Poetry Book Review: Tuesday Night Beats By Jacob R. Moses and Douglas G. Cala

By Ghia Vitale

Tuesday Night Beats is a beat poetry chapbook by Jacob R. Moses and Douglas G. Cala. Moses and Cala are both New York City beat poets and National Beat Poetry Foundation members. Their beat poetry is rich in cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions of commentary and critique on society, religion, authority, and their ongoing corruption.

Tuesday Night Beats is a poetry project tied to a once-physical place: The Muddy Cup Coffeehouse. Described in the book’s foreword as “an artist mecca for creatives of all disciplines,” The Muddy Cup is where Moses and Cala met. From thereon, they both auditioned for Voices in the Garden, a documentary by NJPBS. The two poets began collaborating and performing together as Cala & Moses, a fusion act that showcases their individual and collective poetry efforts. Since, then, they’ve performed all over the New York metropolitan area together, spreading sweet beat vibes wherever they go. To their credit, they’re both in the National Beat Poetry Foundation alongside greats like Bob Dylan, who’s currently being portrayed in movie theaters through A Complete Unknown, his new biopic.

Cala and Moses are each formidable poets and performers in their own right. You’ll find two spoken word poetry albums on Spotify by Douglas G. Cala: Orwellian Tale (his single) and Oenomel (his album). Jacob R. Moses has multiple chapbooks out, including …and the willow smiled and Grimoire, his most well-known and full-length book. Tuesday Night Beats is the perfect synthesis of their creativity. Each poem in this chapbook has a verse-by-verse format, with their voices interchanging between each verse. It’s an effective design: Whenever my father has seen videos of Cala & Moses performing, he has described them as a “stereo system,” an alternating onslaught of poetry with each “speaker” blasting his verse at listeners. Tuesday Night Beats retains this stereo system quality in how their voices are distinct and pronounced, yet creatively, they go together as well as coffee and sugar.

My favorite thing about Tuesday Night Beats is that my favorite poems in this book are toward the end rather than just the beginning. The whole reading experience of Tuesday Night Beats is a literary incline that builds itself up with passing pages. In my opinion, Cala is right when he writes that “it’s time to rise, the key ingredient of yeast to this/ collective casserole” on page 39. With a right-wing, authoritarian president in power and longstanding pressure cooker-tier stress, the heat is certainly turning up in the United States. Now is the time to speak out through creativity, and that’s exactly what Cala & Moses effectively do in Tuesday Night Beats and in their poetic lives. A haunting verse by Moses successfully captures and conveys this energy on page 57:

“And may we let our oppressors know
We see through coded language
Don’t need Dan Brown to decipher
Bigotry lacing the population like Fentanyl”
Jacob R. Moses

Now, it’s important to support beat poets like Douglas G. Cala and Jacob R. Moses. So much of poetry is inherently connected to free speech and reclaiming one’s creative narrative over authority and the powers that be in life. Beat poetry has a history of questioning and standing up to society, government, organized religion, and authority in general. That beat-style anti-authoritarianism is alive and well in Tuesday Night Beats, so I’d suggest reading it if that’s your thing.

Get your copy of Tuesday Night Beats here. For more updates, check out Jacob R. Moses on Instagram and his personal blog. As for Doug G. Cala, check out his Instagram and Facebook. Both Douglas G. Cala and Jacob R. Moses have profiles on the Poets & Writers Network, which you’ll find in the aforementioned links. Thank you for reading!