When Adrian Manning submitted some of his work for the Other Side of the Ragged Edge I was intrigued at first to see how a poet--an Englishman at that--could get, or allow himself to get, so close and tight into the Bukowski mode. The fact that he had taken enough leeway to refer, as Bukowski does, to his writing machine as a 'typer,' and have a line saying, 'gee baby,' (this is an Englishman--or is he writing about or as an American?). In this chapbook of twenty-one poems there are similar references, including plenty of mentions of the sixpack, a famous Bukowski 'prop.'
I accepted a handful of Adrian Manning's poems simply because they were so good, they were enjoyable, showed insight and had plenty of what was his own if also plenty of the Other Fellow. Don't quibble about it, Bottle of Smoke have given us here a bright chapbook still laced with the true grief out of the many domains of human struggle. It's no small praise to say these pages are like a few feathers from the tail of a Black Sparrow.
Adrian Manning has caught some of the Buk flair, there's no doubt about that. And he's going to run with it and play the lines out.
One of the best poems is 'Blood, He Said,' a macabre tale about an artist who wants to use the red stuff from the slaughterhouse because paint is beyond his budget. It gets to him though when his girlfriend slaughters whatever they had between them by prostituting herself to one of the young guys on the night shift to get a barrel.
He picked up the hammer and waited
in the darkness behind the door
for her return
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