Apocryphal Road Code: (Salt Modern Poets)

Wayfarers and their songs, hobos and tramps and the codes they either espouse or deny – all figure prominently in this debut book of poetry by Jared Randall. With both ears bent to the Depression-era stories told among his family about America’s hard-working, migrant past, the poet nevertheless walks the tumultuous road of the here and now. Ranging from blank verse to sonnets to rambling free-verse stanzas, Randall takes a fresh look at the space between memory and recollection – between childhood and adulthood, and between generations separated by a century of social change and forgetfulness. Out of these tensions a voice emerges: the voice of the migrant worker, the vagrant and hobo who speak through “the dust of years.” The hobo carries more than his bedroll across his shoulders, and when he breaks his silence a disjointed vision of an American past spills out in lines both extravagant and clipped, just as the life of the road offers both freedom and hardship. All the while, the old code of the hobo asserts a commentary not to be denied. The hobo’s perspective merges with that of the recollecting poet as they together trace the forgotten way home in whatever boxcar of language will take them a little further down the road.

Table of Contents:
Contents Hobo Code Road Code Ulterior hobo, roadways and finding those side streets… What a boy tells… …his girl when he goes… Truck Stop Monologue Road Code Thinking, road kids and their kit-fists, playful engines… Mortgage Broker Monologue Monologue: Tourist Union #63 Road Code Backseat driver, dirt roads storming the haylofts… Loehr’s Landing Monologue Podunk Lake Road Code Jungles Junkyard View (hanover street) Mini-School (woodlawn avenue) Tree-Fort Shanty (nameless two-tracks) A boy and his mother as seen by a hobo… Road Code Hobo in the house remembering days, those chicken-tree nights… Old Hobo Begging Road Code Hobo Confessional A chuckle… …cut short – Long Haul Road Code Hobo Circle Future King Hobo Tourist Requisition Packer Winter Flop Philosopher Armchair Hobo in Retirement A Good Thought for Jungles Layover Hobo at Heart Penny Thoughts Back in Town Mama Amnesia Hobo Constellation Road Code Travelogue: Searching for your driveway in spring… Travelogue: Hartwick Pines… Travelogue: Silver Lake… vacation… Travelogue: Panhandling words beneath a tenement clothesline… Travelogue: Breakdown Commute in Reverse Road Code Met a lively down a mouth, by the river… Road Code Pete’s First Road Monologue of the In-Between Pete’s Last Layover Road Code M-37 and the Road North Dialog with my outer hobo under a rainstorm… Road Code Travelogue: Wallow in the Straits A Boy’s Journey Home Selected Glossary

About the Author :
Jared Randall received his MFA degree in 2009 from the University of Notre Dame where he also worked for a variety of print publications. He was a nominee for both the 2009 AWP Intro Journals Award and the 2009 Best New Poets Anthology, and his writing has appeared in Controlled Burn, Crucible, and online journals such as Bull: Men’s Fiction and Subtle Tea. Randall resides in Michigan where urban sprawl cramps old farmhouses.