Reviews
Writer Of The Asphalt Range:
The Wheels Of American Poetry Turn These Pages
We have in this elegant book poems that are like chunks of stones and rocks hitting us as we drive on through, surprising but accepted, that we never forget, and also expansive stories that are of the kind that we would tell those who come after.
The crossroads of American Free Verse Poetry needs a book such as this one to mark what direction to take: and it is that of a biker’s position in the saddle with a direction known but an ability to mark it in ways that are not indulgent, never hard to track. Yes, there is a psychic if not heritage connection to the days of cowboys and, indeed, the iron horse is ridden in the same way, “forging a bond within the wind” as only “that loner packing a bedroll” can witness. “A biker keeps it true.” It is not at all without precedent that outsiders write the kind of poetry destined to be included in an American Free Verse canon. There is an aesthetic involved with being a biker that is a connection to the revitalization of this literary art form and, from Walt Whitman through Objectivist poets into the Beats, an outlaw status has been the storm center of poetry that is the “rain that riders tend to watch.” Indeed, those who can write about such things leave the abstract language of ideas behind for the concrete grit of words that call out to us from loners with vision, as does the author of this text.
There is something about being a biker poet that defies the otherwise academic inability to balance feeling with thought because, and we have it here in this evocative book, it takes a writer who lives as only riders do to speak in poetry that seeks to clearly see the main road from the side where “we go back quite a ways” and come forward more wisely.
Martin Jack Rosenblum
Harley-Davidson Motor Company Historian Emeritus
Rounder Records Recording Artist; Gibson Guitars Artist Endorsee;
Professor of Music, Literature, and History at the Peck School of the Arts,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee;
Music and Literature Critic; Poet and Singer/Songwriter
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Poets, like photographers, are true artists. Bikers are a rare breed. When reading the words that make up the poems written by Laurence P. Scerri, the Ironhorse Writer, I can literally see what he is saying. Looking at the photographs that my father shot during his days with the Outlaws MC, I feel what he was experiencing. This is a true gift, shared from the very souls of people who create these photos and poems. Whatever part you play in this life, be remembered as part of a legacy….of sharing dreams as well as changing humanity for the better. It's that legacy that shall never die.
Beverly V. Roberts (daughter of Jim Flash Miteff)
Author of
Portraits of American Bikers: Life in the 1960's
Portraits of American Bikers: Inside Looking Out
http://www.flashproductionsllc.com
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Laurence Scerri, (Ironhorse Writer - American Biker Poet), Co-Founder of the Road Scribes of America, the Biker Poets and Writers Association and a contributing Poet and columnist for Connecticut Cruise News Newspaper’s Poets’ Corner was awarded the 2010 Writer of the Year by the readers of Connecticut Cruise News. It is very easy to understand why the readers would choose Larry Scerri for this honor. In 2007 Laurence P. Scerri was set as the Biker Poet Laureate of the Connecticut Cruise News Newspaper (an honor he still holds), for his long-term commitment to his brother and sister Biker Poets and his ‘true grit’ old 'skool' poetry. Known in most circles as Ironhorse Writer, Mr. Scerri, has been writing and riding the chapters of his life for over thirty years, and if you happen to request to be added onto his MySpace or Facebook page you will find that he is not only well loved, his writing is applauded by all, and deservedly so.
What you will find in these pages is a brother, a friend, and an American who has riding in his blood and writing in his soul. Ironhorse’s perspective comes to life through his ‘collective of individual legacies’ - as he describes being a ‘Biker’ -- in word, in emotion and in mind-pictures that any reader can identify with. Ironhorse’s legacy is our legacy. Whether you go on ‘Papa’s Run’ with Ironhorse or feel the ‘Fabric’ of his life … or be ‘greeted by a stillness, not unknown’ – you will be proud to be an American, a brother, or sister, a biker, or a friend. You will know the ‘Freedom’ of the Cowboy who roams the range, and the Biker who rides the asphalt range towards the same horizon.
MarySusan Williams-Migneault
Road House Press
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