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Poetry. "Alan Catlin's MEMORIES is a dream book that leaps from right now to way back. In short, bursting vignettes he lets his mind and words play across memory and all the randomness memory triggers. From an opium dream to Candace Bergen, from a side glance at racial tensions to a parting glance at Mrs. Robinson, Catlin floats his readers down a stream of memory bubbles, then reaches up and pulls them into a fractured world beneath the surface. This book exhilarates with startling images and jazzy, jagged cadences." --Mike James

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.

"Poetry: Ekphrastic poetry responding to various artists and photographers, real and imagined"--

Alan Catlins latest collection of poetry reflects both the humanistic concerns of his previous work as well as the expanded tone and vision of a wiser older poet. Catlin applies his detailed observation of others to a wide variety of human situations. There is a particular theme of womens lives and their meanings. The collection is populated with women and their stories. Some of the poems are even written from a female perspective. Catlin is known for his dark tone, combined with a concern for humanity and the quality of human lives. His use of language is utilitarian but elegant in its clarity. Over the decades, he has become one of the most popular independent poets, in large part because of his commitment to realism and personal honesty. We believe that readers will find this book to be Catlins best yet. This volume demonstrates why Alan Catlin has earned the right to be called one of the best poets of his generation.

A collection of poems by Alan Catlin

Alan Catlin worked for the better part of 34 years in his unchosen profession as a barman in and around the greater Albany, NY area. He has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books focusing on his work and the people he met while laboring in the trenches of bar warfare.

The smartass bartender, narrator, is locked in a bar with thousands of uninvited guests. The jukebox is virtual which means it is practically infinite and people can and will play music Loud for hours while the hapless, somewhat hard of hearing bartender tries to make the best of this "disco inferno" ( though the music is rarely if ever remotely disco like). Our bartender refers to the jukebox as the infernal machine and the guests are demons with unlimited credit. Snarky, irreverent and based on actual firsthand experience. Alan Catlin worked for the better part of 34 years in his unchosen profession as a barman in and around the greater Albany, NY area. He has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books focusing on his work and the people he met while laboring in the trenches of bar warfare. "Like a sequel to his previous collection of bar poems, Bar Guide for the Seriously Deranged, Alan Catlin's new collection begins, appropriately, in Hell, among those condemned to short, sad, violent lives of pain, humiliation, and self-destruction. There are many doors to Hell, he confides. "The one you choose is always / the wrong one." The whores, the drug addicts, the gang members, the "karaoke killers" they've all walked in through different entrances but wound up in the same place. Fate? In "Maybe it was meant," Catlin philosophizes: "to be, to end this way, / a life spent on the edge / always playing a loser's / hand but pretending /otherwise, and fooling / no one." Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell has moments of humor and scenes of poignance, all so familiar, all so human, all so doomed, all so damned. Belly up to the bar, have a seat. Drink it all in!"-Charles Rammelkamp, author of The Trapeze of Your Flesh "This the kind of place the children and grandchildren of the Dead-End Kids would go. They'd call themselves something like the Wild Bunch or the Wrecking Crew and the bartender, good to his word, would be taking notes and writing it all down. If you see yourself in these poems, it's your own fault."-Elenora Fagan, poet, lyricist "If hell opened up all its' gates, gave every good citizens a couple of hundred bucks to spend at happy hour; they'd end up at this bar, super-charged and ready to go, making up for lost time."-Patrick Allen, occasional poet

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.