Scheherazade Plays the Chestnut Tree Cafe

An old cliché talks about how a reader does not need to leave her/his chair to travel the world. In his collection of poetry Scheherazade Plays the Chestnut Tree Cafe Boyd Baumans poems convert the chair into a TARDIS to whisk us away into his examinations of world travels. Alongside these Bauman shows us his rural Kansas upbringing too and the times of unknowing in the midst of organized religion and ranch-talk. He lends a lens to the racism of that childhood world: though we didnt have a clue / who a queer was / and what would a black man / want with a town like ours... rough these complications examined in this work we get to see the worlds we know the worlds that need revealed and the worlds we havent visited but understand what we do is to survive just as Bauman shares with us through looking at Icelands poet Egil: Poets are forged / simply by bearing witness / to the nature of this land / this land of temper / and skáld (other poets).-Dennis Etzel Jr. author of is Removed Utopia