Tapping My Own Phone: poems & stories Ron Whitehead's CD Reviewed

by Bob Holman

Ron Whitehead's voice is Kentucky. A latter-day Beat, Whitehead is on a crusade of positivity for poetry - his Insomniacathons, 24-48 hours of nonstop poetry, his publication of books and broadsides and CDs for Published in Heaven Press, and his own writings including most recently Blood Filled Vessels Racing to the Heart ( and just released The Declaration of Independence This Time: Selected Poems 1996-2000), now all slide over to give room for that voice, the distilled essence of his own poetry. This cause for joy is his CD, Tapping My Own Phone: poems & stories, which evokes the myths and natures of Appalachia in all its lost-in-the-holler glory and the Beat zone of poesie in full utopian regalia.

There are thirty poems here. Ron's voice, a combination of full drawl, magnolia sweet, and Wendell Berry's Mad Farmer's blue hot rage, drives the disc and vitally fashions a new post in the American ear.

Appalachia in all its lost-in-the-holler glory

The big stories are at the center. Meet Grandaddy Dick whose tales always seemed to tell more - "They had a way of setting you to thinking. You find yourself inside the story, then the next thing you know you're adding stuff till it becomes real, and takes off down the road on its own, and you have to run to catch up or get left behind." Let him tell you about "Moxley and Irene," who've been off their swamp island but once and live on snakes, snapping turtles, possum and moonshine whiskey. Irene was a decent witch, but when she found that picture of an old woman in his pocket she threw it down and broke it. She'd never seen a mirror before.

From the front seat of the family car, watch "Jasper Joyce" hold services in a revival tent. Whitehead's language soars with the St. Vitus dancers writhing to the tune of glossolalia - "swoopers become hoppers," and finally the snakes themselves are pulled out, rattlers and water moccasins, and handled.

The big stories are at the center.

"The Coal Miner" is divided into two sections. In one, a hardscrabble man leaves us with his dream of finishing first or second in some kind of contest in his first week of vacation so he might take the family off to Panama City for his dream vacation the last week. Part two begins in the midst of a rocking chair contest, days measured by noon sirens, the Coal Miner following the "slow gravitational pull of his life." Whitehead leaves a page turn in - insistent anti-polish? Or his own rocking chair? Coal Miner's children pop the wash cloth on his face and counsel, "Stay awake, Daddy." The over-the-top ending is Whitehead's only attempt at Southern Gothic.

rants...he gives us all the classics

Ron Whitehead is best known for his rants, and he gives us all the classics: "GIMME BACK MY WIG: The Hound Dog Taylor Blues," "Tapping My Own Phone," "Shithouse Manifesto," "San Francisco, May 1993" (a paean to Ferlinghetti), "Asheville" (which bridges Ginsberg's death and a generation of poetry slammers), and most especially the narrative rant of "MUSIC SAVED MY LIFE and JESUS SAVED MY SOUL." But the stormy drang of it doesn't translate as well on CD - you miss the vision of Bone Man tension, and there's only so much up on the CD range. It's the hilarity and rawboned realism of "Mama" as she takes the children out to shoot a Christmas tree that's the true story of this CD's power, or the beautiful litany cum echo of the simple "How Many More Times" that'll stop you in your tracks. Ron leans into his angelic countertenor at times, and in "The Ending of Time" we find him fronting The Black Pig Liberation Front. There are a ton of tiny gems and surprises: a hallucinogenic trip with Burroughs ("Calling the Toads"), the hypermelodic "ah" in Buddha in the ethereal Louisville of "Listen."

...a ton of tiny gems and surprises

This anthology is an encyclopedia, a handsome collection of the voices that drive the man who drives the poetry bus. Take a listen. This is the edge that just may lead home.

Bob Holman's CD In With the Out Crowd was recently released. The author of several poetry volumes Bob produced the award-winning 5-part PBS documentary (and Companion Book) The United States of Poetry. Bob put SLAM poetry on the map. In Fall 2001 Bob is opening a Poetry Club in NYC's Bowery.