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From REEL TALK MOVIE REVIEWS
by Betty Jo Tucker
16 August 2006

Movie and television director Stephen Gyllenhaal takes readers on a profoundly humanistic journey in Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, his first book of poetry. Recently published by Cantarabooks LLC, this impressive offering includes 46 poems that evoke marvelous cinematic images and stir the emotions - two things I always expect good poetry to do for me.

“The origins of my poems are the same origins of my work in films. I’m pulled into a scene in my head - often foggy - and do my best to somehow capture it,” Gyllenhaal said in a recent interview conducted by JakeWatch.com.

Gyllenhaal, husband of screenwriter Naomi Foner and father of actors Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, directed the acclaimed films Paris Trout and Losing Isaiah, but “poetry is the foundation of the many facets of his life: husband, father, movie-man, friend, observer of Hollywood,” according to Hugh Ogden, Professor Emeritus at Trinity College. In Claptrap’s intriguing Foreword, Gyllenhaal’s former professor writes, “Few poets have depicted the ‘glitz’ so well and seen the human condition behind it.”

Although actress Jamie Lee Curtis, a published author herself, admits being afraid of poetry, she raves about Claptrap in the book’s well-written Introduction. She calls Gyllenhaal’s poems complicated and scary (among other more complimentary descriptions, of course), but confesses they captured her imagination and “invite you to want to know more.” Cantara Christopher, Gyllenhaal’s publisher, says she was drawn to the director’s poetry because it is “by turns confessional, mischievous, humble, lustful, tender, furious and profound.”

While all of the poems in Claptrap fascinated me because of their stunning imagery and emotional pull, ”Camera,” “Tender,” and “Confession” are my favorites. By referring to the heart as “a Viking at the oar in full battle regalia” in “Tender,” Gyllenhaal calls up visions of glorious Saturday movie matinees. And his director-poet eye lands on just the right angles in “Camera,” which praises ”searching for the holy grail of horizontal and vertical, the perfect tilt to catch a face, fingertips, a sigh.” In the provocative “Confession,” film-savvy Gyllenhaal compares the shoulders of his object of affection to those of Katharine Hepburn in the 1940s, yet fesses up, “It’s to your knees that my eyes fall.”

Where can you find this hidden gem? Only at AuthorsBookshop.com, a small new online company. Cantara Christopher explains, “Just like in the movie business, the old way of getting your work to the public is breaking down. The big impersonal online retailers used to be the only alternative for small presses. Now it’s time to give places like AuthorsBookshop.com a chance to let independent authors like Stephen find their audience.”

Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood definitely deserves to find its audience. Stephen Gyllenhaal’s first book of poetry is a rare treat to read and savor.

From POETIC WHISPERS
by Cristine A Gruber
September 2006

“Nothing is ever as simple as it seems” - so Mr. Gyllenhaal reminds us in his poem, “Spangled Banner” and indeed continues to remind us throughout his insightful and reflective first collection. Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood is a thoughtful, honest, and poignant compilation of touching and detailed poems.

The author pulls the reader in immediately, creating a sense of security, only to have the proverbial rug pulled out from under those slippery feet, with the surprising veracity of who we are and how we live. “Careful There, Pardner” is an excellent choice for an opening poem. Verbally smacked upside the head, the reader has no choice but to sit back, take a deep breath, and devour the entire book in one sitting. Every poem leaves an impression and incites additional readings. The author details the simple, and clarifies the extraordinary.

Gyllenhaal’s imagery is mesmerizing. A spiritual union takes place between reader and poem, as one submerges deeper into the sights and sounds and smells. As with the poem, “Communion,” the juxtaposition of the gardener with the blower and the priest swinging the incense almost triggered an asthma attack as I read the cleverly placed words.

Equally comfortable with both long and short poems, some of his concise works contain incredibly strong messages. The heart may never be viewed the same way again, after reading his poem, “Tender.” And “Axiom” is indeed a favorite. Three simple lines that say so much - sometimes only a poem can dispel the demons that plague us all.

Some will make you smile, others will make you pause, and a few will make you hurt, as with “The Man.” For anyone who’s ever waited on a gurney, in a gown that doesn’t quite fit, thinking about the ones who are grown and not worried, (because you aren’t that old, yet)…you’ll read this poem and tremble in understanding.

“Confession” touches on the simple things that capture our attention and last through the years, and “Bread” is beautiful - illustrating longevity in life, love and relationships.

“Grammar” is breathtaking - ’the space between the words’ - what a beautiful insight. There are no approximate words in a poem, and each ‘space’ speaks volumes as well.

The poet goes on to touch on every conceivable emotion. “Night Job” tears at the heart, even as the heart is being given away.

Daily life can be a bit of a circus. Life in Tinseltown is probably more of a spectacle than most. “Success” and “Canon” offer fascinating glimpses into the glitz and illusion of the creative existence known as Hollywood. Sometimes the truth can only come out in a poem.

In summary, though the poet laments in “Greenwich Time” - ’I will not just leave this perfect place without a mark,’ I believe it’s safe to say, ‘not to worry, Stephen…you have left your mark.’ Hopefully, this book is only the first of many such volumes to follow. An affecting collection. Well done.

From THE GREAT AMERICAN PINUP
by Shawn Pittard
27 September 2006

Never have I struggled so much when reviewing a book as I have with Stephen Gyllenhaal’s first collection of poems, Claptrap: Notes From Hollywood, just out from Cantarabooks. Mr. Gyllenhaal is already well-known for his work as a film director. What is less known is he was an English major at Connecticut’s Trinity College and, in keeping with American literary tradition, has continued writing poetry while meeting the demands of raising a family and building a career. I was rooting for him when I opened his book.

I still am. Even after being somewhat taken aback by the substantial introductory material to his book: a Foreword by Hugh Odgen, Mr. Gyllenhaal’s professor and mentor at Trinity College; an Editor’s Preface by Cantara Christopher and Michael Matheny; and an Introduction by Jamie Lee Curtis. I’ve never seen such an abundance of praise inside anyone’s first book. In addition, both the Editor’s Preface and the Introduction implied most poetry written in America today isn’t really very good, and Mr. Gyllenhaal’s poems are the exception to the rule. That assertion raised the bar pretty darn high for my review. As both a contributor to and a reader of The Great American Pinup, I would assert there is plenty of outstanding poetry being written in America today.

That being my opinion, I couldn’t help but react strongly to the editors’ statement that “Poetry in America is no longer the distinguished art it used to be - it’s never read, hardly taught, and almost never practiced with any sort of discipline. Yet people keep stumbling to write it.” The editors related a story of helping edit a recent issue of North Atlantic Review. “Now, for those of you who think it’s easy to read through a stack of unsolicited poems and come up with five or six that are at least halfway publishable, think again.” My resistance to Mr. Gyllenhaal’s book was becoming entrenched.

What I discovered while reading Claptrap, though, is a poet in love with language, a love that shines at the heart of every poem. Mr. Gyllenhaal enjoys wordplay, which makes his writing fun to read. The poems are wide-ranging in their subjects - parenthood, family, and social justice among them - and style. Some are improvisatory, some painstakingly crafted.

Mr. Gyllenhaal’s poems are most often self-referential, anecdotal, and drawn from his everyday life. He expresses concern about his relationship with an openly antagonistic neighbor - and his noisy “5AM” struggles with his garbage cans - and muses about the world seen through the windshield of his automobile while driving “down Wilshire Blvd./just west of Rodeo Drive.” Hollywood is Mr. Gyllenhaal’s town - the place where he lives and works - hence the subtitle - and Hollywood is a character in this collection.

No book making reference to Hollywood would be complete without making reference to its luxury-car culture, where a woman’s beauty is described, in the poem “Democracy”, as “all past benz/and maseratis”. Hollywood is also a town where wealthy locals are suspicious of a GMC pickup with a “rattling tailgate”. In “Photosynthesis”, the speaker’s suspicion gives way to envy for the young men in the old pickup when he reveals, “Oh, to be that kind of young again/when every oyster spreads its legs for you/and the nails you hit on two by fours/sing out your praise.”

In “Careful There, Pardner,” Mr. Gyllenhaal surprises the reader with revelations about his - and therefore our - ability to jump to conclusions about others. The speaker sits in traffic and, with time on his hands, prejudges the man in the Caddy ahead. He imagines him taking offense to an ad on the side of a bus showing “a joyful black boy billboard prince.” The speaker sees “A Jesse Helms stiffness in the neck,” “fighting/for his Ronald Reagan California/the John Wayne of it all.” The poem ends with him driving by to see there is no angry white man boiling over in the Caddy, but rather “the man/instead/is black/and old/and content.”

While I enjoyed these and other poems for their wit and irony, they never drew me in completely - never convinced me that the writer had a real stake in them. In contrast, Mr. Gyllenhaal is at his best when he writes about subjects closest to his heart, and at the heart of Claptrap is an elegantly choreographed Shakespearean sonnet that I absolutely admire and adore, “Grammar”...

When Mr. Gyllenhaal writes about his family his poems ring true. The depth of his thought and feeling is apparent - even when he offers a clever bit of wisdom in “Birth Announcement”...

James Dickey was asked if there was any value in reading a review of one’s own book - or were book reviews only of value to prospective readers. He said the review is only valuable to the writer if the reviewer takes the time to get inside the work, look at it from the inside out. I hope I succeeded in looking at Mr. Gyllenhaal’s poems from the inside out. They are written with care and consciousness and, while Claptrap has its flaws, I hope I’ve responded in kind.

From GRUMPY OLD BOOKMAN
by Michael Allen
4 September 2006

Stephen Gyllenhaal is a well known Hollywood film director, and he is also a poet. Claptrap, a collection of poems, is subtitled Notes From Hollywood.

The book comes with three introductions or prefaces: one from a Professor Emeritus, one from the two editors, and one from the actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Of these, the editors’ is perhaps the most illuminating. ‘Poetry in America,’ they say, ‘is no longer the distinguished art it used to be - it’s never read, hardly taught, and almost never practiced with any sort of discipline.’ After wading their way through a three-inch pile of submissions, they were pleasantly surprised to find Gyllenhaal.

And, yes, one can see what they mean. Of course, if you are looking for poems which follow a regular meter, and which rhyme, then you ain’t going to find them here. (At least, not to any great extent: there’s a poem called ‘Grammar’ which is actually constructed in an old-fashioned way, and which was, not surprisingly, the one that appealed to me most.) Instead what you have, for the most part, is what I would call prose snapshots: moments of time, glimpses of people, encapsulated like insects in amber. Which is fair enough.

The subject matter is often highly contemporary. "Enron", for example, inspires metaphorical thoughts on family relationships.

I have to say that I am one of the many millions who, by and large, does not read poetry. However, if you are looking for a gift for a thoughtful friend who reads books in general, this might be it.

Claptrap is published by Cantarabooks, a small firm which has the motto: ‘Beating our tiny fists on the big hairy chest of the corporate literary world.’

From SUGARMULE
by Broad Freeman
September 2006

Modern poetry is seldom read today with any enthusiasm by a general audience, and no wonder. Mostly it falls into three categories: the academic poetry which says very little but says it well and is read mainly by academics and other poets; the political protest/minority poetry which attempts to say much and rarely succeeds; and the purely personal and cathartic poetry which is simply therapeutic and even when relatively well-written is difficult for the average person to understand and not usually worth the trouble.

There are exceptions to these categories, however, and one of the latest is a fine book of poetry from a very unlikely source: a Hollywood film director. The book, Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, by Stephen Gyllenhaal, includes an introduction by the well-known actress, Jamie Lee Curtis, which is both frank and insightful and leads us into the poetry which is itself both frank and insightful. The forty-six poems which comprise this slim but elegant volume range from the epigrammatic brevity of “Axiom” and “Pilot”, through the ruminations on romantic and marital love contained in “Madonna”, “Confession”, and many more, to the quiet dignity of the elegaic “Shoe Polish”:

It was in the attic I’d found the WWII gifts
- my father’s second lieutenant bars
gleaming in my kindergarten fingers.
Even now my chest warms 
with the whiskey of that memory: 
beautiful bars mistaken for gold,
relics of opening the concentration camps
in my other grandfather’s case, 
with a rope in the attic when my Dad was 12.

All the poems are well-crafted and honest. Many contain complexities of language and cadence that make us read them over and over again. There are astute political observations (“Careful There, Pardner”, “The Enron in my Face”) alongside endearing whimsy (“Bread”, “Plan B”). The subtitle “Notes from Hollywood” is particularly well chosen as Mr. Gyllenhaal deftly conveys in such a poems as “On Opening Night” and “Watching You Strip/My Daughter” his sense of awe and pride at seeing his two actor-children on stage for the first time:

This is the stream that moves to lakes and rivers
rocks and ocean tides of something oh so far 
much grander all than what the critics see 
and who they’ve been and what they think they know.
The future stretches out her nasty reach
and you can’t hide. The growing hurts - remember
sudden ten year old long arms knocking down a
glass? - and now you move in heels and silk 
with grace that takes our fear away.

The qualities that make modern poetry accessible and desirable are all evident here: universal themes extrapolated from the personal; a fearlessly-stated world view; and a wealth of deeply-felt emotions laid bare on the printed page. I highly recommend this book to all lovers of good poetry, but especially to those who have given up on the narrow, insular poetry being written today. It might just change the way you look at modern poetry - and the world.

From MYSPACE.COM/JOSH_WHEATON
by Josh Wheaton
16 October 2006

I just wanted to share with you a wonderful evening Erica and I had last night with Stephen Gyllenhaal, Cantara Christopher, and Michael Matheny.

It had been many years since I’ve spoken with Stephen, and I relished the thought and opportunity to see him again. Stephen, already known for being a gifted writer and director, is actually a wonderful and amazing poet. He actually has been writing poems for many years, but had kept them fairly private. It was the encouragement he received from his family that he decided to make his works known. It also took Cantara Christopher and Michael Matheny, both of whom recognizing the sheer brilliance and power of his work, to only have him submit more. The end result is Stephen’s book, entitled Claptrap, published by Cantarabooks LLC.

If you love poetry, as much as I, then I highly encourage you to purchase a copy of Stephen’s book. In it, you will discover such an honesty and depth in regards to such topics as the birth of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hollywood, his fears, and his loves.

As a filmmaker, Stephen was responsible for casting me in my first role, and for instilling in me the desire to act in films and to pursue perfection above all else. As a man, he is one of the most humble, gracious, and complex human beings I have ever had the privilege of meeting. I feel honored to know him. Please check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

From THE ROSE & THORN
by Sandra Merz
28 September 2006

Stephen Gyllenhaal’s book of poetry, Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, removes the veil of pretense from the glitz. Culled from his thirty years of writing poems, he takes us on a trip which reminds us that family, with all its delights and tragedies is what life is all about. Interspersed with poems about controversial political and racial issues, Gyllenhaal puts it all out there. A mix of suicide, hospital trauma, family legacies and reminders that, we were all descendent at one time, from immigrants who did menial work to survive.

From the first poem, ‘Careful There Pardner’, with its surprise ending, through poems about operations, hauling garbage, wistfulness of youth, semi-naked ladies, Gyllenhaal’s work has a rhythm that makes you want to keep reading.

He has mastered the art of poetry techniques: impeccable line breaks, similes, metaphors, strong nouns and verbs, lack of adjectives and adverbs, minimal use of capitalization and punctuation to make this book a pleasure to read. A fine example of how poetry is written today. A book for those who like to read poetry that is understandable as well as those who read for poetic technique.

Beginner and advanced poets would do well to read, study and analyze the way he does it, without seeming contrived. These poems flow. And express emotion without being melodramatic.

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