Al Ortolani’s most recent collection of poems, The Taco Boat, focuses not just on the people of the American Midwest, but on the connection to the humor and pragmatism of working men and women. His poems are vignettes from the fields of Kansas, the hills of the Ozarks, and the streets of Kansas City. They are about good dogs and crazy cats. His people are family and strangers alike. Both are seen with an empathetic eye. They share an attachment to the joys and exasperations of being human, struggling to understand, to thrive. The poems in The Taco Boat step back from the day to day with an acceptance of the life its characters have been tossed into. The images are frequently taken from the natural world, but just as often are from the mechanics garage, the fast-food restaurant, the baseball diamond, the assisted living cafeteria. The poems in The Taco Boat are about the relationships people build, dismantle, and build again. |
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What creates an authentic life? The Taco Boat, poet Al Ortolani's latest and perhaps most intriguing book, celebrates the magic in everyday living, mingling family stories with the poet's hard-won savvy as to how life really is. Be it a Glock-totting grandma, where to keep your eyes at a urinal, or dealing with the indignities of old age, these poems caress both the timely and the universal, riffing on the quotidian tasks of daily life while diving into the secrets of the soul and even the cosmos.
—Alexis Rhone Fancher, poetry editor, Cultural Daily, author of EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books, 2022)
Reading Al Ortolani's The Taco Boat was like eating a taco overflowing with surprising but spicy ingredients. So, make sure you go to your local IGA and stock up on your favorite snack food and some chicken nuggets before you read. Park your Oldsmobile in the garage and pour yourself a cup of coffee to get ready for this joy ride through life in Middle America. You'll find Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon, oil changes and battery repairs, painted turtles, fly tying, and so much more. Settle back in your lounger and put your feet up on your favorite stool because you will want to stay for a while.
—Jimmy Pappas, winner of the Rattle chapbook prize for Falling off the Empire State BuildingJimmy Pappas, winner of the Rattle chapbook prize for Falli
from "Socrates Played Second Base":
The barefoot old Greek in the second-hand toga,
chatters questions like a little leaguer,
pops the dust from his glove.
I'm wondering if this could possibly have happened, and the answer is: Yes, if not baseball, in his time, something like it. After all, baseball is a metaphor for life. This is Socrates learning from the ground—up—knowledge does not come without the basics.
All Ortolani's poems are born from basics, so we readers can identify, chuckling and nodding our heads, Yes. Yes. Yes!
—H.C. Palmer, Feet of the Messenger (BkMk Press), Battlefield Surgeon, First Infantry Division, Vietnam 1965-66
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