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The last thing I expected to do upon reading the first poem in Cornfry (Buckman Publishing, 80 pages, $12), the first collection of verse by Rich Perin, was laugh out loud. But how could I not when the opening salvo in the book, titled “Social Stigma of Singular,” is this:
You should be allowed to marry yourself
I think
“Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah,” Perin exclaims when I mention how I reacted to several pieces in the book with laughter. “Damn right my poetry has got a lot of humor in it. It’s life. It’s part of the human condition. I get bored with poetry that doesn’t touch on that at all. I don’t know why poets think it’s such a precious, solemn thing. That’s one thing poetry can be. But it can be the whole encompassing experience of being human. I want to capture all of it.”
Perin certainly wraps up a great deal of human experience in Cornfry. The 51 poems collected in this new volume cover a lot of ground, from watching his favorite haunts in Austin, Texas, getting gentrified to odes to fellow poet William Carlos Williams and performance artist Karen Finley to his fraught relationship with alcohol. The sweet and burning language in each one rolls on the tongue like an Atomic Fireball.
The rhythm and energy of the work also exposes Perin’s past as a slam poet. As a young man, he racked up several honors for his performances, including winning second place with a team from San Antonio, Texas, at the 2000 National Poetry Slam. Even speaking to him for a few minutes on the phone, I get the feeling that the art form is a natural fit for someone with his quick wit and gregarious personality.
“I guess,” Perin says to that. “It’s instant gratification. It’s the immediacy of reaching people that may not understand or listen to poetry. There they are, at the bar, and then some guy’s onstage rapping away. It’s like, wow, I didn’t know words could do that. That’s always exciting to deliver.”
Cornfry covers a lot of physical ground as well. Born and raised in Australia, Perin came to the U.S. on a student visa, landing in Austin. From there, he ventured to San Antonio before relocating to Portland around 18 years ago. The attraction to our city?
“It’s a big transitional town,” he says. “You can come here and make mistakes and hopefully get better at your art or whatever it is. I like the [Geek Love author] Katherine Dunn quote of, ‘The cheapest place on the West Coast is Portland, and all the freaks in America go to the West Coast, so all the cheap freaks are in Portland.’”
Perin has certainly honed his skills as a writer, producing fantastic work like the 2019 short story collection The Last Payphone on the West Coast, and he’s found a stable of fellow cheap freaks to grow a community with. Together with a group of them, he co-founded Buckman Publishing, the imprint responsible for the always exciting Buckman Journal and books like Craig Buchner’s devastating novel Fish Cough.
For all his accomplishments and all he’s produced and continues to produce as a fellow writer, I had to know what drew him to this life of letters in the first place.
“The alphabet is the greatest invention of humankind,” he tells me. “You’re trying to communicate this experience, the human condition into words, and you’re never going to get it exactly right. But the thing with words is that there’s so many of them. There’s so many ways you can arrange them to convey ideas better than any other art. Music comes close, but I haven’t heard a musical piece discuss Das Kapital. It would be really cool if someone did.”