Philadelphia poet, performance artist, and fixture, Warren Longmire has left his indelible mark on the local poetry scene. This mark is now perfectly encapsulated in his first full-length poetry collection, Open Source. In what may be a first for a poetry collection, Open Source contains QR codes for each of the five sections that takes you to a website where a reader can watch Longmire read selected poems in a local location important to him and his work. At the end of the book, Longmire curates a Notes section with additional QR codes of multimedia presentations that explain specific images, words, and topics. This collection is an innovative tour de force.
“Brotherly Love” contained in the first section titled Hooptie is one of the most memorable poems in the collection, both as written and recorded. Longmire begins with this memorable tercet: “Philly all the emo with none of the mosh pit. Philly free jazz in a trash bag. Philly’s a synthetic weave tumbleweed down 69th street.”
With a photographer’s eye, Longmire continues to capture the nuances of Philadelphia that any denizen can instantly recognize.
Philly looks at anything but you as intensely as it can.
Philly is dubstep-basement-rowhouse-hot-pagan-lightshow-for-no-one Philly.
Philly’s a café a bored New Jersey dreamed into existence.
Philly buck toothed street with caution tape floss.
The imagery, rhythm, and wordplay in this poem is staggering and a prime example of Longmire’s poetic gifts.
In the next section, Autoimmune, Longmire deploys undeniably powerful metaphors centered on health, the body, and violence to explore the situation of being a Black poet in America. The following stanza is taken from “Autoimmune 3:”
They laughed
at the writer’s conference of brown poets liking black men
as a thing to wear. More metaphors about
black men as a thing to kill.
Earlier in the poem, Longmire describes his experience with asthma, a disease where “pesticides, genetics, and poverty are known factors,” as the joke of my hyperventilation writing itself.” This poem meticulously weaves different stands of asthma, same sex love, and racism into an exceptional confessional poem.
Another poem to check out both in the book and as a recording from the section, A Strange Place for Snow, is “Instructions for a Secret Handshake.” During one of his flaneur-style walks through the city, Longmire observes a complex handshake between a young Black couple that he has said at his readings he rushed home to write. Lines such as the following put the reader in Longmire’s shoes:
The one hand patty cake {right} into the backhand side.
A five finger ET The Extra Terrestrial Slide…
Grip like a bus pole. Twist. Lean back
like we ain’t never
gonna fall. Leap
in a semi-circle to the right. The Running Man. The Nae Nae. The Cabbage Patch with a one-two twist thing at the end that we mess up.
This poem is dance and a magical testament to a poetic observance of pure joy. It puts a smile each time I read it or hear Longmire read it himself.
In the eponymous poem from Section 4 No One Knows What They Are Doing at Microsoft, Longmire explores the shortcomings of modern technology where “No one knows what they are doing at the Disney subsidiary tucked in the zone 3 London exurb…creating a story of English war propaganda backed by the voice of Ricky Gervais.” Longmire’s wit and cultural criticism is on full display in a world where “No one knows what they’re doing in the incubator inside/the insurance company that owns a stake in Beyonce’s thighs.”
The final section, Basic Income Experiment, brings Longmire’s questing sensibility to bear on the COVID Epidemic. In “COVID-19 Dating Tips,” he writes for tip number five:
Talk about black-owned gun clubs and what happens after grad school.
There is a part of Philly so white they sell Frosé in a field beside brunch tables
overflowing with Comcast. Go to the brewery with chalk art outside it
instead and talk about your recent 90s RNB kit.
This section and this poem have a sharp sense of humor and melancholy mixed together with his astute commentary and his abundant love for Philadelphia.
If I were to be asked what I most admire about what is one of the most exciting poetry collections of this new decade, I would give three answers: 1. Longmire’s precise use of language—whether it is aching, humorous, sharp, witty. 2. Longmire’s enviable ability to take confessional and linguist risks. 3. The use of multimedia and URL codes to share his unique, timely, and important work with the world. Open Source will be one of those books that you will be able to answer when and where you savored it for the first time.
Sean Hanrahan is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collection Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt Press) and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone Press) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Moonstone Featured Poets, Queer Around the World, and Stonewall’s Legacy, and several journals, including Impossible Archetype, Mobius, Peculiar, Poetica Review, and Voicemail Poems. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days and Ekphrastic Poetry and hosted poetry events throughout Philadelphia.