textfiles/magazines/MISC/tr-20b.txt

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  Issue #2.0, section b                                  4/93
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TapRoot is a quarterly publication of Independent, Underground, 
and Experimental language-centered arts. Over the past 10 years, 
we have published 40+ collections of poetry, writing, and visio-
verbal art in a variety of formats. In the August of 1992, we 
began publish TapRoot Reviews, featuring a wide range of "Micro-
Press" publications, primarily language-oriented.  This posting 
is the first section of our 2nd full electronic issue, containing 
all of the short CHAPBOOK reviews; a second section contains all of 
the zine reviews.  We provide this information in the hope
that netters do not limit their reading to E-mail & BBSs. 
Please e-mail your feedback to the editor, Luigi-Bob Drake, at:

                 au462@cleveland.freenet.edu 

Requests for e-mail subsctiptions should be sent to the same
address--they are free, please indicate what you are requesting-- 
(a short but human message; this is not an automated listserve).
I believe it is FTPable from UMich, which also archives back issues.
A cummulative, searchable, and x-referenced HyperCard version is
under development--e-mail for status & availablility information.
Hard-copies of TapRoot Reviews contain additional review
material--in this issue, reviews & articles by Jake Berry, Tom
Beckett, geof huth, Kurt Nimmo, Tom Willoch--as well as a variety
of poetry prose & grafix.  It is available from: Burning Press, 
PO Box 585, Lakewood OH 44107--$2.50 pp. Both the print & 
electronic versions of TapRoot are copyright 1993 by Burning 
Press, Cleveland. Burning Press is a non-profit educational
corporation. Permission granted to reproduce this material FOR 
NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, provided that this introductory notice 
is included.  Burning Press is supported, in part, with funds
from the Ohio Arts Council. 

Reviewers are identified by their initials at the end of each review:
Tom Beckett, Jake Berry, Luigi-Bob Drake, R. Lee Etzwiler, Bob Grumman, 
Roger Kyle-Keith, Bill Paulauskas, John Stickney, Nico Vassilakis,  
Thomas Wiloch, and Ron Zac

*** Many thanx to all contributors. ***



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'CHAPS:

Al Ackerman: PROUD CRAY--Popular Reality, Box 2942, Ann Arbor MI, 
48106.  30 pp., $4.00.  Ackerman's reminiscences of Crowbar, the 
founder of Popular Reality, and Keester House, the combination 
flophouse, youth hostel, warehouse for stolen appliances, amatory 
chiropractic clinic, home for the feeble-minded and insane asylum that 
Crowbar runs with the help of a spirit guide he contacts by inserting 
his finger into an actual hole in his head and twirling it.  In short, 
standard Ackerman humor, which is to say, an absolute howl.--bg

Curt Anderson: BENT ANTENNA--e.g. press, 1506 Grand Ave #3, St. Paul, 
MN, 55105.  44 pp., $5.00.  A series of prose vignettes, each based on 
a "classic" 60's TV series (Gilligan's Island, Twilight Zone, Hogan's 
Heros).  Each one is as inspiring & deeply philosophic as their mass-
culture predecessors.  In the Get Smart episode, Max & Agent 99 are 
called in to fight a new, more depraved chapter of K.A.O.S.: 
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.  Agent 99 draws out the villains by reciting work by 
Sylvia Plath & Robert Penn Warren at a poetry reading--once the evil-
doers are identified by their hysteric reaction, they're rounded up, 
while Max & 99 go back to the apartment and do what we all knew they 
did but never saw.  Great.--lbd

Bruce Andrews: STET, SIC & SP--Case Books, PO Box 292, Salisbury CT, 
06068.  18 pp., $6.00.  Four recent texts by so-called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E 
poetry's Ayatollah of political scat song.
     The first piece, "Time Expansion," explores in twenty short 
sections the microtechnics of reading through an aesthetic of delay.  
It was originally presented to the public as part of the music 
accompanying the choreography of Sally Silver's "Oops Fact."
     "Secret Refracted Somewhere Else" is a vintage Andrews collage 
poem -- short, quickwitted rhetorical jumpcuts.
     "Improvisation," the transcript of a thirty-five minute 
performance piece, is the heart of the book.  Improvised in the act at 
St. Marks Poetry Project in NYC during the first week of the first war 
with Iraq it crackles with humorous rage and some of-the sassiest and 
most refreshing political backtalk I've heard in a long time.
     The volume closes with "Black" an elegant abecedarian list poem 
which effectively and economically underlines the basis of racism in 
America in the first half of each line.  The last five lines:

     white vote
     white who
     white xerox
     white yanking
     white zeitgeist

STET, SIC, & SP. is a bulletin from the frontlines of politically 
committed formally innovative writing.  It's a rare bargain.--tb

John M. Bennett: LEG--Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus 
OH, 43214.  8 pp., $1.00.  A 5-poem sequence whose first poem ends: 
"like the window's seen from inside the wall where/ the damp dreams 
bloom like the mold pressed in where my/ lack churns like an I thinks 
in."  Most of this makes normal sense, even the image of a "lack" that 
"churns"--or an agitating awareness that something's missing; but 
"like an I thinks in," in typical Bennett fashion smears us whereless.  
An eventual semi-comprehension is possible, though.  For instance, the 
"I" might be sinking into the persona's mind as pure thought, but 
doing so in the churning way some sense of incompleteness might emerge 
into consciousness.  Yes, very mold-murky, but engrossing for those of 
us that like this kind of adventure.--bg

John M. Bennett: TOXIN--Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus 
OH, 43214.  4 pp., $1.00.  Two inimitable Bennett poems that, 
characteristically, seem raved from the mind of an amoeba with a 
human's viscera--or the thought of some mineral writhing toward  
semblance of life--or... whatever.  The poems are semi-coherently 
scrawled, with doughnuts, bugs, a skull and other decorations--but 
typed translations are provided.  Also included, two revealing 
appraisals of his poetry by Susan Smith Nash.--bg

John M. Bennett & Susan Smith Nash: OUTLIERS OF EXTINCTION--Luna 
Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave, Columbus OH, 43214.  4 pp.,  $1.00.  
Bennett's poetry is so wonderfully pre-logical, slithery and large 
that it lavas on regardless of any non-Bennett boulders it picks up.  
So his many collaborations, like the five here with Susan Smith Nash, 
are almost always as fascinating as his all-Bennett benders--not to 
diminish the added boulders.  One title from this set should give a 
taste: "LIKEN PHYSIOGMETRICS SUNLIGHT, HOME & MY HAND HOLDING SERUM, 
SOFT W/HOWLING."  This pamphlet also has another worthwhile prose 
observation by Nash on Bennett's poetry.--bg

Lynne Micon Bruno, Cindi Brockett & David Goldschlag: UNRAVELLED--
PO Box 7392, Van Nuys CA,  91409.  20 pp., $2.00.  This set of poems, 
actually three sets by three different poets, covers a wide area of 
interest.  From drive-by shootings to grandmother memorials, 
alcoholism to Greek gods; death, executions, Jamaican Dubs, and AIDs. 
lt is neatly done, clean, and the art work is by Wayne Hogan.  Poetry 
from a keen eye and a cool mind, it makes you think.  For two bucks 
how can you miss?--rle


Didier Cahen, translated by Cid Corman: A WORLD IN PROSE--tel-let, 
1818 Phillips Pl., Charleston, IL, 61920.  34 pp.  Poems that tick off 
various greys and nullities in flat usually two- to four-word 
sentences like- "all secret/ sky infirm/ distant runs the other 
shore." But the poems, in sequence, subtly (and secularly) sneak from 
genesis ("Man comes/ day breaks") to a poem in which "the fable is 
renewed" and "all is carven in you/ life envelops night/ dying is 
impossible."--bg

jw curry: RE: VIEWS: RE: SPONSES: COLLECTED CONCRETE CRITICISMS, 1981-
1990--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, Port Charlotte, FL, 33949.  
$10.00.  An 8 1/2 X 11 book of visual poems, each one being a "review" 
or response to a different book.  The pieces are in response to works 
by Miekal And, bill bissett, Charles Bukowski, d.a. levy, Frank Zappa, 
and several others.  Regardless of their "usefulness" as reviews, 
these are all lively and inventive poems, using a great variety of 
techniques and approaches: no two are alike in fact.  This is work 
from one of the liveliest and most experimental minds around.--jmb

jw curry: THAT FUCKING LINE THAT--Writers Forum, available from 
Rm. 312 Books, 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto ONT, CANADA, M6H 3Z9.  
At long last curry has collected his poetry into a single volume: most 
of it is from the 1980's, much of it previously published in scattered 
journals and broadsides.  Having his work together is a great 
pleasure, as it reveals a distinct intelligence at work, combining, 
often in the same poem, a lively concern with visuality, deliberate 
processes of thought, and a zen-like delight in the ineffable 
juxtapositions of words.  The poems range in length from one word to a 
full page, and many are collaborations with other writers.  An 
essential collection.--jmb

Daniel Davidson: WEATHER--Score, 125 B Bayview Drive, Mill Valley CA, 
94941.  26 pp., $5.00.  This long poem of short, linked segments has a 
peculiar sort of Raymond Roussel meets Bert Brecht with Basho quality.  
Parentheses continually interrupt the text's flow creating a surreal 
alienation effect haiku sequence that's really quite fascinating.  
There are so many parenthetical partitions it is almost as if the 
other materials have leaked out in loco parenthesis.  This is an 
innovative little book.--tb

Mike Davis: BEYOND BLADE RUNNER: URBAN CONTROL, THE ECOLOGY OF FEAR--
Open Media, PO Box 2726, Westfield, NJ, 07091.  22 pp., $3.50.  What 
will Los Angeles (or any major city) be like in the year 2109?  Davis 
sorts out the possibilities in this chap, the 23rd in OPEN Magazine's 
pamphlet series.  While it probably won't be like that depicted in the 
film Blade Runner, it probably won't be any better either.  Projecting 
a "Gibsonian" map of future L.A. and drawing somewhat from the work of 
Ernest W. Burgess and his diagram projection of Chicago from the 
1920's, Davis brings current socioeconomic-political factors to bear 
on his vision.  From this basis we see our cities becoming 
technologically and physically segregated into zones of protection 
and/or terror.  We have begun to build cages to sustain ourselves in 
an urban landscape grown increasingly hostile due to vast economic 
disparities.  The rich live in gated protected regions while the poor 
are relegated to a high-tech maintained urban wasteland that amounts 
to an anarchic prison colony.  Current and potential municipal 
strategies provide ample evidence that these agencies of control are 
already established and need only augment themselves to "perfect" the 
dystopia.
     The most provocative aspect of the whole thing however is that 
this may be the future not only of the megalopolis, but small cities 
and towns as well.  Does your town have Neighborhood Watch, or a SWAT 
team?  These ideas originated from the Los Angeles Police Department's 
attempt to control the burgeoning multi-ethnic population.  As always 
with the OPEN series of pamphlets, this is a chilling indictment of 
the forces of control.  Ignorance is slavery.--jb

Bill Dimichele: HEART ON THE RIGHT--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, 
Port Charlotte FL, 33949.  Very tight literal surrealistic images that 
want to involve the reader in the poet's interior turmoil.  This is 
somewhat of a painful trip... not too many laughs here.  Has a 
political edge and combined with the apocalyptic visions this kind of 
writing can wear one down if you're looking for a romp in the hay with 
*LANGWIDGE*.  But then, Garcia Lorca wasn't exactly a Groucho Marx 
either.  Large fullpage format. --bp

Lainie Duro & Edward Mycue: A MURDERED ETERNITY/GRATE COUNTRY--Oyster 
Publications, 1015 E. 49th., Austin, TX, 78751, 56 pp., , A dos-a-dos 
chap, each poet starting at one cover of the book and working towards 
the center.  The dos-a-dos format always reminds me of "69" oral sex--
the head of each at the tail of the other--and while sexual imagery is 
abundant in the poetry, such equality & mutual satisfaction is not.  
Lainie laments love lost or lacking; Edward's woes are added to by 
homophobia and AIDS.  Honest rather than polished--Lainie is the rawer 
of the pair, while Edward wraps his wounds in wordage--in the end, 
we're not sure if either one is healed in the process.--lbd

john e.aton: EUROPE'S LOWER EAST SIDE and BROWN, MANUSCRIPTS ON 
MEXICO--Shattered Wig Productions, 523 E. 38th St., Baltimore MD, 
21218.  40 pp., $3.00.  Right away this book strikes you as peculiar 
because it contains large fold-out maps inside either cover.  One of 
the U.S. and Mexico, one of Hungary.  But these are more than a 
traveler's observation of the people and land he visits--these poems 
are rich with a life all their own.  In terms of both substance and 
technique the words and phrases flow and work around one another.  The 
boundary between inner and outer reality dissolves and we are drawn 
through a world of images charged with emotion.  These poems are 
explorations of what it means to be in these places, confronted with 
these circumstances.  e.aton has done his work well and Shattered Wig 
should be commended for bringing it to light.--jb

Evert Eden: I'M NOT A WHITE MAN--G. Marie Press, PO Box 211, East 
Meadow NY, 11554.  4 pp., $2.00.  In two parts: "Song of the White 
Man/Curse of the White Man"--the first part running down all the 
cliche bad things white men are/do, the next repudiating the same.  
The author is from South Africa, which makes it all the more pointed.  
He runs one of the Poetry Slams at the Nuyorican Cafe in NY, and these 
would work well in a Slam: accessible, PC, and under 3 minutes.--lbd

Theodore Enslin: GAMMA UT--tel-let, 1818 Phillips Pl., Charleston, IL, 
61920.  32 pp.  Deftly, even masterfully, inept attempts to 
communicate, as an the following untitled poem: "So much/ to think/ to 
say of it// I cannot/ words excuse/ me     simple// diction/ yet I 
have not said."  Wonderful epiphanies occur, such as a look through 
branches "to catch the glint of light/ that follows water/ out    
where more than water is."--bg

Csar Espinosa (ed.), translated by Harry Polkinhorn: CORROSIVE 
SIGNS--Maisonneuve Press, PO Box 2980, Washington, DC, 20013, 129 pp., 
$9.95, A welcome dose of international perspective on experimental 
underground literature.  Visual & concrete poetry has a strong 
heritage in Spanish-speaking countries, and this anthology presents a 
variety of essays on it's history & practice.  They are collected from 
a variety of sources, and don't hang together in any kind of order, 
but taken as a whole seem to cover a lot of ground.  Includes a 
couple-dozen examples of work, which mostly serve to whet the appetite 
for more--a 50/50 mix of samples/essay would've been nice.--lbd

David Gianatasio: BEND BACKWARD FOR SHARPER RECEPTION--Runaway Spoon 
Press, Box 3621, Port Charlotte FL, 33949.  $3.00.  A series of short 
poems making use of various forms of minimalist and elliptical 
expression.  Most of the poems also make use of an implied narrative 
or discursive structure.  The contrast (or balance) between that and 
the haiku-like techniques can be extremely effective: 

     the deserted parking lot 
     engine regards a vacant space 
     "grrrbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr," it says
     "grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" 
     it's saying your name 
     no it isn't
                                                  --jmb

David Goldschiag & Lynne Micon Bruno (eds): DIAMONDS IN A FROZEN 
CAVERN--PO Box 7392, Van Nuys, CA, 91409.  20 pp., $3.00.  "Nine Los 
Angeles Pierce College Poets Speak Out On AIDS."  If you are socially 
aware this chapbook will send your thoughts nebula.  It creates a 
flame which begins mentally, becomes physical, and ends up altering 
one's social concerns.  Poetry can indeed alter the way we view the 
world. It can alter this view forever and become an enlightening, 
spine-tingling (I mean literally) adventure of learning, changing, and 
evolving socially.  I guess art does free the spirit and enlightens 
the masses as a friend of mine once said.  A friend I loved dearly.  A 
friend who died of AIDS.  I prefer to think of it as "Harsh art for 
harsh times."  This becomes a chant which rumbles through my mind 
whenever I read something which affects me as deeply at this chapbook.  
Yes, these are harsh times, and Diamonds in a Frozen Cavern is a work 
which will awaken the reader with it's indicators of the heart and 
mind.  These are words bound by our society's press of necessity.--rle

LeRoy Gorman: HEAVYN--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, Port Charlotte 
FL, 33949.  $3.00.  A thick little book of one-line texts consisting 
of what at first glance look like words with arbitrary spaces between 
the letters.  For example:

     sur  plu  sti  des  ubs  eed

Each of these texts, however, is a protean object for meditation.  
Different words appear and/or are suggested to create the effect of a 
much larger and more complex work.  A maximum example of minimalism.
--jmb

Robert Gregory: BOY PICKED UP BY THE WIND--English Dept., Emporia 
State, KS, 66801.  $9.95.  How does all this fit together and work so 
well?  Zany, tender, surreal, curious, imaginative.  How do these 
poems sound conversational and/or informative while taking such abrupt 
shifts in scene/tone/angle so seamlessly?  Poems entitled "They Wash 
Their Ambassadors in Citrus and Fennel" and "Thomas Jeffersons's 
Garden of White Machines."  A sense that this language sees, opens and 
cuts through, maybe sometimes victimizing/stranding the poet.  A wide 
range of emotions and of questions, but I want to got there, a net to 
fall up from.  "The doctor's yard is full of bones/ and the dream-work 
is just a kind of golfswing, by father said."  It amazes and 
encourages me that a book as avant and energized as this won a 
university press competition.--dan raphael

Jessica Grim: THE INVETERATE LIFE--O Books, 5729 Clover Drive, 
Oakland, CA, 94618.  61 pp.,  $7.50.  This is a volume of prose format 
poems, a newer sentence, if you please, enacting a kind of drama of 
the daily fact transmogrified.  Jessica Grimm's work shirks nothing.  
It's always on, attentive to synapses and lapses of thought, sounding 
well-envisioned thinking, feeling out amongst a thorough listening.
     Recently I read Twyla Tharp's autobiography and wanted to dance.  
THE INVETERATE LIFE makes me want to write--it is that inspiring.--tb

Bob Grumman: MATHEMAKU 1-5--Tel-Let, 1818 Phillips PI., Charleston IL, 
61920.  $4.00.  A small book of six (1 is in 2 parts) haiku-like poems 
constructed as if they were mathematical formulae.  They are amazingly 
effective in eliciting a sense of place/time using the barest of 
means.  No. 2 reads: 

     March=
     (meadows.)(:/.), 
     slowly
                                                  --jmb

Fritz Hamilton: NO DIFFERENCE--5976 Billings Road, Parkdale OR, 97041.  
25 pp., $2.50.  Ten poems composing a mini-chapbook and devoted to the 
testimony of helplessness, dereliction, and addiction.  The characters 
are winos, a Vietnam vet, and a woman amidst family tragedy.  Their 
stories are combined into a Beat-Rant style similar to a subjective 
Gonzo Journalism where Hamilton has immersed himself in the scene, 
becomes deeply involved, and passionately spews out the frustration 
and anger in long, unpunctuated, rants; with long flowing cadences and 
repetitions.  There is a touch of divine nothingness here as it 
appears all are abandoned, trapped within a life of selfdestruction 
and decay.  Jesus in a Detox Center, and a dead wino in a plastic bag 
waiting for the garbage truck to pick him up are just two examples of 
the frightening symbolism here.  The connotations are not subtle,and 
futility is the icon of repetition.  This poetry is dark and 
depressing, evoking fears of failure with visions of street people as 
powerful as a national disaster.  This then is why No Difference is an 
important work.  It has the ability to draw the reader into the scene, 
this device creates a potent self-awareness.  For example these lines: 
"Old Joe Corbett sleeping/ on a pile of plastic/ garbage bags filled/ 
with winos' souls..."--rle 

W. Joe Hoppe: HARMON PLACE--Primal Publishing, 107 Brighton Ave., 
Allston MA, 02134.  76 pp., $5.95.  In this collection of short 
stories Hoppe confronts some of the nastier elements--landlords, bad 
hotels, drunks in the hall, brutal poverty, etc.  Occasionally he 
breaks into Kerouacian euphony and beatitude, but for the most part 
it's beat dead on.  No melodrama, no romanticization, Hoppe is a man 
unafraid to witness the horrors in front of him for what they are and 
then bring it home in our face.  To say he lives his work is a gross 
understatement--there appears to be no difference between the two.  In 
case you haven't noticed, if you turn off the TV there's a real world 
out there.  These are tales of that world.--jb 

Marshall Hryciuk: THE GATHERED GALLOPING SYNTAX STRANDS--Runaway Spoon 
Press, Box 3621, Port Charlotte, FL, 33949.  Mysterious experimental 
poetry and xerox visual overlays and scrawls on found text and it's 
got a unity which is Hryciuk's intelligence and ability to outwrite 
any naive attempt to fit the images together into Procrustean sense... 
whatever THAT is.  It reads like a 19th century transcript of a mad 
alchemist's diary/secret formula hoard.  This is an original voice 
that reaches out and grabs you.  Large format, full of ideas and 
language-rockets. --bp

Albert Huffstickler: WORK--312 E. 43 St. #103, Austin TX, 78751.  8pp.  
A tantalizing taste of Huff's experiences over the past 20 years and 
more.  The most recent addition to his incredibly prolific output, 
WORK documents some of the many jobs that Huff has held in poems 
titled "Day Labor," "First Day at the Furniture Factory," 
"Apprenticeship," and "Short Order Waiter."  He has clearly been 
inside and felt what the average worker feels but often cannot 
express--the pain and sweat, the relationships, the liberation and 
frustration that can only come with the exhaustion of hard labor.  
"Skirmish" describes an experience in a day labor office after someone 
is kicked out for wearing a marine field jacket--attire the dispatcher 
felt was disrespectful.  The frustration and pain of fellow laborers 
is felt, yet they all are resigned to go on to the jobs they so 
desperately need "...the stranger in the field jacket forgotten,/ 
another nameless casualty in the war against the system." In 
"Sanctification" he compares writing poetry to the grease, sweat, and 
long hours of restaurant work--In either job, the speaker learns from 
Holmes, the 14 hour a day cook, that it is necessary give oneself 
fully.  The speaker chooses poetry, "...it was the only thing I/ ever 
found that I could give myself / to the way Holmes gave himself to/ 
restaurant work: it was the only way/ I could ever be sanctified."
--rz

Geof Huth:I'TS--eXpeRimeNtaL (basEmeNt) pReSs, 3740 North Romero Rd., 
#A-9191, Tucson AZ, 85705.  $1.00?  A series of distorted and highly 
suggestive (like the title) printed on a cleverly cut and folded 
single sheet, so that any number of different arrangements or 
sentences are possible.  For example, one might begin, "Its fhe mesure 
ofor lvl..." The possibilities are endlessly folded, unfolded, 
closing, opening...--jmb

M. Kettner: FULL PENNY JAR--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, Port 
Charlotte FL, 33949.  $3.00.  Intros. by Noemie Maxwell and Nico 
Vassilakis; computer illus. by Mike Miskowski.  A collection of 
Kettner's haiku--he's written hundreds over the years--that includes 
some of his best.  Some of these are essentially traditional haiku in 
form and perception, though eschewing the cornball "fireflies and 
sunset" content:  "house to be demolished:/ on its side,/ refrigerator 
in the front doorway."  Others break new ground:  "siren    distant 
pine tree."  This is haiku not as a "literary" exercise, but as a 
practice in attention and expanding awareness.--jmb

David C. Kopaska-Merkel: UNDERFOOT--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, 
Port Charlotte FL, 33949.  $3.00.  Intro. by G. Huth; illus. by Sheila 
Kopaska-Merkel.  Many of these poems arise from the world of 
speculative and fantasy poetry, but avoid the excesses of much of the 
work in that genre.  The best of Kopaska-Merkel's work in that vein 
shows a concision that pulls toward the other pole of this book, a 
kind of minimalist expression that betrays an interest in language as 
a means of expressing the inexpressible:  "wrong side of the/ white 
sky surf/ knife edge over mountains."--jmb

Stephen-Paul Martin: THE FLOOD--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, Port 
Charlotte FL, 33949.  100 pp., $7.00.  Intro. by Richard Royal, 
afterword by Harry Polkinhorn.  Represents six months of experimenting 
with a SmithCorona 2500 typerwriter by Martin, in which time he has 
covered scores of pages with concrete typetics, prose, and verse which 
seems to "center" on biblical/presidential moments.  The presentation 
is greatly enhanced by the quality of Martin's use of language and 
imagery.  Visual puns, cutups, letters overlaid on each other, it's 
all here and in a format large enough to give you the feel of seeing 
it in its original size.--bp

A thick 81/2 X 11 sequence of visual texts (really one long work) all 
created using a Smith-Corona electric typewriter.  The work refers to 
the story of Noah and to "the President" among other things, and 
combines a narrative flow with the more suspensive or static approach 
one may take with each page.  Noah and "the President" are topics of a 
dialectic between the world destroying itself and moving toward hope.  
A major work in a genre Martin excels in.--jmb

Larry McCaffery (ed): AVANT-POP: Fiction for a Daydream Nation--Black 
Ice Books, PO Box 241, Boulder CO, 80306.  250 pp., $7.00.  Fictions 
ranging from cyber-punk SF to PostModernLiterature, with plenty of sex 
& violence and enough sense to laugh at it(self) sometimes.  Some 
older hands like Kathy Acker & Samuel R. Delany,  lots of newer punks, 
and some surprizes like Harry Polkinhorn in the SciFi mode.  Bite-size 
bits make this easy to get into and out of--if you like, say, Wm. S. 
Burroughs, it makes for a "pleasant read".  One of the initial 
offerings from Black Ice Books, somehow in cahoots with a resurrected 
Fiction Collective, which has seen several incarnations.--lbd

Thom Metzger: THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!--Autonomedia, 55 South 11th 
St., PO Box 568 Williamsburg Station, 11211.  181 pp., $6.00.  A 
collection of unrelated rants, roars and other misc. stuff culled from 
Metzger's Zigguart Press.  Advertised as a anarchist horror novel 
(it's not).  Still, anyone who chooses James Brown, not Jean 
Baudrillard, is on the right tract.  Ouch.--js

Judy Murray: HE SOFT SIGHS OF IF--Runaway Spoon Press, Box 3621, Port 
Charlotte FL, 33949.  $3.00.  Poetry, with photographs of highway 
scenes.  These poems are suffused with a playful surrealism that 
expresses a pleasure in being in the world:  

     Oh you have a silly buckle in your mouth 
                                           this morning
     Did you swallow a pillow of happy as you lay down
                                                 my love
     Beside Churgle and Who Hah and Howdey Legs 
     I think I'll take a sun tickle bath myself
                                      Pull out the Wha Hoo plug

                                                  --jmb

Stanley Nelson: IMMIGRANT, BOOK II--Birch Brook Press, PO Box 81, 
Delhi NY, 13753.  110 pg.  The second of 4 installations, this series 
is a valuable guide to the mystique of Brooklyn, New York.  Like 
William Carlos William's Paterson, there is rich historical support, 
as well as contemporary reportage.  Ten years in the making, Nelson 
has fashioned an homage to Brooklyn.  Immigrant is a 400 page poem 
which chronicles the poet's memories alongside Brooklyn's own past.  
It is written in a very readable cut-up verse that welcomes both 
linguistic and ludic reader.  There is an ease and effortlessness that 
shines through; the mark of a strong writer.--nv

F.A. Nettelbeck: ECOSYSTEMS COLLAPSING--Inkblot, 439 49th St., #11, 
Oakland, CA, 94609.  $10.00.  An elegantly produced perfectbound book 
containing "expanded and rejuvenated" (the author's words) sections 
from his well-known BUG DEATH (1979).  This book functions as a single 
whole, however, and provides an excellent taste of Nettelback's art, 
which is perhaps harder to appreciate through short takes appearing in 
magazines.  ECOSYSTEMS COLLAPSING is really a single long poem, 
creating through a variety of literary and visual techniques the 
impression of a multitude of voices speaking through a single 
totalizing consciousness, a consciousness that judges while at the 
same time being all it contains:  

     exciting intriguing breathtaking
     sleep                 "Best/ 
     legs twitch in blasting dreams 
     new character, good. we'll 
     see" 

Essential reading.--jmb

A.L. Nielsen: EVACUATION ROUTES--Score Publications, 125 B. Bay View 
Dr., Mill Valley CA, 94941.  28 pp., $5.00.  A series of 13 "routes", 
with occasional sidetrips, each originating in a letter:
     
          ROUTE  U

          Rub

          Not seen since page one? "There's the erase."  He 
     broke hiscollar-bone swimming with an abandoned baby.  
     A pal; an ode.  AMr.and Mrs. Van Winkle died in their 
     sleep last night in a four alarm blaze which destroyed 
     their home...

This beginning is typical of the work in this compelling book: 
coherent sentences juxtaposed often with little in the way of 
"logical" discursive relationship.  The logic, however, lies in a 
subjective linking: one thing suggesting another, sometimes by the 
sound of words, sometimes by conceptual opposition.  At other times 
one feels that perhaps a paragraph of exposition has been removed 
between sentences.  There is a kind of deadpan surface to these texts 
which does not prevent them from being quite humorous at times; or 
eerie, or desperate, or sarcastic, or...--jmb

Kurt Nimmo: SUSAN ATKINS--Persona Non Grata, 46000 Geddes Road #86, 
Canton MI, 48188.  64 pp., $4.95.  This is a novella which looks like 
a chapbook, composed of nineteen sections and a variety of writing 
styles and techniques; from courtroom entries to journal entries, from 
scatological ravings to bizarre sexual fantasies, from play scripts to 
multiple choice quizzes, from nihilism to exploitation, and all of the 
paths and layers and levels which pile-up and cross the weird 
landscape of Nimmo's making.  This is indeed an eclectic montage of 
exuberance and eccentricity.  A fable built of the boldest name-saying 
where movie stars, murders, politicians, and princesses rub body parts 
and fantasies across our minds.  The central icon of this fantastic 
delirium is Susan Atkins, Charlie Manson's Femme Fatale, murderer 
turned convict, and idolized sexual object.  This is pop-cultural 
sensationalism at its finest, you couldn't have this much fun with a 
ten foot stack of National Enquirers.  Kurt Nimmo's ability to 
transpose cultural images and unexpected atrocious behavior creates a 
fertile ground for epiphany.  Once again, this is Nimmo at his best,--
not for the weak-of-heart or close-minded.--rle

Stephen Peters: DIVERGENT TALES FROM A MAN WITH THE SMELL OF BOOZE ON 
HIS BREATH--105 Betty Road, East Meadow NY, 11554.  32 pp., $?.  Hard 
hitting nihilistic poetry which races through a postmodern landscape 
of alcohol haze spiked harsh and fluent realism.  Experimentally 
structured and punctuated, capitalization optional.  Black and white 
art throughout.  Unemployment, garbage, dead cats, sweat, death, 
blonds, loneliness, love, liquor, and sex embroiled in decadent 
abandon, Nice dose of real images smeared with a youthful fetish and 
played like white-boy blues.  Recommended for those who don't like 
their poetry pretty but do like it honest.--rle 

Brian Richards: EARLY ELEGIES--Bloody Twin Press, Box 253 Rte. 1, Blue 
Creek OH, 45616.  28 pp., $12.00.  The cover photo of Bill Evans at 
the piano is cast in deep blues, the mood and music of these personal 
elegies for the lost vibrance of the late 60's--early 70's.  Richards 
mixes detail and dialogue in the fast dance of meaning and emptiness.  
His opening quote from old Beat, Zen poet Han Shan foretells a kind of 
Taoist unravelling of facts that somehow rise to a heart break of 
moment and memory.  This beautifully crafted letterpress book 
concludes with the long prose poem "Tommy" which caps an era when 
risks spoke a sweet madness 'til friendships vanished before our 
eyes.--larry smith

Franklin Rosemont: LAMPS HURLED AT THE STUNNING ALGEBRA OF ANTS--
Surrealist Editions, 1726 West Jarvis Ave., Chicago IL, 60626.  
48 pp., $5.00.  Twenty-seven poems which touch the marvelous, in the 
tradition of the continuing surrealist revolution, they relocate you 
among the dreams.  With pen and ink drawings by Czech artist Karol 
Baron.--js

Penelope Rosemont: BEWARE OF THE ICE & Other Poems--Surrealist 
Editions, PO Box 6424, Evanston IL, 60204.  64 pp., $6.00.  
Beautifully produced, with drawings by fellow Surrealist Enrico Bai, 
this collection seem a bit more lyrical than the above collection but 
just as surprising.  Powerful work.--js

Leslie Scalapino (ed): WAR (O/3)--O Books, 5729 Clover Dr., Oakland, 
CA, 94618.  32 pp., $4.00.  The first two anthologies in this series 
were thick perfectbound productions filled with fine fine writing, 
dance (i meant to type "dense", but maybenot) with language & its 
illusion.  The writing's still here, tho less illusive & more direct--
but the package is fragile & immediate, letter-size pages xeroxed 
direct from manuscript, staples already tearing thru the black 
construction-paper cover.  It all works to re-call the urgency of 
action & emotion brought on by the Persian Gulf War, all too soon 
forgotten.  Impassioned work, as it/we should be.  From Norma Cole: 
"Walk in beauty like the dead/ the dark is at its zenith, etc./ a kind 
of iridescent/ or even near blur/ given for possibilities/ forgive the 
echo".  Other contributors: Jerry Estrin, Alan Davies, Laura Moriarty, 
Fanny Howe, & editor Leslie Scalapino.--lbd

Sam Silva: DE LA PALABRA--5976 Billings Rd., Parkdale OR, 97041.  
37 pp., $4.00.  A deeply philosophical, Christian-based work of 
romanticism revisited.  The poet guides us through his agenda of 
faith, nature, and spirit in three chapters (Faith Of Our Fathers; An 
Act Of The Sun; A Spiritual Revolution) totaling twenty-eight poems.  
Although this chapbook is described in the forward as a work of it 
sensitivity, a "Work of grace and pain and wisdom," its lyrical nature 
tends to dull the senses and fails to provide surprise, mystery, and 
the edge needed to push/pull the reader towards a climatic catharsis. 
lt is pretty poetry, yes; subtle in meaning, obscure in image, but 
crisp in metaphor, and touching in its degree of spiritual fervor.  
This is a vastly different work than a lot of other poetry today.  At 
first read, one wonders where is the tension, the interplay between 
mind and reality?  A second read shows it is indeed there, cloaked in 
the beat, images peering out from behind rhythmatic slants.  If you 
are looking for nice examples of rhyme, off-rhyme, and alliteration in 
a lyrical free verse format give Sam Silva's DE LA PALAMBRA a try.
--rle 

Herschel Silverman: BLUE LUDES--The Beehive Press, 47 E. 33rd St, 
Bayonne NJ, 07002.  60 pg., $5.95.  Beat literature is both word and 
image rant. The rant is an ancient technique.  With BLUE LUDES we have 
a language that slices through, perpetuated by its very design.  There 
is a restless attraction toward contact.  There is a field of sound, 
of verb--an immediacy of moment that riles the reader.  It is jazz and 
blue, NYC and beat.  They are poems of skin, worn on skin where the 
present tense conducts its business.  There is a zeal for life here.  
Silverman writes his life in this place.--nv

Nathaniel Tarn: DRAFTS FOR: THE ARMY HAS ANNOUNCED THAT "BODY BAGS" 
WILL FROM NOW ON BE KNOWN AS "HUMAN REMAINS POUCHES"--Trout Creek 
Press, 5976 Billings Rd., Parkdale, OR, 97041.  8 pp., $1.50.  The 
horror of modern warfare is only compounded by the official newspeak 
euphemisms that try to cover up what would be intolerable if 
confronted honestly.  Tarn makes the honest call & calls mechanized 
murder what it is--not valor or patriotism, but only death.  The 
language harks back to Whitman, but where Walt could see heroism mixed 
up in the carnage, here we only see "where there had been the 
principle of hope,/ not there is none--/ nor human nor divine,/ no 
condition forward."--lbd

Cheryl Townsend & tolek: PARALLELS & REBUTTALS--xib Publications, PO 
Box 262112, San Diego, CA, 92126, 20 pp., $2.00.  Call & response form 
collaborative poetry--Cheryl paints a soft-porn scenario, tolek 
repaints it from the male point of view.  In the intro, Cheryl makes 
plain the impetus for (at least some of) her poetry: "I want women to 
know that it's okay to "want it" and more so to "get it."  She is the 
editor of IMPETUS magazine, which often pursues a similar agenda; 
tolek edits XIB, which is not exactly a monastery newsletter.--lbd

Thomas Vaultonburg: POEMS AT THE END OF THE WORLD--PO Box 9101 , 
Warwick RI, 02889, 11 pp/, $2.00.  Twelve poems lightly assembled into 
a chapbook without a strong theme.  A touch of the suburban 
intellectual.  The first poem is strong, using fellatio as a metaphor 
for oppression in America, but from this strong start the following 
works seem to drift aimlessly through the miasma of the middle class.  
But Valtonburg's attempts at social statements sometimes ring hollow--
for example, in "Ionic Matriculations" he states, "There's a death 
match on TV, and they're/ selling me the universe with garlic./ 
American Indians want me to buy a Honda/ maybe with four doors, so I 
can drive/ my two blue-eyed boys to a school where/ we have stolen the 
dreams of his children."  Vaultonburg does hit a fine note once in a 
while, like in "Lost and Found" where he shows a momentary 
passion,"Ignoring sad son-of-a-bitch Frost/ Who hid his son's Prozac/ 
and never raised a tent/ any living being could sleep under."  Here I 
applaud this rare bold stroke of iconoclastic plunder.  Still, at only 
two dollars this chapbook is worth a read.--rle 

Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop: LIGHT TRAVELS--Burning Deck, 71 Elmgrove 
Avenue, Providence RI, 02906.  $5.00.  LIGHT TRAVELS is a 
collaborative poem of fifteen parts in a beautifully produced 
letterpress edition.
     Repetition is used section-to-section as propellant and as 
framing device, in aid of reflection, underscoring the dialogic nature 
of this project--as in repeating what another has said to be sure one 
has heard correctly.  Here, by way of example, are sections four and 
five:

  4. close the curtains but
     playful elaborations of otherwise
     arrogant variation keeping
     the window open

     as it's wrong to shut
     one's eyes to dream
     it's raining while it is in fact raining


  5. as it's wrong to shut
     one's eyes to dream it's
     raining while it is in fact raining

     ears busied with hearing more than
     one voice the stream our tears unmirror

Throughout the poem alludes to its own creation.  It alludes, too, in 
a fractured way to its Outside.  It is always well sounded, always 
particular.
     I treasure this book not least because I prefer duets to solos.  
Together you can get to places you cannot go alone.--tb

James L. Weil: IN ART--tel-let, 1818 Phillips Pl., Charleston, IL, 
61920.  12 pp.  Six conversational poems in couplets, for example, "As 
Bill Says...": 

     Actually, there
     is very little,

     to be said about
     poetry--which is

     to say, already
     too much has been said

     about it.  What there
     is to say, it says.

Thoughtful, easy-to-like stuff, even if you disagree with it.--bg

Gail Whitter: INSULAR POSITION--PO Box 64026, 555 Clarke Rd., 
Coquitiam BC, CANADA, V3J 7V6.  64 pp., $7.95.  A series of inter-
connected poems on an abusive relationship and codependency.  
This is a powerful work due to it's perspective: the linking of 
pain/hate/love into a solid atlas of abuse.  This is not pretty 
poetry.  It is potent poetry which is sharp of metaphor and forces the 
reader to think, to compare their own lives to this.  "Pain is an old 
cave/ you always have/ to come back to" It is a work for those who are 
involved in a relationship in the 1990's; it is too important to 
ignore.--rle

Thomas Wiloch: LYRICAL BRANDY--Found Street, 14492 Ontario Circle, 
Westminster CA, 92683.  $1.00.  A kind of pleated mini-broadside 
containing 6 dreamy/surreal freeform haiku, e.g., the title-piece: 
"warm hands/ of/ sleep// (invisible garden)."--bg

A series of six minimalist haiku-like poems, printed on a single sheet 
of paper folded in a delightfully ingenious manner to create a small 
booklet.  The poems form a sequence with erotic undertones: "entice/ 
the keyhole/ overture// (noctural caress)"  Each of the poems contains 
its own implied narrative, but also forms part of the larger narrative 
of the sequence.  A perfect blending of content and format.--jmb

Jeff Zenick: PROTOPLASM and BECAUSE--Wheatcake Productions, Box 877, 
Tallahassee FL, 32302.  8 pp.,  $.29@.  Two micro-comix of loony 
drawing's that ooze through dream-logical narratives.  Just one clump 
of text emerges from the two books--from PROTOPLASM, protoplasmically: 
"IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO CHANGE YOUR MIND."  The drawings are a little 
primitive here and there but densely active and well-integrated.--bg


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