Slipstream 22. 2002. - slipstream press.
PO Box 2071, Niagara Falls, NY 14301. Edited by the Robert Borgatti, Livio Farallo and Dan Sicoli. Christ - these three fuckin guys deserve a pot of gold or at lest a pot to piss in. Send them a few dollars anonymously - you will just piss it away on cards or turnips or socks. So? What are you dunna do?
Big Hammer No. 5 - Edited by Dave Roskos,
P.O. Box 54 Manasquan, NJ, 08736. Send Money. Feel free to send work.
Uncertain Relations - by Joel Chace.
2000. 52 pages. $14.50. Birch Brook Press, PO Box 81, Delhi, NY 13753. ((Luxurious paper and beautiful designed and printed - the book itself as object a joy toy to hold))
Stoker. Issue 73 - Edited by Irving Stetner.
4-2-6 Chiyoda, Hanjo City, Saitama 367-0054, Japan. 3 issues - $20.00 or 900 yen per issue.
Murderous Signs - Issue 5. 2002.
Murderous signs, c/o Grunge Papers, PO Box 53106, Ottawa, ON, K1N 1C5, Canada or www.achilles.net/~grunge/msigns or: grunge@achilles.net $5.00 (Can. Dollars) for sub of 2 issues.
Dillinger's Thompson - by Todd Moore..
54 pages. Phony Lid Books, PO Box 29066, Los Angeles, California 90029. 2002. $5.95
Todd Moore's work at its perfection weaves various strands of poetic
possibility. Dillinger's Thompson is no exception but to perfection.
Engaging the cliché of penis as gun, Moore reinvents it via levels of
metaphor, philosophy, psychology and the manipulation of language until
that tired metaphor is striped and shaken and reinvented at its very root.
The essential, primal truth notion of sex and death as one so merge within
the poem with violence and object as to be seamless. And mesh also
seamless with the American sense of ourselves as living via our objects, or
being objects that define us as beings. Our objects kill. We kill but we
love our objects and sex, which is the thing behind all of our consuming
preoccupations. All these possibilities are here in the poem. And of course
writing is sex and is love and Moore writes, "let love be/ come a machine
gun only/ I can ride some nights/. And that is the perfect metaphor for sex
as writing and recall that the Thomason is AKA a Chicago Typewriter. And
fuckin is also an act of life and is also a horrible act. The word fuck in
its origins depicts a terrible violent action. Fucking words then. And in this melding and merging the sex - as in gender - of Dillinger and his
partner Billie - their selves are inconsequential - they both as one
entity beyond the flesh via the bridge of bullets which are words merge
into one fast fucking entity - one cannot be without the other - there is
no just one being fucked: both are fucked by the essential engaging of this
both ordinary and everyday but most abstract and complex sexual existence
that is simply there as you and I are here human beings. And I am come away
afraid and in awe at the power of poetry and that is what then Moore has
here presented.
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Appalachian Koans - by Mark Hartenbach.
A Peshekee River Mini-chap. 2002. Peshekee River, P.O. Box 689, Eastpointe, MI. 48021. For price, info and the like write to Tom Blessing at above address or peshekee@hotmail.com
As if I were really sitting, really, for once really hearing, really in the
church of my choice, to a saint of Ohio, working class belt, socks, the
poetic voice of Mark Hartenbach. He's not yelling, scolding, bitching,
berating or asking for money but he understands the absolute confusion
about the ordinary spirituality that we - as people hardly a few thousands
years out of the trees in Africa - ponder. He speaks about that
philosophical pondering, someone, you, me, she, whoever, one has when there
are only a precious few seconds of spiritually, wondering and pondering,
and then it is time to go back to work. Why am I here if I am a spiritual
being and still have to punch in? Mark H. knows that the answer is the
question. He's the poet with the biggest soul, maybe all of ours total
together and … he's worried… and he is wondering.
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Slipstream 22. 2002. - slipstream press.
PO Box 2071, Niagara Falls, NY 14301. Edited by the Robert Borgatti, Livio Farallo and Dan Sicoli. Christ - these three fuckin guys deserve a pot of gold or at lest a pot to piss in. Send them a few dollars anonymously - you will just piss it away on cards or turnips or socks. So? What are you dunna do?
So…I'll tell you. First you begin by coming up upon this cover. The most
moist erotic cover that I have allowed my eyes to have a good sleeping
dream wish for the longest time. And this is with taste. Vanilla. Oh wait.
If I write vanilla and then some reads one of the poem in this issue by Lyn
Lifshin, It Was Vanilla She Said, and they - you readers - find out that
the taste of vanilla is really the taste of… Read it folks. But back to the
cover. It is by Vincent Tortora, photographer. Oh. I might never get inside
this issue. But then the back cover is by Norman Olson and it is majestic,
a drawing like one of his poems all multiple of this world and images of
the inside the What the hell? head. Now, in these things you're supposed to
say about the works within and I am writing on here and have to get to it
but as I wrote before these editors are editors and these issues are more
like anthologies than just the poems of friends. It is with the most
focused intensity and dedication that these three editors of Slipstream
assemble these most fantastic issues and this is another grand one. Let me
say that Gerald Locklin is here represented with three works and one poem
is a lighthouse by David Hernandez. There is First Bra a tremendous poem
via the memory eyes of Terry Godbey and also a great one by Nikki Roszko -
I mean keep your eyes out and ears out and go out and look for these poets.
And then I like always when the editors stick some of their work in here
(Sicoli and Farallo do) and I should think that they wanna do that more
and more often. I mean, if you got the car - it is Ok to beep the horn. I
mean if you got the beer. I mean - you should drink it? I mean if it is
your moldy orange, wipe the mold off and give to one of your co-workers. Am
I right? AM I? Am I right? Or What? Each poem in Slipstream always makes
it and all of these in this one do. This issue an exceptionally 2002 great.
Three great editors. Issue 22. Hip Hip Hip Hurrah!
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Big Hammer No. 5 - Edited by Dave Roskos,
P.O. Box 54 Manasquan, NJ, 08736. Send Money. Feel free to send work.
Big Hammer being the baby of Dave Roskos is then also the magnificent,
magnificent and majestic beginning this issue with Other Alfred Kreymborg
and having within this surge of verity the wonderful populace and
department store of poetry works by Beth Borrus, Gerald Locklin, Lamont
Steptoe, A. D. Winans - ah so many more of our great lean and hungry word
panthers creeping about the bus stops and eating carrots in the night by
fire engines and dreaming of zebras and bowling alleys, worrying about the
price of cigarettes and gas, but giving us, the we the people, a solid
stiff shot of dose of poetry - nope not DOZE - I said dose as in sweet and
bitter real shoes.
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Uncertain Relations - by Joel Chace.
2000. 52 pages. $14.50. Birch Brook Press, PO Box 81, Delhi, NY 13753. ((Luxurious paper and beautiful designed and printed - the book itself as object a joy toy to hold))
This work of these words by Joel Chace operates as the mind in moments,
slight ones, as mind and imagination play across an entire life of words.
Here is the past and the future and the present in relation to each other.
These incidents, moments are captured in bits of images and words and sit
on the page as in the mind in relation to each other and those bridges
between such are there and not as they are in mind/imagination. And reading
this, one is then into one's own mind and builds, in the creative
sense, the bridges also. Interactive! So the poem here is the life, the
life of the mind represented. And yes, it is much punctuated with silences
and there are references to John Cage here and there, which relates that
even in the silence between the words of the poem the mind is talking and
making music in those silences. And in the mind also where the poem
manifests at its origins. Each moment in mind has its own reality as does
then each constellation of words in Chase's work. What are the relations?
They are always uncertain but when making a work of art that so clearly
mirrors creative reality that uncertainly is the art of reality so each
segment then captures the rhythm of life and the periodic table of elements, so frequently mentioned in this poem, then is a form placed upon
the poem from the real word in an attempt to order what is already there as
real. And it words, works here and is a metaphor. Life, in the end, is the
mind and mind's operation is at best uncertain and fluctuating. And Joel
Chase has captured that uneasy yet undeniable truth.
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Stoker. Issue 73 - Edited by Irving Stetner.
4-2-6 Chiyoda, Hanjo City, Saitama 367-0054, Japan. 3 issues - $20.00 or 900 yen per issue.
Ah - good to have in hands again an issue of Stroker. Irving Stetner is
still at it and his passion for spreading the wonder of Henry Miller hasn't
slowed although, as you can see, he is up to 73 issues! This issue has
several most interesting articles on Miller written by Japanese authors and
works by, for example, Jesse Glass who has a great poem page in this issue.
And then there are these most wonderful and marvelous prose passages -
autobiographical like - like Miller like passages by Stettner about his
life gone by way back when in New York City he a young tiger and horse.
These passages so alive then one is locked on each word and drawn down the
page - it is horses seeking water, it is moths the moon, it is lions
wishing, lusting, and seeking meat in the African night - so one falls into
and speeds along in Stettner's prose. Japan suits him well. Write to him
there. He is a champion of small press and champion him on.
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Murderous Signs - Issue 5. 2002.
Murderous signs, c/o Grunge Papers, PO Box 53106, Ottawa, ON, K1N 1C5, Canada or www.achilles.net/~grunge/msigns or: grunge@achilles.net $5.00 (Can. Dollars) for sub of 2 issues.
Murderous Signs is a literary zine and although it calls itself a zine, and
it is, is also mighty literary. A most amazing editorial by editor Grant
Wilkins about books and bookstores - like in his local bookstore - 55 feet
of shelf space for self-help books, 70 different for Dummies titles but no
books by the Greek poet Hesiod. And the issue features the epiphanistic
poetry of April A. Severin and a selection of letters by most exciting innovative poet J. W. Curry, in which his vast intelligence comments on the state of Canadian poetry and poetry in general. His most excellent and expansive mind and intellect roar a lighthouse lightning storm in our dull darkness.
All that a zine should we have here - it carries us to a new place in
poetry. DA LIGHT! DA LIGHT! SEE DA LIGHT!
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Michael Basinski
©2002 the-hold.com
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