Alan Catlin

No doubt, there are perfectly sweet lyrical moments in the poems included in the poetry collection. In this significant work, we notice that the poet has discarded all banal phraseology. These poems reveal an impressive tenderness and have a very great variety. The ceaseless radiation of sublime ideas is perceptible in these poems.

Taking its title from the quietly weird and great Luis Bunuel film, Alan's Catlin's latest collection provides his trademark tour of the hardcore and desperate lives of drug users, alcoholics living on the dark side in the mean streets and their meaner heads. Drawing on his years as a bartender in a less than elegant establishment, Catlin is the poet laureate of the down and out, depicting with great brio the world of the terminally vicious, the mortally wounded in heart and soul. Saving his readers from a case of fatal depression is Catlin's marvelous turn of a phrase, like "he appeared to be in his/late forties going on dead" and "Madonna of the meth lab." This is a wonderful poetry collection, the perfect antidote to a Hallmark Christmas movie.-Robert Cooperman, author of Reefer Madness and Go Play Outside Channeling cinematic depictions of reality from scifi classics like Killer Klowns from Outer Space to Tarantino and Bunuel, Alan Catlin artfully shows us the underbelly of The American Dream. The glamour of the bar, the juke joint, the dive, is revealed as nothing but seedy and sad, like the wasted lives of so many of the protagonists of these poems whose ironic titles of famous films reinforce the illusions of charm and enchantment that drive so many to disillusionment and despair. Catlin strips away the mirage of the banquet and, like Burroughs, shows us the piece of meat quivering on the end of the fork.-Charles Rammelkamp, author of Ugler Lee and The Field of Happiness This collection is like a sharp, stainless-steel blade and gives the reader a taste of an America we might have seen through a Philip Marlowe's eyes. It's a powerful ride, in fact it's more like a rollercoaster. I couldn't get quickly enough to the next poem and read it like a private-eye novel and thought more than once of Edward Hopper scenes. Catlin has produced a masterpiece writing with a fury from an angry and disappointed love for America.-Rose Mary Boehm, author of The Rain Girl (Chaffinch Press, Ireland)

Alan Catlin has published well over sixty chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose. Most recently his fictional memoir/novel Chaos Management was published by Alien Buddha and is available on Amazon.

An intense imaginative power in these poems draws its sustenance from the poet dreaming great dreams.

The most notable characteristic of these poems is sharp conciseness of style. The poet uses simple words in the flame of emotion.

The Asylum Floor is a yearly anthology dedicated to honest, inspired writing in all its forms. This issue has 100 pages of poetry, fiction, and comics from Wendy Rainey, Catfish McDaris, Dave Roskos, Tony Gloeggler, Rob Plath, K.W. Peery, George Anderson, Todd Cirillo, Mather Schneider, Janne Karlsson, Alan Catlin, Matt Borczon, Mike Mahoney, Wolfgang Carstens and its editor Brenton Booth.

Asylum Garden - after Van Gogh is a book about seeing: what we see and how we see it. The collection begins with the artist, Van Gogh, during his rest cure at an asylum following a general emotional and physical collapse. He begins to paint landscapes, gardens, peaceful scenes, gradually internalizing what he sees. Upon his release, his vision incorporates a whole new way of seeing: slightly altered landscapes and nightscapes, everything off-center, self-portraits showing a more fraught, perhaps demented, personality. Everything he does, is emotionally charged and completely unique. As the word asylum implies, where the artist resides, is a place of refuge for the artist but it is also an institution. A mental institution, with all its particular sets of rules, regulations, and treatments may range from the well-meaning, but often unintentionally cruel, to a place of outright torture. The artist is at rest, the artist is tormented. Then the artist dies. A peaceful, elegiac scene, in an-inspired-by-Whistler poem, opens a door to another place. The artist undergoes a transmigration of the mind to where there is life in death, and death in life. The later poems become a broad visualization, a verbal journey through a perplexing world of the deep relationships between art and madness, life in death. A peaceful winter scene becomes an elegy, death is a direction, art is the tool of the imagination that takes you from familiar places to those places deep inside. The non-existent photographs direct the reader to see things that appear on the paper but exist only in the mind. Later, actual photographs key responses that take you to particular places: times of upheaval and strife. We move through time and space, a time of revolution, chaos, assassination and radical politics, to where we live now, on the edge, where art and madness, life and death, meet, in the imagination.

Alan Catlin is retired from his unchosen profession as a barman. In his spare time, he has been publishing for parts of six decades in little, minuscule, not so little, literary, and university publication: from the Wormwood Review to the Wisconsin Review to Tray Full of Lab Rats, to Wordsworth's Socks, to The Literary Review and so forth. His chapbook, Blue Velvet, won the Slipstream Chapbook Contest in 2017. One of his more recent full length books is Last Man Standing, from Lummox Press, detailing his life and times walking to the bus stop, busing to work, and, at his former job, continuing an earlier, similarly arranged book, the now out of print, underground classic, The Schenectady Chainsaw Massacre. For his sins he is the poetry and review editor of misfitmagazine.net, an online poetry journal.

"Accept Apart" is a 2018 poetry, flash fiction, prose, and artwork collection book from Scars Publications (http: //scars.tv), one of three 2018 collection books of selected acceptances of 2018 issues of cc&d magazine (http: //scars.tv/ccd) and down in the dirt magazine (http: //scars.tv/dirt) from Scars Publications (http: //scars.tv).Writers and artists included in this book are also listed with their writing at the Scars Publications book link (search for the book title in the books section at http: //scars.tv). Writers and artists in this issue collection book include A.J. Huffman, Adam Randolph, Adam Szetela, Adrian Slonaker, Alan Catlin, Alistair Forrester, Allan Onik, Allen F. McNair, Andrew Cyril Macdonald, Arpit Rohilla, Arthur C. Ford, Sr., Barry Hill, Bekah Steimel, Benjamin Selesnick, Brian Looney, Brian Looney, Carolyn Poindexter, Carolyn Poindexter, CEE, Charles Hayes, Cheryl Townsend, Christina Lacourte, Clay Carpenter, Dan A. Cardoza, Dan Fitzgerald, David J. Thompson, David Michael Jackson, David Russell, David Turton, DC Diamondopolous, Deidre Jaye Byrne, Demond J Blake, Dominic Lim, Doug Hawley, Doug Van Hooser, Dr. (Ms.) Michael S. Whitt, Dr. Shmooz / Daniel S. Weinberg, Drew Marshall, Edward Michael O Durr Supranowicz, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Elizabeth York Dickinson, Emily Jade Walker, Emily Strauss, Eric Burbridge, Erren Kelly, Fabrice Poussin, Frederick Pollack, Gale Acuff, Greg Eckert, Greg G. Zaino, Gregg Dotoli, Harvey Havel, Helen Bird Inksanity , I.B. Rad, James B. Nicola, James N. Thomas, Jane Stuart, Janet Kuypers, John F. McMullen, John Grey, John Kaprielian, John L. Stanizzi, John Zedolik, Joshua Copeland, Julie Weiss, Kenneth DiMaggio, Kilmo, Kyle J Cisco, Lael Lopez, Layla Lenhardt, Lee Conrad, Liam Spencer, Linda M. Crate, Logan Lane, M.C. Rydel, Marc McMahon, Margaret Karmazin, Mark J. Mitchell, Megan Mealor, Michael Ceraolo, Michael J. Harrington, Mike Schneider, Nancy Zhang, Natalie Segura, Olivier Schopfer, Pavol Janik, PhD., Peter LaBerge, R. N. Taber, Rae Monroe, Rene Diedrich, Rene Diedrich, Retta Lewis, Robert E. Donohue, Roger G. Singer, Ronald Charles Epstein, Russell Licciardello, Sandrine Berges, Scarlett R. Algee, Sheikha A., Suraj Alva, Thom Woodruff, Tom Ball, Travis Green, Uzeyir Lokman Cayci, Vincent Barry, W.E. Brower Jr., Wes Heine, William Ogden Haynes, Xanadu, and Zac Harris.

Have you ever gone to an art exhibit and felt as if you had been transported into a museum of curiosities? Alan Catlin's WILD BEAUTY is a poetic examination of the multifarious modes of expression in various artistic media, part of an ongoing process of examining "Extreme Art": the use of unconventional, non-traditional objects to create works that fall under the general rubric of "Art." Whether considering the installations of Damien Hirst or a panel from The Garden of Earthly Delights, Catlin delves into the creative process, treating each subject as unique but also part of a larger canvas whose only boundaries are those that the artist supplies. Using this broad, nearly all-inclusive set of standards and uncommon, out-on-the-edge, lively writing, Catlin takes us to the outer edges of the artistic experience.