The Volume Library 1976

The Volume Library 1976

Sometime in the 1970s, my mother bought a copy of The Volume Library from a door-to-door salesman.

For nearly the next decade, that enormous book was one of my primary sources of information. Long before I could type a question into a computer and have an answer appear in seconds, if I needed to know something for school, I went to The Volume Library.

I used it for book reports. I used it for homework. I used it simply because I wanted to know things.

What I remember most clearly was its wonderful material on mythology and literature. I returned to those sections over and over again. Greek and Roman mythology, writers, stories, characters, history—the book provided a map of a world that seemed almost impossibly large to me then.

I didn't realize it at the time, of course, but much of what I learned from those pages became permanent. That old reference book still comprises part of the backbone of what I know about mythology and literature.

There is something difficult to explain now about growing up with a book like that in the house. Information had a physical location. If you wanted to know about mythology, you didn't search for mythology. You went to the shelf. You pulled down the enormous book. You found the section. And then, inevitably, while looking for the thing you wanted, you found three other things you hadn't known you wanted to know.

Years passed, and the copy we had in our house disappeared somewhere along the way.

Eventually I went looking for it again.

I found a copy on eBay—not the actual book from my childhood, but the same edition, The Volume Library from 1976. I bought it.

It's on my bookshelf now.

I suppose that's one advantage of getting older. Every once in a while, you get the chance to buy back a small piece of the world that made you.

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Vanished Roads Thomas L. Vaultonburg

 In late 2019, my life became much smaller.

A ten-year relationship ended. I lost a home, daily contact with children I loved, longtime friendships, and a place within an arts community that had shaped much of my adult life. The future I had imagined for myself suddenly no longer existed. Before I could begin rebuilding, the world itself contracted. The COVID-19 pandemic closed doors for everyone, including many of the paths I might have taken to reconnect with the people, places, and opportunities I felt I had lost.

Then, in 2020, I suffered a stroke.

Looking back, it seems almost inevitable that I would find my way to haiku.

At a time when everything around me appeared to be shrinking, I was drawn to a literary form built on economy, attention, and presence. I began studying Buddhism and, more specifically, Soto Zen. What started as curiosity gradually became practice. I found myself less interested in explaining the world and more interested in experiencing it directly. Haiku offered a way to do that.

My earliest attempts were often little more than narrative poems wearing haiku clothing. I brought with me the habits I had developed over decades of writing lyric and narrative poetry. I wanted to tell stories, explain emotions, and make sure readers understood what I meant. Over time, however, the poems began teaching me something different. Instead of using haiku to express myself, I became interested in disappearing into the moment itself.

The result was not merely a change in writing style. It was a change in how I moved through the world.

Vanished Roads chronicles that journey.

The collection begins in grief and disorientation. It acknowledges loss—the loss of loved ones, relationships, identities, expectations, and familiar ways of living. Yet it is not a book about remaining lost. It is a book about what happens when the old maps stop working.

During this period, I reconnected with one of my oldest friends, Tré. Together we began a creative partnership that opened new possibilities in both art and life. In many ways, her presence marks the turning point of the collection. A door opens. A path appears where none seemed possible before.

As the book progresses, the poems become less concerned with the self and more concerned with the world beyond it. Roads disappear. Rivers, mountains, forests, weather, and animals take their place as teachers. The journey becomes less about recovering what was lost and more about learning how to walk forward without needing to recover it.

The title poem contains the image that best captures the spirit of the collection: a traveler asks for directions and is handed a map of vanished roads. That is the predicament many of us eventually face. The paths that once defined us disappear. The question then becomes whether we can continue the journey anyway.

These haiku are my attempt to answer yes.

Vanished Roads June 21st From Wolf Twin Books

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Epstein Files: Rockford Edition

Every city has people who know where the bodies are buried.

In Rockford, some of them still answer the phone.

Necromancers Don’t Read Toe Tags follows drifters, addicts, exhausted cops, occult obsessives, failed artists, predators, survivors, and the few decent people left trying to navigate a city built on favors and selective memory.

A woman disappears.
A network closes ranks.
The wrong people start asking questions.
And somewhere beneath the bars, dead-end apartments, river fog, and old brick buildings, something ancient begins keeping score.

Nobody in this story is clean.
Some are just trying harder than others.

Necromancers Don’t Read Toe Tags is part crime novel, part fever dream, part ghost story about what happens when a town mistakes silence for peace.

The dead don’t stay quiet forever.

Get Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags 

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Three Short Poems From Detached Retinas By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Pissed off a bunch of stuffy people on NPR, did cardio, took my heart meds, now all I have to do is wait for drowsiness to overtake me. Later today is Jack's first teeball game. Going to post a couple more of my poems from my second book, Detached Retinas, and wait to get tired. 

Detached Retinas by Thomas L. Vaultonburg from Zombie Logic Press

The Dictator

It's been too short a stay
Over you,
But if you don't mind I'll keep
My wrack and thumbscrew,
And also the map,
I made with a laugh,
Of your so-called borders.


Hello

"Hello, I'm Montgomery Clift,
Back from the grave to recommend
A most amazing product:
The New Phonebook.
yes, everything you've heard is true,
And many things you haven't heard
Are also true.
I have personally been receiving
And returning phone calls
Since March, which is amazing
Because I'm dead."


New Year's Eve 1995

It gets small again
So we order a pizza.
In March we were in love
With the classifieds
And in October picked apples.
But last week I found her in bed
Eating pizza with the delivery boy.
Tonight Dick Clark orders a huge
Ball to drop on New York City.
Shit, that was a year of my life.
-Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Nope, not tired at all. And the humidity is stifling. I still haven't bought a small air conditioner for the apartment. 

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How the Cheetah Got Its Limp From Detached Retinas by Thomas L. Vaultonburg

I've never really posted any poems from my 1997 book Detached Retinas on the internet for a simple reason: laziness. I don't have the files for that book anywhere, and I've never felt like typing them out, despite every poem being less than 25 lines, so none of them are on the internet. Here's the first one. It's titled How the Cheetah Got Its Limp.

How the Cheetah Got Its Limp

It was a Tuesday,
The Serangheti, Africa,
Bill, the cheetah,
Was running fast
In pursuit of dinner
When he stumbled over
A boar lollygagging
In the grass
And turned an ankle.
It's tough being a cheetah
With a limp.
-Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Detached Retinas by Thomas L. Vaultonburg

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Zombie Logic: The Most Dangerous Small Press In America

What makes Zombie Logic Press "The most dangerous small press in America," as NPR has reported? Many things, according to publisher Thomas L. Vaultonburg. 

For one thing, I am beholding to no one. I work for no one. I owe no one anything. I cannot be intimidated by threats, bribed by trinkets, or seduced by grand notions of fame or fortune. I do, say, write, and publish exactly what I want. And if you don't like that, tough shit.

Currently what I like is publishing the best writers from Rockford, Illinois, America's. 9th most dangerous city. But 9th clearly isn't enough danger for America's most dangerous small press, so I have chosen to locate Zombie Logic Press at the heart of the 5th most dangerous neighborhood in America. At night mutants gather beneath my window and bay at me like The Family in The Omega Man. From my west-facing window I can watch the mayor in his office at City Hall orchestrating another dirty deal that will line the pockets of his friends while strangling funding to the schools. On my block there are five restaurants serving human flesh to their unwitting patrons. The garbage dumpsters are a horror show. 

None of this phases me. I witness the discarded human detritum discharged from the various homeless shelters and homes for battered women wander confused and forsaken in the alley all day long mumbling curses and incantations that invoke demons more revolting than the human imagination can muster. I watch them, too, wander the streets, waylaying the unprepared and unsuspected east-side gawkers that spontaneously appear on the weekend to attend events they dread all week long in a neighborhood they don't want to be in. 

From here I see all this. I chose this very place for the most express purpose of seeing this. Seeing it clearly. Not a second-hand account by a reporter new to town and lost on streets she will soon forget when she arrives in Des Moines or Minneapolis. Not a dubious accounting by some Chamber of Commerce type hopeful there will be just enough truth to bullshit ratio in his speil to convince others, especially those who control the locked door to the golden public trough, to open that door and let him bury his greedy snout in the largess. 

No, that's not what I see from here. Nor do I fail to see the beauty and the spectre of past grandeur that is/was The Faust Hotel, The Midway Theater, or the old City Hall building. I know presidents and shieks and Sinatra and Marilyn stayed there, and maybe walked across the street to see a matinee. But not lately. You would also be wrong if you think I condemn the lost and forsaken I see wandering lost and discouraged on the streets. I see them. And I know in the private conversations they constantly seem to be holding with themselves they are speaking as much wisdom as insanity.

But this is no place for wisdom. Or insanity. This is a place for the quick, sly fox that knows how to scavenge. Is comfortable feeding on the carrion of those who have fallen, whether friend or foe. Knows how to bottle and sell snake oil to those who have lost their vitality and verve to face an endless sea of troubles. Rockford is one of the most dangerous places on Earth. A place where you can lose more than your initial investment in a heartbeat.

This is where I make the books. The dangerous books. By writers I have seen underneath my window wandering these streets. For five years now I have resided here, at the geographical heart of this city, watching those who cannot escape interact with those who come here begrudgingly, usually to pay homage to some phantom of a neighborhood they no longer understand or deem beautiful. 

The proposition to publish has never been a safe one. Fortunes and livelihoods have been lost over the ages by those foolhardy enough to be seduced by the passion for the printed word. Freedom has been revoked. Lives exacted as repayment for the sheer and utter indignity of insisting others have a right to see what has been written by their fellow humans. 

So, why do it? Why do it here, especially, where they show no interest in it? 

Because the field of civility can never be ceded to savagery. These posts in these forsaken places must remain attended by earnest keepers of the flame. The alternative is utter darkness. To be routed completely, and overrun by a crudity and a cruelty even the blackest of heart would dare not wish for. 

This is the place where I descend the stairs early every evening, thrust open the front door, look around and wonder "Is it safe? Am I foolish to remain here where they do not need or want me? Should I leave?,'" then cross the street and begin mumbling to myself like all the others.

The Holmes block in Downtown Rockford, Illinois, home of Zombie Logic Press Illustration by Jenny Mathews of The Rockford Illustrating Company.

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A Confederacy of Dunces Book Review By Zombie Logic

The title Confederacy of Dunces is simultaneously a great but somewhat off-putting title for the book by John Kennedy Toole. It's a great title because it's evocative and provocative, and grabs your attention immediately, but in my opinion it has led to some people having a negative reaction to the book and its main character, Ignatius Reilly. It implies a sweeping conspiratorial plot involving so much more than the book really delivers. And the book doesn't promise to deliver any grand, sweeping indictments against society. It's really not about society at all in any real way. What it is is a story about very few people. People without the means or wherewithall to make any serious impact on society at all. So the title is both successful and misleading.

Confederacy of Dunces is a book I had meant to read for a couple of decades before I actually did. And if I had to guess just from the title, or even what little I knew about the book from seeing it mentioned other places, I probably would have assumed it was about a troubled genius who was at odds with society, and through his eccentric but brilliant observations exacts his revenge by using intelligence to expose them for the hypocrites they are.

No.

That is absolutely not what A Confederacy of Dunces is about. So, I had a slow start with the book, as many readers have. I didn't like Ignatius Reilly, and I didn't think he was an undiscovered genius, and frankly I was quite happy that he was miserable and that other people found him disgusting and insufferable. Because he is. I think Toole felt the same way about the character, and wasn't in any way trying to dissuade the reader from disliking him. So, where was the book to go from there? I was expecting an anti-hero that I immediately identified with, and wanted to root for as he took on the Herculean task of challenging the stupidity of modern society. No dice. Because that's not what the book is about.

I don't have to like Ignatius Reilly to enjoy A Confederacy of Dunces. And even at the end of the book, I didn't. Fortunately the book succeeds at what it was really trying to do: spin a farcical tale about a small group of people from different backgrounds in New Orleans that spirals into a ridiculously funny and improbably climax. The dialogue is great. At first I wasn't finding the book funny at all. Until about midpoint. And the reason for that is I was holding on to some expectations that I had about what this book was going to be about. It's a story. And once you give up on the idea that the characters are representing some overarching statement it's a funny story. It builds to a crescendo in Chapter 13 that rivals any farce you've seen before.

I read A Confederacy of Dunces over several weeks, but finished the final 100 pages in two sittings because I really became fascinated by the world where these characters lived, and I knew it was going to pay off. Which it did. I can understand the central flaw of the book, namely that Ignatius Reilly is a grotesque blowhard, and a subpar human being. But what I can say is the wheel of fortune is set in motion in this book, and the characters move forward. Some change. Can Ignatius Reilly? If the answer is yes, then you'll probably enjoy the book. If you believe the answer is no, it will just seem like a torturous character study of someone you find obnoxious and want to fail. However, there is also another option on how to approach the book. And that is to simply let the story unfold, be amused by these characters, and not try to apply any cookie cutter presumptions about what grand statements the book might or might not be making. 

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Books Can Save Your Life, But Why Should They?

I have what is left of this afternoon and evening to myself here at Zombie Logic world headquarters, in the heart of America;s third most dangerous neighborhood, while the rest of the family is sick and quaranteening themselves back at the house. I feel like I should do something productive like make a comprehensive, engaging list of products available from Zombie Logic, and known associates, but every time I have that thought I realize nobody is going to buy them anyway, so I might as well walk over to the convenience store and buy enough ice cream to eat myself into a hyperglycemic coma. 

You weren't going to buy anything I went to the trouble of making a Pay Pal button for, describing, and finding a suitable picture for here, anyway, were you? Didn't think so. 

I saw today books had saved the life of a student at Florida State University where a crazed gunman began shooting. The books absorbed the bullets and saved his life. I'm not saying Zombie Logic Press books can save your life that way. If given a choice, they probably wouldn't. 

I sell books. It was a terrible miscalculation in judgement that has doomed me to a life of poverty and guilt. I don't really sell books, because you don't buy them. More correctly, I make books. I am happy to do so. Right now I'm editing a rather marvelous book by a young fellow with Cerebal Palsy. It's his first book, and details his journey through evangelical Christendom, searching for meaning and such. Hoping to publish that early in 2015, maybe February. 

Anyway, I have a freezer full of burritos, so I can hold out here rather indefinitely. Cyber space is endless, so I could hypothetically just keep jabbering forever, which is somewhat against my directives here at this blog. I rarely just write about myself, my daily thoughts and feelings, or random observations. 

Right there I just ran out of things to say. I should probably put a picture of something in here somewhere. 

Poet and publisher Thomas L. Vaultonburg pissing on a wall. 

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The Most Dangerous Poet In America

Zombie Logic Press is located exactly in the geographical center of  Rockford, Illinois: America's 3rd Most Dangerous City. Furthermore, within that dystopian wasteland, Zombie Logic Press anchors the 5th most dangerous neighborhood in America, which I believe entitles me to make the claim that I am the most dangerous poet in America.

Every one of my grade school teachers seemed to agree. 

Each one of my grade school teachers in succession made very great efforts to convince me poetry was the type of thing that gets a small boy into trouble and leads to a life of depraved indifference to societal standards. They sure were right about that. I should have listened. But I had the poetry bug bad. To their credit, they warned me. 

I was a pretty shady character back in those days, and if they hadn't made such an effort to deter me from the path of goodness, truth, and creativity, there's no telling what type of destruction I might have unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Glad they stopped me. But if they hadn't I soon learned countless others were willing to take their place. Drill instructors, professors, bosses, editors, whoever felt they might have a penile insufficiency or a vaginal surplus. They wanted me to know poetry simply wasn't going to fly, not on their watch. 

My first book was published when I was still a teenager. Many people were furious, mostly because they hadn't published a book and they didn't think I should have, either. The only place you can buy this is at Google, because it sold out over twenty years ago. Every subsequent book I have published at Zombie Logic Press was modeled after this one, largely because it's the only way I knew how to do it.

For some reason, I decided to come back from San Diego, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, to Rockford, one of the ugliest. I spent a few years letting other people pay for me to go to college, where I maintained a 4.0 and won a bunch of scholarships I didn't need because everything was already being paid for. Once again it was re-affirmed to me that being good, working harder, and outperforming other people was irrelevant on this planet. Then, mysteriously, at age 30, my life began. I remember the moment clearly. I had just re-read Richard III, and like a lazer beam boring into my amygdala it became clear to me being a good guy was for chumps. I published my second book that year.

Detached Retinas. Go ahead and be a dear and buy that here. This is a compilation of poems I wrote while in college. They tend towards the surreal and innocuous. Some are even slightly romantic and nice. Mostly people didn't like it. I can really relate to their feelings. It's the last gasp of any true romance or naivete that I might have had in this life, or ever will have again. In that sense it's the only book I have written I can pick up and enjoy reading. I wouldn't but if I did. Then I started my fifteen year career working in bars and restaurants. Which led to my third book.

Flesh Wounds. I'm making the picture bigger because I have a lot more to say about this. Be a voyeuristic lech and buy this here. These are the sordid tales of the time I spent working in dive bars, strip clubs, dance clubs, sports bars, fine dining, and the most scumbag ridden location of them all... the country club. Fast money, fast chicks, drugs, violence. I got paid to do the things most people dream about. And I was good at it. At first. Actually, I was still good at it later, too, especially when me and my brother owned our own bar, Castaways, but that long, drawn out perversion of the senses might open the doors to wisdom, but once wisdom is acquired it's time to move on.

I started writing Submerged Structure on the porch of my brother's house on a yellow legal pad one summer when I was between gigs. The one at the fireman bar and the dance club, if I remember correctly. I wanted to just strip down the whole writing experience and write for the same of the image. I've never been a big believer in adjectives or jamming a line full of figures of speech. It's a fun book with a lot of silliness to it. You can buy that here. The title refers to my lifelong battle with Schizoid Personality Disorder. How the hell do you bartend with a disorder like that, it has been asked. Drugs and booze were always my answer. 

That's how I ended up becoming the most dangerous poet in America. 

2026 update.... Still crazy after all these years. Thomas L. Vaultonburg

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Taking Out the Garbage Poem

The digital age presents us with all sorts of new scenarios. I used to not believe a poem that I had written on the computer didn't really exist until I could print it out, or write it down. I've gotten over this, and now i almost feel a poem isn't real until I have archived it digitally. Detached Retinas is my second book of poetry, published in 1997, and it only exists in book form, and on scans I uploaded for Google. But since they are scans, I have no way to copy and paste them. I'm going to post a few here over the next few weeks. 

The Garbage

Hunched over the scandal 
You've called me to clean up,
Because I keep to myself,
Because my degree is in apathy,
Because what's in my eyes
Is a lie.
The blood is the easy part,
An acquired taste,
And the body more easily
Disposed of than conceived.
Because I love you.
Because I hate everyone
You hate.
Because someone must take
Out the garbage.

Detached Retinas, 1997, by Thomas L. Vaultonburg. Publishing was much different then. This book went from my journals, to a laser printer, to Book Masters in Ohio in three days. It came back two weeks later. Offset printing. For  some inconceivable reason, I have insisted on doing the covers of ll my books. This one is by far the worst.

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Another Poem From Flesh Wounds

  Another poem from my book, Flesh Wounds.


   Collected 

   Say something interesting. 
   Come to our dinner party 
   And insult our queer friends. 
   Please stay in our basement 
   And pee in our sink. 

   You’re our very first poet. 
   We were hoping for PP 
   But we heard some nice 
   Things about you, too. 

   Say something outrageous. 
   Eat light bulbs and peanut 
   Butter and be feral and 
   Nasty and awful to us. 

   You’re a real poet. 

   Come out on the town with us 
   And cause a scene. 
   Drink enough for us all 
   And go to jail for us all. 

   Please get us some 
   Good drugs. Don’t forget 
   To write nice things 
   About us. 

   You don’t mind, 
   Do you? 

Flesh Wounds, by Thomas Vaultonburg

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The Incredulity of Saint Thomas L. Vaultonburg

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas L. Vaultonburg

According to St. John's gospel, Thomas was not present the first time Jesus appeared after the resurrection. Upon hearing the tale of Jesus having risen from the dead, Thomas claimed it was blasphemy, and would believe none of it until he reached his own hands into the wound on Jesus' side. A week later, Jesus appeared, and encouraged Thomas to confirm his existence by placing his hands inside the wounds on his side. Thomas did so, and finding them legitimate, declared "My lord and my God." This painting by Carvaggio is one of the best known of all time, and is on the cover of my book Submerged Structure. 

I identify with St. Thomas in that I always would like to verify even matters that have a component of faith. In that way one can truly believe with all one's heart. Jesus reaction to Thomas' initial disbelief is noteworthy in that he is not wrathful. Having spent an entire life in the flesh he had come to understand the doubts of the flesh, and reacted to Thomas' request in a way that allowed him to satisfy his doubts. Well played by Jesus here.

In the design for my book I have replaced Thomas the Saint with my own head. He has a Schlitz in his hand. The viewer can see Jesus is indulging my mild insobriety by guiding my hand into his wound. He's not angry at me for having a beer. The others look on intently, secretly wishing they had the cajones to be besties with The Big Guy the way I am. 


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