Prefaces by John Crouse - Summer/Fall 2001.
Xtant Books. 2001. Write: Jim Leftwich, 1512 Mountainside Court, Charlottesville, VA. 22903-9707.
No Price Listed - estimate: $10.00.
Shattered Wig Review, - No. 20. 2001.
Rupert Wondolowski, editor. Shattered Wig Press 425 E. 31st Street, Baltimore, MD. 21218.
Sample issue 5 bucks. Subscription is $9.00 per year. See also: www.normals.com/wig.html
Ferrum Wheel. - No 2. 2001.
547 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14209. Editors: ric royer, Chris Fritton and char dickerson.
Write for subscription price and submission info: ferrumwheel@hotmail.com
Remembering Gregory Corso - by Herschel Silverman.
The Beehive Press, 47 East 33rd Street, Bayonne, NJ 07002. 33pp. $10.00.
Prefaces by John Crouse - Summer/Fall 2001.
Xtant Books. 2001. Write: Jim Leftwich, 1512 Mountainside Court, Charlottesville, VA. 22903-9707.
No Price Listed - estimate: $10.00.
In Prefaces there are 20 poems, which, I assume, are 20 prefaces. Upon
reading I became swept intoxicated by the music of poet John Crouse's work.
Truly, he has poetry as music in his focus, for us who might forget that
the vowels have it and vowels make it. Music is meaning here in these -
well - songs/scores. Prefaces - yes - I know poems. However, the music is
everywhere seeping in and springing up eruptions and ejaculations of
pleasure over and over. In these poems - you read about The Writer. That
mysterius creator/being that in this myth in music. The act of writing
feels effortless almost spontaneous. However, music as is in these poems is
never effortless to compose. Certainly, not at this level of
sophistication. But to make it feel effortless - ah. The pace of the
poetry is dazzling and also without seam or break. Of course there are
other levels in John Crouse's poems. They are about, so to speak, A Writer
- The Writer - what is written. His character, being, alter/altar self and
self in the act of creation is objectified as the energy being The Writer
engages words to make the poem. Crouse turns the ego of most poems into The
Writer merging and mingling with the poetry. Biology, obviously, there is
much to write about these poems. I am sure the realm of the poem will hear
form from John Crouse. There is much to write. However, allow me to engage
my own emotional response. Ah, the vowel music soars great Snowy Owls with
yellow eyes.
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Shattered Wig Review, - No. 20. 2001.
Rupert Wondolowski, editor. Shattered Wig Press 425 E. 31st Street, Baltimore, MD. 21218. Sample issue 5 bucks. Subscription is $9.00 per year. See also: www.normals.com/wig.html
I began to read this issue of Shattered Wig Review and could not place it
back on the pile. I was enjoying myself with a poetry magazine! Not just a
poetry magazine but a magazine with prose and comics and a cartoon strip by
A. Goldfarb called, Ogner Stump's 1000 Sorrows. I wondered how I missed the
first 19 issues! Obviously, I was lame, stupid, drunk. I hope dear reader
that you are not dumb, blind, insensitive or an aardvark, albeit I am sure
that aardvark poets read Shattered Wig Review, while they are dreaming
about Chinese food or pizza. You must engage the Shattered Wig Review,
which are a tremendously refreshing poetry and prose and comics and all
around insanely beautiful magazine. This issue is 68 pages of wild humor,
biting ridiculous, ironic intelligently and artistically moronic art and
excellent poems and innovative poetry and prose and art and collage and
snips of reality right out of the newspaper (the true lit of idiots) and
all of it points out how truly crazy everything about the human race is in
fact. Within this issue are poems by Batworth, Jeff Little, Blaster Al
Ackerman, John M. Bennett just to mention a few. And poems by Glans T.
Sherman and Dan Raphael. Rupert Wondolowski, editor, is my new hero - what
he got is guts and what insight into this frail world in which we live as
demented animals. He is a treat and a lord of the beautifully bizarre. Get
this one if you wish other poetry that is not dull, dim, mundane or vapid.
I love this section of poetry from Les Wade's poem Dire Effluvia:
("Anything goes in
anything goes out
fruit, bananas
old pajamas,
mutton, beef, and trout")
Or how about this snip by Blaster Al Ackerman,
Let's get together real soon this week
and discuss how we can enjoy more
Milo Pee Drink
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Ferrum Wheel. - No 2. 2001.
547 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14209. Editors: ric royer, Chris Fritton and char dickerson. Write for subscription price and submission info: ferrumwheel@hotmail.com
Ferrum Wheel is without question thee most innovative and shockingly new
poetry magazine to come along in the past decade. That is a big, big
statement. It is all true, because Ferrum Wheel challenges every aspect of
the poem as it is conservatively known and also as it is known as a vehicle
of experiment. The assembling of each issue is work intensive. It is all
made by hand. All of it. Each issue is not just signed or numbered but
meticulously assembled. It is a sculpture formed by many hands. It is a
work or art itself and brings to mind the word combine as Robert
Rauchenberg used the term for his constructions that were beyond painting
and sculpture. Ferrum Wheel is a combine and a performance of poetry on the
page and a new form of Fluxus. It is poetry as the primitive creative
gesture of imagination coming full to fruit in this vast dead desert of
retro howling langue, NYC and San Francisco moldy ghosts of ghost poetry.
Hail The F-WHEEL -2210 and beyond! Hail The F-WHEEL: intrepid and gutsy
informing and commenting and challenging what one understands to be poetry.
And what one is as an editor also. In Ferrum Wheel the editors are not
invisible not salve slaves to the poems of the poet. The editors are
designers and artists but POETS! and their format, their unit of
composition is the magazine. This magazine is the (a) poetry. I suspect
this razor will slice the strap of the handbag of the world of words and
run with it. Oh, this old soul steps with glee aside and welcomes this new
year, this new century of poets: ric royer, Chris Fritton, char dickerson,
Jessica Smith, Tarwin Baker, Eric Gelsinger, and their company.
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Remembering Gregory Corso - by Herschel Silverman.
The Beehive Press, 47 East 33rd Street, Bayonne, NJ 07002. 33pp. $10.00.
Oh Sad Mad Yak! Gregory Corso is gone - safe in heaven dead. But he is
here remembered by Herschel Silverman most tenderly with poems and bits of
the past, letters by Corso, bits of narrative by Silverman, recounting
where the two poets, Corso and Silverman, touched the same bases over the
bumpily strange course of a lifetime of poetry and pipe butter. Silverman's
poems are the most musical of the street coated with rain jazz beat bumpy
bump dadadadadatata music of New York and environs life now being written
and with the same inspiring jazz joy path one finds and dreams and hears in
the best bars full of words of Keroauc and Ginsberg. Inspiriting these
poems by Silverman and this tiny bit of winged soul book sends shivers and
brings tears. I did knot know Corso. But I miss him and Silverman's poems
help in this respect. Oh and Saint Herschel will lead us with his bebop
singing sings for Saintly Gregory - now for real a real ghost saint. This
little book if a form of prayer and flowers sent to Gregory Corso by his
friend and fellow poet Herschel Silverman. Thank you Hershel. Gregory,
adios King.
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Michael Basinski
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