1586 lines
86 KiB
Plaintext
1586 lines
86 KiB
Plaintext
From au462@cleveland.Freenet.EduMon Aug 21 11:08:57 1995
|
||
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 10:36:34 -0500
|
||
From: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
|
||
To: au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu
|
||
Subject: TRee #6b--chaps
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
TTTTTTTT AA PPPP RRRR OOOO OOOO TTTTTTT
|
||
|
||
T A A P P R R O O O O T
|
||
|
||
T AAAAAA PPPP RRRR O O O O T
|
||
|
||
T A A P R R O O O O T
|
||
|
||
T A A P R R OOOO OOOO T
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
Issue #6.0, section b: chaps 2/95
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
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 second section of our 6th full electronic issue, containing
|
||
|
||
most of the short CHAP reviews; the second section contains most
|
||
|
||
of the magazine 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 subscriptions 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).
|
||
|
||
The archive site for back issues is the Electronic Poetry Center
|
||
|
||
at SUNY Buffalo: gopher to: <wings.buffalo.edu/11/internet/
|
||
|
||
library/e-journals/ub/rift>. Our thanks to Loss Glazier et al
|
||
|
||
for maintaining this resource.
|
||
|
||
|
||
The paper version of TapRoot Reviews contain additional review
|
||
|
||
material--in issue #6: survey of recent anthologies and local
|
||
|
||
poetry newsletters, features on work by Richard Kostelanetz,
|
||
|
||
Michael McClure, Bern Porter, Harvey Pecar/Joyce Brabner, and
|
||
|
||
excerpts from _Chain_, _Synaesthetic_, and _The Al Ackerman
|
||
|
||
Omnibus_. Plus more. TapRoot Reviews intends to survey the
|
||
|
||
boundaries of "literature", and provide access to work that
|
||
|
||
stretches those boundaries. It is available from:
|
||
|
||
|
||
Burning Press,
|
||
|
||
PO Box 585,
|
||
|
||
Lakewood OH 44107--
|
||
|
||
$2.50 pp.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Both the print & electronic versions of TapRoot are copyright
|
||
|
||
1995 by Burning Press, Cleveland. Burning Press is a non-profit
|
||
|
||
educational corporation. Permission granted to reproduce
|
||
|
||
this material FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, provided that THE CONTENTS ARE NOT EDITED OR ALTERED IN ANY WAY, and 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: Michael Basinski, John M. Bennett, Jake Berry,
|
||
|
||
Luigi-Bob Drake, R.R. Lee Etzwiler, Bob Grumman, Susan
|
||
|
||
Smith Nash, Oberc, Andrew Russ, Gregory Vincent St.
|
||
|
||
Thomasino, Mark Weber, Thomas Willoch, and Karl Young.
|
||
|
||
Additional contributors are welcome: drop an e-note or send SASE.
|
||
|
||
|
||
*** Many thanx to all of our contributors. ***
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
CHAPS:
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
THE STANDARD ARTIST STAMP CATALOGUE--PMTTTD Corporation, 4067
|
||
|
||
Letitia Ave. S., Seattle WA, 98118-1137. 150pp.+, $25.00. When
|
||
|
||
I was a neurotic little bastard I used to collect stamps, but
|
||
|
||
this stamp book of mail art stamps is a thousand times more
|
||
|
||
organized than I ever was. These stamps are the creation of
|
||
|
||
artists, and although they imitate the formats of legitimate post
|
||
|
||
office stamps, they are focused on computer generated acts of
|
||
|
||
existential ism, collages, photo sets of contributing artists,
|
||
|
||
bootlegged images of pornography, pen and ink bursts of madness
|
||
|
||
and insanity, letter-bomb threats, and a thousand warring egos
|
||
|
||
all trying to out-create each other while sticking to a format
|
||
|
||
that looks deceptively sane on the surface. If you found weird
|
||
|
||
stamps on your letters during the 80s, chances are you've seen
|
||
|
||
some of this work before--if you haven't, and you're curious
|
||
|
||
about that "stamp thang" you heard about a few years back, this
|
||
|
||
is a most comprehensive collection.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Dr. Al Ackerman: THE BLASTER AL ACKERMAN OMNIBUS--Feh! Press, 147
|
||
|
||
Second Ave. #603, New York NY, 10003. 288 pp., $12.95. Al
|
||
|
||
Ackerman is a kind of Dave-Barry-gone-wrong, prevented by his
|
||
|
||
innate creativity from being satisfied with "family fare." So
|
||
|
||
BLASTER, his first full-length collection, will probably not
|
||
|
||
become a best-seller. On the other hand, it will still be read a
|
||
|
||
million years from now when writers like Barry have long been
|
||
|
||
forgotten. Of course, his readers will all be Vug-Randolphs, the
|
||
|
||
large sentient beetles that Ackerman claims are the true authors
|
||
|
||
of the works of John M. Bennett.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Sherman Alexie: FIRST INDIAN ON THE MOON--Hanging Loose Press.
|
||
|
||
$12.00. A mixture of free verse poems and short prose, this
|
||
|
||
collection of Sherman Alexie's work reflects his personal
|
||
|
||
experience as an American Indian raised on a reservation. The
|
||
|
||
prose pieces work best, if only because the free verse is so
|
||
|
||
conventional in style as to be indistinguishable from many other
|
||
|
||
poets' work. In the prose, recounting the stories of his life,
|
||
|
||
Alexie's anger and pain are captured in brief anecdotal moments
|
||
|
||
and disturbing memories. One example: "An Indian man drowned
|
||
|
||
here on my reservation when he passed out and fell face down into
|
||
|
||
a mud puddle. There is no other way to say this."--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Karen Alkala-Gut: RECIPES: LOVE SOUP AND OTHER POEMS--Yaron Golan
|
||
|
||
Pub., 3 Burla Str., Tel-Aviv, Israel. 64 pp. Karen was raised
|
||
|
||
in America, and now lives in Israel. Breaking the metaphor of
|
||
|
||
silence, she tells us of family deaths and life in a war zone,
|
||
|
||
and of Jewish hearts open to enemies of obligation. Several of
|
||
|
||
her poems deal with the sickness and death of her father. The
|
||
|
||
poems "Night Travel" and "The Train" relates a journey into
|
||
|
||
Germany, juxtaposing Nazi horror and adolescent intrigue. The
|
||
|
||
long journal-poem "Between Bombardments" portrays the trepidation
|
||
|
||
and inhumanity of the Gulf War, of living in the shadows of death
|
||
|
||
and missile attack. Her innocuous honesty and personal
|
||
|
||
revelation brings us to taste her bitterness of violent
|
||
|
||
involvement bound with the absurd. "Instead of his leash/ the
|
||
|
||
dog brings my mask/ to remind me of his walk." This publication
|
||
|
||
touches a deep pulse and reminds us of those the Gulf War
|
||
|
||
personally affected.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Minoa Alloy: NARTHEX--Vortext Editions, PO Box 23194, Seattle WA,
|
||
|
||
98102. 82 pp., $5.00. The author's intro to this richly infra-
|
||
|
||
verbal work suggests the reader think of its "revealed words" as
|
||
|
||
words "retained upon waking from a dream, hermetic definitions"
|
||
|
||
that you are to "carry... in your pocket, leave... on your
|
||
|
||
nightstand." A number of silences from many strands of history
|
||
|
||
inhabit it, as in "arc arch archae// come the silence." And
|
||
|
||
silencednesses, as when "aria" is crossed out, then followed by
|
||
|
||
"your vague epithet." Later, "aria" reappears--sharing a page
|
||
|
||
with "purge" and "cello/ plant threat." A remarkable amount of
|
||
|
||
inter-and intra-tonality helps one "understand the gone/ trace/
|
||
|
||
lostre."--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Miekal And & Elizabeth Was: THE MISSING TEXT OF THE LOST TOWER--
|
||
|
||
Xexoxial Editions, Rt. 1 Box 131, LaFarge WI, 54639. 38 pp.
|
||
|
||
Combination of surrealism and langpo by And, with subtexts by
|
||
|
||
Was. Nonsense to the logocentric mind, but both the Tower of
|
||
|
||
Babble and more scientifically-plausible sites of language-origin
|
||
|
||
form and unform in the haze of the narrative. "During the
|
||
|
||
archaic there were no physical & mental restraints, no
|
||
|
||
institutional boundaries around logos & all the slight
|
||
|
||
expressions of the subtle universe," says the text near the end--
|
||
|
||
"And the brass rings" as Liz's subtext puts it at another point
|
||
|
||
to describe the lyrical way the work uncenters us larger.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Antler: ANTHEM--Beginner's Mind Press, Kingman Blvd. #6, Des
|
||
|
||
Moines IA, 50311. 1 pg., SASE. A plaintext poem by a Vietnam
|
||
|
||
Veteran stating why he will no longer stand for the National
|
||
|
||
Anthem or the Star-Spangled Banner. Not just angry, but mellowly
|
||
|
||
leading to hopeful thoughts about our country's becoming
|
||
|
||
Ecotopia, whose "flag is the Wilderness/ and (whose) National
|
||
|
||
Anthem is the wind." One of a number of worthwhile broadsides
|
||
|
||
occasionally being but out by this quiet new press.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Amari Baraka: FUNK LORE--Open Magazine New Series, PO Box 2726,
|
||
|
||
Westfield NJ, 07091. $1.00. One of Baraka's excellent musicwise
|
||
|
||
and spiritual poems. Originally read at The Cooler in NYC during
|
||
|
||
Reggie Workman's "Word & Music" performances (Workman used to
|
||
|
||
play with Coltrane, among many others). Baraka discovers the
|
||
|
||
blues, their origin in our selves. "In tribes of 12/ bars/ like
|
||
|
||
the stripes/ of slavery/ on/ our flag/ of skin". Music returned
|
||
|
||
to it's source body. A strong dose where you need it.--jb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Dennis Barone: THE MASQUE RESUMED--Standing Stones Press, 7
|
||
|
||
Circle Pines, Morris MN, 56267. 15 pp. If not apocalyptic, at
|
||
|
||
least aware of the linguistic ruptures and impossibilities of
|
||
|
||
representations. This collection of poems is stunning--perhaps
|
||
|
||
the influence of contemporary French poetry is somewhat more
|
||
|
||
veiled here than in Barone's other works, which imparts a
|
||
|
||
breathless urgency. Perhaps some of the most subtle innovative
|
||
|
||
poetry being produced today.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Guy Beining: STOMA--Aegina Press, 59 Oak Lane, Spring Valley,
|
||
|
||
Huntington WV, 25704. 57 pp., $9.00. For years Beining has been
|
||
|
||
composing a sequence of "Stoma." This collection contains
|
||
|
||
numbers 1701 through 1743 (formidably inter-echoing). A stoma is
|
||
|
||
a minute opening or pore in a surface, and also, in medicine, a
|
||
|
||
"mouth." Beining's Stoma, then, are often simultaneously sensual
|
||
|
||
mouths, and haiku-small openings through the quotidian, generally
|
||
|
||
urban, surface of existence into lyricisms like light frightened
|
||
|
||
into "CLOUD swells" or "the language of snow" whose grammar
|
||
|
||
"buntings correct twig to twig."--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
John M. Bennett: JUST FEET--Texture Chapbook Series No. 13, 3760
|
||
|
||
Cedar Ridge Dr., Norman OK, 73072. 24 pp., $6.00. One out of
|
||
|
||
any two poetry magazines is going to feature John M. Bennett.
|
||
|
||
The guy is a poem writer, relentless. A river. A roaring sea of
|
||
|
||
poems smashing against us humble reader beach eyes and ears. A
|
||
|
||
hurricane rain of cat, dog, giraffe words. John Machine Bennett.
|
||
|
||
And the books everywhere also by the flock and herd. So we have
|
||
|
||
this one: JUST FEET. This is one of Bennett's best. Herein
|
||
|
||
also, two essays on JMB's poetry, one by Jake Berry and one by
|
||
|
||
Bob Grumman (two writers that have some clear insight into
|
||
|
||
innovative poetics). Well, this is a way to go. That's good
|
||
|
||
because writers like Bennett of the boiling underground don't
|
||
|
||
receive enough critical comment. We forget what the poet's
|
||
|
||
poetry is all about. Essays good to get new readers. And for
|
||
|
||
the thick reader that has to be struck in the head with a washing
|
||
|
||
machine or cement ostrich, these essays do it. An innovative
|
||
|
||
idea for a book also to get writers reading each other and then
|
||
|
||
writing and that writing going into the book. More. Collages
|
||
|
||
which match the power of the poems by Brekka Hervey, Susan Smith
|
||
|
||
Nash, and Kelly Vincent.--mb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Aloma Bloom & Jessie Gretzinger: STEPS TO FREEDOM--c/o Taggerzine
|
||
|
||
Specials, PO Box 632952, San Diego CA, 92163. 12 pp., $1.00(?).
|
||
|
||
These are playful poems with playful illustrations, and strangely
|
||
|
||
enough remind me of James Thurber. There's social commentary,
|
||
|
||
tons of catholic metaphorical nonsense, relationships fucking up
|
||
|
||
in a strangely stated gentle way, aging and wisdom, and
|
||
|
||
insightful spiritual Zen-like poems that make you think. On the
|
||
|
||
other hand, Zen does no more than love to change the world. Hope
|
||
|
||
is like Heaven, something to believe in until you drop dead.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
E. B. Bortz: VOICES OF A WANDERER--Out There Pub., PO Box 796,
|
||
|
||
Mars PA, 16046. 62 pp., $7.00. An obsessive purity of line and
|
||
|
||
form dominates Bortz's collection of poetry and short stories
|
||
|
||
(the longest of which is about a jaunt into Thailand). The motif
|
||
|
||
here is that of the outsider wandering to various world
|
||
|
||
locations: Singapore, Seoul, Germany, Israel & Montreal, as well
|
||
|
||
as several locations in the USA. The verse is minimalist and
|
||
|
||
melancholy, reminding me of a wanderer infected by a solitary
|
||
|
||
search for something. What is not mentioned. Like a monastic
|
||
|
||
voyeur handing out meticulous images which transcend meaning, the
|
||
|
||
wanderer has almost completely painted himself out of the
|
||
|
||
picture, covering the naked heat of emotion with a refracted
|
||
|
||
mirror of scenes which results in a cool touch. Maybe the author
|
||
|
||
says it best when he ends a short prose-poem with "To suppress
|
||
|
||
the Innerself is to abdicate the living."--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jonathan Brannen: NOTHING DOING NEVER AGAIN--Score, 812 SW
|
||
|
||
Cityview, Pullman WA, 99163. 27pp. +envelope, $6.00. Loose-leaf
|
||
|
||
cardstock in an envelope, each of the 22 panels of this sequence
|
||
|
||
consists of typed repetitions of one of the letters of the title
|
||
|
||
arranged to form a non-representational composition. As the
|
||
|
||
sequence evolves, its range of grays and blacks and sudden
|
||
|
||
occurrences of negative space, and its jolts and whispers of
|
||
|
||
forms in harmony or opposition with each other, slowly turn the
|
||
|
||
nothing that Brannen seems at first to be doing into a permanent
|
||
|
||
everything. If only Brannen did his thing on canvas or the
|
||
|
||
equivalent instead of on pages, he might be getting the acclaim
|
||
|
||
he deserves, for no museumed user of texts in visual art that I
|
||
|
||
know is even a tenth as masterfully not doing nothing.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Andre Breton: EARTHLIGHT--Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire
|
||
|
||
Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036. $12.95. Best known as the
|
||
|
||
spokesman and founder of Surrealism, Andre Breton also wrote
|
||
|
||
poems that are like delicate, exotic jewels. EARTHLIGHT is a
|
||
|
||
selection of his work from seven collections first published in
|
||
|
||
French. For my money, his prose poems are Breton's most
|
||
|
||
interesting work. "Wearing a hooded beige cape, he frolics on
|
||
|
||
the satin poster where two paradise feathers replace his spurs,"
|
||
|
||
begins one poem. And it ends: "Just once can't the expression
|
||
|
||
for life trigger one of the aurora borealises they'll use to make
|
||
|
||
the table cloth of the Last Judgment?" Beautiful work. Like
|
||
|
||
dreams should be.--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Kimberly J. Bright: MAENAD--Fell Swoop, 3003 Ponce De Leon St.,
|
||
|
||
New Orleans LA, 70119. 11 pp., $3. A self-described
|
||
|
||
"carnivorous poet," Kimberly affords us an amusing look into her
|
||
|
||
world; a world of Prozac, cosmo girls, tattoos, post-coital
|
||
|
||
remarks (my favorite: "do you always have so many orgasms?"),
|
||
|
||
turning men into suicides, turning men into "sobbing little
|
||
|
||
boys," barbiturate-induced sleep, and similarly interesting
|
||
|
||
perspectives. "We can make it/ look like an accident." She
|
||
|
||
strikes immediate and deep chords with her sparse and direct
|
||
|
||
voice. "I want to/ make your bones into woodwind instruments/
|
||
|
||
for an all-serial killer orchestra." Her rage and refusal is
|
||
|
||
delicately balanced with sexual and personal torments. Both
|
||
|
||
enjoyable and provocative.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Adam Brodsky: FILM AT 11:00--PO Box 43700, Cleveland OH, 44143.
|
||
|
||
32 pp., $5.00. One of the more unusual chaps I've read in a
|
||
|
||
while; paginated in reverse, each page containing an abstract
|
||
|
||
gray and white frame surrounding a single question: "If a bomb
|
||
|
||
exploded is it still a bomb?" or a short poem: "I am./ You are./
|
||
|
||
He, she, it is./ Why aren't they?" A totally gray centerfold, a
|
||
|
||
couple of longer poems, and a bright insert--somehow it seems to
|
||
|
||
work for me, with the reverse pagination acting as a countdown.
|
||
|
||
The commitment here is to contemplation, to diversity, to
|
||
|
||
originality, and to the absurd.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
John Byrum: FORK SHIFT--Generator Press, 8139 Midland Rd., Mentor
|
||
|
||
OH, 44060. $4.00. A book of graphically super-imposed texts, in
|
||
|
||
which the bold "foreground" words could be commentaries on, or
|
||
|
||
distillations of, the fainter "background" texts; for example the
|
||
|
||
words "writhing nowhere intentions" appears large and bolder over
|
||
|
||
a passage that begins "if follows clean glass place inclination
|
||
|
||
dust designation ever..." There are some variations on this
|
||
|
||
format, for example several pages in which the bold and faint
|
||
|
||
texts are graphically equal, or there is no bold text at all,
|
||
|
||
etc.
|
||
|
||
It seems to me that there are at least two ways of
|
||
|
||
approaching these enigmatic and non-discursive works: one would
|
||
|
||
be to "read" them as visual mandalas, in which the meditative
|
||
|
||
gaze moves back and forth, in and out in a never conclusive
|
||
|
||
movement of recombining and reordering of the words; a way of
|
||
|
||
reading that is process-oriented and not directed toward "getting
|
||
|
||
the point." The other approach is to consider these works as
|
||
|
||
artistic representations of knowledge (or "reality") as it is
|
||
|
||
increasingly manifest in the "information" age: that is, these
|
||
|
||
works are a metaphor for knowing as a multi-layered process, and
|
||
|
||
not as a static body of facts and structures.
|
||
|
||
The book is cleanly and simply presented, and includes a
|
||
|
||
note of "sources," which are all dictionaries. Highly
|
||
|
||
recommended.--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Robert Caldwell, Eric Dietz: THE FOUR FOOD GROUPS--Anaconda
|
||
|
||
Press, PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614. 12 postcards, $4.00.
|
||
|
||
Andy Lowry, the person behind the wild adventures of Anaconda
|
||
|
||
Press, bursts out of her latest explosive frenzy with a dozen
|
||
|
||
postcards by Robert Caldwell and Eric Dietz. The focus is on the
|
||
|
||
four food groups: alcohol, sugar, fat and caffeine. The cards
|
||
|
||
scream slogan feasted rants, and the combination of stark
|
||
|
||
graphics from minds polluted by years of abuse of the four food
|
||
|
||
groups attacked leave one with a strange inner fear that you
|
||
|
||
might be next. Pictures of Klansman eating lard, killers on
|
||
|
||
three day vodka binges, child molesters, and coffee addicts
|
||
|
||
litter the turf, and are only a sampling of the illustrations and
|
||
|
||
the edge they rip across. These postcards carry a dark humor,
|
||
|
||
and a viciousness nastiness, that have to be seen to be
|
||
|
||
appreciated.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Clint Catalyst: CARESSES SOFT AS SANDPAPER--Papershred
|
||
|
||
Productions, 4104 24th Street #254, San Francisco CA, 94110.
|
||
|
||
48 pp., $4.00(?). For a poetry chap with mixed illustrations
|
||
|
||
from a dozen plus illustrators , and poems that capture the wild
|
||
|
||
long strokes of heated lubricated love making, this is a fine
|
||
|
||
introduction into a poet who's on a road filled with either self
|
||
|
||
pitying whoa is me bitterness, or extreme insight into the human
|
||
|
||
condition. I don't know, man, maybe I've always been a cynical
|
||
|
||
asshole expecting the worse, but I thought that these poems
|
||
|
||
needed to go a step further. Perhaps castrations and
|
||
|
||
mutilations, or self destructive rituals, would have over-ridden
|
||
|
||
the youthful angst. Perhaps a more in perspective point of view
|
||
|
||
is what I look for when the world starts to get that looking bad
|
||
|
||
kind of misery blues.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Cydney Chadwick: NOUN DESCENDING A FIRE ESCAPE--Laughing Horse
|
||
|
||
Broadsides, PO Box 2328, Norman, OK, 73070-2328. 1 pp., $1.00.
|
||
|
||
"Noun Descending a Fire Escape" explores the perversity of gender
|
||
|
||
role-constructed bondage, as a woman becomes disenchanted with
|
||
|
||
her snoring lover, "especially after you discover a whole wad of
|
||
|
||
money stashed away in his shoe box." A tableau-vivant that
|
||
|
||
reminds one of French new-wave cinema, Godard's Breathless or
|
||
|
||
Louis Malle's more recent incest-insinuations in Damage.--ssn
|
||
|
||
|
||
Ana Christy: REAL JUNKIES DON'T EAT PIE--Alpha Beat Press, 31a
|
||
|
||
Waterloo St., New Hope PA, 18938. 66 pp., $10.00. Ana's
|
||
|
||
admiration of her beloved Beat roots is unabashed--road poems
|
||
|
||
stretching frm Greenwich Village to Haight St., western haiku ala
|
||
|
||
Kerouak's Mexico City Blues, Bebop & drug references... even the
|
||
|
||
book itself imitates the package of a City Lights Pocketbook.
|
||
|
||
Her opening poem is titled "My Notebook," and that seems an apt
|
||
|
||
description for much of the work--picturesque details and clean
|
||
|
||
colloquial language. But unlike the best Beat writing, this too
|
||
|
||
often fails to soar--careful observation and recording, but
|
||
|
||
without the passionate insight or resounding echoes of the
|
||
|
||
originals. Not bad work, but falling short of what you'd expect
|
||
|
||
from the self-proclaimed "poet of the counterculture and queen of
|
||
|
||
the underground."--lbd
|
||
|
||
|
||
Glenn G. Coats: THE BIG ZANY--East Coast Editions, 105 Betty Rd.,
|
||
|
||
East Meadow NY, 11554. 20 pp., $2.00. A set of nature-rural
|
||
|
||
poems based on a Canadian myth surrounding a man known as "Zany."
|
||
|
||
"The hull/ of his boat/ was like/ his face:/ brown, lined/
|
||
|
||
weathered." Using precise evocative descriptions we are guided
|
||
|
||
through an imaginary Zany's world of "hawks/ and herons," rivers
|
||
|
||
and small lakes, pickerel and walleye, birch and hemlock. Here
|
||
|
||
nature takes on a haunted, surreal specter, "There are no
|
||
|
||
footsteps,/ only water slipping/over rocks" and Zany is the
|
||
|
||
specter, never appearing except in shadows of the mind.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Edmund Conti: HIC HAIKU HOC--The Poet Tree, 82-34 138th St., #6F,
|
||
|
||
Kew Gardens NY, 11435. 23 pp., $3.75. Some amusing parodies of
|
||
|
||
traditional haiku (for instance: "Okay, all you frogs/ Everybody
|
||
|
||
out of the pool/ And form three lines."), and other pieces of
|
||
|
||
light verse, many of them quite infraverbally adventurous, like
|
||
|
||
"Open Every Day Except Sunday":
|
||
|
||
|
||
openopenopenopenopenopenope
|
||
|
||
|
||
In short, my kinda stuff.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Barbara Cramer: A CHILD OF DREAMS--East Coast Editions, 105 Betty
|
||
|
||
Rd., East Meadow NY, 11554. 20 pp., $2.00. Barbara Cramer is a
|
||
|
||
Colorado poet with an eye for the rigorous moment, and a voice of
|
||
|
||
self-conscious narrative. She narrates in varied lines her inner
|
||
|
||
feelings mingled with a patient considerate life. Christian
|
||
|
||
elation regionally based and honest. Often starry-eyed, and
|
||
|
||
sometimes expansive: "People will adore me./ fear me,/ worship
|
||
|
||
me,/ for I am sacred" she states describing her mystical
|
||
|
||
personification as lightening.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Simon Cutts: FOR MARIE BOURGET--Tel-Let, 1818 Phillips Pl.,
|
||
|
||
Charleston IL. 9 pp., $3.00. Three very stiff white pages that
|
||
|
||
seem blank until you realize that a line has been indented on
|
||
|
||
each page as though typed by a typewriter with no ribbon. The
|
||
|
||
lines say, "the only texts/ I ever write/ were the titles," which
|
||
|
||
is droll, and it's probably wrong of me to give the whole book
|
||
|
||
away like this, but I haven't, because what counts here is not so
|
||
|
||
much what the text says, but what it is and feels like in such a
|
||
|
||
context. This work is not a poem, or just a poem... it is a
|
||
|
||
Book!--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Tony D'Arpino: PATANJALI'S TOES--Found Street, 2260 S. Ferdinand
|
||
|
||
Ave., Monteray Park CA, 91754. $2.00?. Two clearly expressed
|
||
|
||
poems presented on a small folded broadside, both of which deal
|
||
|
||
with a sense of mythic presence emerging:
|
||
|
||
|
||
The sex scene in the center of the
|
||
|
||
book lifts off the page like a child's tattoo.
|
||
|
||
The furnace in the yogi: a description and
|
||
|
||
dossier of seasons.
|
||
|
||
--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Marilyn Dammann: EPHEMERAL EARTHWORKS--PO Box 115, Baraga MI,
|
||
|
||
49908. 48 pp., $10.00. Twenty-four well printed photos of
|
||
|
||
outdoor sculptures, most made of bark and driftwood. Pieces
|
||
|
||
constructed by gravity and placement in snow without artificial
|
||
|
||
fasteners. Pieces work with light and snow: the moving shadows
|
||
|
||
of the wood are as important as the wood itself. Hence, time
|
||
|
||
figures into the work in two ways: transience, and time marked by
|
||
|
||
movement of shadows. Sound a bit like Stonehenge? It should:
|
||
|
||
much of Dammann's work takes ancient lyths as points of
|
||
|
||
departure, and she has made stone cairns on the shores of Upper
|
||
|
||
Michigan and along the coast of Ireland. Unlike grandiose
|
||
|
||
earthwork sculptors, Dammann avoids violation of nature, works
|
||
|
||
according to seasons, and makes sure her work leaves nothing
|
||
|
||
behind that might not be there already. Several sculptures are
|
||
|
||
nothing but marks in snow--as ephemeral as art can get. But we
|
||
|
||
have these haunting photos, which Dammann rightly calls "visual
|
||
|
||
poems."--ky
|
||
|
||
|
||
Gary David: A LOG OF DEADWOOD--North Atlantic Books, PO Box
|
||
|
||
12327, Berkeley CA, 94701. 139 pp., $9.95. Poetry of
|
||
|
||
historicity--the result is somewhat tame because of its self-
|
||
|
||
consciously academic nature, but interesting nonetheless. Maybe
|
||
|
||
it's the cowboy in it all. Deadwood refers to the Dakota gold
|
||
|
||
mining rough-n-ready times, in fact, the book purports to be a
|
||
|
||
"Postmodern Epic of the South Dakota Gold Rush." David owes much
|
||
|
||
to Edward Dorn, whose Gunslinger echoes throughout these pages.
|
||
|
||
David's work reminds me of another poet, Bill Sherman, whose
|
||
|
||
surreal meditations upon Old Mesilla bring out the gothic & the
|
||
|
||
grotesque lurking in every ghost town.--ssn
|
||
|
||
|
||
Corrine DeWinter: WISHCRAFT--Arrow Pub., PO Box, East Long Meadow
|
||
|
||
MA, 01028. 32 pp., $2.00. This is Ms. DeWinter's second
|
||
|
||
chapbook, and it is crosshatched with eroticism and death,
|
||
|
||
affection and obsessed lust, magic and myth. She wrenches her
|
||
|
||
images through a screen of incantation, "I have danced far and
|
||
|
||
wide and moved no heart." A floating desperation prevails,
|
||
|
||
wistful yet persistent, "Come out into the light and sing/ Your
|
||
|
||
superstitions, come out..." The background is eerie, haunting,
|
||
|
||
ancient primal needs of tortured goddesses, solemn searchers and
|
||
|
||
shadowy oracles.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Larry Eigner: A COUNT OF SOME THINGS--Score, 812 SW Cityview,
|
||
|
||
Pullman WA, 99163. 8 pp., $4.00. Four short poems in the
|
||
|
||
inimitable high innocence of Eigner, but here with almost
|
||
|
||
sardonic musings on numbers, particularly the number of people
|
||
|
||
over-populating the world at present--with the "yugoslav newborn
|
||
|
||
designated (July '87) our billionth contemporary" making two
|
||
|
||
appearances.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Urhacy Faustino and Leila Miccolis, eds.: SACIEDADE DOS POETAS
|
||
|
||
VIVOS (Vol 5, 1994)--Blocos, Caixa Postal 25029, 20552-970
|
||
|
||
Rio/RJ, BRASIL. 112 pp. [No price listed, but $10 in
|
||
|
||
international postal coupons should do the trick.] Brazil has
|
||
|
||
had a particularly active visual poetry scene since the mid-
|
||
|
||
fifties, when the Noigandres group started its multifaceted
|
||
|
||
projects. Noigandres poets did good work then, and continue to
|
||
|
||
do so now. But the group has also kept succeeding generations
|
||
|
||
from emerging in print in Brazil and from being seen in other
|
||
|
||
countries. The present collection may be the fullest
|
||
|
||
representation of post-Noigandres visual poetry available. If
|
||
|
||
you don't read Portuguese, don't worry: most of the poems work
|
||
|
||
with icons, phrases in English, and brief Portuguese texts that
|
||
|
||
can be read by Anglophones. Perhaps 15% require knowledge of
|
||
|
||
Portuguese. The energy, inventiveness, and variety of these
|
||
|
||
poets comes through forcefully in this anthology. In the next
|
||
|
||
decade, some of the poets in this volume will find an
|
||
|
||
international audience.--ky
|
||
|
||
|
||
Valerie Fox: AMNESIA, OR, IDEAS FOR MOVIES--Texture Press, 3760
|
||
|
||
Cedar Ridge Dr., Norman OK, 73072. 35 pp., $4.00. In the title-
|
||
|
||
piece of this collection of 12 poems and other texts, two banal
|
||
|
||
movie-ideas are turned representative of the vacuity of mass
|
||
|
||
Culture by the suggested title following them, "I really like
|
||
|
||
that building how tall and thin it is." The rest of the
|
||
|
||
collection provides similar slants off popular inanity (e.g., one
|
||
|
||
poem asks if a reincarnation of Emma Goldman would, among other
|
||
|
||
things, "shower in Baltimore/ buy flowers for herself/ or wait
|
||
|
||
for someone to give her/ what she deserved"--or "have another cup
|
||
|
||
of coffee.") The book includes "critical accompaniments" by
|
||
|
||
Stephen Ratcliffe, Thomas Lowe Taylor and Susan Smith Nash, too--
|
||
|
||
the first of them a very indirect one since it's most about
|
||
|
||
Twelfth Night and never mentions Fox's work.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
William A. Fox: GEOGRAPH--Rainshadow Editions, The Black Rock
|
||
|
||
Press, University Library 322, University of Nevada, Reno NV,
|
||
|
||
89557. 60 pp., $10.00. A collection of diagrammatically
|
||
|
||
constructed poems, visually and conceptually arranged in ways for
|
||
|
||
which the Fibonacci series (a mathematical progression referred
|
||
|
||
to more than once in the book) is a metaphor. Most of the poems
|
||
|
||
are in series, each section repeating and rearranging elements of
|
||
|
||
the previous one, giving the poems a sense of being closed and
|
||
|
||
open-ended at the same time, an effect which is strikingly
|
||
|
||
beautiful:
|
||
|
||
|
||
block to stack a
|
||
|
||
a block noather to
|
||
|
||
nother a a mesa
|
||
|
||
box and nother a
|
||
|
||
|
||
Elegantly produced in a square perfectbound format on good
|
||
|
||
paper.--jmb
|
||
|
||
Fox continues to refine the minimalist approach of much of
|
||
|
||
his earlier work. Words isolated by context and by placement on
|
||
|
||
the page often work as modular units that can be transposed in a
|
||
|
||
singular semantic structure or one that changes by slow
|
||
|
||
accretions. In some instances, paired columns that are set up to
|
||
|
||
be read vertically and horizontally add a sense of a third
|
||
|
||
dimension to the work, reminiscent of the volume implied by
|
||
|
||
polyphonic music. Fox's earlier experiments with visual poetry
|
||
|
||
are here refined into simple, thin lines, sometimes implying
|
||
|
||
verse lines left unstated or diagrams surrounding modular texts.
|
||
|
||
Most interestingly, these wispy, schematic lines bring out
|
||
|
||
rhythmic possibilities in the solitary words that would otherwise
|
||
|
||
be difficult to hear. If the minimalism of Ian Hamilton Finlay
|
||
|
||
and Robert Lax appeals to you, you'll probably like this
|
||
|
||
book.--ky
|
||
|
||
|
||
Christopher Franke: =5--William Busta Gallery, 2021 Murry Hill,
|
||
|
||
Cleveland OH, 44106. 29 pp., $1.00. A delightful tiny
|
||
|
||
(2.75x2.25") book of poems and visual poems, containing much
|
||
|
||
humor and wordplay (both visual and aural). The "price" is from
|
||
|
||
the back of the book, which includes the phrase "Dime X A Dime".
|
||
|
||
My favorite piece here:
|
||
|
||
|
||
Franke did find time to write a
|
||
|
||
poem about not having enough
|
||
|
||
time. He calls it "Dash."
|
||
|
||
|
||
"On my stove are four burners.
|
||
|
||
When I need more than four burn-
|
||
|
||
ers, something isn't cooking," the
|
||
|
||
poem reads in part.
|
||
|
||
--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Robert Frazier & Bruce Boston: CHRONICLES OF THE MUTANT RAIN
|
||
|
||
FOREST--Horror's Head Press, 140 Dickie Ave, Staten Island NY,
|
||
|
||
10314. 80 pp., $8.95. Boston and Frazier are longtime Science
|
||
|
||
Fiction poets whose work combines a surrealist sensibility with a
|
||
|
||
hard technological edge. Their CHRONICLES OF THE MUTANT RAIN
|
||
|
||
FOREST invokes a jungle gone botanically mad: "It is a Sphinx
|
||
|
||
that lifts the world upon its back and grows./ Its veins are road
|
||
|
||
maps that lead nowhere,/ its breath a cypher,/ its inscrutable
|
||
|
||
eyes spin mandalas that drift and blue/ shift in toward
|
||
|
||
Armageddon." Eerie and evocative, these poems effectively
|
||
|
||
explore a terrain most poets don't even realize exists.--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Peter Ganick: IT OR S/HE--Standing Stones Press, 7 Circle Pines,
|
||
|
||
Morris MN, 56267. 16 pp., $4.00. Fourteen blocks of prose in
|
||
|
||
the most radically altered-syntax zone of language writing. Its
|
||
|
||
first two sentences, for instance, are: "You and I are what They
|
||
|
||
coil from Us at a sample of Those that inept lick. tells Them
|
||
|
||
that usage it imperils so You can Them." The title tells it all:
|
||
|
||
this is a book hyper-emphasizing described but referentless
|
||
|
||
pronouns. The result is a tantalizingly odd secondary world,
|
||
|
||
full of a sense of being generated by rather that generating. It
|
||
|
||
is experiments like this sequence that are keeping Language
|
||
|
||
writing one of the central modes of verbal art.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Peter Ganick: UNTITLED SELFKNOWLEDGE--Tight Press, PO Box 1591,
|
||
|
||
Guerneville CA, 95446. 16 pp., $4.00. The title seems to refer
|
||
|
||
to a fascinating quality of these poems: they are written in a
|
||
|
||
kind of blank, impersonal style (there are no pronouns, for
|
||
|
||
example) that yet contain an expanding sense of self, a self
|
||
|
||
immersed and growing in the effluvia of consciousness and the
|
||
|
||
inevitable forms consciousness takes:
|
||
|
||
|
||
tactics rose near floundering
|
||
|
||
mallets and fingers
|
||
|
||
the joiners
|
||
|
||
first
|
||
|
||
|
||
crises thought so tentative
|
||
|
||
servant roses above
|
||
|
||
the blue
|
||
|
||
well
|
||
|
||
|
||
As in the above, the language flows through passages of
|
||
|
||
elliptical, "depersonalized" syntax to phrases of a perhaps
|
||
|
||
deceptive discursive clarity: seen in the context of the poems as
|
||
|
||
a whole, such phrases become as protean in meaning and inference
|
||
|
||
as anything here. A slippery and engaging book of great beauty
|
||
|
||
and resonance.--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Sarya Elizabeth Gratner, ed.: EARTHWORDS (anthology)--Write For
|
||
|
||
Life, 4773 Harmony Lane, Orcutt CA, 93455-4513. 103 pp., $10.00.
|
||
|
||
An exquisitely hand-crafted book-object with a front-cover
|
||
|
||
reproduction of a full-color representational painting by Shirley
|
||
|
||
Wallace whose sunlight, leaf-shadows and window-reflections
|
||
|
||
epitomize the mostly quite conventional but often lyrically-
|
||
|
||
substantial poems within. I was especially taken with Camina
|
||
|
||
Tripodi's daringly simple "Because Of Your Heart," which consists
|
||
|
||
of just four lines: its title repeated three times followed by
|
||
|
||
"Everything."--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Richard F. Hayes Sr.: THAT'S LIFE--American Living Press, PO Box
|
||
|
||
901, Allston MA, 02134. 40 pp., $3.00. The poet is an ex-fire
|
||
|
||
chief, and a WWII veteran. His poems are tantalizing personal
|
||
|
||
glimpses of a full life, a life of double-edged humor and pathos.
|
||
|
||
His work is clean and clever, graceful and dramatic, one man's
|
||
|
||
thoughtful account of life, no more, no less. I found this set
|
||
|
||
somewhat academic in that it never tries to break out of its
|
||
|
||
placid mold. Like poetry of another era. The excitement when it
|
||
|
||
comes is in the paradox hidden under the simplicity. <20>Yes, she
|
||
|
||
did swing by her/ teeth from the rope attached to a tree limb,
|
||
|
||
but only momentarily..." The simplicity in this case is not
|
||
|
||
boring, but relaxing and charming.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bernard Hewit: TACIT TENDRILS--Wild Strawberry Press, 105 Betty
|
||
|
||
Rd., East Meadow NY, 11554. 20 pp., $2.00. Obscure twists in
|
||
|
||
voice and mood within these poems. For example, when he talks
|
||
|
||
about returning home after the war, "he needed silence and space/
|
||
|
||
in order to once more paradoxically/ join the human race."
|
||
|
||
Metrically moody and forced. Included in this chap is what he
|
||
|
||
calls a "Gothic Play." Eight pages and five characters to be
|
||
|
||
exact. It shows the irony of human behaviors, and interactions,
|
||
|
||
but it is hardly Gothic, though it is playful. Poetry sometimes
|
||
|
||
portentous & rhetorical, sometimes rhyming, always shadowed by
|
||
|
||
implication.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Dick Higgins: POEMS PLAIN AND FANCY--Station Hill, Barrytown NY,
|
||
|
||
12507. Selected shorter poems 1957-1985 that document a career
|
||
|
||
of experimental poetry by one of its foremost exponents. Many
|
||
|
||
many many many different approaches to writing here, mostly under
|
||
|
||
the imposition of various structures (and strictures), including
|
||
|
||
chance, repetition, sound translation, and his own snowflake
|
||
|
||
form. While not every example will impact the reader deeply,
|
||
|
||
there are quite a few genuinely moving works here, and even the
|
||
|
||
poems that don't work emotionally show the reader new forms to
|
||
|
||
look into for the reader's own writing. I think anyone involved
|
||
|
||
or interested in experimental poetry should at least thumb
|
||
|
||
through this book once to get an idea of the many things Higgins
|
||
|
||
has been up to.--ar
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jack Hirschman: THE XIBALBA ARCANE--Azul Editions, 2032 Belmont
|
||
|
||
Rd., NW, Suite 301, Washington DC, 20009. 62 pp., $10.95.
|
||
|
||
Drawing on the Mayan books of prophecies, the Chilam Balam,
|
||
|
||
Hirschman reprises much of the lyric density of his earlier poems
|
||
|
||
based in Surrealism and Judaic tradition, and expands it into the
|
||
|
||
revolutionary commitment of his more recent work. Here
|
||
|
||
everything goes back to roots, including revolutions: dialectics
|
||
|
||
that turn in circles according to the oldest calendars of the
|
||
|
||
western world and appear in the Zappatista Revolt of contemporary
|
||
|
||
Chiapas. Like any book of prophecies, this one reaches into the
|
||
|
||
past and the future to understand what is happening now. In
|
||
|
||
Hirsch's view this is a time for anger and hence for redress; a
|
||
|
||
time for hope since it is a time for action.--ky
|
||
|
||
|
||
Tom House: I MUST BE AN ALIEN--Penny Dreadful Press, 6680
|
||
|
||
Charlotte Ave., H-6, Nashville TN, 37209. 16 pp., $1.00. Poetry
|
||
|
||
caught somewhere in the lost triangle between surreal, beat, and
|
||
|
||
jazz. Exaggerated line breaks and mounting cadences produce
|
||
|
||
rousing images of tent revivals, pornography, horny little
|
||
|
||
sisters, cannibalism, and drinking at the local union hall. This
|
||
|
||
chapbook is a fun-house mirror which twists images to frightening
|
||
|
||
degrees. Interesting and vivid.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Geof Huth: TO A SMALL STREAM OF WATER (OR DITCH)--Standing Stones
|
||
|
||
Press, 7 Circle Pines, Morris MN, 56267. 15 pp. A meditation on
|
||
|
||
consciousness and its consequences--Huth plunges into the depths
|
||
|
||
of a rage for order that positions death at the very edges of the
|
||
|
||
neat, prosodic alignments of meaning that language grapples with.
|
||
|
||
Huth's work is a wonderful exploration of how a writer expresses
|
||
|
||
self-reflexivity in words, particularly in the intriguing
|
||
|
||
"Arrange," "At," and "Zipper," in which a child's struggle with a
|
||
|
||
zipper parallels the nature of language pushed into new
|
||
|
||
configurations.--ssn
|
||
|
||
|
||
David Ignatow: GLEANINGS: UNCOLLECTED POETRY OF THE FIFTIES--
|
||
|
||
Grist, Columbus Circle Station, PO Box 20805, New York NY, 10032-
|
||
|
||
1496. $25.00. Book on computer disk, available in Windows and
|
||
|
||
Mac format--in either version, the book is not in plain ascii
|
||
|
||
format. It comes with a viewer that facilitates movement through
|
||
|
||
the book, the placement of bookmarks, etc. Format is modeled on
|
||
|
||
that of a printed book, with sturdy, legible type, and "pages"--
|
||
|
||
units framed as pages in a book would be.
|
||
|
||
Perhaps it's appropriate that this harbinger of book forms
|
||
|
||
of the future should be a retrospective of work by a senior poet.
|
||
|
||
In his preface to this collection, Ignatow says that these poems
|
||
|
||
"were not given their final version in time for publication in
|
||
|
||
POEMS: 1934-1969." Some still seem unfinished, but this
|
||
|
||
collection does includes some of Ignatow's best work of the time.
|
||
|
||
Perhaps it was wise of him to let them cook longer. Generally,
|
||
|
||
these are poems typical of Ignatow during the '50s and any fan of
|
||
|
||
his should appreciate them. The urban industrial milieu, with
|
||
|
||
its drabness, repression, anger, fits of bravado and long
|
||
|
||
stretches of quiet desperation, may have changed in many of its
|
||
|
||
outward details but a lot of the essentials remain as relevant
|
||
|
||
today as they were in the '50s--perhaps, eerily, more so now than
|
||
|
||
10 or 20 years ago.--ky
|
||
|
||
|
||
Michael Kriesel: ASSHOLE MANIFESTO--Full Moon Press, 727 Lincoln
|
||
|
||
#1, Antigo WI, 54409. 4 pp., $1.00(?). This is a short chap
|
||
|
||
that feels like a takeoff on Ginsberg's HOWL. Not exactly an
|
||
|
||
original idea, and the anger becomes more obnoxious than a
|
||
|
||
threat, but it still works in part. This is actually an excerpt
|
||
|
||
of a longer poem (oh no!), and I don't know, with UFO abductions,
|
||
|
||
AIDS, dildos, MTV, and the philosophy that life is shit stated
|
||
|
||
over and over again, this becomes rather tedious fast. The few
|
||
|
||
lines that work aren't enough to save this excerpt, much less a
|
||
|
||
longer piece.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jack Lamb, editor: SPEAKING OF CHANGE--PO Box 4290, Carlsbad CA,
|
||
|
||
92018. 69 pp., $4.00. An anthology of racially-conscious prose
|
||
|
||
& poetry of Color. Originally a spoken word performance of
|
||
|
||
persuasive face-to-face discourse. Here we have racial and
|
||
|
||
cultural disintegration: "the Taiwanese is in me I just don't
|
||
|
||
know how to bring it out," Leng Loh explains her lack of
|
||
|
||
traditional language. We hear a southern child's wonder "The
|
||
|
||
year my mother birthed me/ they shot Jack/ and as a child, I
|
||
|
||
accepted the guilt of that." Infinity decays in the face of
|
||
|
||
these disturbing voices, voices of people devastated by gilded
|
||
|
||
white ideals: keening holocaustical voices weary from pain and
|
||
|
||
deceit "this is my culture. i experience it differently from
|
||
|
||
you. it is not a joking matter to me." Read this, learn from
|
||
|
||
this.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Dan Landrum: SIDE-LONG GLANCE--c/o Taggerzine Specials, PO Box
|
||
|
||
632952, San Diego CA, 92163. 8 pp., $1.00(?). This collection
|
||
|
||
captures a poem, "Impersonals," that comes so damn close to the
|
||
|
||
truth I want to know what Landrum was drinking when he wrote it.
|
||
|
||
It's a cross-reference guide to misfits looking for love, while
|
||
|
||
running through a list of things that'll alienate the most
|
||
|
||
empathetic savior on a street corner. These poems click with
|
||
|
||
understanding, and although this chap is short, it carries more
|
||
|
||
wisdom than anything anyone who claimed God was talking through
|
||
|
||
his lips ever had to say.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Hank Lazer: INTER(IR)RUPTIONS--Generator Press, 8139 Midland Rd.,
|
||
|
||
Mentor OH, 44060. $4.00. The first chapter in a long work-in-
|
||
|
||
progress, 10 x 10, INTER(IR)RUPTIONS is fundamentally a poem, or
|
||
|
||
series of poems, of parallel intelligences drawn from a variety
|
||
|
||
of sources including Emerson's journals, The New York Times,
|
||
|
||
Seventeen, a work on neuroscience, etc., and Lazer's own
|
||
|
||
powerful, sometimes even ludic, imagination. It is how this
|
||
|
||
imagination creatively juxtaposes and allows the texts and
|
||
|
||
graphics to locate poetically with one another that gives the
|
||
|
||
work shape in the mind as well as on the page. We sense
|
||
|
||
initially the similarity of this collision of voices with our
|
||
|
||
daily lives. Despite whatever course we may choose to focus on
|
||
|
||
as if it were the subject of our concentration, in reality we are
|
||
|
||
living through and working with a multitude of media and
|
||
|
||
intelligences that in essence provide the primary substance of
|
||
|
||
that focus. We are then living many lives occupying several
|
||
|
||
domains at the same time in a single space. Lazer articulates
|
||
|
||
this reality with a music that not only reminds us of these
|
||
|
||
anxious circumstances but finds the music in it--a kind of flux
|
||
|
||
that neither annihilates the individual persona nor panders to
|
||
|
||
it. This is a realistic poetry for an age where information
|
||
|
||
media, and this also reflects on the function of the book itself
|
||
|
||
and print media generally, is the actual "landscape" of our
|
||
|
||
passage.
|
||
|
||
INTER(IR)RUPTIONS then is a mapping process, but not of the
|
||
|
||
actual, but a means of responding to the actual. This is the
|
||
|
||
dance of "events" entered with a metasentience of the nature of
|
||
|
||
the music. Almost apocalyptic in its effect, the knowledge of
|
||
|
||
nature extended into the abstract thus rendering the abstract as
|
||
|
||
natural. Still, this is only one possible overview, and the
|
||
|
||
beauty of the Lazer's poetry should be witnessed line by line for
|
||
|
||
the deeper secrets it yields. High craft in combination with
|
||
|
||
vast imagination. The opening movement of a important work.--jb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Richard L. Levesque: FETAL GRACELAND--Wudge Press, 2227 Woodglen
|
||
|
||
Dr., Indianapolis IN, 46260. 32 pp., $3.00. With poems titled
|
||
|
||
"Orga(z)m," "Prison Stabbing Blues," and "Punk Rock Cunt," we
|
||
|
||
expect an ominous point of view, but Levesque goes beyond simple
|
||
|
||
sinister: here are the killing grounds filled with monstrous
|
||
|
||
images of zombies, two-dollar booze, guns, serial killers, death
|
||
|
||
and bizarre sex. "Can you hear the killer/ inside me--?" Amid
|
||
|
||
the bleak images is a stinging force, something that reads like
|
||
|
||
an incantation--"moans, forest molds, salt/ and cider; pagan
|
||
|
||
folds."--or sometimes like a syncopated beat stomp: "knee drop
|
||
|
||
baby worships this,/ this Cadillac lump without a soul."
|
||
|
||
Sociopathic poetry of fractured hopes and unique times. I'm
|
||
|
||
thinking about cutting and pasting this chap into my family
|
||
|
||
album.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Rafael Zepeda & Gerald Locklin: THE DURANGO P0EMS--Zerx Press,
|
||
|
||
5016 Inspiration Dr. SE, Albuquerque NM, 87108. 30 pp., $3.00.
|
||
|
||
I like collaborations like this, wars between poets that can only
|
||
|
||
leave ashes and flames and explosions that kill more neighbors
|
||
|
||
than friends. We got drinking, self medication, attempted sexual
|
||
|
||
endeavors, fights that don't want to happen unless someone wants
|
||
|
||
to throw the first punch, ethnic points of view, and a real
|
||
|
||
attempt to capture what it all means on paper, knowing damn well
|
||
|
||
once you sober up you'll probably throw the answer away. Usually
|
||
|
||
you get sparring between poets in these deals, but here you got
|
||
|
||
best friends throwing imaginary punches, both figuring they won
|
||
|
||
the fight, leaving the reader laughing at that cocky walk both
|
||
|
||
writers got when they walk down the street. These are old hands
|
||
|
||
doing it right, and every word does what its supposed to do.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Liz Magor and Joey Morgan: HOW TO AVOID THE FUTURE TENSE--The
|
||
|
||
Walter Phillips Gallery, Box 1020, Banff AL, CANADA, T0L 0C0.
|
||
|
||
$20 (Canadian), + shipping. Basically a photo book with
|
||
|
||
narrative. But some of the photos are from a different narrative
|
||
|
||
than the text. There are two kinds of pages, one for each
|
||
|
||
narrative. On white pages there are pictures of people camping,
|
||
|
||
in relatively primitive style, in backwoods Canada somewhere. On
|
||
|
||
translucent pages, there are anecdotes from the narrator's stay
|
||
|
||
in France plus small pictures of bits of French architecture and
|
||
|
||
art. Thus we have juxtaposed Old World and New World ways of
|
||
|
||
living in the past. The reader is left to make the final
|
||
|
||
comparisons of the two.--ar
|
||
|
||
|
||
Stephen-Paul Martin: CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION--Standing Stones
|
||
|
||
Press, 7 Circle Pines, Morris MN, 56267. 15 pp. Two pieces,
|
||
|
||
poetic in their intensity and their attention to the multi-
|
||
|
||
faceted possibilities of language. "Double Bed" is a dramatic
|
||
|
||
monologue recast to accommodate two points of views: Jenny and
|
||
|
||
Freddie. There is an eerie doubling going on: Jenny and Freddie
|
||
|
||
could be aspects of one person, split into painful doppelganger,
|
||
|
||
evil twin status, by the sheer stress of maintaining a pulse rate
|
||
|
||
while all around collapse.--ssn
|
||
|
||
|
||
G.Z. Mataisz: END TIME--AK Press, PO Box 40682, San Francisco CA,
|
||
|
||
94140-0682. 299 pp., $8.00. Solidly-crafted thriller set in the
|
||
|
||
year 2007 and concerned with some missing "riemanim: (a sort of
|
||
|
||
super-plutonium), with lots of anti-war echoes from the sixties.
|
||
|
||
Provocative political discussion and "what if's" raise the book's
|
||
|
||
intellectual value without spoiling it as a good read.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Michael McClure: LIGHTING THE CORNERS On Art, Nature, and the
|
||
|
||
Visionary--University of New Mexico College of Arts and Sciences.
|
||
|
||
338 pp., $19.95. "Our sensoriums are spirit mechanisms that
|
||
|
||
light up the cave around them for the experience," McClure states
|
||
|
||
in the opening interview, "Writing One's Body", of this essential
|
||
|
||
and revealing volume. He has been a traveler through our common
|
||
|
||
space-time, our great mammal voice bard, reminding us, as we
|
||
|
||
create ever more indulgent idols to our techno-arrogance, that we
|
||
|
||
are animals, our mind, our soul is animal soul and to attempt to
|
||
|
||
deny that is a kind of self-imposed schizophrenia. In these
|
||
|
||
essays and interviews we begin to understand the poetics behind
|
||
|
||
the poems, or rather the poetics articulated in prose what the
|
||
|
||
poems allow us to live. And we see McClure as he moves among his
|
||
|
||
peers, pieces on Robert Duncan, Robert Creely, Allen Ginsberg,
|
||
|
||
Jim Morrison, Dennis Hopper, Bob Dylan, Gary Snyder, Julian Beck,
|
||
|
||
etc., and come to realize the connections, the obvious influence
|
||
|
||
his work and his life (the two are surely one) have had on the
|
||
|
||
culture. The pieces cover four decades of radical intelligence,
|
||
|
||
as fresh and important today as they have ever been. Through
|
||
|
||
these essays and interviews we get illuminations of the poet
|
||
|
||
building his soul in the world, and revelations within our own
|
||
|
||
sensoriums as to what we are and how we might act from that
|
||
|
||
knowledge. If McClure had never written a poem this book would
|
||
|
||
be indispensable, but because he voiced and scribed so much
|
||
|
||
brilliant poetry this book means more than the textual form can
|
||
|
||
relate. "To walk a hundred yards in total freedom is to live
|
||
|
||
forever in eternity--freedom for an instant is beyond measure and
|
||
|
||
is immortality." This is truth in and as flesh, an invitation
|
||
|
||
impossible to refuse.--jb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Steven McDaris: THE MOON GETS LAID--Skinners Irregular Horse,
|
||
|
||
2107 E. Jarvis St., Milwaukee WI, 53211. $4.00. McDaris was a
|
||
|
||
new name to me a few months ago. His chapbooks have been
|
||
|
||
arriving in the mail and I've been knocked-out by this flat-out
|
||
|
||
great story writer. Real page turners. A new raw talent forming
|
||
|
||
and taking shape. Hope he sticks with his big-hearted vision.
|
||
|
||
His locker room banter of tits & girls. His easy shock of
|
||
|
||
recognition with the feelings absolutely familiar. His tact and
|
||
|
||
sagacity and magic of getting them down on paper in such a way
|
||
|
||
the picture blossoms in your mind like a John Ford movie. Never
|
||
|
||
dull. Always moving. If he were a bebop saxophonist in the '50s
|
||
|
||
he'd be Dexter Gordon, going with the flow. Not the innovator
|
||
|
||
that Bird or Sonny Stitt or Lucky Thompson were. Just good ol'
|
||
|
||
straight-forward Dexter (who incidentally made his most powerful
|
||
|
||
statements in the '70s). This MOON is a real '60s story, with
|
||
|
||
all the pertinent images of that era--weed, free love, & wine
|
||
|
||
high psychedelic philosophy. It strikes me as a man's story--I
|
||
|
||
wonder if women enjoy reading it. MOON is a novella set in the
|
||
|
||
Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, with an admirable knowledge of
|
||
|
||
flora & fauna & geology & native cooking & Indian history &
|
||
|
||
customs. Seamlessly interwoven. Characters as alive as
|
||
|
||
yesterday.--mw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Todd Moore: DANCING W/ BLOOD--Undulating Bedsheet Productions,
|
||
|
||
c/o Mike, PO Box 25760, Los Angeles CA, 90025. 16 pp., $1.50.
|
||
|
||
Todd Moore is that uncle your best friend had, that was so
|
||
|
||
worldly and wise and filled with tales of weirdness, you wanted
|
||
|
||
to leave home and see it all for yourself. In this collection
|
||
|
||
you get the hard edged unforgiving poetry that Moore does so
|
||
|
||
well, with poems about a "bar girl coming out for/ a smoke she
|
||
|
||
has a 4 inch/ pipe rolled into her fist" bashing the head of a
|
||
|
||
drunk trying to molest a girl with a 45 automatic, and the first
|
||
|
||
safe sex attack I've ever seen: "when he/ wdn't give her/ the
|
||
|
||
grocery/ money she/ sapped him/ w/a 2 ply/ condom filled/
|
||
|
||
w/nickels...". There are other great poems done in that
|
||
|
||
tradition Todd has become famous for, capturing revenge with a
|
||
|
||
taste of blood.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Todd Moore: SHOOTING OUT THE LIGHTS--Zerx Press, 5016 Inspiration
|
||
|
||
Dr. SE, Albuquerque NM, 87108. 40 pp., $4.00. (back-to -back
|
||
|
||
with Mark Weber's SWINDLER'S HARMONICA SIESTA). It's good to see
|
||
|
||
Todd settling into the southwest after all of that vicious
|
||
|
||
gangster writing of the midwest. Fortunately he's as mean as
|
||
|
||
ever, and the poems in this collection capture hookers, sweat and
|
||
|
||
piss soaked beds in ten minute hotels, home made 22s, bets that
|
||
|
||
got more losers than winners, brains scattered across a hundred
|
||
|
||
sidewalks, and rocks smashing through windows without a message
|
||
|
||
you don't want to hear. This is Moore kicking ass. This is the
|
||
|
||
real life without pretense.
|
||
|
||
And hey, just when you thought you were safe from Weber he
|
||
|
||
kicks back with a strong longing for stability in a world that
|
||
|
||
changes its faces so fast you often want it all to sit still so
|
||
|
||
you can know where you are at that moment. Mark also grabs that
|
||
|
||
asshole who fucks with you at a reading and shows the jerk the
|
||
|
||
rules are a lot different than he thought. When I read Weber I
|
||
|
||
feel like I'm drinking with an old friend, we're catching up on
|
||
|
||
the latest news.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Susan Smith Nash: MY LOVE IS APOCALYPSE AND RHINESTONES--Texture
|
||
|
||
Press, 3760 Cedar Ridge Dr., Norman OK, 73072. 24 pp., $4.00.
|
||
|
||
Using Marilyn Monroe as an archetype for women in a media-
|
||
|
||
saturated society, Susan Smith Nash creates a chapbook of poems
|
||
|
||
mingling levels of allusion, cross-pollinating from line to line
|
||
|
||
as worlds collide in jarring verbal effects. "Celebrity goes by
|
||
|
||
the velocity of discover, I waited/ my sense of self scattered by
|
||
|
||
Doppler-shifted/ light palms clapped together, so faint so
|
||
|
||
retreating." The best poem here is the extended "Letters from
|
||
|
||
Marilyn," written in a more conventional verse but with enormous
|
||
|
||
power. The first letter ends with the line: "Let me rip apart
|
||
|
||
the reverse image of my smile." The eighth letter ends with "His
|
||
|
||
mistake broke me, like echoes of mother/ on the face of every
|
||
|
||
abandoned child." Nash concludes with an essay on Monroe's last
|
||
|
||
movie, "The Misfits," in which the actress played an androgynous
|
||
|
||
character, and which Nash sees as a cinematic commentary on
|
||
|
||
gender roles.--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Susan Smith Nash: T.E. LAWRENCE: A VEIL IN THE SAND--Room Press,
|
||
|
||
29 Lynton Place, White Plains NY, 10606. 14 pp., $3.00?. A set
|
||
|
||
of five remarkably passionate long poems, which invoke not only
|
||
|
||
distant times, places, and personalities, but a very strong sense
|
||
|
||
of self coming into being, as if the awareness of history (and
|
||
|
||
not just human, but geological as well), were "taken personally"
|
||
|
||
very much indeed. The language is largely accessible yet
|
||
|
||
charged, elliptical, and constantly breaking out ahead of its own
|
||
|
||
structures, running ahead of itself:
|
||
|
||
|
||
Serpentine walls fits like saddle, series erect
|
||
|
||
desert grow in weeping torrents, false poetics like abandon
|
||
|
||
or warmth, bent twisted, round, ripping silence
|
||
|
||
cold spokes on rhythmic way you tell tide hitting seawall,
|
||
|
||
Type faster, harder, even--arrange sentiment onto self
|
||
|
||
or message--intelligence on the basic wet & dry
|
||
|
||
season, abundant dazzle mystery Alchemist constructed
|
||
|
||
hero at work Brughel's prelude to chemistry, whipping camels
|
||
|
||
foaming to your Yanbu home, Saudi Arabian
|
||
|
||
grief or rape sprawls human remains over dawn's corona--
|
||
|
||
|
||
It is rare to encounter poetry of such emotional intensity and
|
||
|
||
strong intellectual engagement combined. The closest thing to it
|
||
|
||
I can think of are some of the major works of Romanticism (i.e.,
|
||
|
||
the Odes of Keats, or Jose Maria Heedria's Niagra) although
|
||
|
||
comparison is a challenging one, and is an indication of the
|
||
|
||
authentic brilliance of her work here.--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Letta Simone-Nefertari Neely: GAWD AND ALLUH HUH SISTAHS--104
|
||
|
||
Gates Ave., Brooklyn NY, 11238. 28 pp., $?. Starting with a
|
||
|
||
quote from M.O.V.E. leader, Ramona Africa, "Nobody was supposed
|
||
|
||
to survive," Neely goes on to prove that many people have indeed
|
||
|
||
survived. Written in a diced phonic style of free verse, with
|
||
|
||
liberal doses of Black English, a powerful narrative and
|
||
|
||
historical Black images. "my girls are blk shadows lookin for
|
||
|
||
answer hanging/ from a pulpit blown away/ by the klan...// ...let
|
||
|
||
us all say ache." Letta Neely has the yoke of tradition upon
|
||
|
||
her, but she projects a visionary future, a future where we
|
||
|
||
"remember to take Emmit Teal, Atlanta child murders, ghost
|
||
|
||
dancers, Stonewall, and/ apple pie/ all together." She shows us
|
||
|
||
the bold vicious hate within our culture, with all of its isms
|
||
|
||
and phobias (racism, sexism, homophobia), and then she stands up
|
||
|
||
and says what she believes with a passionate voice echoing into a
|
||
|
||
new era. "this/ is/ no/ time to stop breathing/ this is no time
|
||
|
||
to stop/ this is no time." Feminist, lesbian black pride in its
|
||
|
||
most critical, intellectual form--the poem of incidental tragedy
|
||
|
||
and healing growth.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
R.L. Nichols: THE POINT IS...--Alpha Beat Press, 31a Waterloo
|
||
|
||
St., New Hope PA, 18938. $6.00. With major honesty, wide open,
|
||
|
||
speaking with the machine shop music tools of poetry, R.L.
|
||
|
||
Nichols sings through this book with some of the cleanest and
|
||
|
||
clearest agony and sexual pleasure notes of word music of any
|
||
|
||
poet canary or spring bird on the planet. Can do and does make
|
||
|
||
amazement with the simple language words into poetry. No dull,
|
||
|
||
camp repetition. A voice of communication. Frank philosophy
|
||
|
||
from the bottom honest side up. Beat, Bukowski, bad, bay, mouth
|
||
|
||
full words dance. And he says, and we should all consider when
|
||
|
||
thinking about poetry: "To realize the beauty of worms?"--mb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Eric Nisenson: ASCENSION--JOHN COLTRANE AND HIS QUEST--St.
|
||
|
||
Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY, 10010. $22.95.
|
||
|
||
For many of us John Coltrane was more than a jazz genius, though
|
||
|
||
that surely would have been enough to merit his acclaim. He
|
||
|
||
moved through all jazz had to offer and all he could invoke from
|
||
|
||
those roots and went further still beyond the limits of his
|
||
|
||
medium, his instrument and possibly even his humanity and carried
|
||
|
||
us along with him (even those of us who discovered him a decade
|
||
|
||
or more after his death). To tell his story as a man or musician
|
||
|
||
would and has produced fine work, there is so much to draw from.
|
||
|
||
But Nisenson has given us a gift of another order, focusing
|
||
|
||
centrally on what drove him to the reaches of such extraordinary
|
||
|
||
passion. Certainly this is a biography, covering virtually all
|
||
|
||
stages of his life including such bucolic details as his love for
|
||
|
||
sweet potato pie (which gave him dental problems) and his humble
|
||
|
||
southern manner or his early drug abuse. But as Nisenson says in
|
||
|
||
the opening pages, Coltrane's "life was based on a series of
|
||
|
||
discoveries". It is these moments of discovery and self-
|
||
|
||
revelation that are the meat of the book and what gives
|
||
|
||
Coltrane's life and work such enormous value for the generations.
|
||
|
||
The music and how it relates to the quest is central, including
|
||
|
||
details of how Trane arrived at his "sheets of sound" or his
|
||
|
||
later development of modes and finally free outside playing.
|
||
|
||
Yet, the descriptions are never difficult and non-musicians and
|
||
|
||
players alike should be able to fully understand every nuance.
|
||
|
||
Also, Nisenson's personal accounts of Coltrane in performance,
|
||
|
||
which often included solos that would last over an hour, add an
|
||
|
||
almost cinematic dimension to the book. After listening to him
|
||
|
||
all these years I found these passages to be a dear treat, able
|
||
|
||
to see through them what I will never be able to see in the
|
||
|
||
flesh. The individual albums are analyzed and appraised as well
|
||
|
||
so that someone who knew little of the work would have a reliable
|
||
|
||
guide of which pieces to seek out first. Nisenson's research
|
||
|
||
should also be commended, full of accounts and information from
|
||
|
||
friends and acquaintances and of course the musicians themselves.
|
||
|
||
I've wanted for years to read what I felt was an adequate account
|
||
|
||
of a man, and the music, for which words must surely fall short,
|
||
|
||
and this is as close as we are ever likely to get. Coltrane has
|
||
|
||
inspired us to commit ourselves whole heart and soul to our
|
||
|
||
callings and is no doubt a primary inspiration for much of what
|
||
|
||
is reviewed in these pages. It is such a delight at last to have
|
||
|
||
a volume that explores and relates the discoveries in the life of
|
||
|
||
the high lord of jazz transcendence. Very highly
|
||
|
||
recommended.--jb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Oberc: PORN--A.T.H. Press., c/o T. Bishop, 2177 Stewart Dr.,
|
||
|
||
Hatfield PA, 19440. 40 pp., $3.00. The violent and decadent
|
||
|
||
times of a female porno star as she lives and works the fringe of
|
||
|
||
society, from childhood to middle-age. Hypnotic, erotic,
|
||
|
||
violent, just like real life. Paragraphs form a prose-poem style
|
||
|
||
which reads like parables of the obscene. Oberc has fused a
|
||
|
||
singular isolated spirit of seeking with a delicious sexually
|
||
|
||
obsessed darkness. "feminists scream outside the set/ they want
|
||
|
||
to save my ass/ they don't want to pay my bills/ I fuck for a
|
||
|
||
living/ they scream out slogans/ they tell me to save myself/
|
||
|
||
they talk about freedom while trying to take it all away..."
|
||
|
||
Oberc's self-lacerating personification judges and refuses to
|
||
|
||
judge, condones and condemns society at the same time. This chap
|
||
|
||
is not for everybody, but I enjoyed it.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
William Parker: MUSIC IS--Open Magazine New Series, PO Box 2726,
|
||
|
||
Westfield NJ, 07091. $1.00. Introduction to the forthcoming
|
||
|
||
book, MUSIC AND THE SHADOWPEOPLES, MUSIC IS is a spontaneous
|
||
|
||
feeling manifesto, a diatribe of holy inspiration from one who
|
||
|
||
understands the deepest richest impulses of creative sound
|
||
|
||
without the restrictions of manufactured order. "Music is the
|
||
|
||
abysmal rainbow that bridges endless galaxies/ Music passes
|
||
|
||
through the musician, the Muse-Physician knows enough not to
|
||
|
||
interfere/ Music remands bad spirits." We get the sense of the
|
||
|
||
full liberating possibility of music. Music as the rite soul
|
||
|
||
healing. This little book, like Parker's music, is further
|
||
|
||
evidence of his enormous gift for delivering that rite. Much
|
||
|
||
gratitude to the folks at Open for this and all recent materials,
|
||
|
||
they continue to remind us of the power of walking the radical
|
||
|
||
edge.--jb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Geza Perneczky: THE MAGAZINE NETWORK-The Trends of Alternative
|
||
|
||
Art in the Light of Their Periodicals-1968-1988--c/o Stephen
|
||
|
||
Perkins, 1816 S. College, Iowa City IA, 52245. 285 pp., $30.00.
|
||
|
||
Mike Gunderloy thought he was onto the big time when he started
|
||
|
||
Factsheet Five, but there were already extensive archives and
|
||
|
||
documenters of the underground, and if you want to see what laid
|
||
|
||
the foundation for Mike's publication, this is the place to
|
||
|
||
start. Perneczky originally published this book in Hungarian,
|
||
|
||
and it had an international focus on mail art and literary
|
||
|
||
publications from the very start. At the same time many of the
|
||
|
||
underground publications that earned decent reputations in the US
|
||
|
||
during the '80s (Nightmares of Reason, Artpolice, Bag of Wire,
|
||
|
||
Bikini Girl, Lost And Found Times, etc.) are captured at their
|
||
|
||
peak, and were probably discovered through Factsheet Five's
|
||
|
||
attempts to catch as mush of that world as possible. Although
|
||
|
||
there is an academic side to this great book, there is also a
|
||
|
||
historical capturing of many of the individuals who were doing it
|
||
|
||
yourself before anyone knew what doing it yourself was all about.
|
||
|
||
They were highly motivated creative types that got involved
|
||
|
||
because they were so driven, because they had to focus their
|
||
|
||
energy in a positive direction, and this book captures that
|
||
|
||
energy and creativity in an international perspective you won't
|
||
|
||
find in your local underground coffee table book. If you can't
|
||
|
||
afford a copy, try to get your Library to borrow it for you.
|
||
|
||
It's definitely a peek into the past that'll stir brain cells you
|
||
|
||
thought were dead.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Stephen Petroff: THE SECRETS OF THE TOWN OF BOWDOINHAM--Kore
|
||
|
||
Press. 24 pp. Handwritten in legible script with exquisite
|
||
|
||
hand-drawn borders and artwork. I believe it is written about a
|
||
|
||
small rural town in Maine. Deep woods magic, and pain combine to
|
||
|
||
swirl around the reader like a vortex of strange assurances that
|
||
|
||
something weirder is coming up. As narrative prose it has a rich
|
||
|
||
feel: a mentally deficient boy teaches his father the magic of
|
||
|
||
wooden whistles; a cancer patient becomes a ghost; a woman
|
||
|
||
shoplifts plums, a poet's last meal, a witch who lives on Post
|
||
|
||
Road, and the destruction of a litter of half grown puppies...
|
||
|
||
these incidents and more are found in these pages.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Sylvia Play: AIRY EL--Poets & Writers, dist. by Da Dead Press,
|
||
|
||
3226 Raspberry, Erie PA, 16508. $$23.95. This appears to be a
|
||
|
||
major find: 22 lost poems by Plath, edited by Paul Weinman and
|
||
|
||
Ron Androla. These poems were obviously buried by the author,
|
||
|
||
perhaps out of embarrassment at their sexual explicitness (some
|
||
|
||
titles: "Plath, the Hopeless Cunt", "Pigs in Fecus"), but they
|
||
|
||
will go a long way toward clarifying some of the issues that have
|
||
|
||
swirled around her work. The editors are to be congratulated for
|
||
|
||
this latest example of their on-going scholarship and research
|
||
|
||
into the hidden and ignored texts for some of our greatest
|
||
|
||
literary heroes. (I only wish they had kept their noses out of
|
||
|
||
my trash--last year they published a group of poems I had thrown
|
||
|
||
away and forgotten, but they must have found them doubtless
|
||
|
||
soaked in the juices from one of those chicken-package diapers,
|
||
|
||
and published them as EAR CANNIBAL, to my great embarrassment.
|
||
|
||
Oh well, one has to be thick-skinned in this poetry business, and
|
||
|
||
I suppose the interests of history take precedence over the
|
||
|
||
posturings of my fragile ego.--jmb
|
||
|
||
Don't worry about the address or the price because anytime
|
||
|
||
Androla an with Robert Lowell ("Shy girl anemic in back of his
|
||
|
||
poetry class,"), and yeah, more lust ("Did you shed/ Silk socks,
|
||
|
||
capped incisors and a BMW"). Sometimes these psychopaths hit it
|
||
|
||
right on the nose, but other times they're just making references
|
||
|
||
to the authors while being themselves, creating a satire that
|
||
|
||
leaves you trying not to laugh, but knowing your eyeballs might
|
||
|
||
fall out of their sockets if you don't.--oed incisors and a
|
||
|
||
BMW"). Sometimes these psychopaths hit it right on the nose, but
|
||
|
||
other times they're just making references to the authors while
|
||
|
||
being themselves, creating a satire that leaves you trying not to
|
||
|
||
laugh, but knowing your eyeballs might fall out of their sockets
|
||
|
||
if you don't.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Richard Schevill: WHERE TO GO, WHAT TO DO, WHEN YOU ARE BERN
|
||
|
||
PORTER and Bern Porter: SOUNDS THAT AROUSE ME: Selected Writings-
|
||
|
||
-Tilbury House, 132 Water Street, Gardiner ME, 04345. $16.95 and
|
||
|
||
$9.95 respectively. Reading these books gave me a picture of and
|
||
|
||
an appreciation for Bern Porter. The books of his I had seen
|
||
|
||
before, small volumes of founds, had not overly impressed me.
|
||
|
||
Porter was a failure in that he did not generate the income to live off his work, but was a great success in anticipating ideas
|
||
|
||
(both artistic and intellectual) that would rise in importance a
|
||
|
||
decade or five later. It's important to know about Bern Porter
|
||
|
||
because he looked towards the future, because he survived so long
|
||
|
||
without compromising his aims, and because of the way he
|
||
|
||
celebrated creativity in all areas of his life. Porter is an
|
||
|
||
inspiring example. On the other hand, the books make it clear
|
||
|
||
there were obstacles--primarily poverty, misdirected social
|
||
|
||
expectations, and governmental mistrust--to getting things done.
|
||
|
||
In spite of all this, Porter did a lot. The moral is, if you
|
||
|
||
can't do it, find another way to do it; if you can't find a way
|
||
|
||
to do it, at least sketch your vision down.
|
||
|
||
Schevill's biography is a chronology of where Porter went
|
||
|
||
and what he did. The book is profusely illustrated with many
|
||
|
||
relevant pictures of Porter, of his artworks, of his found poems,
|
||
|
||
of newspaper clippings, of places he visited, covers and ads for
|
||
|
||
books he published, etc. A number of poems and other writings
|
||
|
||
are included in the text. After cataloging and describing a long
|
||
|
||
list of Porter's achievements, the author devotes the last
|
||
|
||
chapter to giving a detailed appreciation of Porter's found poems
|
||
|
||
and what they stand for. That chapter makes me want to look at
|
||
|
||
some of those books in the major sequence of founds books, and
|
||
|
||
look back at those I'd already gotten (such as the two short
|
||
|
||
books published by the Runaway Spoon Press).
|
||
|
||
SOUNDS THAT AROUSE ME includes all kinds of writing,
|
||
|
||
excepting the visual: finished poems, parts of books,
|
||
|
||
manifestoes, excerpts of interviews, even a couple letters.
|
||
|
||
The writing ranges from the familiar (I had the same basic idea
|
||
|
||
for "Blank Verse" around the same time, and I'm sure there were
|
||
|
||
hundreds if not thousands of other schoolboys that had the same
|
||
|
||
idea as a reaction to being taught Shakespeare in the dry dusty
|
||
|
||
ways high school teachers think up) to the incompletely thought
|
||
|
||
out (such as "Statement"--fixing or replacing the book/text as
|
||
|
||
transmitter of information would require many years of effort--
|
||
|
||
this piece gives a few concrete proposals that don't seem to be
|
||
|
||
incomplete answers to the very important facts given.) to the
|
||
|
||
moving and complete and significant ("Why Don't You Use the
|
||
|
||
Trail?", "Sciart Manifesto", "Me"). The reminiscences on people
|
||
|
||
like Henry Miller, Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and
|
||
|
||
Gertrude Stein are quite interesting, too.
|
||
|
||
The biggest shortcoming in this anthology, ultimately, may
|
||
|
||
be the neglect of the found poems, of which we have but one or
|
||
|
||
two examples (if you count the rather arresting "Found Story").
|
||
|
||
I can also complain that the resetting of "What Henry Miller Said
|
||
|
||
and Why It Is Important" leaves out the all-important white space
|
||
|
||
in the original. But Porter's been at it for longer than most of
|
||
|
||
us have been living, and despite the flaws, these books are
|
||
|
||
important documents of living history.--ar
|
||
|
||
|
||
Peter Redgrove: THE LABORATORS--Taxus Press. <20>6.50. This
|
||
|
||
collection of Peter Redgrove's delicately fashioned verse
|
||
|
||
displays the same concern common to much of his poetry: the
|
||
|
||
female menstrual cycle and its overwhelming importance to human
|
||
|
||
society. Redgrove, a trained chemist, sprinkles his poems with
|
||
|
||
an eclectic mix of scientific and alchemical terms and often
|
||
|
||
writes of a surrealistic or mystical blending of the inner and
|
||
|
||
outer realms. "The scents and the steams, distilled, condense on
|
||
|
||
the mirrors/ In populations of pearly droplets;// Equally the
|
||
|
||
whole forest outside the window/ Shimmers with dew;// Equally her
|
||
|
||
mouth today/ Shimmers with his seed."--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jeff Rentsch: THE STORY OF TWO MEN--PO Box 480, Denville NJ,
|
||
|
||
07834. 24 pp., $2.00(?). This is a collage of text and visuals
|
||
|
||
that may, or may not, be related, and which gestalt into a
|
||
|
||
strange coherency about a son who beat his father with a bat
|
||
|
||
until he couldn't beat him anymore. At first I was hesitant to
|
||
|
||
even deal with this, but after looking at it closely, I was
|
||
|
||
amazed at how powerful it really was, and the way it strangely
|
||
|
||
fit together, like a three dimensional puzzle that doesn't make
|
||
|
||
any sense until it's all assembled. Rentsch is someone to look
|
||
|
||
out for, especially if he's creeping up behind you.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Marilyn R. Rosenberg: SPALL SPIRULA--101 Lakeview Ave. West,
|
||
|
||
Peekskill NY, 10566. 37 pp., $12.00. Another quietly important
|
||
|
||
visio-verbal work by one of this country's quiet handful of long-
|
||
|
||
time important visual poets. It consists of competently
|
||
|
||
representational pen & inks of the artist's study, rocking chair,
|
||
|
||
scissors, unpacked groceries, etc., mixed with discussions of
|
||
|
||
illumagery using quotations from people like Walter Benjamin, and
|
||
|
||
wherever "9: Potato chips sell eight times as well as pretzels"
|
||
|
||
came from, not to mention non-representational explosions, one
|
||
|
||
with eye-charts and words derived from "fan-" such as "fantasy"
|
||
|
||
and "fancier." My favorite verbal touch is an alphabet that's
|
||
|
||
spelled "ba, dc," etc., up to "ts"--meaning the alphabet ended
|
||
|
||
with TS Eliot?? Every page has several such items. This is
|
||
|
||
definitely a must-get book for anyone interested in
|
||
|
||
pluraesthetic, or even just visual, art.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Stuart Ross: RUNTS--Proper Tales Press, Box 789, Station F,
|
||
|
||
Toronto Ontario, Canada, M4Y 2N7. $1.00. A collection of 20
|
||
|
||
poems, each of 6 lines or less, that have an ironic, playful
|
||
|
||
quality that is most refreshing. Using a pared-down but direct
|
||
|
||
language, they often create a sense of the possibilities that lie
|
||
|
||
behind ordinary surfaces:
|
||
|
||
|
||
WHO KNOWS?
|
||
|
||
|
||
She sits on the subway
|
||
|
||
eating Zesty Cheese Doritos
|
||
|
||
and reading The Enquirer.
|
||
|
||
Maybe she killed someone today.
|
||
|
||
--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
C.C. Russell: MORE LIKE FORKS--UBP, c/o Mike, PO Box 25760, Los
|
||
|
||
Angeles CA, 90025. 24 pp., $2.00. I like the way Russell turns
|
||
|
||
a line: "You said we used to spoon/ all night,/ wrapped around
|
||
|
||
each other", "I know something about windows/ and saying the
|
||
|
||
right words/ at the wrong times", "They would not call this love/
|
||
|
||
but warfare", are just a sampling of openings that make you know
|
||
|
||
something is going to come smashing through your window any
|
||
|
||
second. These are poems filled with confused emotions,
|
||
|
||
contrasting love and hate. But there is also, in the midst of the
|
||
|
||
confusion, a strange hope that keeps you going, that makes you
|
||
|
||
want to get it right the next time around.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Vern Rautsala: LITTLE-KNOWN SPORTS--Univ. of Mass. Press.
|
||
|
||
$20.00 cloth, $9.95 paper. Winner of the annual Juniper Prize
|
||
|
||
in poetry, Vern Rutsala's LITTLE-KNOWN SPORTS is a collection of
|
||
|
||
prose poems divided into three parts. The first part contains
|
||
|
||
poems about photographs, each one describing a particular scene
|
||
|
||
and somehow transforming it into a distinctive and
|
||
|
||
psychologically-resonant slice-of-life. The second part,
|
||
|
||
entitled "Bestiary," contains mythologized explanations of
|
||
|
||
everyday objects, as in "Paper Clip": "We persist in baiting this
|
||
|
||
dull hook with page after page, yet we catch nothing." The final
|
||
|
||
part contains the little-known sports of the book's title,
|
||
|
||
including sleeping, hating, getting into bed, and being hopeless.
|
||
|
||
All in all, a whimsical and unpretentious examination of this odd
|
||
|
||
experience called life.--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino: WHO IS BIANCA?--Wet Motorcycle
|
||
|
||
Press, 3055 Decatur Ave. Apt. 2D, Bronx NY, 10467. 6 pp.,
|
||
|
||
$1.00?. A torrent of Othello-like obsessions about an apparent
|
||
|
||
rival in love whose name is Bianca. Exactly where we are, or
|
||
|
||
what's happened is unclear, but that is appropriate--as are the
|
||
|
||
florally-archaic poeticisms, and the hints of romantic-novel-
|
||
|
||
schlock, for the poem is (brilliantly) about a person too
|
||
|
||
deranged by jealousy to care about journalistic thoroughness,
|
||
|
||
decorum, or avoiding gush.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino: SIX COMETS ARE COMING; ELEGY FOR
|
||
|
||
CHRISTOPHER SMART; and WHO IS BIANCA?--Wet Motorcycle Press, 3055
|
||
|
||
Decatur Ave. Apt. 2D, Bronx NY, 10467. 6 pp. @, $1.00@?. These
|
||
|
||
three small booklets form a set, each presenting a different
|
||
|
||
strategy for manipulating texts: the first epigrammatically
|
||
|
||
and/or visually; the second by excising words and letters from
|
||
|
||
words to create a sense of intriguing fragmentariness; and the third by suggesting 17th century poetic diction in an enigmatic
|
||
|
||
dialogic context. Very nice indeed; like little primers of
|
||
|
||
linguistic possibility.--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jack Saunders: OLLA-PODRIDA--Florida's Shame, PO Box 10375,
|
||
|
||
Parker FL, 32404. 4 pp., SASE. Soon, boasts Saunders, he'll
|
||
|
||
have written "100 books without selling a word to New York or
|
||
|
||
Hollywood." But he keeps on keepin' on, obsessively re-prosing
|
||
|
||
his defeats at the hands of the literary establishment, now in
|
||
|
||
this series of 4-page pamphlets available to whoever shows an
|
||
|
||
interest. One reviews BLASTER by Al Ackerman, who (now that
|
||
|
||
Bukowski's gone) is the writer to beat for Saunders. Another
|
||
|
||
reports on and satirizes the Florida poetry-grants scene--which
|
||
|
||
leads to a third, which is a quite intelligent discussion of the
|
||
|
||
flaws in most fellowship-distribution procedures. Whether
|
||
|
||
Sisyphus, or the new Kerouac he sees himself as, Saunders is
|
||
|
||
worth reading.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Barry Silesky: ONE THING THAT CAN SAVE US--Coffee House Press.
|
||
|
||
$10.95. Filled with talk of lost jobs, unpaid bills, lives
|
||
|
||
distracted by shopping and television, and worries about the
|
||
|
||
state of the world, Barry Silesky's short-short stories paint a
|
||
|
||
bleak picture of Clinton's America. These stories are
|
||
|
||
constructed a sentence at a time, each simple declarative
|
||
|
||
sentence not building on the one before but going in a new
|
||
|
||
direction, adding fresh perspective, new data, until the effect
|
||
|
||
is almost giddy as we hang on tight to the words so we don't fall
|
||
|
||
off. Maybe the words are the one thing that can save us.--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jack Skelley: NO BARBIE--Found Street, 2260 S. Ferdinand Ave.,
|
||
|
||
Monteray Park CA, 91754. $1.00. Two poems out of the Bukowski
|
||
|
||
school but with weirdly misconnected images like an "Onramp crack
|
||
|
||
beggar" vs. "Nietzsche's hanky holder" vs. "Blue chip stamp
|
||
|
||
collector" in one series of lines, and a post-modernist allusion
|
||
|
||
to Capt. Kirk preceding "Mahler turned all the way up/ to sheer
|
||
|
||
black, with a red rose felt at the tip."--bg
|
||
|
||
Two delightfully quirky poems presented as a small folded
|
||
|
||
broadside where the concept of "Barbie" is presented as a
|
||
|
||
metaphor for a kind of swarming erotic irritant:
|
||
|
||
|
||
My doggie
|
||
|
||
Seventh planet of space
|
||
|
||
Mohammed's Ecstasy
|
||
|
||
All the things you aren't
|
||
|
||
Little animal
|
||
|
||
Polio moss in the gutter
|
||
|
||
--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Patti Smith: EARLY WORK, 1970-1979--Norton. $18.95. Back when
|
||
|
||
she was a skinny punk, Patti Smith made a name for herself first
|
||
|
||
as a poet and then as a rock star. Then she got married, had
|
||
|
||
kids, moved in among Detroit's Auto Barons, and got middle-aged.
|
||
|
||
EARLY WORK, 1970-1979 takes us back to her rebel days as a
|
||
|
||
haunted visionary poet. Most of these poems read as if they
|
||
|
||
should be shouted from a stage, hysterically and with great
|
||
|
||
emotion. The prosey pieces are rambling and so pure that they
|
||
|
||
didn't need any rewriting at all but just glopped out honest,
|
||
|
||
straight from the heart. If Patti has written any poems about
|
||
|
||
her children, her life in the elite suburbs, or her career as a
|
||
|
||
hypocritical poseur who knew that a media image as a moody rebel
|
||
|
||
could make a fast buck, they aren't included here.--tw
|
||
|
||
|
||
Mark Sonnenfeld: MISCELLANY BY MARK--Marymark Press, 45-08 Old
|
||
|
||
Millstone Dr., East Windsor NJ, 08520. 54 pp., $4.00?. There
|
||
|
||
are moments among these cleanly written but fairly conventional
|
||
|
||
poems, of the short-lined "conversational" variety, when a more
|
||
|
||
elusive/allusive and charged poetry seems to be emerging:
|
||
|
||
|
||
His lunacy
|
||
|
||
|
||
I dared not lock horns
|
||
|
||
with
|
||
|
||
Those boots
|
||
|
||
scuffed And a wide black leather belt
|
||
|
||
was symbolic
|
||
|
||
way back
|
||
|
||
|
||
The poems deal with daily life, music, reading, mass culture, and
|
||
|
||
work, and often demonstrate a considerable sensitivity, to their
|
||
|
||
topics, a step beyond the chatty flippancy often found in this
|
||
|
||
kind of writing.--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Mark Sonnenfeld: TEN INCH DIAGONAL--Marymark Press, 45-08 Old
|
||
|
||
Millstone Dr., East Windsor NJ, 08520. 24 pp., $2.50. There is
|
||
|
||
an open and playful quality to these poems, many of which are
|
||
|
||
quite free-wheeling in their juxtapositions of vocabulary and
|
||
|
||
syntactical structures. The poet seems to be enjoying himself,
|
||
|
||
but this does not result in a mere facile silliness: the poems
|
||
|
||
often also express a wistfullness and melancholy that, along with
|
||
|
||
the techniques used, remind me of the work of Appolinaire and
|
||
|
||
Huidobro:
|
||
|
||
|
||
the lines
|
||
|
||
of stars twitch
|
||
|
||
as pigeon couples flyby
|
||
|
||
the colored flare
|
||
|
||
|
||
the republic grocer sweeps
|
||
|
||
|
||
the simple of
|
||
|
||
|
||
intimacy alone
|
||
|
||
channels
|
||
|
||
the bug sideways
|
||
|
||
|
||
A most refreshing collection, nicely illustrated with geometrical
|
||
|
||
and technical diagrams.--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Surllama, et al: PENTACOST BOWEL HACK--Anatomy Floaters, USF
|
||
|
||
#3182, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa FL, 33620-3182. 12 pp.
|
||
|
||
Originally a chapbook ms. submitted to Anatomy Floaters. Editor
|
||
|
||
Surllama mixed its texts up and performed a hack on it; later
|
||
|
||
other defilers joined in the fun with separate hacks. The
|
||
|
||
results include a Chinese-quite disintegrated text cum over-
|
||
|
||
scribble by John. Lingner, a renga experiment by John M. Bennett,
|
||
|
||
and a computer-generated "whered salm" by Ficus
|
||
|
||
strangulensis.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Curtis Taylor & Nico Vassilakis: SEVEN STEPS OF LOVE--Sub Rosa
|
||
|
||
Press, 6234 Carleton Ave., Seattle WA, 98108. $4.00. Moltenly
|
||
|
||
high-colored Tarot-occult illumages by Taylor on the following
|
||
|
||
seven subjects: "Mouth," "Luck," "Risk," "Give," "Pierce,"
|
||
|
||
"Trick," and "Sip." Accompanying them are seven equally
|
||
|
||
energizing Vassilakis poems that move from a mouth that,
|
||
|
||
devouring all, "will taste your skin 'til your thoughts are
|
||
|
||
hinged at the mouth, and what air is here will mix with what air
|
||
|
||
is in you," to the claim that "we are equipped with radar and
|
||
|
||
music." A jangle of textures, ideas and images that pretty much
|
||
|
||
cover the entire range of human existence.--bg
|
||
|
||
A small, accordion-folded booklet consisting of color
|
||
|
||
illustrations backed by texts (7 of each), collectively having
|
||
|
||
the quality of a set of divination cards, the images and texts
|
||
|
||
being intriguingly ambiguous enough to accommodate a wide variety
|
||
|
||
of readings. The first one is "Mouth":
|
||
|
||
|
||
Consider a circle, then consider
|
||
|
||
what will fit inside that circle. a
|
||
|
||
mouth has mountains, a mouth has
|
||
|
||
oceans, a mouth has the universe,
|
||
|
||
and all things are ingested easily
|
||
|
||
within in it. there is an
|
||
|
||
obstacle....
|
||
|
||
--jmb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Tentatively, a Convenience: PUZZLE WRITING--Score, 812 SW
|
||
|
||
Cityview, Pullman WA, 99163. 13 pp. (loose sets in an envelope),
|
||
|
||
$3.00. A sequence concerned with identical rectilinear forms
|
||
|
||
that are shaped to be able to interlock, and sometimes they do.
|
||
|
||
Each has a one-word label, "rocket" and "pedicab" being the
|
||
|
||
labels of the two in the opening panel. The background, with one
|
||
|
||
exception, is a pictureless, doubly-exposed jigsaw puzzle.
|
||
|
||
Intriguing events take place but exactly where the narrative is
|
||
|
||
going beats me.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Larry Tomoyasu: PHOTOS--Found Street, 2260 S. Ferdinand Ave.,
|
||
|
||
Monteray Park CA, 91754. $2.00?. A story dealing with fragments
|
||
|
||
of childhood memories, accompanied by grainy b/w 1950's photos of
|
||
|
||
little boys, in a small booklet produced with Found Press' usual
|
||
|
||
hand-made elegance. The story deals with motels, traveling, lost
|
||
|
||
photos, and has a delightful episode in which "Johnee", perhaps
|
||
|
||
the speaker's brother, is tossing Gideon Bibles out the window of
|
||
|
||
a moving car. The writing is clean, focused, and highly
|
||
|
||
evocative.--jmb
|
||
|
||
Story of an ordinary Joe who had lost a box of photos three
|
||
|
||
years earlier. As he and his friend from boyhood drive cross-
|
||
|
||
country in their search for the photos, stealing Gideon Bibles as
|
||
|
||
they go, the Joe's simple-seeming thoughts and observations click
|
||
|
||
strangely against the photographs of two children that accompany
|
||
|
||
the text. The result is an unexpectedly ed husk adorns the
|
||
|
||
cover--at first glance it could be a drawing of a trendy
|
||
|
||
hairclip, or the logo for an "Invasion of the Insect-Body
|
||
|
||
Snatchers." Trammell's collage, narrative and lyric poetry often
|
||
|
||
brings the self right into the jaws of the locusts, but somehow
|
||
|
||
manages to keep it from being gnawed down to the roots. "Cicada-
|
||
|
||
-the True Bug/ of Apollo, that sings./ warns."--ssnf right into
|
||
|
||
the jaws of the locusts, but somehow manages to keep it from
|
||
|
||
being gnawed down to the roots. "Cicada--the True Bug/ of
|
||
|
||
Apollo, that sings./ warns."--ssn
|
||
|
||
|
||
Nick Vaile: HARDCORE MOTHERFUCKER--WTG-Pubs., PO Box 12646,
|
||
|
||
Lexington KY, 40583. 56 pp., Definitely an attention-grabbing
|
||
|
||
title. The first fourteen pages read almost like a journal; a
|
||
|
||
gripping journal of the thoughts of a Hispanic factory worker in
|
||
|
||
Dayton, Ohio, who exists in a vacuum of hate and violence. This
|
||
|
||
is an almost purging rant, a dispelling of evil. "Anger is an
|
||
|
||
injection of adrenaline laced with insanity," he tells us, and
|
||
|
||
then relates to it personally: "I am a grudge holder, now and
|
||
|
||
forever. I cannot forget." Vaile doesn't shy away from rough
|
||
|
||
language, "My ex-mother-in-law is truly a cunt and a whore."
|
||
|
||
There are also several poems about startling places, like the
|
||
|
||
motel where "Deep Throat<61> was filmed. And more. I can't say
|
||
|
||
this is pretty, but then motherfuckers seldom are. It is real,
|
||
|
||
though. Have you ever been shot at? This chap left me feeling
|
||
|
||
like I had.--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
Nico Vassilakis: A NAME FOR RADIO--Elbow Press, PO Box 21671,
|
||
|
||
Seattle WA, 98111. 12 pp. Amazingly coy, this tiny little book
|
||
|
||
is a treasure, something one could collect in a miniature
|
||
|
||
bookcase of exquisitely produced examples of the art of the book.
|
||
|
||
Seattle continues to be the hub of visual impact, whether it be
|
||
|
||
grunge or in the fascinating twists and turns that visual poetry
|
||
|
||
hammers into the unconscious. What amazes me is the consistently
|
||
|
||
high quality of it all--Vassilakis is an inspiration.--ssn
|
||
|
||
|
||
John Viera: SLOW MOVING PICTURES--Score, 812 SW Cityview, Pullman
|
||
|
||
WA, 99163. 10 pp., $3.00. Drawings, textual illumages and
|
||
|
||
visual poems, all in similarly expressive, scribbly calligraphy.
|
||
|
||
Includes a terrific 10-part impression of a poetry reading called
|
||
|
||
"Minutes of a Poetry Reading at Rocky Point"--it reminded me of
|
||
|
||
Saul Steinberg's visualizations of classical musical compositions
|
||
|
||
without seeming any more derivative than all art is. I was also
|
||
|
||
taken with a florally-cursive rendering of the words "sign" and
|
||
|
||
"song" in such a way that their letters look identical, so the
|
||
|
||
one word shivers provocatively into the other.--bg
|
||
|
||
|
||
Fred Voss: STILL IN THE GAME--BGS Press, 1240 William St., Racine
|
||
|
||
WI, 53402. 24 pp., $3.00. In "Normal" we get tossed into an
|
||
|
||
explosion of misfits, hippies, electric shock orgasms, out of
|
||
|
||
body experiences, and the need to live life instead of
|
||
|
||
disintegrating and hiding from the world. In "I Was Terrified"
|
||
|
||
the opening lines, "He roared his bike to a stop/ on the sidewalk
|
||
|
||
in front of the bay window of my apartment/ and stomped up the
|
||
|
||
stone steps" sets up the situation where some strong willed crazy
|
||
|
||
motherfucker thinks he's doing you a favor when actually you're
|
||
|
||
too scared to get in his way. In "Daredevils" we get another
|
||
|
||
taste of hysteria: "My chair/ could barely hold him as he
|
||
|
||
squirmed/ and told me/ what it was that got him off", where the
|
||
|
||
love of bikes and riding left me wanting to get out there myself.
|
||
|
||
This is pure well written insightful poetry, and although I've
|
||
|
||
had a taste or two of Voss' work before, now I want to get it
|
||
|
||
all.--o
|
||
|
||
|
||
Jeanine Wade: NECK DEEP IN LUST (29 Poems of Love and Lust)--PO
|
||
|
||
Box 272, Goodlettsville TN, 37070-0272. $3.00. What can be said
|
||
|
||
is that for sure Jeanine Wade is neck deep, waist deep, head deep
|
||
|
||
and over her head and basking in, bathing in, wallowing in the
|
||
|
||
moist from lust and love. Like 29 Arabian nights (knights)--
|
||
|
||
EARotic tales (tale). Not the overt straight forward redhot mama
|
||
|
||
tomato stroke and squirt and squirm strain and stain realism but
|
||
|
||
playing with words and with the tools of poetry getting to the
|
||
|
||
same place. A different lush pathway to get to (on) the top of
|
||
|
||
the orgasm mountain. Many paths and sure this is perfumed but
|
||
|
||
never skirts (lifted) the focus which is genuine physical and
|
||
|
||
emotional passion. The body is here and Jeanine Wade (wading in
|
||
|
||
lust) hasn't forgotten that she has a mind, as well as a heart,
|
||
|
||
as ...well, ass.--mb
|
||
|
||
|
||
Mary E. Weems (ed.), Susan Kane, Patricia Harusami Leebove,
|
||
|
||
Kristen Ban Tepper: WOMEN'S VOICES--Burning Press, PO Box 585,
|
||
|
||
Lakewood OH, 44107. 28 pp., $3.00. The heartbeat of women:
|
||
|
||
multi-cultural, multi-voiced, moon goddess proud and strong.
|
||
|
||
This is a collaborative effort emphasizing women's artistic
|
||
|
||
voices in one poetic collection. Chimerical forces and tough-
|
||
|
||
minded introspection combine amid dances of raw experiences:
|
||
|
||
motherhood, art, nurturing addictions, sensual dehumanizations,
|
||
|
||
suburban imprisonment, love "my love like air like food like
|
||
|
||
need." The voices here are all pulled from deep history,
|
||
|
||
genetically extracted: "and when I speak/ I use thunder/
|
||
|
||
thunder// it is my perfect voice." They rage and demonstrate but
|
||
|
||
never beg meaning. Language and song, primitive and holy, guilt
|
||
|
||
and lust, abuse and abandonment, all combined in these four
|
||
|
||
women's voices, world rhythms bound in Cleveland. Alkaline-
|
||
|
||
Electra charged resurrections of the mighty "I AM."--rrle
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
End, TapRoot Reviews Electronic Edition (TRee)
|
||
|
||
Issue #6.0, section b: chaps
|
||
|
||
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
|
||
|