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Blurbs and Reviews "Nakedness honesty beautified by your self-confidence & |—Allen Ginsberg,
from 1976 letter on first reading the
manuscript of Antler's Last Words
"I think Walt passed on his humanity to you, and now you are passing it on to this and future generations." —Gay Wilson Allen,
author of The Solitary Singer:
A Biography of Walt Whitman "Antler writes with a clear focus in a vernacular mode dealing straight-on and first-hand with the actualities of American and planetary life. He's one of the half-dozen or so truly committed wilderness poets in American letters." —Gary Snyder (1975 Pulitzer for Turtle Island)
"Antler's humanist spirit and provocative free verse link him with Thoreau, Muir and Whitman... His uniqueness comes from a blend of midwestern innocence and fine timing that dares to take on major social themes and to assert an essential human unity." —Larry Smith in Choice
"Writing in the Whitman-Thoreau-Lawrence-Jeffers-Rexroth-Ginsberg-Snyder tradition, Antler is an original. I imagine that when he is an old man a vast wilderness area will be named after him." —Howard Nelson, author of Gorilla Blessing
"Incredible imaginative strength. Life strength. Panoramic compassion!" —Morgan Gibson,
author of Revolutionary Rexroth:
Poet of East-West Wisdom "...one of Whitman's 'poets and orators to come'." —Allen Ginsberg
"He catalogues as Whitman and Ginsberg catalogued. He has the language 'in his pocket.' He is a marvel of virtuosity, with tremendous agility, change of pace, and sense of the dramatic. While 'Factory' is a powerful polemical poem, the title poem of the book, Last Words, bowls you over with a freshness I haven't seen in anything in years and with a talent for the phrase and the mot juste. This is a major American poet. His attitude toward sex, as illustrated in the poem 'Whitmansexual,' is an exact translation of Walt's sexual philosophy into the America of the 1980s. Where do his economic views fit in, where do his ecological and erotic views fit in? Everywhere. This is an astonishingly topical and timely book. His virus has the power to activate antibodies. Something which just about everybody now lacks in our sanitized literature. Read Antler to discover anew the power to surprise, to shock, to awaken." —from a review of Antler's 1986 book Last Words
published in Emergency Messages, a 1989 book
of poems and prose by Carl Solomon, the man
to whom Allen Ginsberg dedicated "Howl"
Some responses to Antler's epic FACTORY, published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in his City Lights "Pocket Poets" series in 1980:  "Factory is a long and wonderful poem about contemporary hells.... Pathos and humor run like lightning streaks through this work."
—Andrei Codrescu
"Antler bewails the hideous misuse of man's inventiveness.... But the adventure also lies beyond that, with hair-raising excursions into absurdity, in litanies of truly dire facts and figures that never fail to amaze, in pyrotechnical bursts and showers of language and imagination that launch the whole giant poem like a rocket into the cosmos." —The Los Angeles Times
"The factory, inside and out, seen like Huck Finn at his own funeral." —Andy Clausen in American Book Review
"Thank you for documenting this devastating experience in a Bosch-like, Guernica-like slave-song of the 20th century—and especially for preserving a Whitman-like wit and bemusement and will toward a hopeful future through the carnage." —Dan Campion, co-editor of Walt Whitman—
The Measure of His Song "I still wake up some mornings from the wondrous dreams that have been my salvation and ask myself why I am still working in a factory. I've made my escape time and again, but I keep turning up in factories. Antler's eloquent poem Factory left me shaken." —Amanda Rachie Prowell
 "It should be read at factory gates and under smokestacks and on the unemployment lines."
—Gar Smith, Friends of the Earth
"You chose an important subject, maybe the most important, and what a work of art! GOOD WORK!" —Edward Abbey
"I had admired Factory when it first came out, but that admiration has grown as I've now had time to allow the full impact of that energy-flow to enter in—what rage and rapture! You capture what I think Whitman's attitude would have been if he'd had to absorb this technological wasteland we live in." —Ed Folsom, co-editor of Walt Whitman—
The Measure of His Song "Factory is as good as the notices I've seen for it, and in some ways it's even better than that. It's the sweetness and wit—yes, wit!—of it I admire most. We're walking around in grim times and I take much heart in Factory." —Geoffrey Gardner, editor of
For Rexroth,
an anthology of writings about Rexroth "Ahh, that the sacred Exclamation Point is brought forth again! And the message and messages of this exciting book!" —Ed Sanders
"Here's a prophecy beyond Factory to new Eden in aeonic mindspace." —Allen Ginsberg
Some responses to Antler: The Selected Poems, published by Soft Skull Books in 2000:  "Antler's Selected Poems deserves a place on the poetry shelf between Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder."
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"Lawrence Ferlinghetti in his poem 'Populist Manifesto' asks: 'Where are Whitman's wild children?' And I answer him: 'One lives in Milwaukee.' Certainly Antler's poems, with their sexual candor, love of nature, scorn of material wealth, and prophetic warnings, link him clearly to the Whitman tradition. Yet Antler has achieved that difficult balance: of being part of a tradition while still writing his own poems. Though they're influenced by Whitman and Ginsberg and Snyder and D.H. Lawrence, they're still uniquely and recognizably Antler's. He gives us sound-filled, richly textured poems that mean, celebrate, question, witness, hold and examine the oddities and beauty in our world and lives." —Susan Firer
"What he's protesting is everything that sucks the joy out of people, makes them corpses before they're legally dead: protesting every inhuman act, from dehumanizing factory work to concentration camp atrocities and wars. And the point is to remind the reader what it means to be fully alive, and to be alive in the fullest sense is a person's only reason for existing." —Linda Lerner, reviewing Antler's Selected Poems
in the Spring 2001 Chiron Review
"Antler is a poet committed to a number of important causes, not the least of which is the authenticity of living a life to the fullest degree possible and not compromising his art. Few writers are possessed of as much artistic integrity." —Dale Ritterbusch, Vietnam veteran poet
"I've long been a fan of Antler's poetry, which bears absolutely no resemblance to the MFA bungfodder being extruded in vast quantities (vast vast) these days." —Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall
"Antler's poetry is an exhilarating flashback to the best of everything the '60s had to offer. For Generation X-ers, there's no better introduction to the spirit of those times and its relevance today as we move into the new millennium." —Beatlick News (Nashville, TN)
From Milwaukee Public Library's Feb. 25, 2002 press release: "Friends of Milwaukee Public Library are pleased to announce that Antler has been named the city's new poet laureate. 'Antler celebrates and lives the life of the poet perhaps more completely than any other Milwaukee citizen,' said Karl Gartung of Woodland Pattern Book Center, a member of the poet laureate selection committee. 'His poetry often takes a very critical stance regarding current politics and culture, particularly regarding ecological issues, but within a framework of ebullient celebration of the natural world and our place in it.' There is an unflinching honesty to Antler's work. Amid the homages to nature are poems that explore war, materialism, censorship, and hypocrisy. A student of Ginsberg and Whitman, Antler writes a poetry that is bold and liberating. " Antler is available for poetry readings, etc. Contact him at: Antler P.O. Box 11502 Milwaukee, WI 53211 |
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