2169 lines
120 KiB
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2169 lines
120 KiB
Plaintext
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From au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu Tue May 7 20:26:29 1996
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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 09:33:51 -0500
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From: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
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To: pauls@etext.org
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Subject: TRee #5b: chapbooks
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TTTTTTTT AA PPPP RRRR OOOO OOOO TTTTTTT
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T A A P P R R O O O O T
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T AAAAAA PPPP RRRR O O O O T
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T A A P R R O O O O T
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T A A P R R OOOO OOOO T
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Issue #5.0, section b: chaps 8/94
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TapRoot is a quarterly publication of Independent, Underground,
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and Experimental language-centered arts. Over the past 10 years,
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we have published 40+ collections of poetry, writing, and visio-
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verbal art in a variety of formats. In the August of 1992, we
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began publish TapRoot Reviews, featuring a wide range of "Micro-
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Press" publications, primarily language-oriented. This posting
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is the first section of our 5th full electronic issue, containing
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most of the short Chapbook reviews; the second section contains
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most of the zine reviews. We provide this information in the hope
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that netters do not limit their reading to E-mail & BBSs.
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Please e-mail your feedback to the editor, Luigi-Bob Drake, at:
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au462@cleveland.freenet.edu
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Requests for e-mail subsctiptions should be sent to the same
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address--they are free, please indicate what you are requesting--
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(a short but human message; this is not an automated listserve).
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I believe it is FTPable from UMich, which also archives back issues.
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Hard-copies of TapRoot Reviews contain additional review
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material--in issue #5: features on the Argentinian experimental
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poetry movement _Paralengua_; the LA micropress Found Street;
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the Russian transfuturist artists Rea Nickonova & Serge Segay;
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recent French writing-in-translation, the new magazine _Apex of
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the M_; plus features on work by Nathaniel Mackey, Bill Luoma, and
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Ivan Arguelles. TapRoot Reviews intends to survey the boundries
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of "literature", and provide access to work that stretches those
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boundries.It is availablefrom: Burning Press, PO Box 585, Lakewood
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OH 44107--$2.50 pp.
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Both the print & electronic versions of TapRoot are copyright
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1994 by Burning Press, Cleveland. Burning Press is a non-profit
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educational corporation. Permission granted to reproduce
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this material FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, provided that this
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introductory notice is included. Burning Press is supported, in
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part, with funds from the Ohio Arts Council.
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Reviewers are identified by their initials at the end of each
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review: Mark Amerika, Michael Basinski, John M. Bennett, Jake
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Berry, Luigi-Bob Drake, R. Lee Etzwiler, Steve Fried, Chris
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Funkhouser, Jessica Grimm, Bob Grumman, Roger Kyle-Keith, Joel
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Lipman, Stephen-Paul Martin, Susan Smith Nash, Kurt Nimmo, Oberc,
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Charlotte Pressler, Dan Raphael, Andrew Russ, Mark Wallace, Don
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Webb, Mark Weber, and Thomas Willoch. Additional contributors
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are welcome: drop an e-note or send SASE.
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*** Many thanx to all of our contributors. ***
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CHAPS:
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Akhter Ahsen, ed.: NEW SURREALISM: THE LIBERATION OF IMAGES IN
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CONSCIOUSNESS--Brandon House, PO Box 240, Bronx NY, 10471. 538
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pp., $25.00. Ahsen maintains that Surrealism is an enervated
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methodology of literary and artistic transgressions. It needs
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rejuvenation, a megashot of adrenaline in the buttocks, and the
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editor supplies this via his own field of clinical psychotherapy.
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In true Andre Breton fashion he proclaims it in a manifesto. The
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late J.H. Matthews, world authority on Surrealism reacts to
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Ahsen's ideas. Can science come to the aid of art? We know what
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C.P. Snow said about the two cultures. Supporting documentation,
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including case histories, reflect the supposed efficacy of Ahsen's
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new engine of revitalization.--as
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Ron Androla: PERFECTLY SANE LIKE EXCESSIVE INEBRIATION--
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Translucent Tendency Press, 3226 Raspberry Avenue, Erie PA, 16508.
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12 pp., $2.00. This collection of fuck poems would make a
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politically correct feminist cringe, because it captures the male
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side of copulation in all it's chauvinistic glory, both the
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glorious and brutal sides of it. Ron rips into the violence, the
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physical cramming, the pushing and shoving and taking and physical
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side of an act so romanticized that the sweat is forgotten. But
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Androla's war goes beyond lovers--and tears into factory politics,
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drunken pissed off dreams, and the world of working class heroes
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who got no place else to go.--o
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Ron Androla: THE BOOK OF MEDITATIONS--Smiling Dog Press, 987 Fritz
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Rd., Maple City MI, 49664. 5 pp., $2.00? A prose poem, in
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seventeen parts, by Erie, Pennsylvania poet Ron Androla. Small
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town angst surfaces here; the poet is unemployed, he admits his
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sympathy for the president because we live in "the strangest
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exploding times ever dreamed in history," and arrives at the
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decision to "fit into society by smiling alot." He understands and
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inwardly shudders at the slow economic and political decomposition
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all around--and vents poetically tinged diatribes against the
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media and government on his attic-room word-processor. Sexually,
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this long poem is pure Androla--due to an S/M allusion involving
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Hillary Clinton, a literary magazine in California strenuously
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rejected MEDITATIONS before this SMILING DOG publication. Dean
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Creighton's letterpress edition is tastefully rendered with a
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linoleum print cover in three colors.--kn
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Androla goes Eastern Philosophy in these short meditations
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based on the tales of philosophers like Lao Tzu. There are 17
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bursts of wisdom, seemingly inspired more by drug abuse and whisky
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than spiritual enlightenment, with deep lines like "2. chain-
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smoke. smoke another bowl. gulp more coffee. consider tolerable
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alcoholism" and "12. avoid the kissing wife, pull away from her
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sad, shivering hug. make her slap yr face & curse yr very
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existence."--o
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Bud Bracken: CIRCUS THRU THE FOG--Poetry Harbor, 1028 E. 6th St.,
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Duluth MN, 55805. 28 pp., $3.95. Pat McKinnon of POETRY MOTEL
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once claimed that Bud Bracken was the actually the editor, because
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Bud hated poetry--if Bud liked a poem, it got into the mag,
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because there had to be something there that was special. Bud's
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poetry kicks ass, and you'd never know he hated the stuff by the
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clean crisp lines in this chap. These are vicious poems, filled
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with love, hate, and a strange emptiness that makes you want to
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hide in the shadows even where there are no threats on the street.
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They tell me poetry is supposed to rearrange the universe and make
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us look at things in a different light. I don't know what light
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Bud is using, but it sure as hell is powerful in all its
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subtleties.--o
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Dennis Barone: THE MASQUE RESUMED--Standing Stones Press, 7 Circle
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Pines, Morris MN, 56267. 16 pp., $2.00. Three short pieces of
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nearverse that collage images, ideas, situations and parts of
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speech with great dexterity. In and out of story, in and out of
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sensation, in and out of reflection, in and out of in and out...
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& sundry blossomings like "Was not a husband informed tonight to
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seclude the heart of shuddered property?"--bg
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Michael Basinski: WORMS--Veighsmere Series, 411 Parkside Ave.,
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Buffalo NY, 14216. 4 pp., $1.00. Four sets of appropriately-
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mismated fragments of (my guess is) zoology texts, scholarly
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discussions of mythology, and who-knows-what that turns the human
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condition from it's worm-lowest shudderings up to where its
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"brightness sanctuaries" are into multiply-meaningful poetry.
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--bg
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E. R. Baxter III: LOOKING FOR NIAGARA--Slipstream, Box 2071,
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Niagara Falls NY, 14301. 120 pp., $10.00. This is a marvelous
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book of a man and a city (Niagara Falls, USA) and a river: The
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Niagara, which leads to that which is also marvelous: Niagara
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Falls (the natural wonder). This is a poetry where all history is
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contemporaneous with the poet and the poet's life--his history,
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his changes and he moves in a man's time and the river moves in
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geographic time and here then is this mill town, tourist town,
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paradise lost--well you have poetry. Frankly written, clear
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thought through the fog and rain, dreams and facts, youth and age.
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An exploration in the wonder of the self as a place. Collage--
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bric-a-brac beauty of a store with endless merchandise of memory
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and fact--Baxter III--it is how to see--read a life.--mb
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E. R. Baxter III: WHAT I WANT--Slipstream, Box 2071, Niagara Falls
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NY, 14301. This item is a one poem chapbook printed as a
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supplement to SLIPSTREAM Issue #13. WHAT I WANT is an eight page
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wide ranging poem of parallel construction in which Baxter reveals
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the pantheon of his desires. He discloses the variables that
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compose a poet's existence. He wants to smoke a lot of
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cigarettes, have frequent sex with multiple partners, and he wants
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the animals to talk. The poem proclaims and documents the value
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of the individual in a complex world, without sexual fear, with a
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sensitivity to nature, with the despair that cigarettes are
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unhealthy, and with the generosity that thanks the human world for
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its support. Baxter ends his poem from the heart of his soul. He
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writes thank you. When was the last time anyone said that to
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you?! "Thank you. Thank you."--mb
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Guy R. Beining: DAMN THE EVENING GARDEN--MindWare, 310-762 Upper
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James St., Hamilton Ontario, CANADA, L9C 3A2. 28 pp., $8.00.
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Twenty-six haiku-like three-line poems, each beginning with, and
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illustrated by, a different letter of the alphabet (in proper
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alphabetical order). The illustrations are splotch, expressive,
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and apt; the poems sexedly Bible-based, e.g.: "Damn the EVEning
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garden/ it catches/ ALL the hOles."--bg
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Dodie Bellamy: ANSWER--Leave Books, 57 Livingston St., Buffalo NY,
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14213. 16 pp., $4.00. This installment of The letters of Mina
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Harker actually includes a letter from Bob Gluck to Dodie Bellamy,
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a letter to Mina (Dodie) from Cassandra (Ron Day), and the letter
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in answer, from Mina to Cassandra. In her answer, Mina works in,
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around, through, and ultimately in spite of the request which Bob
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has asked of Dodie: to write "5-10 observations of aspects of
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having a woman's body." Mina's response is alternately playful,
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exasperated, pissed off, and ultimately takes off in its own
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direction--a thinking, a sexy and fabulous world embedded in a
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letter. Bellamy's writing sparks and whines, glides, pulls you up
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short, engages in bouts of the limbo beneath inhumanely low bars.
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This little book is a great introduction to the wonders of
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Bellamy's work.--jg
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John Bennett: THE NEW WORLD ORDER--The Smith, 69 Joralemon St.,
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Brooklyn NY, 11220. 85 pp., $10.95. John Bennett (not to be
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confused w/ John M. Bennett) is a small press survivor, though I'm
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not sure if he would agree with my assessment. THE NEW WORLD
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ORDER, with all quirkiness of style and subject, is a paean to the
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fine art of survival in modern America. There are 25 short pieces
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here; they encompass varied subjects--alcoholism, mental decay,
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Vietnam, childhood trauma--and the message is unmistakable: one
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must bounce back, hold tight, weather the odds and survive. "Each
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day," Bennett writes, "I rise up from the world of dream into
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illusion... and ask myself: what next? Receiving no answer, I set
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about the all-important task of recreating myself." From this
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departure, Bennett transmutes into the various personalities of
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this book. Not surprisingly, John Bennett wrote a book entitled
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SURVIVAL SONGS, which appeared in two self-published mimeograph
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volumes. Bennett is a literary dynamo, an avowed outlaw on the
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fringes of literary convention. This book sharpens and hones his
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alienated, rough-and-tumble vision of a chaotic world "that
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embraces insanity like a succubus, living on the brink is what
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sanity is all about: torque resistance, crystallized perception
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full of sunlight and terror."--kn
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John M. Bennett: BLANKSMANSHIP--Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland
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Ave., Columbus OH, 43214. 24 pp./90 min., Book $5.00; tape $6.00;
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both for $10.00. For years Bennett's two word instruction-poem
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"Be Blank" has been drifting through the otherstream, on stickers,
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postcards, magazines. And though this sense of the non-projecting
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mind pervades all of his poetry, in BLANKSMANSHIP he manifests it
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more masterfully than usual. And to have the poems on the page
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and literally in our ears via audio tape is sheer delight. The
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individual poems are longer than usual for Bennett, allowing us
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to experience deeper revelries of body and soul, mind and matter,
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convulsing to be; each piece ending with five words or
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combinations of words that can be associated freely with one
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another, with the poem, with the book as a whole or all of the
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above, or perhaps best, being blank, to simply let them be what
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they will at each hearing/reading. For instance these five at the
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end of "Number Wing":
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Downflight hurricane wet land urinating hive
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The general body of the poems heard as well as read surge and
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flow with moments of epiphany and entropy--the two finally the
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same. So much of Bennett's poetry is dependent on individual
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perception, even differing states of mind in a single individual
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can produce wildly different reactions.
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Bennett is a man possessed of reality triple intensified.
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These poems have an otherness, to be sure, but that otherness is
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intimate, as close as our thoughts and viscera. Side Two of the
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tape is a classic performance of the same piece with James Weise.
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This is prime Bennett, put on the headphones, open the book, and
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strap yourself in; you'll be ripped apart and love every minute.
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--jb
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John M. Bennett: BOOK CLASSIFICATION--Luna Bisonte Prods, 137
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Leland Ave., Columbus OH, 43214. 5 pp., $1.00. Five Bennett
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poems with an etiquette book pictured on the cover, and again on
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the inside of the cover--but with fish skeletons diving into it.
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The poetry, as usual, is out of "the kitchen drawer where's
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burning limits snore."--bg
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John M. Bennett: REVERSION: PILES OF THAT--Luna Bisonte, 137
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Leland Ave., Columbus, OH, 43214. 252 pp., $30. 00. Gahhhhh!
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Well over 400 poems by the renowned spitter, teeming with
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Bennettisms like: "Where the why whys! Where the pause lie!" from
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"Why Whines"; and "So I langoured, breathed a wall" from "A Glance
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Back Cast." Results a mutter-to-utter maxitrosity by a poet who
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more and more seems to be the Jackson Pollock of contemporary
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poetry--because of his disorienting originality; crudity; size and
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plain old self-publishing Americanness.--bg
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John M. Bennett & Johnny Brewton: DRY--Luna Bisonte Prods, 137
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Leland Ave., Columbus OH, 43214. 8 pp., $2.00, (coproduced w/
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Pneumatic Press, PO Box 170011, San Francisco CA, 94117) Graphic
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images, mostly of watering cans, by Brewton; poems by Bennett.
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Like many of Bennett's poems, these have anti-titles, uppercase &
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catty-corner to their main titles. A mere eccentricity 'til you
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start thinking about it, about text sandwiched between titles,
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titles clashing or harmonizing; or is the anti-title the first
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half of an inevitable next poem's title? Bennett keeps on makin'
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you work.--bg
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John M. Bennett & others: MISCELLANY--Luna Bisonte Prods, 137
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Leland Ave., Columbus OH, 43214. 1 pg. @, SASE. An assortment of
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some twenty 4" x 4" cards, each with a poem or other artwork on
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it, mostly collaborations between Bennett and people like Serge
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Segay; also some intriguing drawings by John's sons, Also and Ben.
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Seeing what Bennett's poetry inspires from others made me flash on
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the possibility of one of these dimension X aliens who abducts
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neurotic human women while being, himself, abducted by some alien
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from dimension Z... if you see what I mean.--bg
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Gina Bergamino & tolek: TWO SIDES--xib publications, PO Box
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262112, San Diego CA, 92126. 12 pp., $2.00. None of the poems in
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this slim chappie are credited, so it's difficult to tell who
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wrote what. Yeah the similarity between Bergamino's and tolek's
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styles is intriguing. In some instances, gender references give
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away the author. Overall, though, these poems are very similar,
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and in many ways typical work of the authors. Not for the
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kiddies; some naughty sex and adult subject matter.--rkk
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Jake Berry: BRAMBU DREZI--Runaway Spoon, PO Box 3621, Port
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Charlotte FL, 33949. 70 pp., $10.00. For several years I have
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been reading (and seeing: some have major visual components) these
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pieces in magazines and anthologies, and while they never fail to
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intrigue as separate works, the effect of encountering them all
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together intensifies (and clarifies and enriches) the experience
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exponentially. The texts are connected and/or contrapuntal, and
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at times they are graphically absorbed into the texts that follow,
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or are even obliterated by them. There are sheets of words, slabs
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of anaphor, paralinguistic passages (like the title itself), words
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scattered in graphic formulae, and almost purely visual sections.
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The whole represents an inherently impossible but at the same time
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inherently necessary voyage of total consciousness beyond language
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within the context of language (or symbolic representation), from
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the opening "legion swollen faces drift through sentient blue-
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orange empty space..." to the closing "I vanish and everything is
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everything/ is everything/ like nothing idiot singing." The
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concerns of this vast, almost musically constructed work, are
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consciousness and language as its vehicle, a universe structured
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as a somewhat destructive (or dynamic) conflict of under- and
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over-realities (which perhaps, the work suggests, derives from the
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mind's struggling to perceive), and an evolutionary but a the same
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time circular process of psychic or mythic history. This is not
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"literature" as "good writing" but literature as an attempt to
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know (control) what might be. It has, however, passages of such
|
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intensely charged writing that, as a reader, one is compelled to
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engage with and grow from Berry's work. A major work, only
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glanced at here, which will become essential reading. Includes an
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introduction by Jack Foley that provides a useful
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contextualization of Berry's work in the spectrum of American
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Poetry.--jmb
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Terence Bishop: HEADS I LOSE, TALES I LOSE--ATH Press, 2177
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Steward Dr., Hatfield PA, 19440. 32 pp., $2.00. Bishop seems to
|
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thrive on existential angst--predicting the worst will happen,
|
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knowing it won't, and feeling like he's come out on top--which
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breeds a strange hopeless optimism that shows up in his work. In
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the short story "Scene From Hollywood Apartment No. 425," for
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example, a couple is flirting, but not really caring if they fuck
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or not, and when they don't there's no disappointment either way.
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It doesn't matter what they do. "The Birth of Lonely Man"
|
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chronicles some easily recognized drinking habits: going to a bar
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because of boredom, being bored at the bar, hitting a liquor
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store, then going home to drink alone. While this collection
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includes a lot of poems, the fiction is clearly Bishop's strong
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point--the three stories are easily worth the price of the chap.
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--o
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David Bromige: A CAST OF TENS--Avec Books, PO Box 1059, Penngrove
|
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CA, 94951. 96 pp., $9.50. David Bromige's A CAST OF TENS is a
|
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series of musings and reflections upon the full range of human
|
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experience. In his exact adherence to a form (ten-line sections
|
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usually broken into a few stanzas) and an inner form (phrases or
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sentences start with a capital letter, ending at the next capital)
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Bromige inserts as much variation and insight, where other writers
|
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may have found only restriction. A very "human" text, A CAST OF
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TENS proceeds in its unique voice with a quiet intensity never
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losing sight of its goal.--jg
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Bromige is a master at probing the irreducibilities of
|
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symbolic logic, and his playful yet outrageous equivalencies
|
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explode the neat, cut-and-dried tautologies of Wittgenstein: "The
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old man is 112 pages long / and so is the sea / They are deeply
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symbolic (psychotic)." Bromige's structures are sinuous and
|
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mathematic, and they evoke the tonal colors of Schoenberg, Satie,
|
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or Cage, successfully evading what Bromige has characterized as
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iambic pentameter's "echoic invasions."--ssn
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David Castleman: I STAMMER IT TO ANGELS--Dusty Dog, 1904-A
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Gladden, Gallup NM, 87301. 31 pp., $5.95. Part fiction, part
|
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essay, part autobiography. Heck, it's actually one long
|
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philosophical discourse! No, really, it's a story. No action to
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speak of, minimal dialogue, lots of third-person commentary and
|
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observation. And none of that pop psychology junk, either. Real
|
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thinking-man stuff spun out over the course of a story which
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pretty much is background to the thought process. For the
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literate crowd with time enough to actually read, not skim.--rkk
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Alan Catlin: IN THE UNDERGROUND--Anatomy Floaters Clearing House,
|
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3113 Bernadette Ln., Sarasota FL, 34234,. 28 pp., $1.00.
|
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A gripping albeit conventional story about paranoia and futility
|
|
in an urban subway. Can't think of anything else to say about
|
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it.--bg
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|
Leonard Cirino: POEMS OF THE ROYAL CONCUBINE LI XI--JVC Books,
|
|
Rt. 2 Box 440C, Arcadia FL, 33821. 40 p., $4.95. The soft
|
|
fragrance of the boudoir, the coiled tension of expectation,
|
|
the moist honey of lubrication, the softness of yielding flesh,
|
|
the gentle descent into rapture, the intimations of release, the
|
|
swelling force, the soft fleeting bursts into the perfect world
|
|
and then... the end. Youth, decline and final decrepitude of an
|
|
imperial concubine. Hot sex in the beginning, resignation in the
|
|
middle, wisdom at the end. Not just another chapbook about a poet
|
|
humping his girlfriend. Cirinao has taste, discretion, and a full
|
|
view of life.--as
|
|
|
|
Brian Clark: APOCALYPSE TAO--Anatomy Floaters Clearing House, 3113
|
|
Bernadette Ln., Sarasota FL, 34234. 16 pp., $1.00. Jump-cut
|
|
prose partly unsparing revealing autobiography (in part about the
|
|
author's bisexuality), with references to some pol named Bill here
|
|
& there, and all kinds of other ravings that include neat words
|
|
like "befinneginning."--bg
|
|
|
|
William Clark: UNTITLED--Primal Publishing, 107 Brighton Ave.,
|
|
Allston MA, 02134. 10 pp., $2.50. (#2 in the Primal Publishing
|
|
Singles Club). Clark's stories of drug disintegration in the
|
|
wilds of western Pennsylvania reminded me of a ride I got hitching
|
|
through that state in 1973--half a dozen hours drinking in pool
|
|
halls, doing tranquilizers the driver had to combat schizophrenia,
|
|
and wondering if I'd ever see the interstate again. The country
|
|
people I met that night were every bit as fucking crazy as any
|
|
inner city hoodlums I ever ran into on the street. This story of
|
|
the rape of a handicapped girl brings to light such an unsettling
|
|
anger and confusion that it made me want to write Clark a blank
|
|
check for the rest of his published work.--o
|
|
|
|
Norma Cole: MARS--Listening Chamber, 2420 Acton St., Berkeley CA,
|
|
94702. 114 pp. Norma Cole's writing is complicated, beautiful,
|
|
straight to the heart and always about the mind. What the mind
|
|
does. This book, in 6 sections, is about living, dying, loving--
|
|
having lost, having done all those things, and its proof is its
|
|
presence. The writing, often intricate, and moving from one form
|
|
to another, conveys a thinking that is convoluted and deeply
|
|
personal. And because the writing is so felt, the reader insists
|
|
that the "sense" comes through, grants that it does, and moves on
|
|
with the work. There is a pain in writing, or perhaps it's that
|
|
all writing is a moving beyond tragedy. Cole, in this book, shows
|
|
us that. A gorgeous cover collage by Jess makes this one of the
|
|
most beautiful books, inside and out, that I've seen in awhile.
|
|
--jg
|
|
Norma Cole's MARS is a witness to the event, a coiled serpent
|
|
ready to strike, danger under the surface of the words she
|
|
propels. At differing times full of wisdom, a careful observer
|
|
with a plain-speaking mode of address, or an abstracted voice
|
|
(many voices here). MARS shows Cole's interest in critical theory
|
|
as it informs a thread that increases the dimensional thrust
|
|
accompanying concepts, every word mattering.--pg
|
|
|
|
John Robert Columbo, ed.: WORDS IN SMALL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF
|
|
MINIATURE LITERARY COMPOSITIONS--Cacanadadada Press, 3350 W. 21st.
|
|
Ave., Vancouver B.C., Canada, V6S 1G7. 96 pp. Make it small and
|
|
do it in 50 words or less. The microtext for your delectation.
|
|
Most of the sources are SF, but all bear the requisite hermetic
|
|
compactness. A commentary follows each selection. This is truly
|
|
the age of the sound byte--will it become the age of the lit byte?
|
|
As technology causes attention spans to drop, such concision will
|
|
be a useful skill in the grim determinisms of literary Darwinsm.
|
|
--as
|
|
|
|
Edmund Conti: EDDIES--Runaway Spoon, PO Box 3621, Port Charlotte
|
|
FL, 33949. $3.00. By playing with words, inverted them, turning
|
|
syntax and insight inside out, Conti opens a new way of seeing.
|
|
These tiny poems are self-referential often, but the in-joke is in
|
|
our minds and we find ourselves joining the play and
|
|
reinvestigating the possibilities of language, poetry, and
|
|
thought. For instance, a poem titled "Embellishment" reads, in
|
|
full, "To be/ Ornate to be". Or the poem "Wry": "I drink/
|
|
therefore I am/ what I drink." Even the title of the book could
|
|
be construed as a pun on the poet's name. The poems are
|
|
accompanied by equally playful line drawings that have some
|
|
revelations of their own. This is a good book to have around when
|
|
friends drop in, certain to stimulate inventive dialog.--jb
|
|
|
|
Marc Cooper, Hannah Holm, Barbara Pillsbury & The Zapistas: THE
|
|
ZAPISTAS, STARTING FROM CHIAPAS--Open Magazine, PO Box 2726,
|
|
Westfield, NJ, 07091. $4.00. (#30 in the Open Pamphlet Series)
|
|
On January 1st of this year the Zapatista Army of National
|
|
Liberation, consisting primarily of Mayan Tzetal indians, declared
|
|
war against the Mexican government and took control of the city of
|
|
San Cristobal. The various dominant news organizations presented
|
|
this as just another guerrilla insurgence, a five minute story for
|
|
a few days, then forgotten amidst the pig circus malaise of
|
|
Washington, DC. But there was more to the story than that, and
|
|
this pamphlet fills in the pieces. For the most part it amounts
|
|
to a group descended from the indigenous peoples of the area that
|
|
have organized themselves to demand justice and genuine democratic
|
|
reform. Included here is the story of their struggle, as well as
|
|
documents from the Zapatistas themselves. The fact that the
|
|
revolt began just as NAFTA took effect and that the Mexican
|
|
government was willing to negotiate testifies to the power of
|
|
their organization. Is this the beginning of a broader revolt?
|
|
Like the rest of the Open Magazine series, this is vital
|
|
countermedia, an antidote to the usual information tripe.--jb
|
|
|
|
Judson Crews: HENRY MILLER AND MY BIG SUR DAYS--Vergin Press,
|
|
PO Box 370322, El Paso TX, 79937. 47 pp., $5.95. This memoir's
|
|
just a slice from the long and complex life of Judson Crews. Yes,
|
|
he talks about Henry Miller--and Anais Nin and lots of other "well
|
|
known" folks. The core of this stream-of-consciousness autobio
|
|
bit (reportedly culled from more than 10,000 pages of notes and
|
|
journals) is a year he spent at Big Sur, often in the company of
|
|
Henry Miller. An intimate look at Miller & surrounding people,
|
|
the times, and Judson's own state of mind. But it's not plodding,
|
|
introspective stuff--as Belinda Subraman says in her forward,
|
|
unlike "Anais Nin's... artfully, self-conscious diaries" this is
|
|
"candid, thoughtful... a perspective on Henry Miller and the Big
|
|
Sur days that would be quite different from any others."--rkk
|
|
|
|
Judson Crews: MANNEQUIN ANYMORE THAT--Zerx Press, 5016 Inspiration
|
|
Dr. SE, Albuquerque NM, 87108. 34 pp., $5.00 Judson is one of
|
|
those dirty old men I'd love to bring to a family reunion, knowing
|
|
he'd get me written out of so many wills, and would leave such a
|
|
trail of gossip and stories, that while I'd never inherit a
|
|
fortune, I'd certainly be a part of family history. In this
|
|
collection we get that lusting action again, tales of Buddha and
|
|
Casteneda, scents of strong feminine feet, topless bars, being a
|
|
charter member of N.O.W., reverences to Henry Miller, bouts of
|
|
masturbation, and freshened Scotch & Seltzers at 3:00 in the
|
|
morning. These are the stores my uncles used to tell when they
|
|
were drunk, the stories my grandfather wanted to forget as he
|
|
tried to claw his way to heaven.--o
|
|
|
|
Elanor Earl Crockett: WI, GEE, IT MUS BE CRAZY LIKE A DOG (pts. 3
|
|
& 4)--Bonton Books, 1500 Eastside Dr. #219, Austin TX, 78704.
|
|
24 pp. + cassette. Elanor Earl Crockett is a poet and performance
|
|
poet from Austin whose taped productions show an amazing
|
|
liveliness and variety of voices. This compilation includes work
|
|
from a period of several years and would serve as an excellent
|
|
introduction to her work. On the tape, the poems are performed
|
|
against a variety of noise an/or music backgrounds, although the
|
|
sound and voice are often deliberately at the same level, so that
|
|
neither is dominant. It is fortunate that the tape is accompanied
|
|
by a booklet of the texts, which stand alone very strongly as
|
|
poems on the printed page. The poems take a great variety of
|
|
approaches, from first-person narration to word and/or dialect
|
|
play, to anaphoric or conceptual structures, to an almost
|
|
Language-like allusiveness in a piece called "Phrases," a
|
|
collaboration with "SW":
|
|
|
|
which to choose
|
|
aerobic animals will see light
|
|
pocket manufacturers
|
|
trapped in the gravel mica glinting
|
|
from this vantage the trajectory
|
|
silence tears the evening
|
|
until at night and drive right into the ocean
|
|
|
|
The productions values of this work are simple (reduced
|
|
typescript, etc.) but the content is strong, polished, and unique.
|
|
--jmb
|
|
|
|
Doris Cross: REWORKS 1968-1953--Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New
|
|
Mexico, Box 2065, Santa Fe NM, 87504-2065. 62 pp, $15.00. The
|
|
full-color cover reproduction of one of Cross's dictionary-page
|
|
treatments alone is worth ten times the price of this catalog of
|
|
an 1993 Santa Fe exhibition of her work--at least to those
|
|
interested in visual poetry, for she was one of the century's
|
|
masters of the genre. But the volume also contains numerous other
|
|
excellent reproductions of her works as well as an excellent
|
|
introduction to it, and her, by Jim Edwards, and a wonderfully
|
|
poem-filled appreciation by Gerald Burns.--bg
|
|
|
|
Robin Crozier & John M. Bennett: HAW RAG--Luna Bisonte Prods,
|
|
137 Leland Ave., Columbus OH, 43214. 8 pp., $1.00. Bizarre
|
|
combinations of scrawled phrases, clip-outs, Chinese (or Chinese-
|
|
like) charactry, and on each page but the first word, "REALLY," in
|
|
triplicate, vertically, somewhere on the page with a large bold
|
|
"J", "R", or "B" in front of it. Sorta like some kind of rhythm
|
|
section to help us keep our bearings from movement to movement,
|
|
I guess.--bg
|
|
|
|
Richard Currey, CROSSING OVER: THE VIETNAM STORIES--Clark City
|
|
Press, PO Box 1358, 109 Callender St., Livingston MT, 59057.
|
|
$11.00. CROSSING OVER painfully returned me to those calamitous
|
|
years, now a full generation past, with all the accuracies of a
|
|
participant's historical memory. "Rose-stained bodies dumped in
|
|
the chopper's gut." Poetically-bonded, gritty, vivid details with
|
|
tersely understated emotion, thus might one characterize these
|
|
articulate wartime vignettes.
|
|
Currey is humanely aware, collagistic, and associative. His
|
|
tour as a Navy medic provided the insight for these understated &
|
|
exceptionally tight narratives. His skills as a writer, honed in
|
|
writing two solidly crafted earlier books about Vietnam, allow
|
|
this book of fewer than 40 text pages to vibrate with the hideous
|
|
corpses and limbs, the "legs that were not legs... that were
|
|
glutinous mire, that were ooze." A resurrection of "every
|
|
drowning ghost and airborne soul." A field notebook--beautiful
|
|
and dreadful.--jl
|
|
|
|
Joel Dailey: DOPPLER EFFECTS--Shockbox Press, PO Box 7226, Nashua
|
|
NH, 03060. 20 pp., $2.00 (?). Dead cats, car sex, seductive
|
|
Cheryl Dreams stories, and other weird juvenilia fill this
|
|
booklet. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old and jaded, but this
|
|
seemed light weight. I tried to give it a handful of chances, but
|
|
everytime I had to let it drop.--o
|
|
|
|
Gary David: A LOG OF DEADWOOD--North Atlantic Books, PO Box 12327,
|
|
Berkeley, CA, 94701. 144 pp., $9.95. Labeled a postmodern epic
|
|
of the South Dakota Gold Rush. Gary David's work does attempt to
|
|
deconstruct a period of history limited to an active linear
|
|
journal-like format whereby most conventions are broken down &
|
|
accented with images from The Wizard of Oz, The Tibetan Book of
|
|
the Dead, the Old American West; utilizing Viking fury, Jungian
|
|
Symbolism, Sioux Legends, & even a touch of hard science.
|
|
Actually 49 presences, each a poem, each a day in the journal of
|
|
Deadwood 1876. From "Day 25": "...spear-shaker, you're gonna
|
|
cry/ 96 tears!" Or, from "Day 48": "I feel my days/ over the
|
|
mirror of its pages.//...white stone black stone/make.// Gung ho &
|
|
hard on/ rising red, but on the run."--rrle
|
|
|
|
Jeff Derksen: DWELL--Talonbooks, 201-1019 East Cordova, Vancouver
|
|
BC, V6A 1M8. 98 pp., $9.95. Derksen scrutinizes all; the pieces
|
|
in this book are the ongoing critique of living the life he
|
|
lives--the culture, the politics; nothing escapes, nothing
|
|
devolves into sentimentality, everything receives a keen, if
|
|
sometimes merely whispered, analysis. It is observation with
|
|
edge, with keen insight, with a fair amount of cynicism, and a
|
|
pleasing, sometimes brilliant, play on language. The pieces in
|
|
the book vary interestingly both formally, and in what they take
|
|
on. "Hold on to your bag, Betty" is a wonderful, resonant and
|
|
sometimes lush "report" from foreign lands; "Temp Corp", the final
|
|
piece in the book, is spare but emotionally packed, held very
|
|
close to the line of breaking, tracing a kind of emotional pain
|
|
that only loss engenders. A wonderful book from this up n' coming
|
|
Canadian writer.--jg
|
|
|
|
Paul Dilsaver: A CURE FOR OPTIMISM: POEMS--Sky and Sage Books,
|
|
PO Box 3606, Rapid City SD. 72 pp. And I thought that I was a
|
|
pessimist! The language of ultimate despair. Dark laughter drawn
|
|
from a sadness, a jaded contempt for homo sapiens and "the
|
|
blinding terrors of consciousness." Praying for amnesia and
|
|
oblivion. Extraordinary world weariness and misanthropy--as
|
|
|
|
John Dollis: BL( )NK SPACE--Runaway Spoon, PO Box 3621, Port
|
|
Charlotte FL, 33949. $5.00. Dollis writes poetry that appears
|
|
abstract and elusive on the surface but is rich in the depths.
|
|
He is dealing with the fundamental means by which we arrive at a
|
|
sense of ourselves, define ourselves, and communicate this sense
|
|
to the world at large. But rather than taking shelter in pure
|
|
philosophy he incorporates elements of the everyday, giving his
|
|
work a connectedness that normally is missing from such studied
|
|
introspection. He introduces an idea then detaches from it, moves
|
|
around it, rediscovers it evolving into the fibers of his own
|
|
intelligence, a fascinating process to observe and participate
|
|
in.--jb
|
|
|
|
Larry Eigner: WINDOWS/WALLS/YARD/WAYS--Black Sparrow Press,
|
|
24 Tenth St., Santa Rosa CA, 95401. 192 pp., $13.00(cloth).
|
|
Eigner has been the inspiration for many poets who have read him,
|
|
and read by many where he lives in the Bay Area, but he has never
|
|
received the audience he deserves. He is simply one of the finest
|
|
poets of a generation that included Robert Duncan, Charles Olson,
|
|
and James Broughton, not to mention the Beat Poets. This volume,
|
|
which covers the period 1959-1992, presents a large enough
|
|
selection that someone, having never read Eigner, would come away
|
|
with a good understanding of his work, not to mention a change in
|
|
his or her way of looking at things. There is an almost Eastern
|
|
sense of awareness in Eigner's poetry, a stillness in the imagery,
|
|
so quiet & yet so intense. You can see the images in your mind's
|
|
eye so clearly that when you move into an odd turn of phrase you
|
|
move through it and are changed almost without your noticing it.
|
|
The poem "July 22 87":
|
|
|
|
water splashes
|
|
At the surface
|
|
and hits you
|
|
whatever things
|
|
may be
|
|
or have been
|
|
|
|
But there is no way to do justice to Eigner's poetry in a
|
|
short review, or in a long one. If you like poetry of any kind,
|
|
from traditional to wildly experimental, you will be changed by
|
|
reading this book. Very highly recommended.--jb
|
|
|
|
Endwar: FOUR WINDOWS, ONE FRAME--Institutional Projects, PO Box
|
|
10973, State College PA , 16805. 12 pp.+tapes, $20.00. The box
|
|
this material comes in describes the audio tapes included as "four
|
|
antitapes (total time 2 seconds)." It's all in the packaging and
|
|
labeling. Yes, very Cagean, but no minor imitation--in fact,
|
|
about as appealing an extension of the genre as I've come across.
|
|
--bg
|
|
|
|
Endwar: UNTITLED--Institutional Projects, PO Box 10973, State
|
|
College PA , 16805. 6 pp., $1.00. A scrap of found poetry and
|
|
three business cards with little 2-part conceptual poems on them,
|
|
in two cases on both sides. Extremely clever, like the card with
|
|
"Bill of Sale" on one side and "Bill of Rights" on the other.
|
|
Fascination equation when you think about it.--bg
|
|
|
|
Michael Estabrook: STRIPPED & SHIVERING--BGS Press, 1240 William
|
|
St., Racine WI, 53402. 20 pp., $2.00. You get the impression, on
|
|
first reading these poems, that Michael Estabrook is a novelist--
|
|
not long ago, in a letter, Estabrook told me he'd tried to write a
|
|
novel, but he wasn't entirely satisfied with the result. So, I
|
|
imagine, he let the poetry take over. STRIPPED & SHIVERING
|
|
consists of 19 short poems, each poem a personality sketch.
|
|
Estabrook's lines are sharp, his words well chosen. Too many
|
|
poets make us plow through line after line, serving up too much
|
|
verbiage in the fat. Estabrook's poems are small, one-takes,
|
|
well-crafted arrows. They instruct, without didacticism, about
|
|
the hard knocks of life.--kn
|
|
|
|
Terry Everton: MANNEQUIN DREAMS ROTTING THERE IN MUGSWEAT AND
|
|
SUDS--Borderline Press, PO Box 741178, Arvada CO, 80006. 24 pp.,
|
|
$2.00. Jesus, with an opening poem like "mannequin dreams rotting
|
|
there in mugsweat and suds" where a drunk in a bar has a tooth
|
|
fall out, a woman buys it for five bucks, and when the man asks
|
|
her what she's going to do with it she says: "I'm building/ myself
|
|
a man/ one piece at a time"--I'd say, it's a winner. Everton
|
|
tosses the reader into a world filled with competitive hookers,
|
|
incompetent fabulous boyfriends who can't even kill their cheating
|
|
old ladys without goofing it up, bar farts, out of control fires,
|
|
german shepherds slaughtered for stealing chickens, and rats
|
|
fighting in alleys for the scraps left by drunks--action among
|
|
scavengers, and hard gritty survival tales of the down and out.--o
|
|
|
|
Lawerence Ferlinghetti: THESE ARE MY RIVERS New & Selected Poems
|
|
1955-1993--New Directions, 80 Eighth Ave., New York NY, 10011.
|
|
320 pp., $22.95. Any library of 20th century poetry would have to
|
|
include the work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is a connector
|
|
between contemporary and modern. Engaged in the events of his
|
|
age, moving through the world igniting sparks, illuminations--not
|
|
unlike the imagists in form, or the troubadors in romance, but
|
|
completely, purely Ferlighetti. There is no mistaking his voice,
|
|
a classic sensibility writing the poetry of a world spinning
|
|
sensless in dissolution. His poetry is real and direct, in
|
|
ordinary tongue, but rarely resigned, never hopeless. At the end
|
|
of "Assassination Raga," in part a commemoration of the Kennedy
|
|
assassinations, after facing the cold reality of bitter death he
|
|
says, "There is no god but Life" and leaves us with "People with
|
|
roses/ behind the barricades!"
|
|
The poems are his own selection from his books, and includes
|
|
an excellent selection of new work. Ferlinghetti has certainly
|
|
been a poet of our times, but has also certainly written in
|
|
eternity, suspending the events and his own flesh and blood soul
|
|
there, illuminations of the world.--jb
|
|
|
|
Huck Finch: PROGRESS--Anatomy Floaters Clearing House, 3113
|
|
Bernadette Ln., Sarasota FL, 34234. 18 pp., $1.00. Striking
|
|
photograph-sequence in shades of day-glo green of some
|
|
unidentifiable road-killed animal's week-by-week decomposition.
|
|
With texts. Also a cover photo of the author kissing a deer head
|
|
at a roadkill art show at the University of South Florida... for
|
|
which action he was promptly ushered out.--bg
|
|
|
|
Charles Henri Ford: OM KRISHNA I--Bogg Publications, 422 N.
|
|
Cleveland St., Arlington VA, 22201. 20 pp., SASE (large). This
|
|
book, offered in Bogg's free-for-postage series, was published in
|
|
1979 by Cherry Valley Editions. Charles Henri Ford was one of the
|
|
"founders of the New York school" of poetry, but this book is not
|
|
a very good primer on that genre. OM KRISHNA I is an
|
|
uncomfortable mix of '50s styles, '60s subjects, and '70s me-
|
|
generation attitude. The book (mostly one long poem) combines
|
|
beat, subconscious stream-of-consciousness, flower-power pop
|
|
philosophy... a dash of Eastern mysticism and a fistful of pop
|
|
literary references. But it's not a savory stew. Ford published
|
|
his first volume of verse in 1938, but OM KRISHNA I sounds hippy-
|
|
dippy and temporal, a detour by a graying poet into the love-beads
|
|
scene.--rkk
|
|
|
|
Edward Foster: THE SPACE BETWEEN HER BED AND CLOCK--Norton Cocker,
|
|
PO Box 640543, San Francisco CA, 94164. 44 pp., $5.95. The roles
|
|
of critic and poet are merged in a poetic space that engenders a
|
|
work which expands the tradition of Shelley's "A Defense of
|
|
Poetry" and counters the smug extremes of T. S. Eliot. Foster's
|
|
preface, "Poetry Has Nothing To Do With Politics" is a refreshing
|
|
reaction to critics who suggest that their reductions of meaning-
|
|
generation processes in the poem are more important that the poem
|
|
itself. This is a welcome diatribe--we're getting used to seeing
|
|
Language poets people-pulped by Tiannamen Square vintage critical
|
|
tanks who have little or no love for the poetry itself, they only
|
|
want to smash the work into their own agendas. Foster's poetry
|
|
resists critical appropriation by refusing to confine itself to a
|
|
single form or prosodic arrangement. This is negative capability
|
|
taken to a new level & it feels good--like flight-simulating G-
|
|
forces in a jet built for oblivion.--ssn
|
|
|
|
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 cipher,/ 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
|
|
|
|
Celestine Frost: AN IMAGINED EXPERIENCE OVER THE ENTRANCE--Dusty
|
|
Dog, 1904-A Gladden, Gallup NM, 87301. 55 pp., $5.95. This
|
|
chapbook is a nice surprise--Celestine Frost's crafting is a real
|
|
find. It's exquisite work, dense and enveloping with a strong,
|
|
assured narration. Celestine is adept at both metaphoric work and
|
|
down-to-earth storylines--and manages to toss off lines like "O it
|
|
had come to the morning/ of the drug bitter end// with that
|
|
quality/ of a private bath" without being cliched or sophomoric.
|
|
There's only one literary price to pay for Celestine's imagery...
|
|
the reader needs to take a breather every dozen pages or so.--rkk
|
|
|
|
Peter Ganick: NEWS ON SKIS--Avenue B, PO Box 542, Bolinas CA,
|
|
94924. 61 pp., $8.00. In three parts; the first a wonderful play
|
|
on UPPER and lower case, a rant that becomes a mesmerizing
|
|
cadenced song; the second a visually compelling array of geometric
|
|
stanzas--an interesting tension created by the sense that the
|
|
language/content is there solely to fill out the (literal) form;
|
|
and the third, an Epilogue, is a series of ellipses, dash, and
|
|
period-ridden stanzas and lines. This book offers a pleasing
|
|
variety, in form, shape, and tone. The back cover blurbs are the
|
|
most loudly ironic I've come across--text is layered over other
|
|
text so that a sort of ulterior alphabet is formed--no word
|
|
recognizable, but the sentiment is clear. A fun book.--jg
|
|
|
|
Bob Grumman: EXCERPT FROM RABBIT STEW--Anatomy Floaters Clearing
|
|
House, 3113 Bernadette Lane, Sarasota FL, 34234. 15 pp. Perhaps
|
|
one would have waited for the complete work to appear before
|
|
attempting a review, but this little tidbit of a longer piece is
|
|
too tempting to let pass. It consists of a dialogue between Ned
|
|
and Fred (other characters intrude later) who refer to various
|
|
incidents of incest, necrophlia, and murder, all in a rather
|
|
absurdist, offhand manner. One wants to read more of this!--jmb
|
|
A portion of one of Grumman's plays, somewhere beyond
|
|
Surrealism or the antics of the Cabaret Voltaire. For the space
|
|
of a few lines the dialog is odd, but logical, then complications
|
|
arise, sometimes by intellectual extension of the dialog,
|
|
sometimes by poetic flight, and we tremble joyously as our nerves
|
|
are ripped out by these wicked imaginative turns. There are
|
|
problems with wheelbarrow theft, and beaten mothers, a man named
|
|
Wally drug around with a rope, and other things that begin to make
|
|
strange sense. Personas shift and veer into one another,
|
|
characters pontificate and confess. But through what could be
|
|
agony a sense of joy is dancing and the plays begins to reveal
|
|
itself in the mind of the beholder. This is a delight to read and
|
|
it would be better still to see the whole play performed.--jb
|
|
|
|
Mark Hammer: IRIS--Shuffaloff Press, 260 Plymouth Ave., Buffalo
|
|
NY, 14213. 12 pp., $3.00. A series of quite, precise lyrics each
|
|
with the title "iris" and dedicated to poets like John Weiners and
|
|
John Clarke. The poems often recall the crafted devotions of some
|
|
of Robin Blaser's work, another poet who is quoted significantly
|
|
in the book. But these poems work best because the accuracy of
|
|
their own insights is not overwhelmed by the writer's obvious
|
|
admiration for this illustrious and varied influences--despite
|
|
those influences (and very unlike a lot of recent poetry that
|
|
seems to try to imitate greatness) the carefully sharp vision here
|
|
is clearly Hammer's own.--mw
|
|
|
|
Keith Higginbotham: GLOOMY NEW LIFE--Burning Llama Press, 100
|
|
Courtland Dr., Columbia SC, 29223. 8 pp., SASE? Dopey pix
|
|
sprinkled with word and phrases in various typographies that warp
|
|
together a droll story that begins, "I grew up/ fucked in/ What
|
|
the Seventies did to/ gender, with boys/ and girls dancing in
|
|
separate/ rotes of pain/ Clamped to their/ unsensuous/ slang/ of
|
|
denial."--bg
|
|
A small booklet of collaged found texts and images with a
|
|
definite, if elliptical, autobiographical narrative structure.
|
|
Childhood, sexuality, class, history: a rich mixture of topics
|
|
roiling about in a visually stimulating and humorous format.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Lita Hornick & Poet Friends: GREAT QUEENS WHO LOVED POETRY: TO
|
|
ELIZABETH & ELANOR--Giorno Poetry Systems, 222 Bowery, New York
|
|
NY, 10012. 74 pp. A professionally produced perfect-bound book
|
|
with color illustrations, consisting of poetry by Lita Hornick in
|
|
collaboration with a variety of poets, mostly from NY, such as
|
|
Jeff Wright, Alice Notley, John Giorno, Ron Padgett, Rochelle
|
|
Owens, George Economou, Bob Rosenthal, Paul Violi, Anne Waldman,
|
|
Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky, among others. The poems are
|
|
generally in a conversational first-person voice, and have a
|
|
consistency of tone that is a bit surprising considering that
|
|
Hornick's collaborators are such a variety of differing and strong
|
|
poets. This suggest that hers in the dominant voice in these
|
|
exchanges. The volume also includes reproductions of artwork from
|
|
her collection, a "credo," and an essay, "Why I Love Gay Men."
|
|
An entertaining book focusing on a unique and intriguing
|
|
personality.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Tom House: NAZIS & NOSE JOBS--Tom House, PO Box 120661, Nashville
|
|
TN, 37212. 12 pp., $3.00. House has never been one to shy away
|
|
from trouble, and his strong political (if not necessarily
|
|
"politically correct") stances have always been clear. This time
|
|
House attacks media manipulation, government seduction, planetary
|
|
self-destruction, fuckin' the flag in the name of punk, politics
|
|
and pornography, televised evangelists, and a hundred other things
|
|
that piss him off so much that even the anarchists are afraid to
|
|
take him on. This is hard core, without pretense or plastic
|
|
presentation.--o
|
|
|
|
William Howe: TRIPFLEA--Tailspin Press, 418 Richmond, #2,, Buffalo
|
|
NY, 14222. $5.00. This is the first "book" from a brand new
|
|
press. Tailspin's project will be to challenge the notion of what
|
|
a book is, that is the form of a book itself. Tailspin will
|
|
produce concrete chapbooks. This first offering by William Howe
|
|
arrives in an envelope and appears to be ordinary until one opens
|
|
the "book." The pages not only turn towards the right but
|
|
alternate pages turn towards the left. It is as if two books
|
|
collided. This allows the free floating text on the alternate
|
|
pages to reform endlessly. There is no narrative poetry enclosed.
|
|
Words are grouped in clusters and as the pages combine and
|
|
recombine there is a fluctuating constellation or word units.
|
|
Here is a map of words that leads to the imagination.--mb
|
|
The first in a new series of chapbooks devoted to exploring
|
|
the physical possibilities of the chapbook format. The pages of
|
|
this book are folded over each other, so that opening the book is
|
|
like opening a series of doors, each of which changes the layout
|
|
of the words in front of the reader. The words themselves are
|
|
angry stutters of pun-filled language ("sometimes i change
|
|
my/ mem(shoes) ory" arranged in striking visual fragments; the eye
|
|
roves around the surface of the pages instead of reading from top
|
|
to bottom. The constantly changing field of words resists all
|
|
attempts at unity, a visual tripflea in a long dark night of the
|
|
soul.--mw
|
|
TRIPFLEA's readers can't escape their responsibility for the
|
|
order of the text they read -- but this is hardly a solemn
|
|
responsibility. Howe separates and isolates letters, words,
|
|
phrases, and spreads these fragments across the page;
|
|
deformations, klang associations, and polyglot puns yield the
|
|
"well puteed achaeans," the "wallaby wannabe," the "meatbook," and
|
|
"laus methedrine hydrochloride." This is the sort of book that
|
|
will make me think of Raymond Queneau's permutational sonnet
|
|
sequence Cent mille milliards de poe`mes, but there's a difference
|
|
in Howe's work. The mathematician Queneau's work is generated
|
|
from the formal structures of the sonnet, while the reader, who
|
|
would need a minimum of 190,258,751 years to read through the
|
|
complete sequence, is in effect made redundant. Once the
|
|
permutational principle is grasped, everything of importance has
|
|
been grasped. Howe, on the other hand, leaves much less room for
|
|
textual permutations (his unit is the whole page, while Queneau's
|
|
was the line). What's foregrounded, instead, is the reader's work
|
|
with the text Howe, as "simulated authorial figure," has put
|
|
together. But Howe (unlike Queneau) is very present in this book;
|
|
the reader will have to struggle with him in order to redirect the
|
|
text. And just as that struggle reaches its peak, the text itself
|
|
will jump many times its height into the air and land where you
|
|
didn't expect it to. Future concrete chapbooks from tailspin
|
|
press will include work by Ken Sherwood (of RIF/T) and Michael
|
|
Basinski.--cp
|
|
|
|
Robert Howington: SPIKED SLURPEE--UBP, PO Box 25760, Los Angeles
|
|
CA, 76147. 21 pp., $2.00. Howington writes like Mickey Spillane
|
|
on acid, with short short stories that carry all the black and
|
|
white film noir he can muster. This short collection was a fun
|
|
read--car jackings, bowel movements revenged by vicious kids in
|
|
Texas, wet dreams of Madonna, bad ass wannabes, killers passing
|
|
the time in bars, dog murderers, rapes, uzis, and other tales so
|
|
weird I'm glad Howington lives 1000 miles away from Chicago.
|
|
These stories remind me of early Bukowski--fun and playful and so
|
|
mean they make the kids in horror flicks look innocent.--o
|
|
Nine short stories, most under 1,000 words. His themes are
|
|
influenced by the crime genre, a combination of Todd Moore and
|
|
Charles Bukowski. In "Old-Fashion Grilled Pound Cake," a man is
|
|
shot to death outside a bar and Howington's protagonist offers the
|
|
killer the last of his beer. A woman witnesses murder in "The
|
|
Long Cool Drag"; she calmly remarks how it reminds her of "Miami
|
|
Vice." There are guns everywhere, especially in Texas--maybe too
|
|
many. I read along, patiently waiting for the author to change
|
|
gears, take me somewhere else. But he keeps on, driving home one
|
|
violent scene after another. Robert W. Howington knows how to
|
|
write--I just wish he'd write about something more than murder in
|
|
American streets.--kn
|
|
|
|
Robert W, Howington and C.F. Roberts: FUCK YOU!--Wormfeast Press,
|
|
PO Box 519, Westminster MD, 21158. 18 pp., $3.00. The shock
|
|
value of this chapbook would undoubtedly outrage Miss Manners.
|
|
There are images of murder, torture, flatulation, animal
|
|
copulation, vomit, and kinky sex. Robert W. Howington is
|
|
described as "poet, nut, admirer of serial killers & Bukowski,"
|
|
and C.F. Roberts is "sickly, sweet, painful, vampires and
|
|
goblins." Now that we have parameters, let me go on to say
|
|
Howington throws in crude stick-cartoons of oral sex. I don't
|
|
know why. Truly representative of the shock poetry underground,
|
|
the kind of stuff that you never show to children, and which
|
|
raises the hackles of born-again Christians and the prosecutor's
|
|
office alike.--kn
|
|
|
|
Don A. Hoyt: A NEW KERYGMA--Bootleg Press, PO Box 158, Uniondale
|
|
NY, 11553. 24 pp. Don Hoyt is a classic poet--that is, he takes
|
|
a single emotion, event or scene and draws it out through vivid
|
|
and complex language. Lots of similes and metaphors and that sort
|
|
of poetry stuff. Traditional work where the term "craftsmanship"
|
|
can still be applied. It's not the sort of poetry a person zips
|
|
through like a comic book, but the type that should be enjoyed
|
|
over a cup of hot java, a box of bon-bons and a snowy day outside.
|
|
>From philosophy to satire, Hoyt covers the gamut in these 15
|
|
poems.--rkk
|
|
|
|
Albert Huffstickler: CITY OF THE RAIN--Press of Circumstance,
|
|
312 E. 43rd St. #103, Austin TX, 78751. 36 pp., $6.00. This
|
|
collection of poetry started badly for me; with a rhymey ballad
|
|
about the absence of a "place to ease your pain/ in the City of
|
|
the Rain." The next poem concerned a rain that made the poet want
|
|
to scream (his description) because it "was my loneliness and
|
|
disenchantment." But then came some highly effective barroom
|
|
slices of life in the bitter-sweet Bukowski mode that redeemed the
|
|
book.--bg
|
|
|
|
Albert Huffstickler: THE DARK FLOWER--Press of Circumstance, 312
|
|
East 43rd Street #103, Austin, Texas, 78751. 8 pp. Small but
|
|
precious, easy to slip into your pocket when you are headed
|
|
somewhere and might get caught without something to read, the
|
|
subway, the restroom at work, behind the dumpster while the crack
|
|
heads shoot it out, or anywhere. Beautiful purple cover with the
|
|
poet's own artwork, and one long poem inside. "They found her
|
|
sleeping/on a large stone, curled up/child like, face soft."--rrle
|
|
|
|
G. Huth: DBQPPRODBOOQPDB #9--dbqp, 875 Central Parkway,
|
|
Schenectady NY, 12309. 4 pp., SASE. Actually this publisher's
|
|
catalog, but well worth sending for, filled as it is with
|
|
Joyceanated locutions such as "contradionary," "eternaphemera,"
|
|
and "stamge speace." Includes a number of Larry Tomoyasu's
|
|
thought-whirring illuscriptations; and presents through its list
|
|
of dbqp "merchandise" a rich survey of what's going on at the most
|
|
inventive margins of poetry.--bg
|
|
|
|
Geof Huth: ANALPHABET--Burning Press, PO Box 585, Lakewood OH,
|
|
44107. 28 pp., $10.00. Geoff's takeoff on a child's alphabet
|
|
primer is full of little delights. Instead of words beginning
|
|
with the letter, the letter itself is depicted:
|
|
A
|
|
and a caption is added:
|
|
An A
|
|
Then usually another frame or two is added to playfully comment
|
|
on the one above:
|
|
An
|
|
with caption:
|
|
A An
|
|
Lots of surprises as a fairly rigid form is bent and played with
|
|
in 26 different ways.--ar
|
|
|
|
Ruth Jespersen: THE BLINK OF AN EYE--7030 Evergreen Woods Trl.,
|
|
Apt. B-136, Spring Hill FL, 34608. 438 pp., $29.95. Originally
|
|
published by Mother of Ashes Press--publisher Joe Singer is gone,
|
|
but we can't let this book die! Ruth Jespersen has acquired the
|
|
copies from Joe's estate. This is one of the strangest novels I
|
|
have ever read. It's as if Anais Nin's love of self-display were
|
|
mixed with Djuana Barnes' peculiar gentlemen callers and Ivy
|
|
Compton-Burnett's conversational monomanias. Jespersen is
|
|
extremely funny, idiosyncratic and bizarre. This is a novel that
|
|
hinges on her fascinating and quirky self. It's the kind of work
|
|
that could, and should, have a cult following. A feminist work in
|
|
a sense, about a woman with an offbeat but healthy mind, always
|
|
being her own inimitable self.--as
|
|
|
|
Andrew Joron & Robert Frazier: INVISIBLE MACHINES--Jazz Police
|
|
Books, PO Box 3235, Lagrande OR, 97850. 60 pp., $9.00. Science
|
|
Fiction poetry spanning thirteen years of collaborative writing.
|
|
It highlights the difference between SF and other genres of
|
|
writing--the intensely shared, interactive, collaborative elements
|
|
of SF, since we all have a stake in the Future and a soul in the
|
|
Other. In his introduction, Andrew Joron sums it up well: "SF is,
|
|
in fact, a dialogical genre, one in which texts are written in
|
|
direct response to other texts, in which meanings are produced and
|
|
sustained by community effort... I believe the cross-pollinating
|
|
spirit of SF can be authentically transferred to the writing of
|
|
poetry." Illustrated with strange photos by noted surrealist
|
|
Thomas Wiloch.--dw
|
|
|
|
Karl Kempton: RUNE 6: FIGURES OF SPEECH and RUNE 7: POEM, A
|
|
MAPPING--Runaway Spoon, PO Box 3621, Port Charlotte FL, 33949.
|
|
$5.00@. With Kempton a typewriter is not a machine, but a ritual
|
|
device with which he articulates his magic. He has, over the
|
|
years, created a metalanguage, unique to himself, instantly
|
|
recognizable. In RUNE 6: FIGURES OF SPEECH we see figures, at
|
|
times human-like and sometimes something other. But these images
|
|
are organic, full of living creatures speaking to us through their
|
|
form. In RUNE 7: POEM, A MAPPING we begin with "poem" typed in
|
|
block letters then follow a metamorphosis and charting of the word
|
|
and resonances surrounding it. These two new books testify to the
|
|
power of Kepmton's continuing exploration in mythic fields of
|
|
poetic intelligence.--jb
|
|
|
|
Elayne Keratsis: JACK AND MISS CRACK--Firestarter Films and Press,
|
|
802 Euclid Ave. #102, Miami Beach, FL, 33139. 82 pp., $11.00.
|
|
Elayne is a princess of Pop illusion, with a smooth flowing voice,
|
|
and a sharp but mournful chorus which exerts an ironic presence;
|
|
dramatic, flirtful, bittersweet songs conducted with vamp/camp
|
|
wit. There is a dark side to her elastic alcoholic visions--
|
|
Elayne is one bitchy, funk-driven, charming, dynamic word-slave.
|
|
Her incendiary neo-beat talent makes poetry and short stories fun
|
|
again. --rrle
|
|
|
|
Arthur Winfield Knight: COWBOY POEMS--Potpourri Publishing
|
|
Company, PO Box 8278, Prairie Village, Kansas, 66208. 54 pp.,
|
|
$3.50. Fifty-two poems, more or less traditional free verse, all
|
|
centering on various 19th century outlaws and their family and
|
|
friends. Jesse James, Cole Younger, Belle Starr, Doc Holiday, Kid
|
|
Curry, Black Bart, and Geronimo are just a few . Knight has
|
|
extended the outlaw metaphor to include very human thoughts and
|
|
acts, utilizing empathy and understanding to create remarkable
|
|
personalities which makes them more hero and less villain in the
|
|
eyes of the reader. Like these words from Cole Younger: "...but
|
|
I'm not sorry about riding/ with Frank and Jesse./ I'm not sorry
|
|
about anything." or these words from Calamity Jane: "'I'm just
|
|
ahead of my time./ In another fifty years/ all women will be doin'
|
|
it." This is a fine collection for fans of the Old West, outlaws,
|
|
or revisioned details.--rrle
|
|
|
|
Michael Kriesel: LONG DARK--Zerx Press, 5016 Inspiration Dr. SE,
|
|
Albuquerque NM, 87108. 44 pp., $4.00(?). Kriesel mixes modern
|
|
mythology (Kryptonite, Cthulu, Bill Bixby, Dr. Doom) with his
|
|
post-Navy experiences in the long poem LONG DARK. Alienation and
|
|
disorientation is captured in lines like: "My lst week in the
|
|
graveyard/ and we're in this metal shed/ where all the people who
|
|
die/ over winter get stored because/ the ground's too hard to
|
|
dig," and "I've always been attracted/ to the wives of friends./
|
|
Perhaps because we have/ so much in common," and "You were 2 hours
|
|
of the/ best foreplay I ever had". There are explosions of
|
|
honesty, confusion, and anger. There is fruitless lust, and
|
|
endless pointless jobs. There is the America we live in today,
|
|
undressed, and without illusions.--o
|
|
|
|
T. L. Kryss: STRANGE ATTRACTIONS--Zerx Press, 5016 Inspiration Dr.
|
|
SE, Albuquerque NM, 87108. 24 pp., $3.00. Seventeen poems from
|
|
Cleveland's T. L. Kryss. "There will be no academic squabbles
|
|
about authorship or emotional influences on this work," remarks
|
|
Steven Ferguson in his introduction to this small chapbook.
|
|
Indeed, Kryss takes us to Treblinka, Cleveland's lower east side,
|
|
and even out toward the edge of the solar system. His poetry is
|
|
tight, concise, and unique in voice. Tom Kryss--along with d.a.
|
|
levy, William Wantling, and Charles Bukowski--remains an icon of
|
|
America's largely disregarded underground literary tradition.
|
|
STRANGE ATTRACTIONS, in addition to Tom's poems, is host to
|
|
several drawings by Harland Ristau, Dan Nielsen, Hilary
|
|
Krzywkowski, and T. L. and Carolyn Kryss.--kn
|
|
|
|
Janet Kuypers: LOOKING THROUGH THEIR WINDOWS--Scars Publications,
|
|
5310 North Magnolia, Chicago IL. 20 pp. I like Janet Kuypers'
|
|
poems, even if she occasionally dwells on the emotional
|
|
consequences of death and pan too much. Even so, for a poet under
|
|
30, her mastery of the simple word is exceptional. Too many
|
|
poets, when they attempt a change of persona (especially in the
|
|
first person voice), the result is often flat, unbelievable, too
|
|
forced. Not so with Kuypers. In the poem "Private Lives III, the
|
|
elevated train", she takes us for a ride with morning commute
|
|
yuppies on a crowded train to work. Suddenly the poet's disgust
|
|
for these middle-class workers surfaces; when she observes a woman
|
|
decked out in a full-length fur coat, her reaction becomes the
|
|
urge to spill coffee on the woman. "I'll bet they don't even know
|
|
what the animals they killed for this looked like," she writes.
|
|
Most of the other poems here are good, though Kuypers'
|
|
emotionality can become intense, if not bewildering.--kn
|
|
|
|
Lauren Leja: untitled--Primal Publishing, 107 Brighton Ave.,
|
|
Allston MA, 02134. 10 pp., $2.50. (#l in the Primal Publishing
|
|
Singles Club) Leja writes long spontaneous stream of
|
|
consciousness lines, and they always carry an edge. The first
|
|
story in this chap, HISTORY, crawls into the drunken confessional
|
|
of a woman just picked up by some guy who carries more luggage
|
|
than most tourists. The story QUICKSAND carries another self
|
|
destructive woman into the gutter... and i start to wonder why the
|
|
women in these stories keep walking into stupid fucked up
|
|
situations, as if they'd all just stepped off the bus from the
|
|
suburbs. And it is probably that element, that lack of street
|
|
sense and survival instincts, that makes these stories so
|
|
fascinating. The only complaint I have is that $2.50 is a lot
|
|
of money for ten 5" x 5" pages.--o
|
|
|
|
Lyn Lifshin & Gina Bergamino: WHITE HORSE CAFE--Mulberry Press,
|
|
105 Betty Rd., East Meadow NY, 11554. 24 pp., $1.00. WHITE HORSE
|
|
CAFE is not co-written but divided in two sections; the first by
|
|
Lifshin and the latter half by Bergamino. As usual, Lifshin's
|
|
poems come wham-wham-wham in a torrent of words and visual
|
|
stimuli. This time she's talking love (or as close to it as Lyn
|
|
ever gets in her poetry!). Gina, too, talks about men lost and
|
|
found. The connector? Not a WHITE HORSE CAFE per se, but a
|
|
definite sense of place--bolting the feelings to a specific
|
|
locale.--rkk
|
|
|
|
Gerald Locklin: WOMAN TROUBLE--Event Horizon Press, PO Box 867,
|
|
Desert Hot Springs CA, 92240. 20 pp., $4.95. Locklin's character
|
|
here, a womanizing educator, looks for love in all the wrong
|
|
places. Even so, as a married man, he is in search of "something
|
|
closer to a regular family, a regular marriage," while
|
|
simultaneously looking for sex on the side. The main character,
|
|
Jimmy, "cannot afford a nervous breakdown," so he drinks, only to
|
|
end up in dread of what Hemingway called "The Fear," which the
|
|
rest of us call delirium tremens. He warns friends and associates
|
|
not to "take my drinking as an example or as anything manly or
|
|
romantic." Various women, as if sensing his perpetual horniness,
|
|
tease but do not bed him. In the end, frustrated, he masturbates
|
|
while remembering an affair he had with a "very anal erotic young
|
|
lady." Locklin, as always, knows instinctively how to shape and
|
|
steer good fiction, especially dialogue. He is a master humorist,
|
|
though I'm sure all of this would be lost on the hardboiled
|
|
feminist who'd likely find Gerald's fiction sexist. The rest of
|
|
us can laugh at the absurdity of Jimmy's chaotic existence.--kn
|
|
|
|
Colleen Lookingbill: INCOGNITA--Sink Press, PO Box 590095, San
|
|
Francisco CA, 94159. 61 pp., $8.00. Most of the work in this
|
|
book is in prose form, and explores some of the more interesting
|
|
corners of what prose can do. The sentences, while often
|
|
employing normative grammar and syntax, take a turn.
|
|
Descriptiveness is upended. "Fate with unkissed lips allowing the
|
|
wick to ignite a vigilant ear, mixing things up seemingly
|
|
indestructible after midnight at such an hour an entrancing
|
|
tableau." Run-on sentences at their very best. The words seem to
|
|
expand and contract to fit the space of their thoughts. This is a
|
|
solid and interesting book, well worth reading.--jg
|
|
|
|
Damian Lopes: 2 SLIDES OF A--Fingerprinting Inkoperated, PO Box
|
|
657 Station P, Toronto Ontario, CANADA, M5S 2Y4. 2 "pp." A work
|
|
of visual or concrete poetry presented as two 35mm transparencies
|
|
glass-mounted in plastic settings. The slides, negative and
|
|
positive images of a designed letter A, should be superimposed
|
|
any way one wishes and projected simultaneously. Bound in an
|
|
attractive printed small case rather like a matchbook cover.
|
|
A unique and intriguing production.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Catherine Lynn: THE SNAKE PIT--BGS Press, 1240 William St., Racine
|
|
WI, 53402. 34 pp., $3.00. Every once in a while I read something
|
|
that seems so brutally honest it almost makes me shy. The poems in this collection approach that emotional state. "Relapse"
|
|
captures a nervous breakdown with a panic reaction that left me
|
|
rubber legged, "Doctor Bastard" takes on a sadistic therapist who
|
|
thinks he's an exorcist, "Getting Your Money's Worth" captures
|
|
stealing food while in a hospital. These are real poems, honest
|
|
poems, full of life and weird worlds and therapy.--o
|
|
|
|
Elizabeth MacKiernan: ANCESTORS MAYBE--Burning Deck, 71 Elmgrove
|
|
Ave., Providence RI, 02906. 160 pp., $8.00. Imbued by the odd
|
|
charm that invariably derives from a wacky family, three sisters
|
|
exert themselves to the highest perfection of their
|
|
eccentricities. Understated and delicate humor of the kind that
|
|
our British cousins so pride themselves on possessing. Those who
|
|
delight in little vignettes and the featherlike touch will be
|
|
enchanted by it.--as
|
|
|
|
Stephen-Paul Martin: FEAR & PHILOSOPHY--Detour Press, 1506 Grand
|
|
Ave. #3, St. Paul MN, 55105. 124 pp., $8.95. The best collection
|
|
of meta-fictions I've EVER read. Its peak is a sur-novella in the
|
|
form of an essay--or; better, notes toward an essay, a definitive
|
|
essay--about Superman (and Lois, Jimmy and Perry), whose reality
|
|
(or, mare exactly, equivalence to my and your reality) the text's
|
|
very intelligent narrator takes for granted; and expects us to as
|
|
well. The result is hilarious satire, caustic porn, philosophical
|
|
fun, poetic brilliance, mad sanity--and a text for all-time.--bg
|
|
As we are daily deluged by infotainment and disinformation
|
|
the world narrows to the parameters of the delugion. We notice
|
|
nagging anxieties but are unable to notice anything physical that
|
|
might explain them. Exhausted, we relax further into the media
|
|
haze, only to become more anxious. Such is "civilization" as we
|
|
slide screaming through the final decade of the millenium. In
|
|
these stories, which often read like prose poems wired for speed,
|
|
Martin utilizes the very elements of our anxiety to shatter the
|
|
illusion in the mirror and release us into the world beyond our
|
|
collective dream. He demonstrates through a crucible of topical
|
|
paradox how the individual is continually undermined and buried
|
|
beneath a sea of consumerism until nothing remains but a hollow
|
|
hunger for gleaming new objects suspended before us, we become the
|
|
"hungry ghosts" of Tibetan mythology. But Martin takes this a step
|
|
further, bringing into question the very assumptions on which
|
|
civilization is founded. How much of what we call reality is based
|
|
on these assumptions? In the final section "Double Identity",
|
|
which is one long derangement of the Superman story, we confront
|
|
the essence of this conflict, "But in fact it was a fake George
|
|
Reeves who killed himself in Hollywood Hills. The real George
|
|
Reeves got caught on the silver screen, became pure seeming,
|
|
became what he had to become, became pure cytoplasmic screaming."
|
|
So much of what we identify as ourselves, as what we are willing to
|
|
defend to the death, is nothing more than "pure seeming", the
|
|
narrow mythos of a dwindling cultural apparatus. Driving to the
|
|
dark heart of our psychology, Martin reminds where true freedom
|
|
lies, or at the very least offers us the opportunity of finding
|
|
it for ourselves.--jb
|
|
|
|
Greg Matherly: SHACKLED IN 3-D--The Useless Press, PO Box 413,
|
|
Bristol TN, 37621. 28 pp., $3.00. The opening poem, "Better
|
|
Belief," captures homelessness with a bite that leaves scars: "A
|
|
cynic. A bastard./ A parody of our times./ I love you all...".
|
|
"Falling Together Again" reminds me of the kind of relationships
|
|
that make talk show audiences cringe with fear--an on again, off
|
|
again neurotic messes that go in circles, carrying love in fucked-
|
|
up cycles of despair. "Just Breathing" disputes suicide, casting
|
|
it against the living dead. And that's only the first page in
|
|
this chap..--o
|
|
|
|
Lisa McLaughlin: THE BODY'S EXECUTIONER--tel-let, 1818 Phillips
|
|
Pl., Charleston IL, 61920. 16 pp., $2.00?? Short prose vignettes
|
|
in various shades of surrealism. In one, McLaughlin beautifully
|
|
works Everywoman's coming-of-age depths and derangements out of
|
|
the following passage from a Natural History article on a
|
|
contemporary religious sect: "Young Hutterite girls often create
|
|
a secret world confined to a locked chest. Here are found bits of
|
|
the temporal world... cosmetics... and suntan lotion."--bg
|
|
|
|
Douglas Messerli: ALONG WITHOUT--Littoral Books, 6026 Wilshire
|
|
Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036. 90 pp., $11.95.
|
|
Intertextualities of death and its multiple others--this is a
|
|
"Masque of the Red Death" played out in a large British manor
|
|
house. Plague narrative weaves disparate parts together:
|
|
narratives by Gertrude Stein, Albert Camus, Bram Stoker, Samuel
|
|
Beckett, others; photo stills from Claude Ricochet's underground
|
|
film, SANS LONGTEMPS; voices intoning poetry of ruptured self.
|
|
Messerli's poems grip the sweat that pours down in the middle of a
|
|
back that has been long broken by the horrific thought that even
|
|
what we envision as heaven is lined with gargoyles. Fears,
|
|
contagions, contaminations mark the relationships: "Blood,
|
|
blood only/ binds us to the loving/ lived in the pact of acting."
|
|
Artaud's THEATRE OF CRUELTY is a linguistic shadow behind every
|
|
eye.--ssn
|
|
|
|
Thom Metzger: THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING--Autonomedia, 55 South
|
|
11th St., PO Box 568 Williamsburg Station, Brooklyn NY, 11211.
|
|
188 pp., $6.00. Occasional flashes of what might be termed
|
|
Maldororean rhetorical landscapes that give way to a generalized
|
|
irrational spewing. Rants and post-gnostic disgust! Anarchist
|
|
tirades! To my rational mind it seems imprecation for the sake of
|
|
imprecation. Is the irrationality to a higher purposes? That's
|
|
difficult to say.--as
|
|
|
|
Effie Mihopoulos: LANGUID LOVE LYRICS--Salome/Ommation Press, 5548
|
|
N. Sawyer, Chicago, IL, 60625. 70 pp., $ 8.00. Languid, yes
|
|
sometimes, but always soft, flowing, lyrical. Beautiful without
|
|
the edge, the hard-driving refrains which made her earlier book
|
|
"The Moon Cycle" a gift. Here Effie lets us see another side, a
|
|
magical, moody side applied to loves of all kinds, with exacting
|
|
allusions to Sirens, Medea, Diana, Satyrs, Salome, Angels, George
|
|
Sand, the sun, the army, and even a foot fetish. Her poetry is
|
|
infused with imagery, energy, and an impressive boldness: "The sky
|
|
is a brass drum that gleams/ pound on it/ you will hurt your
|
|
hands..."--rrle
|
|
|
|
Christine Monhollen: RAZOR MOON--Triage Press, PO Box 1166,
|
|
Sterling Heights MI, 48311. $7.95. The majority of the poems in
|
|
this collection locate themselves in the grasp of Eros. As the
|
|
poet notes, "The flesh speaks." Throughout there is a joining in
|
|
the act of love and made as a purled poem fabric from the intimacy
|
|
between a woman and a man. The center of the poetry is the heart
|
|
beneath the mesh of nature within the body self of the "I". The
|
|
heart is a sexual thing. And fleeting as is the apex of love
|
|
there is then loss, losing, separation, and the anticipation of
|
|
and finally the reunion, union, reunion. And so there is the
|
|
notion of death then in all of this life which makes this poetry,
|
|
"the combination becomes a whole."--mb
|
|
|
|
Todd Moore: ARMED & DANGEROUS--BGS Press, 1240 William St., Racine
|
|
WI, 53402. 16 pp., $2.00. Todd Moore shoots from the hip, would
|
|
never consider taking prisoners, and leaves a trail of blood and
|
|
guts, bullets and broken knives, wherever he chooses to go. In
|
|
this collection, with great illustrations by Dan Nielsen, Todd
|
|
rips into the masses with all of the fury and hate and survival
|
|
instincts he can pull out of his gut. In the love poem, "brenda
|
|
dreams," we get lines like: "...all/ roads lead to/ her father/
|
|
who talks to/ his shotgun/ before the/ shooting the/ wound in/
|
|
frank's back/ is a door/ brenda puts/ her face/ inside she/ can
|
|
feel his/ blood going/ w/her tongue". And that is just a quick
|
|
sampling of the turmoil that follows in the other 23 poems in this
|
|
collection.--o
|
|
|
|
Todd Moore: THE LAST GOOD THING--Bull Thistle Press, PO Box 184,
|
|
Jamaica VT, 05343. 24 pp., $9.50. In this new collection Todd's
|
|
words ring as loud as ever, while the chapbook itself is a thing
|
|
of beauty--hand sewn binding, wrap-around cover, handset type so
|
|
perfect and on the mark that if feels like a collector's item
|
|
you'd want to pass on to your grandchildren--that is, until you
|
|
start reading about blood and guts and lust, suicides and murders,
|
|
alcoholic psychosis, brass knuckles and blackjacks, and generally
|
|
a world you would most like to hide from your children if you had
|
|
half a chance. This is pure hardcore violence and libido
|
|
schizophrenia, and some of the best work I've read since, well,
|
|
Todd's last book.--o
|
|
|
|
Todd Moore & Gina Bergamino: AMERICAN CANNIBAL--Mulberry Press,
|
|
105 Betty Rd., East Meadow NY, 11554. 20 pp., $1.00. Poems in
|
|
your face, straight as a razor and right out of the blood-drenched
|
|
reality of the daily news. Todd Moore, known for his multi-volume
|
|
long poem on John Dillinger (which has been abandoned midstream by
|
|
yet another publisher--this time Primal Publishing, two books into
|
|
it, folded...), is also a master of the minimal shock poem, a no-
|
|
bullshit arena where death, torture, and humiliation lurk behind
|
|
drab midwestern facades. Gina Bergamino recreates Jack the
|
|
Ripper, a modern-day reincarnation of the original who serves
|
|
blood to unsuspecting guests in beer. In "Schizophrenic Baby",
|
|
she details insanity; her protagonist smells quinine in the
|
|
shower, envisions "a choir of angels" hovering over her in the
|
|
hospital, and dwells on the abortions she endured before marriage.
|
|
Much of the poetry here is impulsive, not unlike violence and
|
|
insanity itself. AMERICAN CANNIBAL is stark realism. Not for
|
|
the weak of stomach.--kn
|
|
|
|
Gustave Morin: RUSTED CHILDHOOD MEMOIRS--Runaway Spoon, PO Box
|
|
3621, Port Charlotte FL, 33949. $5.00. According to the
|
|
introduction this book is the result of Morin's destroying some
|
|
of his early poems. I did not read any of those early poems so
|
|
I cannot testify to their value, or lack thereof, but their
|
|
destruction has produced an astonishing volume of vizlature. The
|
|
pages are starkly original and beautifully organic, as if an alien
|
|
from some other world had collected scraps from our world and
|
|
assembled a series of language maps accessible only by intuition.
|
|
They also function as a series of paintings consisting of letters,
|
|
pen and ink scribbling and drawing, xerox images and fingerprints.
|
|
Moving images in collision at the crossroad of millenniums, rusted
|
|
childhood memoirs is hauntingly, wonderfully weird.--jb
|
|
|
|
Sheila E. Murphy: TOMMY AND NEIL--Sun/Gemini Press, PO Box 42170,
|
|
Phoenix AZ, 85733. 90 pp., $12.95 paper/$20 hardcover. A book of
|
|
poetry with an unusual premise: each section consisting of 36
|
|
poems written to one of the poet's brothers, on the occasion of
|
|
each's 36th birthday. The volume is professionally produced,
|
|
bound in signatures with color covers, and wider than tall to
|
|
allow ample space for some of the poems' long lines. The poetry
|
|
is personal and intimate, addressing the issues of a particular
|
|
family and particular relationships, but there is nothing maudlin
|
|
about the writing, and it contains none of the usual cliches of
|
|
"confessional" discourse. The language of these poems moves
|
|
seamlessly between what Janet Grey, in a comment on the cover,
|
|
calls the "pre-grammatical" and the "narrative"--this is a major
|
|
factor in creating the sense of intense but relaxed caring and
|
|
attention directed both at the subject/objects of the writing (the
|
|
poet's brothers), and at the act and process of writing itself.
|
|
The book is a treasure; accessible and elusive, personal and
|
|
universal, innovative and immersed in the most traditional of the
|
|
functions of poetry: to illuminate living.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Susan Smith Nash: LIQUID BABYLON--Potes & Poets, 181 Edgemont
|
|
Ave., Elmwood CT, 06110. 54 pp. A remarkable sequence of poems
|
|
bound together by a posture of oblique autobiography, which goes
|
|
far beyond being merely confessional. These poems shift back and
|
|
forth between the first and third person, and between levels of
|
|
involvement in the events, situations, and states-of-mind that
|
|
serve as context for what is at hear a movement toward
|
|
cohesiveness within a process of change and loss, of knowing and
|
|
feeling. A poem from the series "Water Shard Night" illustrates
|
|
some of these qualities: "Unblemished by cigarette or exudate of
|
|
denial--I am/ paid to sing like this, every note reminds me I've
|
|
lost you;/ under paralleled spaces in our roaming, desiring gasps/
|
|
phrasing not music pearls beryls sapphires agates/ mistures of
|
|
unprecious to inlay ceremonial life-in-/ wartime--your eyes
|
|
flutter down drinking wines."
|
|
Apparently an hors-de-commerce limited edition--it is to be
|
|
hoped that the publisher will make more than 42 copies of this
|
|
excellent book available.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Susan Smith Nash: MY LOVE IS APOCALYPSE AND RHINESTONE: THE
|
|
LETTERS OF MARILYN MONROE--Texture Press, 3760 Cedar Ridge Dr.,
|
|
Norman OK, 73072. 40 pp., $4.00. The usual issues revolving
|
|
around MM are raised here (person vs. icon, ideas of the feminine,
|
|
the manipulated and/or manipulating doll, etc.). But along with
|
|
the standard themes of the grotesqueness and destructiveness of
|
|
mass image-making is an entirely different process, a use of the
|
|
topic of MM to create a fuller consciousness of self and self-in-
|
|
its-history and culture that has a positive and life-affirming
|
|
quality about it. The poems vary a great deal in their techniques
|
|
and dictions, going from a discursive series of "Letters" in MM's
|
|
voice, to the illusive, collage-style stanzas of "Pyroman Norway
|
|
Air Till God Passengers Flying": "my skull will infer like fish--
|
|
probable molting w/ syntax / wrinkling little or now dorso-
|
|
ventrally crushed, preserve/ tunnel for dreams or lipstick or
|
|
abdomen-flexured sex-/ restrict virtual, applaud--Pava Temple
|
|
leaning vertical / all Guatemala "you look everything" real
|
|
forebears..."
|
|
This book is not simply another spin of the Monroe prayer-
|
|
wheel, but an investigation into how that wheel continues to
|
|
exist, and how it connects to the world we inhabit. Whether
|
|
you're interested in MM or not, this book is well worth reading
|
|
and pondering over. It concludes with an essay by Thomas Lowe
|
|
Taylor on Nash's poetics, which is a useful and enthusiastic take
|
|
on what she does here.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Susan Smith Nash: PORNOGRAPHY--Generator Press, 8139 Midland Rd.,
|
|
Mentor OH, 44060. 28 pp., $4.00. PORNOGRAPHY is like a slightly
|
|
wild trip out west, where you're not too sure of the terrain, not
|
|
too sure of the condition of your trip at all, but there you are.
|
|
America does you, or you do America. Nash takes us along. Photos
|
|
provide travelogue "action" at a similar remove. Interesting,
|
|
provocative, worth a look. We all get to be voyeurs in this
|
|
one.--jg
|
|
|
|
Dan Nielsen: INSINCERE FLATTERY & THINLY VEILED SARCASM--BGS
|
|
Press, 1240 William St., Racine, WI, 53402. 16 pp., $2.00.
|
|
This wonderful little chap with its 15 poem by the Wisconsin's
|
|
voracious, wildman poet-artist-publisher Dan Nielsen is
|
|
provocative, thrilling, head-wrenching, and almost as much fun as
|
|
a bucket of psychotropics. Most of these have previously appeared
|
|
in publications like TIGHT, PEARL, BOUILLABAISSE, IN YOUR FACE,
|
|
etc. His poetry is startling, tight, compressed, etched in absurd
|
|
realism, bulging with comic relief, or sardonic sadness. Nielson
|
|
has a butcher's-eye for splintered cultural bones, and he is
|
|
serving up a soup of choice social satire, laced with bizarre
|
|
line art by Greg Evanson. Damn nice.--rrle
|
|
|
|
Dan Nielsen: YOU'RE OUT OF MY MIND, BUT SO AM I--Fell Swoop,
|
|
3003 Ponce De Leon St., New Orleans LA, 70119. 16 pp., $3.00.
|
|
Dan Nielsen is a natural master of the tongue-in-cheek poem.
|
|
He is minimalistic, drives for the point, and his lines are
|
|
unadorned, straight-forward. The absurdity of childhood and
|
|
sexual relations predominate here. In "And It Paid Off" he
|
|
writes: "I remember/ my father/ asking me// what I was doing/ to
|
|
prepare/ for the future// 'I'm hallucinating,/ dad." When the
|
|
poet attempts to instruct his son how to recognize a crazy
|
|
person--describing the way they look and act--the son wants to
|
|
know if his father is crazy. In the short story "Joe Got Hard",
|
|
Nielsen introduces a character stoned on acid who attempts to have
|
|
sex with a fat woman; the situation quickly deteriorates when the
|
|
woman's biker husband arrives. Much like a real LSD trip, the
|
|
short story is surreal and disconnected from reality. Nielsen's
|
|
absurdist observations are a welcome digression from a large body
|
|
of poetry that is too serious, academic, or often
|
|
incomprehensible. In addition to his poems, there are drawings
|
|
and collages, all of which are unmistakably Nielsenesque.--kn
|
|
|
|
Kurt Nimmo: SUNFLOWERS OF VAN GOGH--Undulating Bedsheets
|
|
Productions, PO Box 25760, Los Angeles CA, 90025. 18 pp.,
|
|
$1.75. Nimmo writes with a precision you wish those engineers
|
|
who design jets that explode had. When a writer puts you into
|
|
situations you aren't familiar with, you need to trust their
|
|
abilities to get you out--Nimmo carries that authority, that
|
|
illusion of competency you need when the air under your plane just
|
|
isn't enough. In this three story sampling we get meditations in
|
|
both poetic and essay formatted hysteria--the residue of Vietnam
|
|
on modern life. Nimmo is Camus tossed into a suburban Detroit
|
|
trailer park; these stories leave you with that dry heaving
|
|
madness comes from surviving way too long.--o
|
|
|
|
Mark Nowak, ed.: ANTHOLOGY OF NORTH AMERICAN IDEOPHONICS--227
|
|
Montrose Place, Apt. C., St. Paul MN. 92 pp. An assemblage of
|
|
all kinds of texts about the arts but most about "Ethnopoetics &
|
|
the Poet as Other," the title of the first selection, which is by
|
|
Jerome Rothenberg. Among the many other highlights: an essay by
|
|
John Olson on the value of sound for transforming words from
|
|
denotations to things, and a discussion of H.D. and Robert Duncan
|
|
regarding "the poetics of non-market values" by Greg Hewitt.--bg
|
|
|
|
Mario Rene Padilla: REACHING BACK FOR THE NEVER ENDING--Red
|
|
Dancefloor Press, PO Box 7392, Van Nuys CA, 91409-7392. 86 pp.,
|
|
$9.95. "I am the author of my own memories, a child of his own
|
|
making," states Padilla in his prologue, and this collection of
|
|
twenty-five urgent, moving poems reaches out with a semi-lyrical
|
|
free verse style which startles and slides, prods and evokes with
|
|
Mayan beasts and cello notes, the legend of the Nagual, and the
|
|
decapitated body found in a wrecked car thirteen years after the
|
|
accident. Yes, this is a hodgepodge of versatile occurrences and
|
|
manic voices. "I feel the slow coming to an end/ like unwinding
|
|
wire from a wire roll/ or the drip buckets easy sway/ against the
|
|
wind/ I feel the coming end." Padilla is a poet who deals with
|
|
realistic coincidence, class-conscious images, and American myths.
|
|
He overcomes time, reaches into his autobiographical self and
|
|
pulls out poetry which is active and indulgent... "...like twelve
|
|
against one/ just take the baseball bat I thought/ and go lecture
|
|
them about 'one-on-one'/ but my son's matter-of-fact tone 'pop,
|
|
they're all packing guns'"--rrle
|
|
|
|
Clemente Padin & Jorge Caraballo: SOLIDARIDAD URUGUAY--Clemente
|
|
Padin, Casilla Correo Central 1211, Montevideo URAGUAY. 40 pp.
|
|
Documentation of articles about various mail-art and other network
|
|
efforts to free Caraballo and Padn from the imprisonment they
|
|
suffered at the hands of the Uruguayan military government from
|
|
1977 to 1985. Caraballo and Padn were well-known mail artists,
|
|
writers, and visual poets whose case attracted a lot of attention.
|
|
It is good to have this documentation, complete with reproductions
|
|
of pieces of mail-art, of a grim period in this continent's recent
|
|
history. Articles in Spanish or English.--jmb
|
|
|
|
Mark Pawlak: SPECIAL HANDLING--Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn NY.
|
|
90 pp., 10.00. There aren't many, if any, poets writing like Mark
|
|
Pawlak. His poetry has conscience. It actually deals with
|
|
issues, political issues. It calls attention to the world class
|
|
structure and the crushing power of wealth and privilege. I've
|
|
been in dozens of conversations that revolved around the fact that
|
|
poetry has almost no audience. If there were more poetry like
|
|
Pawlak's than every person earning less than 50 grand a year would
|
|
be all ears. Need comparisons? Like Reznikoff. Pawlak has a
|
|
gift for the ironic. A fragment of his poem "Progress in
|
|
Honduras": "in outlying hamlets/ where doctors had been unknown/
|
|
the stooped peasants/ lugging sacks of corn// now ease their
|
|
backaches/ with aspirin at bedtime/ thanks to U.S. medics."--mb
|
|
|
|
John Perlman: ANACOUSTIC--Standing Stones Press, 7 Circle Pines,
|
|
Morris MN, 56267. 16 pp., $2.00. This collection of poems seemed
|
|
mostly discourse on discourse at first. But then it turned into
|
|
"sky & all the/ unstunned stars the moon just/ fallen short of
|
|
full..." and the like, to seem more communion- than discourse-
|
|
centered, a notion supported by my later coming on the word
|
|
"paten" ("plate; esp.: one of precious metal for the Eucharistic
|
|
bread"--a word I've started seeing a lot of in poems lately).--bg
|
|
|
|
John Xerxes Piche: GRUMBLEPHUCK--Love Bunni, 2622 Princeton Rd.,
|
|
Cleveland Hts. OH, 44118. 48 pp., $3.00(?). Apparently one of
|
|
those dreaded personal zines, written by a Reverend John Xerxes, a
|
|
survivor of the Subgenius hysteria that terrorized America in the
|
|
80's. There is the expected incoherent rambling; fictionalized
|
|
essays; a confession of his posing as Diane in the personal ads of
|
|
"Maximum Rock & Roll" magazine to solicit mail from males (in
|
|
order to "relate to the female experience"); a decent essay on
|
|
being disappointed by GG Allin's death; some bad porn; a funny
|
|
piece on SEXUAL ATTRACTION IS NECESSARY; drug use analysis...
|
|
and so on. Either the writing of an isolated psychopathic
|
|
schizophrenic, or the words of a genius.--o
|
|
|
|
Laurie Price: EXCEPT FOR MEMORY--Pantograph Press, PO Box 9643,
|
|
Berkeley CA, 94709. 74 pp., $8.95. Suzanne Brooker's cover art,
|
|
a collage of antique watches, brings to mind the idea of temps
|
|
perdu ("lost time"), which is perhaps the emotional point of
|
|
departure of this collection. "Pry" peels the dial from the hands
|
|
in order to create a state of suspended animation: "The watched
|
|
clock never stops/ bordering reasons held in check." Influenced
|
|
by an imagist aesthetic, Price's lyric poems are highly visual,
|
|
and privilege the supersaturated colors of the dream.
|
|
"Sleepwalkers" is a good example: "A tangerine figure/ approaches
|
|
from the curb/ lightens the street/ flooded by blues."--ssn
|
|
|
|
Stephen Ratcliffe: PRIVATE--Leave Books, 57 Livingston St.,
|
|
Buffalo NY, 14213. 12 pp., $2.00. A poetics of intervention,
|
|
interruption, and subtle insinuations of voice which intrude in
|
|
the form of enclosed parenthetical asides and French shifts. The
|
|
effect is magnificent: "to speak of returning before/ (think)
|
|
objects--several/ intervals or (less)/ the knowledge of her
|
|
possessions." Ratcliffe's collisions of public and private
|
|
literacies create a tension between the voice and the voiced.
|
|
--ssn
|
|
|
|
Pam Rehm: PIECEWORK--Garlic Press, PO Box 1242, Stockbridge MA,
|
|
01262. 25 pp., $5.00. Velocities of transformation heat up as
|
|
the poems refuse to back down from the place in the brain that
|
|
makes connections. "Neurology: A Theory" places the limits of all
|
|
figurative language, particularly metonymy, squarely in the region
|
|
that attempts to fence in perception in what Sir Philip Sidney
|
|
referred to as a jail-cell of flesh. Observes Rehm: "One gets
|
|
stuck in, what is evidently,/ describing oneself." A subtle and
|
|
intellectually engaging read.--ssn
|
|
|
|
Werner Reichhold: SENSESCAPES--AHA Books, PO Box 767, Gualal CA,
|
|
95445. 62 pp., $8.00. Huge pages (17" wide, 11" high) containing
|
|
twenty-eight 2-page "projects" on which gorgeous surrealistic
|
|
collages (often using material from Dore) face similarly potent
|
|
surrealistic texts, e.g., on that begins: "Ajax, is this the town/
|
|
that eats men and women/ copper for breakfast?// Yes, but look at
|
|
the phone book,/ is it broke yet?" ready to ignite in any
|
|
sympathetic aesthcipient's redeeming connectives.--bg
|
|
|
|
Jeff Rentsch: THE STORY OF TWO MEN--InDigest, PO Box 480, Denville
|
|
NJ, 07834. 52 pp., $1.00. The full title of this text&graphic
|
|
collage novel is "the story of two men walking across the room to
|
|
the sofa and what happened on the way there to change both their
|
|
lives." What happened is violent, and told a micro-second at a
|
|
time in understated, flat sentences and surrealistic graphics that
|
|
work as well together for the full course of the narrative as any
|
|
I've ever come across.--bg
|
|
|
|
Joan Retallack: ERRATA 5UITE--Edge Books, PO Box 25642, Washington
|
|
DC, 20007. 64 pp., $8.00. This book is a series of five-line
|
|
take-offs on (from) errata slips. Retallack starts with a
|
|
correction explaining a correction, saying what the prescribed fix
|
|
is ("read poisonous snake not snack")--and from there she goes
|
|
somewhere else altogether. These pieces are full of lingual
|
|
shorthand, anachronisms, bits of foreign words, roots of words.
|
|
The whole is an astonishing, melodic, humorous song. While any
|
|
traditional "sense" is denied, the pieces begin to take on a
|
|
wonderful logic of their own, flowing. In an odd way ERRATA 5UITE
|
|
in its core of misreadings, misspellings, and alternate meanings,
|
|
presents us with just the required poetry corrective. We get it
|
|
right this time.--jg
|
|
ERRATA 5UITE lets the error stray in a fluid movement among
|
|
the "zero sum ergo blather" of systematic thought. Error,
|
|
corrected, leads to the progress of knowledge? The "allreasonable
|
|
dog stranded on causal plane", "apostrophe's tragik musico
|
|
philosophicus" will "read land and math for lang and myth," "for
|
|
the undeniable is all they seek"--"God upon His solemn Review
|
|
finds not one Erratum in the Book of Nature whole as writ." But
|
|
"she la cantatrice whenas she goes without a trace" sics Derrida
|
|
on this (philosophy is a boys' club if there ever was one)--"she
|
|
read I now (know) this Kant bee rite"--read "cum for sum (ma) la
|
|
logical." Or so would go one of many possible wanderings through
|
|
this suite. Another would start with the delightful
|
|
"conversations of the (alphabetized) philosophers" Retallack
|
|
makes, in conversation herself with Richard Rorty's way of reading
|
|
philosophy playfully.--cp
|
|
|
|
Joan Retallack: ICARUS FFFFFALLING--Leave Books, 57 Livingston
|
|
St., Buffalo NY, 14213. 16 pp. ICARUS FFFFFALLING collaborates
|
|
with Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, and with Retallack's students at Bard
|
|
College "who when asked to go out and photograph Icarus falling
|
|
found him everywhere." Icarus: boy wonder who won't follow
|
|
Daddy's advice and stick to the middle way; son who by sacrificing
|
|
himself covers up his father's jealousy and murder (look up the
|
|
myth of Daedalus and Talos); Leonardo/Daedalus the artist building
|
|
machines of destruction; "Dead-o-Lust founder of Socrates circular
|
|
line"--but this is too simple a reading already. Make it messier:
|
|
"a boy rejoicing in bold flight deserts his leader why this desire
|
|
for open sky in species w/out wings"--not easy to refuse this.
|
|
And question poetry itself: "have you noticed that poetry was one
|
|
of the noble gases ripening the pomegranate never a cantaloupe or
|
|
banana"--the "noble gases" are those that don't mix with others in
|
|
chemical compounds. They remain pure--"and the grief remains
|
|
buried in the obscurity of the Latin" as if it were one of
|
|
Gibbon's chastely quoted Roman obscenities--"dis pathetic Roman
|
|
tic nihil est how to: have hi-flyin ideas under fallen yellow
|
|
arches." The theme of the pharmakos runs through all the myths of
|
|
Daedalus and his kin; drug, poison, healing medicine, and also
|
|
scapegoat, the pharmakos in ancient Greek ritual was thrown over a
|
|
cliff into the sea, but provided with wings that might break his
|
|
fall and let him live, though in perpetual exile. Take note:
|
|
Retallack's not dealing here (or elsewhere) in the sort of cozily
|
|
Jungian archetypes this might suggest; the languages she weaves
|
|
together are as complex as the twenty-five or so centuries of
|
|
painful aspiration and destruction she has gathered in this short
|
|
poem.--cp
|
|
|
|
Elliot Richman: THE WORLD DANCER--Asylum Arts, PO Box 6203, Santa
|
|
Maria CA, 93456. 110 pp., $9.95. Richman's many voices--dark
|
|
eroticist, Vietnam testifier, visceral viewer of art and the
|
|
adumbrations of irony--come scattershot from his small press
|
|
exposures and in more unified rushes from chapbooks like "Fucking
|
|
in Stupid Hope: Love Poems for the Death of the '80's"
|
|
(Slipstream: Niagra Falls 1989). But not 'til THE WORLD DANCER
|
|
from Asylum Arts, a press committed to risky material, do we get
|
|
Richman whole. Unlike some fragments, he's no hellbent macho
|
|
cynical kicker against the pricks, but a compassionate
|
|
comprehender of, though never apologist for, human inconsistency.
|
|
His vision--less the self annihilating gaze of Van Gogh or
|
|
Hemingway, who become his croney-doppelgangers in these poems, and
|
|
more the consummate witness to edges of art, love and loneliness--
|
|
is more like the swordlike zen brushwork he honors and emulates:
|
|
|
|
...My features are painted
|
|
on that octopus in the print by Hokusai,
|
|
tentacles wrapped 'round Katrina's naked body,
|
|
my giant head fused between her thighs,
|
|
enormous black pupils scanning her skin
|
|
as she swoons in pleasure, holding tightly
|
|
to one of my suckered arms, the cruelty
|
|
gone from her features, so lost in sex.
|
|
(from "The Portrait of a Poet")
|
|
|
|
Here's complex, violent art coming into a maturity that will take
|
|
us to new places, and help make sense of some of the hardest old
|
|
ones.--sf
|
|
|
|
Steve Richmond: MY WIFE--Deadtree Press, PO Box 81305, Lincoln NE,
|
|
68501. 20 pp., $6.00. Infectious, self-reflective, easy-going
|
|
plainstyle poems, like the "gagaku" in which the author admits
|
|
he'd like best-sellerdom but decides, "fuck it/ (instead of
|
|
writing a hot novel) I'll stick here/ in the/ short devastating
|
|
poem/ the demon poem/ the mad poem/ the sick poem// where I'm/
|
|
comfortable."--bg
|
|
|
|
Sheryl Robbins: OR, THE WHALE--Shuffaloff Press, 260 Plymouth
|
|
Ave., Buffalo NY, 14213. The title is half of MOBY-DICK, OR,
|
|
THE WHALE--and the half that is this collection of poems is the
|
|
feminine. Yes, women voyage also. That dark stuff of guilt and
|
|
19th century creeping American protestant gloom isn't here. The
|
|
puns and metaphors, the images within the poetry, and the titles
|
|
of the poems are carved from Melville's novel. Sure that provides
|
|
the book with a spine, but rather than darkness and death within
|
|
this poetry there is at each vertebrate a love and a light, some
|
|
white magic, an irresistible intoxicating ring of bone Isis
|
|
white.--mb
|
|
|
|
Thaddeus Rutkowski: SUPER NATURE--Power Trio Press, PO Box 187
|
|
Cooper Station, New York NY, 10278. 16 pp., $1.00. Unlike many
|
|
"performance" poems, these stand up powerfully on the page, as in:
|
|
"Walk to the water circle,/ dive to the bottom/ and nail your
|
|
question/ to the dragon's door" (from "Mother's Advice").
|
|
Poetry-slam winner, art-history scholar, forbidden fantasizer
|
|
Rutkowski has packed arresting lines, inspired graphic design,
|
|
and innovative weirdness into these 4x4 pages. These 14 brief
|
|
poems each slice a heretofore wholly unsuspected microsection
|
|
from the murky interface of consciousness and world, like "a
|
|
test pattern from the right half/ of a hare's brain" ("Half a
|
|
Thought"), or suddenly shift the disturbingly untoward into
|
|
sharpest focus: "a tiger pouncing on a zoo-booster/ a wife shaving
|
|
her housekeeper's head/ a kidnapper guarding his capturing box"
|
|
("Assault With a Deadly Plotline"). Finally, having read, we can
|
|
"Skim some rain./ Whirl in surf./ Dream of hair" ("-plasm").--sf
|
|
|
|
Leslie Scalapino: OBJECTS IN THE TERRIFYING TENSE LONGING FROM
|
|
TAKING PLACE--Roof Books, c/o Segue Foundation, 303 East 8th St.,
|
|
New York NY, 10009. 82 pp., $9.95. Scalapino's critical writings
|
|
might already be familiar to readers of poetics journals; this
|
|
anthology includes pieces on H.D., Robert Grenier, Danielle
|
|
Collobert, Robert Creeley, Alice Notley, Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge,
|
|
Lyn Hejinian, and others. There is also a selection from THE
|
|
FRONT MATTER, DEAD SOULS, political writings she began during the
|
|
last presidential election. (She calls this "a serial novel to be
|
|
published in the newspaper," though the newspapers she submitted
|
|
it to refused to run it.)
|
|
Scalapino practices the poetics of language writers, who
|
|
insist that the division of labor between poet and critic be done
|
|
away with. It is what I might call, borrowing one of her lines,
|
|
the "putting of thought to thought"--but as something done, an
|
|
action, not a view from above, or a statement of logically prior
|
|
conditions. Criticism that co-exists with the writings it is
|
|
"about" (and "about" here becomes a kind of adjacency to or
|
|
perambulation of the writings) will problematize its own form, as
|
|
Scalapino says: "The form of rigor itself has to undercut its
|
|
concept." Here, her stated aim is to "allow the shapes of the
|
|
structures of the texts being considered to emerge." But there is
|
|
a characteristic Scalapino line as well, and its structure,
|
|
familiar to her readers since "That They Were at the Beach," may
|
|
at times overlay the structures of the texts she is writing about;
|
|
this at least was my own feeling about her Collobert piece. But
|
|
not always; her writings on Grenier are "within the way his text
|
|
sees." And then there's the lines from "The Front Matter"--"Our
|
|
vice president tries to turn us against the 'cultural elite.'
|
|
Here, the cultural elite are simply people who can read at all."
|
|
It seems her remarks have not lost their topicality.--cp
|
|
|
|
Spencer Selby: SOUND OFF--Detour Press, 1506 Grand Ave. #3, St.
|
|
Paul MN, 55105. 64 pp., $7.95. A collection of poems illuminated
|
|
by ironic double entendre: "sound off" as protest literature by
|
|
poets voicing their rage at toxic-waste dump Americana, or,
|
|
equally, as a state of being akin to watching t.v. with the volume
|
|
turned down. The condition of language echoes the condition of
|
|
our world: "Extensive straightforward meaning/ goes funny before
|
|
it's written / in the face of impending disaster." Because linear
|
|
forms of writing and thinking yield nothing but distorted copies
|
|
of what has come before, Selby advocates a poetic language
|
|
informed by experience: "Walk the path and live for knowledge/
|
|
that's exasperated by what you see."--ssn
|
|
|
|
Tim Shepherd: DEAD ROSES FROM A FRIEND--Drew Blood Press Ltd.,
|
|
3410 First St, Riverside CA, 92501. 21 pp., $2.00. This
|
|
chapbook, first published in 1990, was perhaps a pioneer of the
|
|
sadly growing list of "AIDS memorial" chapbooks. As such, it
|
|
doesn't have a lot of lilting language, melodious rhymings or
|
|
crafted imagery. It does have anger, profanity, and a wrenching,
|
|
tangible sense of loss and bitterness. Some of Shepherd's poems
|
|
come off as hopelessly melancholy; others unnecessarily foul-
|
|
mouthed; and some as on-target with a profound sense of grief.
|
|
Not overly poetic; but undeniable work for those interested in
|
|
a reality dose of what a real AIDS death means to those left
|
|
behind.--rkk
|
|
|
|
Bill Shields & Elliot Richman: DISPATCHES: FROM VIETNAM TO THE
|
|
GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS--Boog Literature, PO Box 221, Oceanside
|
|
NY, 11572. 16 pp., $3.00. War poems from a coupla folks who know
|
|
war, and poetry, first hand. Richman's war takes place in Iraq,
|
|
and draws us into the interment of Iraqi soldiers being buried
|
|
alive, while Shields talks about the distancing of killers from
|
|
their victims through modern warfare techniques. These words
|
|
crawl into you, and leave you shaking, scared, and pissed off.
|
|
The realities of slaughter on these scales makes you wonder if
|
|
hope will ever be an option again.--o
|
|
|
|
Florentin Smarandache: ANTHOLOGY OF THE PARADOXIST LITERARY
|
|
MOVEMENT--Ophyr University Press, PO Box 42561, Phoenix AZ, 85085.
|
|
174 pp., $17.95. More of a chrestomanthy than an anthology, since
|
|
the genius of Smarandache is predominant through out. After
|
|
reading his NON POEMS last year I thought Paradoxism an
|
|
interesting development, though I would have had difficulty
|
|
defining it. Here are manifestos, stridency and curious writings,
|
|
but also gnawing doubts that arise when one suspects a tincture of
|
|
hucksterism. When something new and different comes out of
|
|
thewilds of Romania I am curious and ready to give it credence,
|
|
but I am beginning to wonder if Paradoxism is all that it purports
|
|
to be.--as
|
|
|
|
Charles Smith: ALIEN LOVE POEMS--BGS Press, 1240 William St.,
|
|
Racine, WI, 53402. 12 pp., $ 2.00. Black, samurai-swift
|
|
imagination and humor as hard as a jackhammer's heart, Smith
|
|
captures candid incidents from youth to present with images which
|
|
could have been reflected from a fun-house mirror. "It's my turn
|
|
to wear the dog collar.// I mount you, oh so slowly/ I am slashing
|
|
my wrists/ the blood mixing with your hair..." Here is rage,
|
|
pathological enough to be trivial, trivial enough to be cool and
|
|
seductive. There is a spontaneous, unmediated emotion here, a
|
|
delicious sexual darkness. Suicide, sadomasochism, punk bravura,
|
|
child abuse, academic failure, self-depreciation, spouse abuse,
|
|
drunken sex, miscued allegories, old age dread and drawings by Dan
|
|
Nielsen. How can it get any better than this?--rrle
|
|
|
|
David H. Stone: SPECULAR SHARDS--O!! Zone, 1266 Fountain View Dr.,
|
|
Houston TX , 77057. 76 pp., $10.00. Clipped, usually anecdotal
|
|
free verse, freshened here & there with puns and pun-couples--like
|
|
"sir spent"/ "sir spit" in a poem about Adam and Eve. Several
|
|
strong poems about the work-a-day world, and (mordantly) funny
|
|
ones about law and politics.--bg
|
|
|
|
SuZi: CARNIVAL IN THE AGE OF KALI--Ourobourous Press, PO Box
|
|
533613, Orlando FL, 32853. 9 pp., $1.50. SuZi knows the street
|
|
from experience. Though she's in New Orleans now, she definitely
|
|
left her mark on Chicago. She's still tough as nails, but there's
|
|
a fragile sensitivity beneath the tough veneer. These poems bring
|
|
the street into your head, with lines like: 'Hey sister/ didja dig
|
|
them bad-bootied bands?/ the sister on the tuba from Saint Mary's
|
|
and/ the covetous lovey dove eye action from the marine/corp?",
|
|
and: "the earhole of damnation/ and she was held more than a/ day
|
|
after/ the judge said go/lost in some sheriff scuffle shuffle."
|
|
Although this is a short collection of SuZi's work, it's strong
|
|
powerful writing in a voice so unique... let's just say she's
|
|
good. Damn good!--o
|
|
|
|
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino: EKPHRASIS--Pygmy Forest Press, PO
|
|
Box 591, Albion CA, 95410. $5.00. The title, referring to a test
|
|
that is its own explainaint, is in one sense an apt description of
|
|
these self-referential poems, but in another sense they are not,
|
|
since they often have a haiku-like ellusiveness/allusiveness, the
|
|
meaning-ripples spreading out in all directions so they "mean"
|
|
everything and nothing, The irony in that title is functional,
|
|
and is part and parcel of the beauty of these works:
|
|
|
|
EKPHRASIS No. 16
|
|
|
|
Mechanic a
|
|
Spit o'
|
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Ecstatic re
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Lease
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Javeliner
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Crested
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Quiver a
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Gog stride
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The collection consists of 15 poems, in a nicely produced
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booklet. These pieces have an intimate and enigmatic quality that
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keeps this reader going back to them.--jmb
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At the crossroads between intelligence and intuition, where
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the mind grasps to contain experience but does not have the logic
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or syntax, and the entire being is filled with sensation and
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strange knowing, the creative impulse rises. We are taught very
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early, though usually not directly, to ignore such impulses and
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direct attention toward a knowable object. St. Thomasino
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understands that to allow the creative impulse to culminate in
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action is a means of expanding the field of perspective and
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thereby knowledge in its deepest sense, of insight. These
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selections from his Ekphrasis series are brilliant examples of
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that understanding, and like all great poetry are doorways to that
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deeper knowledge. The words seem to rise from that critical
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moment, they are utterances of the voice and mind in awe of direct
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experience of unlimited sensation. Sometimes the words fall into
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a phrase that seems to make logical sense, that relates something
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specifically, sometimes not. It doesn't matter. It is the
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impulse, the life shining through these poems that's important.
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Certainly, an exhaustive analysis would reveal a variety of
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interpretations, but something would still be missing. Ordinary
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syntax cannot contain their light. From "EKPHRASIS No.11":
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Inter
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Missive
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Juncture
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Unthinkable
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Scenes
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Dovetail
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A
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Ha a ha
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--jb
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A selection of St. Thomasino's ongoing series of state-of-
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the-art language-centered poems full of locutions like "Will o'
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sea" and "Out'r quart'r lo!" Consequently, one seems in tho ages
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of discovery at once: Columbus's, Drake's & Cook's; and ours.--bg
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Michelle M. Tokarczyk: THE HOUSE I'M RUNNING FROM--West End Press,
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PO Box 27334, Albuquerque NM, 87125. 56 pp., $6.95. This book of
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poetry was published a few years ago, but it demands a reading,
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particularly if one is interested in women and work. And the
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fears one encounters after living a working class life and
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attempting to "make it" in a profession, herein examined. What
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makes this poetry so exciting is its legitimacy. This is not a
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book by a poet that lost her diamond while riding on her third
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best polo pony. Oh no. But this is not the grit of a saloon
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either. Nothing dark here. Just the hard work of a white ethnic
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in working class America struggling to maintain simply a life of
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dignity and peace, which because of the American grind... What do
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you think? Can you relate? Or will you ponder a rose is a rose
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is a rose?--mb
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Cheryl A. Townsend and Paul Weinman: MY NIPPLES RISE EYES--Watson
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Publishing, 2774 9th St., Cuyahoga Falls OH, 44221. 20 pp. This
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chapbook is so steamy that I'm amazed it didn't arrive with damp
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pages. Townsend and Weinman trade sex-saturated poems here.
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Cheryl is the initiator and Paul follows suit. Each poem is
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short, never longer than eight or nine lines. The cover has a
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Blair Wilson graphic--a stylized cartoon of a woman's breasts,
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limber as deflated innertubes, that reach out and smack a cartoon
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man in the face. There's an added bonus stapled inside this
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chapbook; WHITE BOY CUMS 2, with a suggestive, as-always
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pornographic John Howard drawing. Even though I enjoy the rat-a-
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tat-tat minimalism of both Townsend and Weinman, the continual sex
|
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dulls after awhile. I begin to look for new poetical vistas.
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Cheryl Townsend is the Anais Nin of the small press poetry scene.
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Even so, she is at her best when she digresses from the fuck-fest
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and writes about other subjects. A good example of this is her
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small chapbook MOTHER TENDED BAR, which is truly remarkable in its
|
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emotional and descriptive intensity.--kn
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Cheryl Townsend: VESTIBLES--East Coast Editions, 105 Betty Rd.,
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East Meadow NY, 11554. 10 pp., $2.00(?). Cheryl is the publisher
|
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of IMPETUS, and her poetry carries a seductive touch that could
|
|
make you fall in love with a stranger. While Cheryl still carries
|
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that sexual lust and subtle confusion between people who don't
|
|
know how to relate to each other, her words get cleaner and so
|
|
crisp you often feel like her poems are dried flowers waiting to
|
|
break in the wind. In lines like: "I could smell the
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anticipation/ when we met on Tuesday for lunch" and "Snuggling
|
|
into a dream/ that lasted well into Monday" you catch a glimpse
|
|
into a world filled with sensual confusion. Cheryl is one of the
|
|
few women poets covering this turf, in poems that work and convey
|
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the inside story.--o
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Paul Trachtenberg: BEN'S EXIT--Beach & Company, Cherry Hill
|
|
Editions, PO Box 303, Cherry Hill NY, 13320. 123 pp., $7.00.
|
|
When I read a book I want a total pure honesty, or hard core
|
|
sensationalistic crap. This is not sensationalistic crap. It is
|
|
about real life adventures, academic politics, relationships (gay,
|
|
straight, and otherwise), Disneyland, the brains of serial
|
|
killers, metaphysical mysticism and scientific exploration,
|
|
plumbers and surfers, California earthquakes, the end of the
|
|
sexual revolution, AIDS, and so many other things it's hard to
|
|
make up a comprehensive list. This book made me feel ripped off,
|
|
not because it was bad, but because it was so good I didn't want
|
|
it to end.--o
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Nico Vassilakis: A NAME FOR RADIO--Electron Elbow Publications,
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|
PO Box 21671, Seattle WA, 98111. 12 pp., $4.00. A wonderfully
|
|
lyrical jump-cut mini-epic about the quest for knowledge--I think.
|
|
At any rate, electro-magnetic waves play a large role in it; sound
|
|
waves and water, too: "sounds are delicious, the scent of
|
|
musicality of noise. we never imagine noise in water. water is
|
|
large enough for thoughts to co-exist."--bg
|
|
An exquisitely produced miniature book containing a single
|
|
long poem, which is a meditation on the body and the mind
|
|
revolving in consciousness of each other, and a meditation on
|
|
meditation: "abrupt, aboutnd, ablutions, abingo, abongo/ aconga, a
|
|
smooth rumination, a jolt shattering/ the nervous system, the
|
|
electric formation of/ receptors singing in a naturally occurring
|
|
quiet./ immediate environments the beatitude of/ neighborhood."
|
|
This is lucid and evocative writing that perfectly embodies
|
|
the ideas and aperceptions it speaks of.--jmb
|
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|
Nico Vassilakis: ARTAUD WHAT--Runaway Spoon, PO Box 3621, Port
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|
Charlotte FL, 33949. $3.00. One can always count on Vassilakis
|
|
to stir the imagination and summon a few demons. This is a book
|
|
of associations between words and images that appear in the text
|
|
to be cut up, but may only be so in the mind of the poet and/or
|
|
the reader. For instance, "a day spent proving/ light and she is/
|
|
another room. we say/ particulate", a schizoid dismemberment of
|
|
syntax that is magically reconnected in the mind. The poems
|
|
function as juicy hallucinated haikus and distorted and collaged
|
|
pictures that perfectly reflect the texts, not as illustrations,
|
|
but enhancements of the effect. Psychoactive.--jb
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Janine Pommy Vega: RED BRACELETS--Heaven Bone, PO Box 486, Chester
|
|
NY, 10918. 32 pp., $5.95. Composed while traveling through
|
|
Nepal, these poems function as a travelogue of the trip and of
|
|
the soul. Torn between lover at home and the search the poet
|
|
continues, drawing in clear direct verse the image of the world
|
|
she moves through, her yearning for experience and for home. She
|
|
makes it easy to feel the struggle as she feels it and by doing so
|
|
allows us to some extent to gain from her experience. But RED
|
|
BRACELETS is better an emotional experience than intellectual.
|
|
Vega isn't trying teach us, but relate generally, from the soul.
|
|
And she does this very well, coming in the final, title, poem to
|
|
sing, as if in a fire of transcendence of "red bracelets/ for the
|
|
mother of love."--jb
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|
Fred Voss: GOODSTONE--Event Horizon Press, PO Box 14645, Long
|
|
Beach CA, 90803. $15.95. I remember telling Fred about how I
|
|
almost beat the shit out've some dude at my post office job and
|
|
Fred wrote back suggesting I try to keep my cool. How Fred
|
|
managed to keep his composure long enough at Goodstone to write
|
|
this masterpiece I'll never know. Such incompetence, immaturity,
|
|
idleness, lifelessness, idiocity, on-th-job drunkeness & insanity
|
|
as can be witnessed in a Breughal painting. This book is about
|
|
the end of the Industrial Revolution as personified by the day-to-
|
|
day workings of a bomber aircraft factory--it certainly documents
|
|
the coming end of the United States' long-held boast as #1
|
|
industrial nation of the world. One wonders if morale picked up
|
|
at Goodstone during the "crisis" in the Persian Gulf--did this
|
|
insane asylum begin to sing & dance for the rich boy's money & oil
|
|
war? This book is a knife stuck in the guts, and twisted. And
|
|
somehow Fred has done it all without getting caught up in the mire
|
|
of hatred & spite that most of his fellow workmates have lost
|
|
themselves in. Our dear Whitman would bawl his eyes out if he
|
|
read this book and found out what has happened to his beloved
|
|
workers of America (though I imagine every late-20th century
|
|
factory in the world is like this, except maybe Japan's).
|
|
Not for the patriotic or squeamish. 180 poems machined from
|
|
solid steel, cool sweat & the catastrophic humorous eye of Voss.
|
|
One might consider taking the train after reading this. And every
|
|
time they fire up those jets, 5 blocks from here at Kirtland AFB,
|
|
Albuquerque, I'm gonna run for cover.--mw
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Fred Voss & Joan Jobe Smith: THE HONEYMOON OF KING KONG--Zerx
|
|
Press, 5016 Inspiration Dr. SE, Albuquerque NM, 87108. 40 pp.,
|
|
$3.00. "Machinist Poet" leaps right into action with "D.H.
|
|
Lawrence would've liked this man/ as much as I do, how he offs
|
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his/ blue collar when he comes home to/ drink chardonnay with me,
|
|
read aloud to me, The Subterraneans until Kerouac says,/ "It was
|
|
her little face I wanted to enter,"/ and then he stops reading to
|
|
enter/ my face, too, with his quick tongue." In "The Eve of
|
|
Destruction" the words are clean, honest: "In her kitchen/ my
|
|
fiancee's daughters compare their/ 6 and 8 months along/ pregnant
|
|
bellies and/ bounce them/ off each other/ again and again doing
|
|
little swinging/ dance steps and giggling uncontrollably/ as I sit
|
|
in the corner drinking and trying to feel/ as much/ like a
|
|
bachelor/ of 37 years/ as I can." These are fine warm words by
|
|
real people, people I'd love to have for neighbors.--o
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James L. Weil: BILL'S SHAKER CHAIR--tel-let, 1818 Phillips Pl.,
|
|
Charleston IL, 61920. 20 pp. Self-effacing, diffident poems
|
|
dedicated to William Bronk, as this one called "Imperatives
|
|
Composed for Bill's Voice": "What I write makes no/ difference.
|
|
I write// indifferent to/ the difference it// does not make.
|
|
It has/ nothing to do with// our undoing. There/ is nothing to
|
|
do,// all done. I write. I/ love you. Love me. Write."--bg
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Hannah Weiner: SILENT TEACHERS/REMEMBERED SEQUEL--Tender Buttons
|
|
Press, 54 East Manning Street #3, Providence RI, 02906. This book
|
|
continues Weiner's obsession with formally radical representations
|
|
of multiple voices that has been central to her work at least
|
|
since CLAIRVOYANT JOURNAL. The poems here create a broad,
|
|
sweeping, and tense historical context for understanding how
|
|
voices have come to her. What this book teaches us is that
|
|
history--written accounts of people's lives and actions--is always
|
|
about the struggle for voices. But Weiner has no sentimentality
|
|
about multiplicity--the many voices of her text are framed by
|
|
conditions of power, and their desire for it. In such a context,
|
|
language itself is revealed as a hesitant, embattled, sometimes
|
|
obscure and always resistant medium. Finally an autobiography,
|
|
SILENT TEACHERS/REMEMBERED SEQUEL is not a story of triumph, of
|
|
social conditions overcome by a saving mastery of language.
|
|
Rather, this book returns its readers to the condition of their
|
|
own lives and languages, teaching us that listening is something
|
|
we must learn to do in our own circumstances, however
|
|
tentatively.--mw
|
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|
Paul Weinman: IN THE FISHTANK--Strangulensis Research Labs, Rt. 6
|
|
Box 138, Charleston WV, 25311. 16 pp., $2.00. Collages and other
|
|
graphics by Harold Dinkel masterfully wrong-step Weinman's
|
|
crackling plainstyle poems, one a near-perfect evocation of a
|
|
nursing home in which "the here and there teeth/ pok(e) through
|
|
sentences, postponing/ putting words in order until never;" but
|
|
one man asks the narrator "if racial/ demographics are changing,
|
|
yet."--bg
|
|
|
|
Simon Wickham-Smith: FEW--Runaway Spoon, PO Box 3621, Port
|
|
Charlotte FL, 33949. $5.00. Consisting of three distinctly
|
|
different and equally compelling experiments, FEW is a challenge
|
|
to ordinary consciousness. The first section "Six Short Fictions"
|
|
is a sort of elliptical, or parenthetic poetry, that dances
|
|
around, or beyond, absolute meaning, excellent poetry. The second
|
|
section is a long series of connective hieroglyphic-like images
|
|
that develop as they proceed down and across the page, and from
|
|
page to page, suggesting an investigation of how we associate
|
|
meanings with lines on a page. The final section is a repeated
|
|
visage which can be interpreted differently from page to page as
|
|
words are added. Stimulating and provoking, FEW can be many.--jb
|
|
|
|
Bob Z: YUCKY STIFF--Panic Button Press, PO Box 14318, San
|
|
Francisco, 94114. 30 pp., $3.25. The author's note says this
|
|
one's about "looking hard at the seamy filthy unpleasant side of
|
|
life" and sure enough, it is. Words tumble over each other, slam
|
|
together in a mosh pit of imagery to create a space for
|
|
themselves, push thoughts and events at the reader as quickly as
|
|
Husker Du (the band, not the child's game.) Repetitive, dirty,
|
|
funny, and pocket-sized to boot.--rkk
|
|
|
|
Mickey Z.: REMOTE CONTROL--PO Box 9103, L.I.C., NY, 11103.
|
|
26 pp., SASE? "Poems to Watch Television By," this one's in
|
|
the style of Bob Z. (family resemblance?) and the form of Paul
|
|
Weinman's "WhiteBoy" series. Poems for couch potatoes with short
|
|
attention spans, but hoping to shake 'em out of their video-
|
|
induced stupor. The final poem, "One Last Question", is
|
|
representative: "So, why do you/ think they call it/
|
|
PROGRAMMING?"--lbd
|
|
|
|
Nicholas Zurbrugg: THE PARAMETERS OF POSTMODERNISM--Southern
|
|
Illinois University Press, PO Box 3697, Carbondale IL, 62902.
|
|
184 pp. The quintessence of Postmodernism crammed into tiny
|
|
microchapters. What it is. How it manifests itself. The
|
|
leitmotiv here is the "B effect" vs. the "C effect". The B effect
|
|
is here defined as a needlessly catastrophic sense of critical &
|
|
creative crisis propounded by such writers as Burger, Bonita-
|
|
Oliver, Barthes, Baudrillard etc.; verses the C effect, a more
|
|
optimistic hypothesis of postmodernist practice, which Zurbrugg
|
|
associates with John Cage among others. Postmodernism posited not
|
|
as a doomsday machine, a sterile lunar landscape, but rather as a
|
|
source of insight into human experience, just as other literary
|
|
-isms have been.--as
|
|
|
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End of TapRoot Reviews Electronic Edition
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Issue #5.0, section b: chaps 8/94
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