Take Dion and the Belmonts - that was the poetry of the street corners in The Bronx infused with Doo Wop Harmonies. Take Lou Reed (Brooklyn) and you have the poetry of the dark alley with street hustlers trying to make a dime, all to the tune of some crazy psychedelic beat. Take Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (both from Queens - though Simon was born in New Jersey, another place that's loaded with Poets!)  and you have a more graceful type of poetry that was a bridge over troubled water or a sign written by the prophets on the subway wall. Take the Ramones (Forest Hills, Queens), especially Joey and Dee Dee, and there you have the poetry of dysfunction, the poetry of love, and all done at break-neck speed! I could add to that Patti Smith (though born in Chicago she developed as a Poet and a songwriter in Manhattan and Billy will be pleased I listed her as she's one of his favourites!) and Allen Ginsberg (another New Jersey born guy who ended up in East Village, Manhattan), though strictly a Poet he has dabbled with musical forms from time to time. I don't have time to say anything about Willie Nile (Buffalo, New York) and Jesse Malin (Flushing, Queens) except to say they are worth checking out also (C'mon Doug, get to the actual subject of this post!)

Then there's the Poetry of Billy Lamont (see, we are back on track now! 😉). Sometimes set to music (as I mentioned above) - but not always. He has recently published a brand new book of Poetry called Words Ripped From A Soul Still Bleeding (even the title sounds so Poetic). A fascinating piece of work it is as well.

On almost every page you read the words and they flow with great passion and find themselves beating in time to the drum of the human heart. It wouldn't seem out of place to shout like Dee Dee Ramone before the start of each Poem "1-2-3-4"!

This new collection touches all spheres of life as we know it from the social world to the political world, the enviroment, to things we can see with our physical eyes to the things that we can only see with the eyes of faith. There is poetry to be found in every place. It's like he says in the opener Hero or Villain Of My Villanelle, "Poems bleed from my veins like ink from ink wells".

Spirituality to Billy Lamont is like breathing and poetry, very hard to separate them. I commend Billy Lamont for being part of that great unbroken chain of New York Poets and if these poems are anything to go by then there will be more to follow. All I can say is, "Billy, don't get that soul wound sown up yet!" 

The book is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and can probably be ordered from your local bookstore.


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