If

you are a small press poet and you haven’t heard of Dave Roskos or read anything published by Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books, or, at least settled back in an easy chair with an issue of Big Hammer and a drink, then you are so far behind in the game you may as well collect your chips and leave quietly, preferably by the back door. Roskos has been writing poetry since 1979 and publishing Iniquity Press since 1988.

I knew about Roskos and Big Hammer for many years and when he stopped on his way through Albuquerque a few years back, I had lunch with him and Mark Weber and we talked about tire irons, doing shots in the front yard, furniture thrown out of second storey windows, survival when survival did not seem to be an option, writing poetry in the dark booths of working man bars, Kell Robertson, listening to all the best street talk, and publishing it all out of pocket, out of the soul because that is where it all starts and ends. The soul of a poem isn’t worth a dime but it demands so much of the blood of your blood, the way that you breathe, the way you dream.

I’m looking at Big Hammer 12. The title page is covered with the images of hammers. What else? I flip through the issue at random. Page 118, Blow Out Siesta, the poet is Boni Joi and this is the first line. “She went out for a smoke and got an explosion….” The poem is like a quick shot of bar whiskey, raw all the way through and every word right where it needs to be. This is the kind of poetry that Dave Roskos looks for. This is the kind of poetry that I require while waiting for the next bus to the apocalypse.

Or, lets try this one. Big Hammer, same issue, page 60. The poem is Wild Bill by the late Dave Church. It seems that Dave and his friend Wild Bill go to a bar called Muldoon’s Saloon, get liquored up and go home to make some tapes. On the way,

Wild Bill decided to scale the railing
Of the bridge we were crossing.
He said he wanted to test his nerve.
Suddenly the Devil rushed up behind me—
Made me push Wild Bill right into the river.

As a result of that stunt both Church and Wild Bill are committed to the Institute of Mental Health for a month of observation to see if they really are suicidal. A few months after they are released Wild Bill does kill himself. “Stuck a knife in his heart/Right in front of his mother.” These two lines are what really make the poem, but it’s that last line that blows it all to hell. “He must have really wanted to fuck her…” It’s this kind of poem that makes Big Hammer sing.

If you hang around the small press long enough you will become an editor, even if you don’t want to. It just happens because sooner or later the juice to edit and publish just gets in your veins and pretty soon you are hooked. In my opinion Roskos is one of those rare poets who is a first class editor and publisher. Forget about perfect bound, slick publications for a moment. Those kinds of books are the products of money and hype and bullshit and bean counters. And, yes, there are great ones out there. But, I have looked at far too many really badly written, badly edited slick perfect bound books in my life to know when I am staring at a piece of pure crap. There is no heart, no soul in them. And, if there are genitals, they hidden away from the delicate sensibility.

However, all you have to do is open Andrew Gettler’s Footsteps of a Ghost: Poems from Viet Nam or Ed Galing’s Burlesque or The Goofy Goddess on the Wall by Kell Robertson and you’ll discover the care that Roskos takes in making these books. Roskos prefers to call it building and it actually is a process of building something. Putting it together with your hands. Good editing is almost like dreaming. You have to get yourself in the zone where Andrew Gettler or Kell Robertson live. I have yet to see an Iniquity Press book that has been thrown together. Each one is a work of love and care. You won’t find handmade paper or special print fonts here. Still, the printing is bold and crisp. And, the books like the poems that Roskos publishes, are strictly visceral, the stuff of the shot and beer tradition in poetry. If Roskos had been born say around 1910, he would have been an editor for Black Mask or Dime Detective in the thirties and forties. I can just picture him using a lurid shoot em up cover featuring a Raymond Chandler novelette, say RED WIND. Or, plenty of pin up leg featuring a Paul Cain story.

Building a book includes knowing just how to edit a chapbook. Mark Weber once called chapbooks the equivalent of classical music that string quartets play. Naturally, the world has always been geared toward the big works of art, symphonies by Mozart, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Copland. Novels by Faulkner, Melville, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. And, the ambitious long poems of Olson, Pound and Williams. But, the standard collection in the small press world is the chapbook which can be as brief as two or three poems and as large as thirty for forty poems. It takes a special kind of editing skill to pull off the publication of a good or even a great chapbook. Lets face it, THE WASTE LAND really appeared as a chapbook. And, the same goes for HOWL. Chapbooks are the life blood of the small press world, the place where the real action is. And, when you stop to think about it they are almost always quick reads. Roskos knows this fact as well as almost any editor and that’s why his publications are the equal of any around.

I have heard the term writer’s writer thrown around the writing world most of my life. But there is also that rare person who is an editor’s editor as well. Dave Roskos is an editor’s editor. Not only does he know how to design a book well, but he also knows how to read a manuscript as a book before it really becomes a book. And, that, in and of itself, is unusual.

Keep this in mind, there are no Maxwell Perkinses in the small press world. Perkins, who was an editor at Scribners during the twenties and thirties played no small roll in building THE SUN ALSO RISES and THE GREAT GATSBY. That kind of editor is an extreme rarity in contemporary publishing. But, I think Roskos comes close in the way that he works, simply because the books he edits and publishes always have a very stark clean look to them. Clean and spare. He is the master of the simply designed cover. And, he has the eye for that lean black and white effect. He gets it that stark is also beautiful.

Last, but maybe most important of all, Dave Roskos has a feel for what really is important in small press poetry. When you take a look at almost any issue of Big Hammer, what you will see is something that comes close to the honor roll of the best poets writing in the small press world. A. D. Winans, the late Lorri Jackson, B. Z. Niditch, Tom Kryss, to name just a few. If it weren’t for Dave Roskos, who would publish the work of the late Andrew Gettler? And, this is my little sidebar, Gettler’s work needs to be collected and published in one book. And, if it weren’t for Roskos and publishers like him, Kell Robertson’s work would not be as accessible (if that is the right word) as it is. Robertson is, in my opinion, a major American poet whose work so richly deserves to be read again and again. If there ever is a small press editor’s hall of fame, Dave Roskos should be among the first ten editors to be inducted.

What he does and the way he does it takes heart and guts.

Todd Moore, 27 January, 2009, Albuquerque, NM

a first part of Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books are available now in THE SHOP here… and as well on the Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books web page here… More books will be added soon.

some related articles are listed below:

1. dave roskos | sunday morning 1/4 to 6
2. dave roskos | if the shoe fits stick it up your ass
3. dave roskos | dollar bill wall paper
4. dave church | the editor
5. dave roskos | scene on a loading dock
6. dave roskos | iniquity press / vendetta books
7. dave roskos
8. dave roskos | found myself…
9. dave church | dirty dave
10. david roskos | pregnant sky a.m. hours 9/23/89
11. david roskos | our lady of simultaneous orgasm
12. todd moore | pure blood primal: the poetry of kell robertson
13. todd moore | the second
14. todd moore | i was
15. todd moore | when…
16. todd moore | just before
17. todd moore | i want it all and i want it now
18. todd moore | we cut
19. todd moore | how come
20. todd moore | i don’t want
21. todd moore | I don’t
22. todd moore | this
23. todd moore | red
24. todd moore | what I want to know
25. todd moore | right after…
26. todd moore | the kid
27. todd moore | just
28. todd moore | when dillinger
29. todd moore | i love
30. todd moore | cindy was
31. todd moore | what haunted
32. todd moore | dynamite
33. todd moore | the mystery
34. todd moore | peckinpah took…
35. todd moore | the perfect
36. todd moore | the bank…
37. todd moore | lucky
38. todd moore | fucking
39. todd moore | burning the…
40. todd moore | dillinger was
41. todd moore | the question
42. todd moore | coleman is
43. todd moore | the bottle
44. todd moore | they’re coming
45. todd moore | the house
46. todd moore | reading
47. todd moore | hemingway
48. todd moore | tyler’s
49. todd moore | burning
50. todd moore | all the way to the fame
51. todd moore | lisa was…
52. todd moore | the name is dillinger
53. todd moore | outlaw
54. todd moore | frito stopped…
55. todd moore | the sign of the outlaw
56. todd moore | dillinger stood…
57. todd moore | parker shot
58. todd moore | rd armstrong | reads
59. todd moore | taking on bukowski
60. todd moore | i write in the blood
61. todd moore | the sentences are burning
62. todd moore | walking around in the blood
63. todd moore | the blood of america
64. todd moore | going to meet the outlaw
65. todd moore | jack wilson
66. todd moore | the nightmare talking
67. todd moore | devouring the shadow
68. todd moore | the nightmare of poetry is war
69. todd moore | working on my duende
70. todd moore | billie licked…
71. todd moore | shotgun blues
72. todd moore | dillinger stepped
73. todd moore | geeshie wiley
74. todd moore | the blood of the poet
75. todd moore | the old man’s waiting
76. todd moore | nightmare frenzy
77. todd moore | donny shot…
78. todd moore | the treehouse reading
79. todd moore | a conversation with raindog
80. todd moore | i’ll play dillinger
81. todd moore | shadow of the outlaw
82. todd moore | black rain
83. todd moore | everything changes when dillinger arrives
84. todd moore | inventing the nightmare
85. todd moore | gimme a shotgun
86. todd moore | outlaw poetry
87. todd moore | road testing the kid
88. todd moore | nightmare splender
89. todd moore | largo slapped
90. todd moore | dillinger posed
91. todd moore | gimme danger
92. todd moore | the dark country
93. todd moore | tasting the blood
94. todd moore | reading the dark
95. todd moore | dillinger, the coyote, and the wolf
96. todd moore | working the outlaw wind
97. todd moore | blood and fate under mad stars
98. todd moore | I work the shattered line
99. todd moore | and the gunfight at dodge city
100. todd moore | leaving a little blood on the floor
101. todd moore | stealing dillinger, becoming an outlaw
102. todd moore | fighting death for the poem
103. todd moore | the machine gun blood of the poem
104. todd moore | the dark side of america
105. todd moore | death rides the blood
106. todd moore | that terrible shaking in the blood
107. mera wolf & todd moore | read
108. todd moore | what are the stakes in american poetry?
109. todd moore | damage, genius, courage
110. todd moore | the coyote trickster and the wooden gun
111. todd moore | night blood, red hands
112. todd moore | writing dillinger in the eye of the hurricane
113. todd moore | billy the kid in the theater of blood
114. todd moore | falling in love with danger
115. todd moore | cold fire, molten ice
116. todd moore | the great american poem
117. todd moore | writing poetry, burning the house
118. todd moore | washed in the blood of the outlaw moon
119. todd moore | falling asleep in outlaw country
120. todd moore | the outlaw poet and those killer eyes
121. todd moore | patrick mckinnon and the drunken shamanic
122. todd moore | scratching it out street level for the poem
123. todd moore & Lawrence welsh | poetry reading
124. todd moore | dillinger, outlaws, writing, and murder
125. todd moore | hustling for drinks, praying for lines
126. todd moore | the long way home and the blood on the floor
127. todd moore | all the dark talking to the angel of death
128. todd moore | coyote death mask outlaw
129. todd moore | the fevers and sweats of the nightmare poem
130. todd moore | reading the movies, watching the poems
131. todd moore | love, longing, dillinger, disaster
132. todd moore | dreaming the dream, paying the price
133. todd moore | outlaw bonfires and dillinger’s blood
134. todd moore | the murder and the ecstasy of the everlasting dream
135. todd moore | love & death & teeth in the blood
136. todd moore | american metaphors, visions, and nightmares
137. todd moore | the exalted scar and the annointed cure
138. todd moore | the last good reading from the outlaw dark
139. Todd Moore (1937 – 2010) | A Memorial Reading | Vox Audio
140. todd moore | machine guns, movies, culture, dreams
141. todd moore | the dillinger convergence: three ways of dreaming the outlaw
142. todd moore | gary goude and that crushed rotting dawg
143. todd moore | into the open madness: the poetry of kell robertson
144. todd moore | blind whiskey and the straight razor blues
145. todd moore | the rat’s blood had glued my hand shut
146. todd moore | machine guns, guernica, and the outlaw poem
147. todd moore | mythic blood, psychic movies, outlaw dreams
148. todd moore | the volcanic death song of baby face nelson
149. todd moore | scorched trinity: dillinger, billie, and machine gun love
150. dave church | drunk radio poems
151. todd moore | danger beyond danger, where the outlaw lives
152. todd moore | blood calls to blood
153. todd moore | what’s
154. todd moore | burning
155. todd moore | 45 auto
156. todd moore | coming out of…
157. todd moore | jerry’s old
158. todd moore | the fever of writing
159. todd moore | the nightmare of reading
160. todd moore | doing shots with ben smith in air à boire
161. todd moore | play it & judy christopher
162. todd moore | dillinger and the riddle of the wooden gun
163. todd moore | stories, ashes, and fire
164. bone | poetry by todd moore & rd armstrong
165. todd moore | dancing in the fire with s.a. griffin
166. todd moore | dillinger, death, and the high mountain air
167. todd moore | living at the movies with dillinger and depp
168. todd moore | the last good movie I made was a poem
169. todd moore | chasing jack micheline’s shadow
170. todd moore & dennis gulling | shotgun weather
171. todd moore | outlaw poetry, psychic damage, the survival of wounds
172. bill nevin | todd moore, cinematic poet on the outlaw’s trail
173. todd moore | stealing the fire, stealing the shadow
174. todd moore
175. wolfgang carstens | for todd moore
176. todd moore & john macker
177. rd armstrong | todd moore and lummox press
178. daryl rogers | near full moon | …for todd moore
179. todd moore | dying with dillinger in the corpse is dreaming
180. todd moore | las montanas de santa fe: visions of the spirit country
181. todd moore | the sea, the poem, and the house of all possible myths: the poetry of milner place
182. todd moore | the central avenue rundown jazz radio show
183. john dorsey & s.a. griffin | the dead zone trilogy by todd moore
184. todd moore | how to survive the coming night: the poetry of john yamrus
185. todd moore | the gold cane, van gogh’s ear, and the gun in the casket: wandering down this crooked road
186. todd moore | saturday night desperate, don winter, and the black mitten of poetry
187. dave lancet | toasty haiku (and silly)
188. joe salerno | getting up for work III
189. ed galing | calling bukowski