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taproot_5.0a
From au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu Tue May 7 20:26:22 1996
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 09:11:07 -0500
From: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
To: pauls@etext.org
Subject: TRee #5a: zines
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Issue #5.0, section a: zines 7/94
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TapRoot is a quarterly publication of Independent, Underground,
and Experimental language-centered arts. Over the past 10 years,
we have published 40+ collections of poetry, writing, and visio-
verbal art in a variety of formats. In the August of 1992, we
began publish TapRoot Reviews, featuring a wide range of "Micro-
Press" publications, primarily language-oriented. This posting
is the first section of our 5th full electronic issue, containing
most of the short ZINE reviews; the second section contains most of
the chapbook reviews. We provide this information in the hope
that netters do not limit their reading to E-mail & BBSs.
Please e-mail your feedback to the editor, Luigi-Bob Drake, at:
au462@cleveland.freenet.edu
Requests for e-mail subsctiptions should be sent to the same
address--they are free, please indicate what you are requesting--
(a short but human message; this is not an automated listserve).
I believe it is FTPable from UMich, which also archives back issues.
Hard-copies of TapRoot Reviews contain additional review
material--in issue #5: features on the Argentinian experimental
poetry movement _Paralengua_; the LA micropress Found Street;
the Russian transfuturist artists Rea Nickonova & Serge Segay;
recent French writing-in-translation, the new magazine _Apex of
the M_; plus features on work by Nathaniel Mackey, Bill Luoma, and
Ivan Arguelles. TapRoot Reviews intends to survey the boundries
of "literature", and provide access to work that stretches those
boundries.It is availablefrom: Burning Press, PO Box 585, Lakewood
OH 44107--$2.50 pp.
Both the print & electronic versions of TapRoot are copyright
1994 by Burning Press, Cleveland. Burning Press is a non-profit
educational corporation. Permission granted to reproduce
this material FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, provided that this
introductory notice is included. Burning Press is supported, in
part, with funds from the Ohio Arts Council.
Reviewers are identified by their initials at the end of each
review: Mark Amerika, Michael Basinski, John M. Bennett, Jake
Berry, Luigi-Bob Drake, R. Lee Etzwiler, Steve Fried, Chris
Funkhouser, Jessica Grimm, Bob Grumman, Roger Kyle-Keith, Joel
Lipman, Stephen-Paul Martin, Susan Smith Nash, Kurt Nimmo, Oberc,
Charlotte Pressler, Dan Raphael, Andrew Russ, Mark Wallace, Don
Webb, Mark Weber, and Thomas Willoch. Additional contributors
are welcome: drop an e-note or send SASE.
*** Many thanx to all of our contributors. ***
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ZINES:
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1 CENT--(# 297, April 1993), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto,
Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 1 pp., $.50. Just a 4" x 5" piece of
paper with a title, "DYSLEXIC ESSAY:/ too:/ TRANSLATION:," which
is jittered by double-printing; some information about number of
copies printed, etc.; and a three-word poem (by "NE"): MOOM IN
VALLEY.--bg
1 CENT--(# 300, April 1993), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto,
Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 1 pp., 1 Canadian cent plus lots of
postage. Pretty amazing what one cent will get you these days: a
commemorative anthology of previous issues of 1CENT, 3 cent Pulp,
2 Bit Poetry, and the Ganglia 5 cent Mini Mimeo Series, plus some
excerpts from works in lieu of a review and a few new poems.
Lovingly rubberstamped on scraps of paper and hand-sewn into a
book. The poems themselves are generally short (less than ten
lines) and maybe a bit zen-like (or paradoxical). A large number
of mostly Canadian poets, such as Richard Truhlar, Michael
Ondaatje, The Four Horsemen, Stuart Ross, Guy R. Beining, appear.
--ar
1 CENT--(January 1994), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto, Ontario,
CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 10 pp., $.50. "A triple memorial issue for
RDHansen, dom sylvester houedard & Joe Singer, edited by jwcurry"
and titled, "Ecosystem; a Fragment." Some fine short
reminiscences of the three recently deceased poets by curry; and
some samples of their work along with a reprint of a newspaper
article about houedard by Guy Brett.--bg
ABACUS--(February 1994), 181 Edgemont Ave., Elmwood CT, 06110.
20 pp., $4.00. Somewhat surrealistic poems in what I (and, before
me; Charles Wright) call the jump-cut vein (because they jump
abruptly from one scene to another not obviously related to the
first) by one of the leaders in the field, Rosemarie Waldrop.
Lots of fun lines like: "No one is ahead of his time; and he only
slightly," from "Cornered Stones."--bg
ABACUS--(January 1994), 181 Edgemont Ave., Elmwood CT, 06110.
20 pp., $4.00. This one is devoted to "Blue Horizon," a set of 9
two-page poems by language-poet Bruce Andrews that are outside all
logics I know of but... well, in the first poem, words & phrases
like "Sherwood Frost," "Bumblebee Biolage Juleishtee," and
"Tomahawk cedar star-of-the-veld," and many references to musical
items such as a "belfrey-tree" lead, for me, to the "bellfounding"
of a kind of Forest of Arden.--bg
ANTISKIOS--(#s 10, 12, 15, & 28), 4143 F. St., Bremerton WA,
98312. 1 pg. @, SASE. Odd mixtures of mostly plainstyle poetry,
including "Memorial Haiku," by Sparrow: "At the funeral/ one girl
told me: 'He was/ my Hygiene teacher'," which is about as
unprepossessingly moving a poem as I've come across.--bg
APEX ANNUAL--(#1, "Erotic Fun"), PO Box 49324, Austin TX, 78765.
64 pp., $8.95. This one has been around for a while but if it is
still available, if you enjoy reading erotic writing (like that of
Cheryl Townsend, Don Zablocki, Charles Sidney Bernstein)--this is
a goody. Useful within the First Amendment: "Congress shall make
no law..." Freedom of Speech recall we have it. And the
collection's manifesto (introduction by Pistol Pete): "This manual
of erotic art contains writing which will help human beings to
achieve the fullest joy..." A few strangely erotic photographs
exploring that which we all have and in this fashion--oddly erotic
takes--turn-on/offs by Patricia Morales. APEX ANNUAL is published
by the folk at Art-Core. And taste moan fingers red pops pound
dribbling dream empire lethargic god hot dog.--mb
ART TIMES--(October 1993), PO Box 730, Mt. Marion NY, 12456.
20 pp., $1.75. ART TIMES bills itself as "A literary journal and
Resource for all the arts," but is mostly concerned with visual
art--of the easiest-viewing variety, like the work of Thomas Cole.
Well written and informative about exhibits in and around Albany
NY, but of less value beyond that local base.--bg
ARTHUR'S COUSIN--(#10, Winter 1993), 2501 Wickersham #2132, Austin
TX, 78741. 32 pp., $2.00. This one started out as a fanzine, &
has since matured. Editor Joshua's "New Year" started out with a
party I wish I'd been invited to, carrying enough sex and violence
and destruction to keep even an old fart like me amused.
Christopher revives the revived controversy over censorship,
Beavis & Butthead, and parental responsibility. Add to this mix
true hospital stories, poetry by John Grey, and getting tattooed,
and you get real life mixed together in such a personal way you
feel like these folks live across the hall.--o
ARTHUR'S COUSIN--(Vol. 2, #1, Spring 1994), 2501 Wickersham #2132,
Austin TX, 78741. 18 pp., $1.50. Another one of my favorite
zines, ARTHUR'S COUSIN comes flying at you at the speed of light.
Bombarding the senses with short bursts of random wisdom, poetry
by John Grey ("it almost rains/ the sky squeezing itself/ like a
dog sucking bone"), Joshua's arguments that we are not equal, and
his loving review of a band I hate, Pearl Jam. But that's not
all, there are more music reviews, poems, comics, zine reviews,
and all of the ingredients that make a zine a zine: energy, and an
eye for things that count.--o
ATELIER--(#3, Winter 1994), PO Box 580, Boston MA, 02117. 58 pp.,
$5.00. In an interview printed in this issue, poet and critic
Andrew Schelling suggests that the goal of the Naropa Institute's
writing program is to teach not only how to be a writer, but to be
a person. Being a person in difficult times, a difficult world is
the basic ground upon which this well-produced, innovatively
arranged issue builds a body of work which affirms and validates
the individual's experience. A deep love for humanity flows from
each page: Leah Spencer's "all my thorns point inward," Quraysh
Ali's "Crescent, OK," Charles Rossiter's "I watch bad TV" are only
a few.--ssn
ATOM MIND--(Vol. 4 # 13), PO Box 22068, Albuquerque NM, 87154.
104 pp. This issue of ATOM MIND bears a grinning picture of the
late Frank Zappa on the cover as tribute. Suzy Creamcheese--
Zappa's blunt-end-of-a-joke embodiment of the middle class
plebeian mindset--is also quoted. Inside, under glossy covers, we
find poetry and short fiction by the likes of Michael Estabrook,
Errol Miller, Ann Newell, Gerald Locklin, and many others. In
every issue, ATOM MIND pays homage to a poet of long-standing
achievement with it's "Living Poets Series"--Winter 1994 profiles
Carol Berge. There are graphics by the inestimable R. Crumb, and
Wayne Hogan among others. "Cowboys & Poetry," by Kendall McCook,
is essential reading for those interested in the diversity of
American poetry; the article profiles cowboy poet Kell Robertson.
In the tradition of THE WORMWOOD REVIEW and THE NEW YORK
QUARTERLY, ATOM MIND chronicles underground America's unknown
poets.--kn
AVALON RISING--(#20, January 1994), PO Box 1983, Cincinnati OH,
45201. 18 pp., $1.00. Due to the proliferation of computers and
small copying machines, we are now witnessing a large increase in
small and independently produced zines. AVALON RISING is a good
example of this multiplication; it's under 20 pages, printed on
cheap bond, and the type is computer generated. Michael
Estabrook, Eroll Miller, Robert W. Howington are included in this
issue. There's a personal flavor to the zine; editor Tebbs
indicates her sincere desire "to quit smoking." Of particular
interest is an interview with poet Michael Estabrook. As for the
obscurity of American poetry, he cites the experience of Emily
Dickinson, who "wrote great poetry & hid it in the bottom of her
underwear drawer," only to be discovered later. Much of AVALON
RISING is a good read, though the zine's small size leaves you
searching for more.--kn
BLAZIN' AURALITIES--(#2, 1993), 4083 Clark, Montreal Quebec,
CANADA, H2W 1X1. 20 pp., $4.00. This magazine is an irregular
review of spoken word recordings. Most of the reviews are short
and precise and explanatory. The poetry word on cassette is well
represented: John M. Bennett, Bob Z., John Cage, Bern Porter, Kurt
Schwitters, Gregory Whitehead... plus radio station listings, &
more. A must for those involved in the world of poetry/sound
performance, recording, and distribution. A network before the
eye. The big & the small without prejudice, and addresses
galore.--mb
Focusing on reviewing spoken word recordings, audio
and video, and also listing Radio Stations sympathetic to spoken
word, and addresses from which you might obtain such. This is an
excellent and desperately needed resource. The reviews are short,
descriptive and enough to give you an idea about the recording in
question. If you have any interest at all in the sound and vision
of contemporary poetics check this out.--jb
BLIND MAN'S RAINBOW--(#1?), PO Box 1557, Erie PA, 16507. 16 pp.,
$1.55. A magazine that has a true innocence--I believe that an
editor who wants all submissions kept to a "PG-13 rating" and
suggests we avoid the "F" word still deserves a chance. While
most of the poems in this magazine are done by young poets, who
still have a naive optimism and don't yet know just how bad things
can get, it was fun to relive the years when I felt the same way.
--o
BOB'S JOINT--(Vol. 1 #3, Winter 1994), 111 President St., Brooklyn
NY, 11231. 4 pp., SASE. Editor Bob Balo runs workshops in "voice
& movement... to improve delivery of written word," as well as
running some NYC open readings. The best of the poems here would
fit well at an open, & if performed well might even be remembered
the next day. Others lack an original voice, which no delivery
would make up for.--lbd
BOOG--(#66, Winter 1992-1993), 422 N. Cleveland Street, Arlington
VA, 22201. 68 pp, $4.00. Subtitled "An Anglo-American Journal,"
which includes poetry from England, the Commonwealth countries,
and America. One hundred contributors, including Androla,
Bukowski, Daldorph, C.A. Townsend and Nielsen in this issue--a
quantity of memorable, diverse poetic styles. Tension/balance as
irrelevance struggles with directness and originality: time,
place, incident, and persona in each poem--and often a Beat-
current--pushes us along against a minimalist tide of realities.
"logical kisses/ through a surgical/ mask" Dave Ward of Liverpool
serves us his image of a street-wise female, and images like this,
clear and enticing, fill each page. From the late Buk, "there was
nothing to say/ there never will be anything to say/ we live, we
die, huh?" Art work included in this issue is Wayne Hogan's pop
surrealistic icons, merry and mysterious. --rrle
BOUILLABAISSE--(#3, Fall 1993), 31A. Watterloo St., New Hope PA,
18938. 80 pp., $10.00. This issue is dedicated to Carl Solomon
and includes a memoir about him by Larry Lundwall, and a poem for
him by Allen Ginsberg. Its other texts and graphics, which
includes a fine one by Charles Bukowski (that, sadly, turned out
to be among his last) keep the beatnik tradition energetically
alive.--bg
BURNT TOAST--(#3, March/April 1994), PO Box 1314, Huntington Beach
CA, 92647. 31 pp., free. Poems saturated with coffee and
coffeehouse poetry reading ambiance, these are (depending on your
bias): youthful/naive, immediate/unpolished, sincere/sentimental,
direct/obvious. JAM'S CoffeeHouse in Huntington Beach seems to be
the spawning ground, with seemingly the same explosion of cafe
readings there that we see here in Cleveland. BURNT TOAST is
free, but poets are asked to contribute $1/page for work
submitted--a turn of the table, charging the artist instead of
the audience.--lbd
CAFE REVIEW--(Vol. 5 #1, Winter 1994), 20 Danforth St, Portland
ME, 04101. 60 pp., $5.00. One of the most subtle, yet vicious,
publications around. It looks too innocent to have poems like
Wayne Atherton's "Vagrant Meditation", or "Wild Fecundity", which
carries its lines like a sword: "When the last wolf/ kills the
last sheep/ and feeds... which/ shall you morn most/ in its
passing?" and "She places her teeth/ on the dashboard/ next to a
white plastic Jesus." Kurt Nimmo roars in with a dope-bust poem
filled with the anxiety of wired out speed paranoia and cop cars
closing in for the kill, while Gina Bergamino seduces with yet
another emotional poem of abandonment. An interview with small
press dirty-old-man Judson Crews rounds out another fine issue of
poetry that brings joy to the heart, or takes you to the brink of
destruction, depending on what you thrive on most.--o
CENTRAL PARK--(#23, Spring 1994), PO Box 1446, New York NY, 10023.
$7.50. CENTRAL PARK functions as a window between worlds, a
mysterious crossroads of perspective and creativity beyond the
veil of the mainstream, but accessible enough to lure readers of
purely main and knownstream mags. But one quick pass is like a
cudgel to complacency. These are ideas hungry for change,
openness, liberation of the contemporary mind, information
assaulted into numbness. A fine example of this is Edward
Jefferson's "The Shores of Artificial Lake", which consists of
"interviews" with radical thinkers who move beyond the
conventional parameters of debate and suggest genuine alternative
ideas; guaranteed to induce a healthy attack of philosophical
vertigo in those who suffer from what Bob Grumman calls
"segraceptuality" in his article on mathematical poetry and its
lack of acceptance by the aesthetic establishment. Powerful razor
edge stories, poems, visuals and forms that defy category. The
taboos are tossed to the wind, this is what free individualism
looks like in print.--jb
The highest production values and the thoroughest coverage
in the otherstream: includes considered essays on culture and
society by such writers as Susan Smith Nash and (editor) Stephen-
Paul Martin; such kinds of texts as Eve Ensler's series of
performance monologues, "The Vagina Monologues," and Jonathan
Brannen's droll surrealistic short story, "The Happy Shirt"; and a
wide variety of poems, visuals, and interviews.--bg
CHIRON REVIEW--(Vol XII #1, Spring 1993), Rt. 2 Box 111, St. John
KS, 67576. 48 pp., $3.00. In this issue, Todd Moore graces the
front cover, and some of his short Dillinger poems fly at you with
lines like "i've never told/ anyone abt being/ a dillinger/
hostage 'til now/ i remember the/ wind how cold/ it was...", and
"the whole idea/ dillinger sed/ is to make/ bank robbery/ a
business...". There's also an interview with Todd about his
growing up in Illinois which fills in the blanks for folks who
only know him by his work. Mark Weber does an excellent interview
with Judson Crews that crawls into this wild man's head, and
follows up with some of Judson's poems about women, Christ, etc.
Plus Bill Shields, Ana Pine, Arthur Winfield Knight, and a few
book reviews--a read that'll keep you busy for a day or two.--o
CHIRON REVIEW--(Vol XII #4, Winter 1994), Rt. 2 Box 111, St. John
KS, 67576. 48 pp., $3.00. This issue begins with Charles
Bukowski and Jack Hirschman. Oberc interviews folks that knew the
poet Lorri Jackson, who died of a drug overdose. Antler and Cat
Spydell celebrate oral sex. CHIRON has a fair amount of reviews,
news on contests, calls for manuscripts, and conferences. CHIRON
also runs poetry contests and something called "The Poetry
Rendezous," complete with workshops and dinner. These folks are
serious about poetry. CHIRON is not a fly-by-night operation.--kn
CLIQUE-CLACK--(#6, March 1994), PO Box 891722, Oklahoma City OK,
73189. 8 pp, $1.00. I have to admit, I liked #4's Killer Klowns
from Outer Space cover better than this lovely but calm sketch of
a woman, but I do like the #6 tattooed on her arm. Energetic
arrangings of graphics, poetry, short fiction, faux personals,
"Your Name In Hieroglyphics."--ssn
CLUTCH--(#3, December 1993), 132 Clinton Park #4, San Francisco
CA, 94103. 70 pp., $5.00. Lorri Jackson's "6/10/93," written the
year before her death from heroin overdose, is chilling cinema
verite, reinforced by three more eerily premonitory poems that
push urge into the bloodstream & weird desire to find her grave or
at least photograph Jim Morrison's outside Chartres. A set by
Charles Bukowski reinforces confrontations with mortality and a
pervasive fin-de-sicle death-drive that the reader will not
quickly shake off. Other must-reads: Simon Perchik's "to feel my
name cut in two," Mark Weber's "Holding Tank of the Damned" and
Denise Dee's discussion of her research on AIDS.--ssn
COTTON GIN--(January 1994), 3408 Burlington Rd., Greensboro NC,
27405. 8 pp., SASE. The first issue of a tiny accordion-folded
zine featuring an appealing array of poetry, prose and drawings.
The title of one of its poems, which is by Jay Sean Neese; gives a
good idea of the zine's style; "Sometimes You Make It Up As You Go
Along." Among the issue's other items is an intriguing illumage
(i.e.; work of visual art) by editor Chris Stafford that looks
like a page out of a notebook for a class in botany.--bg
CRADLE BOXCARS--(Fall 1993), PO Box 844, Rockford IL, 61105.
44 pp. Mostly solid plainstyle poems, among them the first poem
I'd read by the notoriously black-humored Todd Moore--a fun
anecdote about boys playing cops and robbers who happened on a man
who seemed to be sleeping off a drunk until "jimmy went/ closer &
sd ants/ are coming out/ of a hole/ in his head then/ he opened
the/ door & stuck/ the gun barrel/ into the wound/ yelling look
how/ far i can make/ it go in."--bg
CRASH COLLUSION--(#7), PO Box 49233, Austin TX, 78765. 64 pp.,
$4.00. This issue continues exploration of the areas previously
established: UFOs,Psychedelics, and Conspiracy Theories, but as
Wesley has refined his editorial skills the articles have
deepened. Where once most would have dismissed CRASH COLLUSION
as just another fringe rag, now there is much here worth
consideration by even the most skeptical. For instance, an
interview with Michael A. Hoffman II who manages to read the
"conspiracy" in world events without falling victim to easy
conclusions. Rather than proselytize any particular point of
view, CC merely opens the doors for discussion and allows the
reader to make of it what he or she will. Free press for free
minds.--jb
CURMUGEON--(Fall 1993), 2921 Alpine Rd., #112, Columbia SC, 29223.
24 pp., $3.00. Another new artzine out of Columbia, South
Carolina, and it's packed with graphics and texts, the former
substantially more far-out than the latter, which are mostly
anecdotal near-prose; with bitter or sardonic punch-lines--like
one poem, by Robert B. Howington, in which a woman joins the
narrator in an elevator, after she stops the elevator and
undresses; saying it makes her feel like a woman, the narrator
undresses, too, but then hands his clothes to the woman and asks
her to fold them.--bg
DATA DUMP--(#7 & 8, 1993), Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place,
Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK, HD58PB. 4 pp. @,
$1.00 @. DATA DUMP is a bibliographic project of SF-related
poetry, and these two issues focus particularly on genre poems
containing nuclear holocaust imagery. There's quite a bit, & it's
nice to see (as a non-fan) concerns for the present-day dangers of
technology-run-rampant, as well as hypothetical futures,
addressed. This is definitely for fans, tho, as there's no
contact information for most of the publications (most of the zine
listings mention only name/issue#). And the tiny handwritten text
is difficult to read.--lbd
DISCARD,--(Postcard Series #1), PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614.
15 pp., $3.00. In this series we get what is essentially a
chapbook worth of poems and collages by Jeff Ferrell. Each
postcard begins with "Greetings From...", and a poem follows,
incorporating great lines like: "Why do BMWs smell like blood?/
Why do poodles eat chicken?/ Why does money talk? Why do
shopping/ malls feel like prison?" While some of the cards have
stronger images than words, or vise versa, the overall collection
works well and continues publisher Andy Lowry's efforts to push
publishing as far as it can go without falling off the edge.--o
DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES--(#42, Spring 1994), 1300 Kicker Rd.,
Tuscaloosa, Al, 35404. 20 pp., $2.00. This issue features one-
word poems, fifteen of them, including G. Huth's "unneceszxzsary"
and John Graywood's "Fredulent", which is titled "Psychofeit."
Among the longer poems in D&N are a very funny one by editor
David-Kopaska-Merkel about brain-lobe rental, and a charming one
by Carolyn Ann Schirmbeck Cambell about a little girl's eventually
shrinking small enough to play Afternoon Tea under her bed with
her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Caper.--bg
DRIVER'S SIDE AIRBAG--(#11, January 1994), PO Box 25760, Los
Angeles CA, 90025. 20 pp., $1.60. This issue captures editor
Robert Howington's political side, some fine hysteria by Cynthia
Hendershot, and that mandatory Lyn Lifshin angst. A wonderful
uplifting Terry Everton hands over one of the finest bitter
hangovers I've read in a long time. There's also an essay about
inter-racial pornography, several short stories, and a few pages
of music reviews.--o
DRIVER'S SIDE AIRBAG--(#12, Spring 1994), PO Box 25760, Los
Angeles CA, 90025. 26 pp., $2.50. The highlights in this issue
were: John Grey's "Soldiers Been And Gone" ("I think of those
stilted young men,/ rifles growing out of their flesh,/
interrogating only that tiny part/ of us that has something to
hide"); a few prose poems by Cynthia Hendershot; a long
surrealistic poem by Halchin that left nerve endings snapping in
my head; a Weinman poem that I truly admired ("Most of the animals
I fucked/ didn't stay for seconds, or/ come back later for more");
a few music, chap, book reviews; and (God only knows how Howington
did it) a few Lyn Lifshin poems that I actually liked.--o
ENDING THE BEGIN N4--(Spring 1994), PO Box 4816, Seattle WA,
98104. 25 pp., $1.00. Stiff-covered 2" x 3" zine with short
mostly coarse fun stuff like Tim Tate's "I just can't fart/ loud./
No matter how hard/ I try,/ it's always quiet." But also, some
cleverful semi-experimental pieces like one by Sandy Plotnikoff
called "see ann / c an," that discusses and includes a picture of
some Anns kicking some cans, and does much more than this
description might suggest.--bg
EPOCH--(Fall 1993), 251 Goldwin Smith Hall, Cornell Univ., Ithica
NY, 14853. 96 pp., $5.00. Short stories, poems, and an essay
that I couldn't tell from the short stories except for it's label.
Just about all of these focus on aimless, small lives (an
unfulfilled farmer, a tradition-shorn young priest). Though
invariably sensitive, clear-voiced, and tricked out with
authenticizing details, they never go anywhere very far.--bg
EXILE--(Vol. 2 #2, Spring 1994), 149 Virginia St. #7, St. Paul MN,
55102. 8 pp., free fr postage ($.52). The "New & Neglected"
column is still here, featuring reviews of Jack Spicer, Jonathan
Brannen, Andrew Joran and a few others. But the balance seems to
shift more & more toward the satirical and humorous--an interview
with the Devil on how to make it in the poetry world; an excerpt
from the forthcoming "Selected Blurbs and Prefaces of Robert
Creeley"; Tom Phan's catalog of fingernail references in Samuel R.
Delany's autobiography; and a list of soon-to-be-chic Poetry
Fashions. The humor is smart and pointed, almost bitter--inside
jokes for the not quite insiders of the poetry world.--lbd
EXPERIODDICIST--(February 1993), PO Box 3112, Florence AL, 35630.
4 pp. Another one-contributor issue, in this case the under-known
Darrel L. Pritchard, a poet currently doing about everything one
can with fruitful distortions of syntax, crossed content, and
plain old Grand Vocabulary. One example; a few lines from his
"Chaos": "Of becoming. Voluminous incognito acceleration/
damnity. The reich ol matter bedlam under/ Shintoism the
antechamber filled with."--bg
EXPERIODDICIST--(November 1993), PO Box 3112, Florence AL, 35630.
4 pp. All kinds of farsome teXts in this one, like the poem by
mike kessel that ends: "loplops mes laters ofs initials r. 's
mutts"; or Gregory St. Thomasino's fascinating "Elegy for
Christopher Smart," which seems to be a short verse-bio of the
sometime-institutionalized English poet in words mostly chopped
off in the front as in the following passage: "...he/ geous/ ent
to/ s/ t/ mmitted;"--bg
FACE THE DEMON--(#8), 3077 Garner Creek Rd., Dickson TN, 37055.
$2.00? With a slap-together rough look of street insurgence, FACE
THE DEMON regularly assaults the Nashville area with gritty
poetry, clippings, subversive collage, etc. The work doesn't
originate totally in Nashville though and its actually an eclectic
dose. Some of the work reads like poetry manifesto while other
rambles strange confession or sings the body angst-wired. This is
the underbelly entrails of decline.--jb
FEEDBACK--(#18), 619 N. Magnolia, Lansing MI, 48912. 24 pp.,
$2.00. Editor Carol Schneck has published many zines over the
years--some of them were mailart, others consisted of her brutally
honest stories and poetry, but all of them were powerful humane
publications. In FEEDBACK she features a lot of the regulars in
the smallest presses (Donny Smith, Edward Mycue, Michael Dec,
Charlie Nash, Kyle Hogg, and Carol herself) doing what they do
best--forcing us to reexamine reality by knocking off the
artificial shells and making us crawl inside the action. Heavy
doses of existentialism, recreational drug use, love & hate &
sunshine--the norms of the edge, and what make that life worth
living.--o
FEH!--(#16), 147 Second Ave #603, New York NY, 10003. $2.00.
The best way to relate what happens in these pages is to quote one
of the shorter poems in its entirety, so here is "Liturgical
Quandry" by r.J. dates:
During the service,
the pastor farted.
It was a stern and resonant fart.
But no one could figure where it fit
in the liturgy.
Bodily excretions, oozing sores, low humor turned into mana, the
raw fodder of material existence with a religious zeal. This
issue is divided evenly between poetry and a letters section that
is just as depraved and inventive as the poetry. Reading FEH! has
the effect of reminding you of your own gritty reality while
making you laugh and think. And as always plenty of great
visuals, from classic to contemporary, that invoke the same
paradoxical Epiphanies as the text. When the sewers wax eloquent
it smells like FEH!--jb
FLAMING ENVELOPES--(#3), PO Box 470186, Fort Worth TX, 76147.
12 pp., $1.00. Xerox-duplicated shock poetry underground. Editor
Robert W. Howington edits this zine between games of minor league
hockey in Texas. Go figure. Poetry by Linda Lerner, Todd Moore,
England's Andrew Darlington, and a few others. Gregory N. Coursen
is "Homemade Ice Cream Press Poet of the Year" for 1993, and six
of his poems are included. Ian A. Woods writes about having a
watch stolen in Tangiers, a la Bill Burroughs, while engaged in
sex with an Arab boy. W. Bryan Massey III does something entirely
disgusting with his dog; the poem aptly demonstrates the absurd
lengths of shock poetry. Graphics by Blair Wilson, Dawne, and
Pschot. "Psycho Joe," a cartoon by Pcshot, instructs on various
mass murder and wholesale destruction techniques. FLAMING
ENVELOPE is thin, but each element within is volatile.--kn
FLYING DOG--(April 1994), Vol. 2, No. 2, PO Box 66534, Baton Rouge
LA, 70806. $3.00. Focusing primarily on naturalistic voice
poetry, or essays of similar ordinary mind. This issue opens with
another of those gritty collaborations by Joe Speer and John
Knoll, and continues with a page of Janet Kuypers' "short" series
of poems. There are essays, screeds, confessions with a good mix
of comics, original and borrowed graphics. They should have this
in waiting rooms instead of all those commercial craprags.--jb
FRAYED--PO Box 3756, Erie PA, 16508. 36 pp., $3.00,. Billed as
"the real fuckin' on-the-edge verse & rant magazine," FRAYED
consciously attempts to push the envelope of acceptability.
Poetry by Todd Moore, Cheryl A Townsend, Paul Weinman, Ron
Androla, Ana Christy, and others. Marijuana, homosexuality,
pornography, and copious anti- Americanism predominates.
Illustrations by John Howard, Ron Androla, and Mike Diana, who
was busted in Florida for obscenity. Included here is the search
warrant used on Ana and Dave Christy; Ana writes about "empty
shells of commando pork" on the opposite page. The back cover of
this zine holds a photo of a nameless rectum spread open for the
camera. I'm not certain why this is included, except to widen the
radical, in-your-face character of this zine. Somebody, at least,
had enough foresight to put the words "Adults Only" on the cover.
--kn
FREE LUNCH--(#12, Summer 1993), PO Box 7647, Laguna Niguel CA,
92607. 32 pp., $3.50. Editor Ron Offen keeps rejecting my poems
but I continue to like most of the poems he doesn't reject for his
magazine, however non-experimental: e.g., Henry Jacquez's "dock
poem/ Ford truck poem,/ Clattering teeth,/ Propane tank poem."
Not so sure I go along with Offen's thoughts herein on what a
"serious" poet is and isn't, though, or believe it a question
worth pursuing.--bg
FROZEN HYPNOSIS--(#8), Box 41, Waukau WI, 54980. free or trade.
The mutant collage geniuses Malok and Bern Porter have been
creating a collaborative body of work in recent years that bears
extensive cataloging and publishing. This is but a small sample
of that collaboration. Utilizing the discarded elements of
materialist culture and original visuals accompanied by
recontextualized popular faces and headlines, we find ourselves
immersed in an oddly familiar otherness. These collages are the
sublunary script of human entropy, though not an entropy of
despair but of hallucinatory release from the oppression of
sensory overload.--jb
FUEL--(#5, Fall 1993), PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614. 66 pp.,
#3.00. In this new issue of FUEL we get Joe Mason accounting for
six bullets in a surrealistic fashion that hits it on the mark.
Ann Erickson's independent burst of maturity piece has a woman
going out on her own, proving her worth, and feeling beautiful as
a result. Opo's art piece left me with a graphic gut feeling of
words coming on in one long burst of bombardment. And that's just
a quick look at the surface. There's a lot of angst, anger,
freedom, and independence in these pages, breaking around the
frustration of society. It's good writing, thoughtful humane
editing, and a glimmer of hope for the survivors.--o
FUEL--(#6/7, Winter 1994), PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614.
66 pp., $3.00. In this issue, Lisa Manning's "the edge of it
sticks in your eye" leads off with a drug poem: "you wonder/ what
it's doing to you now/ what deep holes are being drilled/ into
what part of your body,/ you wonder just for a moment/ how long
you got to live." Nicole Panter strikes again with the insightful
"Cactus Garden," carrying with it the nostalgia of talking puppets
made out of wood that dance on your knee. And then more Lisa
Manning--with so many pieces that click, she deserves every page
she got.--o
FURTHER STATE(S) OF THE ART--(#3, 1992), 100 Manhattan Ave.
Suite 1210, Union City NJ, 07087. 30 pp., $5.00. A newsletter
containing interviews and high-powered, thoughtful discussions of
new American fiction, on pages split into "Antagonisms" (or
"Ambivalences") and "Enthusiasms,", a peppy idea I found
effective. Like his colleague at ZYX, Arnold Skemer, editor Phil
Leggiere covers books he considers important regardless of
copyright date or notoriety. Well-worth reading.--bg
GAIA--(#1 & 2, April/July 1993), PO Box 709, Winterville GA,
30683. 54 pp., $6.00. The majority of the fiction and poetry in
the premiere GAIA is pro-earth of the warm and fuzzy New Age
variety. It is, however, finely crafted stuff, especially the
poetry. Be prepared for work that moves with a rhythm of a
glacier and the sound of a distant river... this stuff takes it's
time unwinding. The stories are iffy (you've seen it all before,
but these old chestnuts are at least retold in a competent
manner); the poetry is sound-alike but assuredly penned.--rkk
GENERATOR: "Dissembling/Dismantling"--(#6, 1994), 8139 Midland
Rd., Mentor OH, 44060. 100 pp., $6.00. The latest in these
annual anthologies of experimental poetry. I was happy to see
more of the visual in here, perhaps a result of GENERATOR's role
in putting out the excellent CORE reference last year. While not
every piece appears to follow the theme, there is lots of
interesting writing here. Some highlights: Bob Grumman's
redefinition of "The Intellect At Work" (a visual poem that
derives from the 1980s work of Crag Hill), Jane Reavill Ransom
tuff guy deconstruction raps, Paul Widenohoff's visual
contribution, George Hartley's noble but unfollowable multitrack
analysis of Nick Piombino's poetry (there's a visual analogue to
Talmudic texts with commentary), Richard Kostelanetz's storyboard
(which looks much more interesting on the page than it would on
screen, i think), William Benson's "Farewell Reminder", and i'm
sure i missed some...--ar
John Byrum's "international anthology of visual and language
poetries" has a broad and inclusive focus in this issue; it's a
magazine written by and for people interested in experimental
work, not a curriculum vitae inflator, though some of the
contributors are very well known (Bruce Andrews, Stephen-Paul
Martin, Susan Smith Nash)and at least one is a tenure-track
professor at a major state university. A good list of
contributors: Will Alexander, Nico Vassilakis, Sheila E. Murphy,
John M. Bennett, Bob Grumman, Andy Levy, Joel Lipman and George
Hartley appear here. Michael Basinski deconsonates Edgar Allan
Poe's "Eldorado"; Jane Reavill Ransom (like a dog I once had)
pulls famous theorists' socks down and grins at their
discomfiture; Gregory K.H. Bryant juxtaposes Machiavelli's maxims
with technical diagrams; William Benson's "Farewell Reminder"
collects the "errors" his typewriter correction ribbon recorded;
W.B. Keckler's "My Egypt" visually reworks evocative,
heterogeneous, broken phrases. Each page of this magazine is
almost a genre in itself; compare to the standardized layouts of
mainstream journals, which totalize the form of their supposedly
diverse contents. Contact addresses are given for all
contributors.--cp
GRIST ON-LINE--(Dec. 1993), Box 20805 Columbus Circle Sta., New
York NY, 10023. 96 (virtual) pp., free if down-loaded--email
requests to <Grist@phantom.com>. The first specimen of electronic
experioddica I've come across. It includes several first-rate
cutting-edge textual poems by poets like Andrew Gettler, Jurado
and Jerome Rothenberg (from 1968!), and a good variety of
articles, some very helpfully concerned with the art-dissemination
aspects of the Internet and other computer-age matters I, for one,
am not too up on.--bg
HAMBONE--(#11, Spring 1994), 134 Hunolt St., Santa Cruz CA, 95060.
250 pp., $14/2 issues. Edited by Nathaniel Mackey. A recent
scarlet manifestation of HAMBONE continues the journal's decade
(plus) streak of vigorous and elastic editions, presenting high-
quality lyricism by 30 important writers from various locations of
place and verse. The cover's skeletalized figures dancing with
elbows and knees locked, and, wordwise, the excerpt from Will
Alexander's "Isolation, Neutrality, and Limbo" particularly
illustrate HAMBONE's serious though not always grimacing organism
of poetics forms, where "breath and bone" remain the writing
giving waters. Labyrinthine as ever, HAMBONE #11 begins with Tan
Lin's "Anyone Can Perform//an interlocking series of
'random/codes' or information patterns..." and subsequently takes
the reader through Ed Roberson's urban heron-watching reflections,
three "Odes of the Extravageted" by Gustav Sobin, Willard
Gingerich's detailed interview with Armand Schwerner, and "The
Delights of Memory, I: Lily," a one-act play by Jay Wright, among
many further complementary and sophisticated strands of poetry,
telling and singing. Alexander's piece, addressing an "environ of
upset, of weakened gregarious eating," in which "carnivorous
instigation will more fully evince its unseasonable tremor,
creating collapse by orchestration," is a fulfilling meditation on
the curiosities and whirlwind of our Babylon, a call to action, to
realization, and, actually, to kindness for our worlds, "no longer
swayed by rewards, by ego-centered missives and doctrines." Don
Byrd's "Manifesto: Culture War," a partial condensation of his
discursive prose of the last decade, also seeks "to find the way
from misery to felicity." As ever, HAMBONE distills one of the
more energizing reading experiences on the American poetry scene.
--cf
HARDBOILED--(#16, August 1993), PO Box 280-209, Brooklyn NY,
11228. 100 pp., $6.00. There are times I wonder whatever
happened to the good old days when people were politically
incorrect, backstabbing vicious fools. I wonder why I can get
killed faster and with more wounds than in the past, I can expect
a million more things to go wrong in the next decade than in the
past decade, but I cannot accuse anyone of doing me wrong because
they are economically disabled or psychologically maladjusted.
I wonder why there aren't more magazines like HARDBOILED out
there, mining this turf, breaking every rule in the book.--o
HEARTLANDS TODAY--(Vol. 3, 1993), Bottom Dog Press/ Firelands
College, Huron, OH, 44839. 160 pp., $ 7.50. The theme, and
subtitle this year is "Art and Society," and it covers the heart
of innovative art, using essays, critical reviews, poetry, and
visually refreshing black and white graphics in abstract and
surreal motifs. Included are works by Nick Dragovich and Michael
E. Waldecki of Black River Review, Sam Hamill of Copper Canyon
Press, Chicago's Effie Mihopoulos, and dozens of other writers
whose voices are contemporary, powerful and concise.--rrle
HOWLING DOG--(Fall 1993), 8419 Rhode, Utica MI, 48317. 64 pp.,
$5.00. The focus here is poetry and short pose that snipes--the
targets are various, but gentility is certainly #1. One poem, for
instance, is a long list by Michael Foster of instructions from a
poetry magazine editor, including the standard injunction against
poems that are "pornographic, racist sexist/ or (demeaning to)
animals/ domestic or wild...". The zine also contains a revealing
reminiscence by Gabriel Monteleone Neruda of time spent some forty
years ago with Dylan Thomas and Salvadore Dali, and a handful of
informative mini-review of other publications by editor Mark
Donovan.--bg
IMPETUS--(#21), 4975 Comanche Trail, Stow OH, 44224. 145 pp.,
$4.00. With a huge backlog, editrix Cheryl Townsend has kicked
into high gear by doubling up her issues, and this one strikes
with the impact of a sucker punch from a stranger. Giles Scott's
"Wishbone" captures the yearning for children in simple,
passionate words. Mark Weber spins a tale of pennies at the
liquor store, while Tom House carries on the beat tradition with a
tale of lost love and no money to cover the costs. Judson Crews,
Ron Androla, Kurt Nimmo, and many other small press heroes cut so
deep you wonder why you don't see blood on your skin. Angst so
fine tuned you have to catch your breath between the pages.--o
THE IMPLODING TIE-DYED TOUPEE--(Winter 1994), 100 Courtland Dr.,
Columbia SC, 29223. 36 pp., $3.50. A wide selection of visual
and "snapped-context" poems, and various kinds of collages. Just
the title of the poem here by Sheila E. Murphy is enough to prove
the superiority of this zine's zine to me: "Climbless Afternoons
(Away, Apart From)." Another high is Michael Estabrook's
brilliant/dopey combination of non-representational drawing, the
four symbols of the suits in a deck of cards and a woman's
frustration with a... flat tire.--bg
IN YOUR FACE--(#7, Fall/Winter 1993), PO Box 6872, New York NY,
10128. 32 pp., $3.00. Unrelenting tough city poetry and
graphics, framed by a wild editorial rant on vivisection, make
this a jolting cover-to-cover trip. High points and sudden
precipices include Judy Meiksin's meditation on penile
amputation--"these men would have dragged the rivers/ all day &
night,/ searched the fisher's nets/ in case they swept it up/ by
mistake,/ cut open belly after belly/ of fish in case one
swallowed it..."--and Lyn Lifshin's horrifying expose of Thai
smugglers who move their heroin across border in the bodies of
murdered infants. Besides being a powerful poem, this piece
reportedly was instrumental in bringing about an Amnesty
International investigation into the practice. Then, in "Dogs,"
Paul X admonishes those of his peers who would disrespect women:
"I wonder if Harriet or Rosa would have bothered/ if they could
look thru the veils of time/ and see you calling the womanhood/
'Bitches', 'Skeezers', and 'Hoes'// I wonder if your mother would
have bothered/ if she knew what kind of animal you would grow up
to be?" IN YOUR FACE's title says it all, and the editor clearly
knows how to pick the writers to make that happen. Number 8,
which should be out by now, is a women's issue. Anyone who's read
this one can't help but eagerly anticipate it.--sf
INDEFINITE SPACE--(Vol. 2 #2, Winter 1993), PO Box 40101, Pasadena
CA, 91114. 32 pp., $3.00. An elegant range of work, wider than
might seem at first, attesting to the judgment of editors Kevin
Joy and Marcia Arrieta. Evocative fables (Simon Perchik, Bernard
Hewitt) co-existing with 21st century zen (Randall Brock, Thomas
Willoch) and visual poetry (Arrieta, Greg Bryant).--dr
A carefully chosen collection of work by 21 poets with each
poem featured on a page to itself. There are a number of nicely
imagistic poems here, such as those by Corrine DeWinter and
Bernard Hewitt; some excellent minimalist pieces by Thomas
Willoch, Guy R. Beining, Marica Arrieta, Ann Erickson, and others;
and some fine surrealist deconstructionist work by Kevin Joy,
Jeffrey Skeate, and Gregory K.H. Bryant. A nicely produced
magazine in which the work, though displaying great stylistic
variety, has in common a fine delicacy, imagistic sensibility, and
lack or verbosity.--jmb
INK--(Fall 1993), HSS 127, SFSU, 1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco
CA, 94132. 77 pp., $3.50. A nice collection of solid writing and
graphics taking off, in this issue, from Barthes' "Text of
Jouissance," or text that unsettles; etc. Enjoyable but
academicized rather to the rear of the crises in our relation to
language that the magazine's stated aim is to explore; as one
would expect from its quotations from Barthes, Lacan and Derrida
and other museum figures.--bg
INTERRUPTIONS--(#1, 1994), 131 North Pearl St., Kent OH, 44240,
82 pp., $8.00, Ed. by Tom Beckett, the editor of The Difficulties,
one of the most influential and rigorous of journals featuring
experimental and Language poetries. This is a stunning debut,
with collaborations testing the limits of voice, representation,
and authorial presence. "I'm Not Here: A Report from the First
Festival of New Poetry at SUNY Buffalo" by Leslie Bumstead, Jean
Donnelly, Joe Ross, Rod Smith is a standout, with funny &
subversive cut-and-paste juxtapositions: "the gun went click/
in the class picture/ they want to take us back."--ssn
KETTLE OF FISK--(Vol. 3, #3), 16 East Johnson Street #C,
Philadelphia PA, 19144. $1.00. It is always a delight to see
KOF in the mail. Small enough to fit in your hip pocket, it's a
mail art journal, complete with interviews, editorials, articles,
letters, and reviews & packed with computer graphics, line
drawings and collages of a decidedly bent nature. In this issue
afungusboy attempts to define networking beyond the usual
assumptions, John Held follows this with an article that places
"International Networker Culture" into art history perspective.
Later Baphomet appears murderous and horny on a tv set advertising
beer, people have tvs instead of heads, etc, documentation of a
television mailart project. You'll never get this kind of
information from CNN, or anywhere else knownstream.--jb
LACTUCA--(#17, April 1993), PO Box 621, Suffern, NY, 10901.
72 pp., $4.00. As usual with LACTUCA, #17 is a solid effort
presenting dynamic work from a couple dozen different poets and
writers. This issue is subtitled "The Jaws of Factory," taken
from the first poem in the magazine (by Peter Bakowski). It's a
fitting title and intro to the magazine's theme--most of the poems
in here have a Metropolis-style attitude and a smoky, gritty feel.
Although, only a few of these poems are actually about working in
factories. In addition to the poetry, there's also a fistful of
better-than-average stories--nearly everything in this issue
works.--rkk
LETTER eX--(#93, April/May 1994), PO Box 476920, Chicago IL,
60647. 24 pp, $2.00? "Chicago's Poetry Newsmagazine". In this
issue there are several Bukowski letters, and excellent interview
with Paul Hoover (Lorri Jackson's creative writing teacher), a
calendar of poetry events, a poetry profile on David Haupteschein,
poetry book reviews, a review of HYPHEN (one of the best literary
magazines in the city), and bits and pieces of everything else you
need to know about poetry in Chicago. I personally thrive on the
letters column, where local poets viciously attack each other on
issues like are poetry slams really poetry or are they simply
performance art.--o
LILLIPUT REVIEW--(#55, April 1994), 207 S. Millvale Ave #3,
Pittsburgh PA, 15224. 16 pp., $1.00. LILLIPUT REVIEW reminds me
of that windowpane acid they used to sell in the early 70's--tiny,
but potent enuf to rip the eyes out of your head. Hugh Fox's
"Inside" captures the underlying youthful creature hidden behind
an aging facade: "...these are the breasts,/ nibbles and the hair
falls back/ from the face revealing the/ girl still under the
almost-old/ lady"; Arthur Winfield Knight creates history in a
scratch at Custer's National Battlefield; and Alan Catlin reaches
through the snow to touch dreams lying just below the surface.--o
LIME GREEN NEWS--(#7, Feb. 1994), PO Box 626, Green Mt. Falls CO,
80819. $1.00? or trade. A mail art mag primarily focusing on
correspondence between the editor (Carolyn Substitute) and various
otherstreamers including Al Ackerman in fine form, apparently
responding to previous issues, but with Ackerman one never knows.
Malok contributes some of his God inkblots, including "God's
Sperm" and "God's Ovum", there's an alien talismanic collab. by
John M. Bennett and Serge Segay, a Carolyn doll with "date
accessories" by RetroCrispy, and much more. Classic mail art
devised by classic deviants.--jb
THE LITTLE MAGAZINE--(#20, 1994), English Dept., SUNY Albany,
Albany NY, 12222. 200 pp., $7.00. Another lit-mag sponsored by
a university English department, this one distinguishes itself in
several ways. Serious attention is payed to performance,
intermedia, & collaborative work--an interview with performing
poets/storytellers The Snickering Witches, a performance script by
Anne Waldman, Amy Schoch's "opera for two voices" (libretto only),
and work by computer-mediated writing collaborators Awopbopaloobop
Groupuscle. Another nice touch is presenting both creative work
and critical reviews written by the same artist, providing insight
into the writer as reader, and thus providing valuable context.
--lbd
LOST & FOUND TIMES--(#32, May 1994), 137 Leland Ave., Columbus OH,
43214. 54 pp., $5.00. Editor John M. Bennett conducts this
matrix of othermind invention that manifests in the poetics,
graphics and scatological verbignosis of a gang of artists so far
beyond convention that there is simply no relevance from that
perspective. T he reader must dive in and accept the work here on
its own terms and surrender to the phantasmagoria of the western
mind (to wax oxymoronic) inverted, like an eyelid turned inside
out, like a mirror that refuses to reflect. There is a directness
in much of this work, directness in the sense of experience
without psychological projection. LAFT 32 is a shamanic trickster
dose, page after page packed with words and images that defy
ordinary analysis. This is revolution where it counts, in the
dangerous depths of the imagination.--jb
LOVE PROJECT--(1993), PO Box 8766, Portland OR, 97207. 84 pp.
The second thematic compilation edited by Thomas Lowe Taylor,
focusing on a topic that is difficult to write about well or
innovatively. The 60+ contributors to this volume, however, show
that is indeed possible to write about love in unique, personal,
and entirely new ways, which shows that love can be approached not
as an exercise in recombinant cliches, but as a dynamic part of
the writer's life experience and processes of consciousness. The
collection is primarily poetry, with some visuals and prose works,
and provides a wide variety of reich and thought-provoking
reading. The contributors' list reads like a who's who of
innovative writers, but includes as well several names new to this
reviewer.--jmb
LOWER LIMIT SPEECH: A NEWSLETTER IN POETICS--(#8, 1993), 1743
Butler Ave. #2, Los Angeles CA, 90025. Stapled 8.5 x 11 sheets of
reproduced typescript, containing poetry and innovative and post-
language style poetry and prose. This issue has work by Bruce
Andrews, Nico Vassilakis, Curt Anderson, Jessica Freeman, Dennis
Barone, John Crouse, Alan Davies, Greg Fuchs, Jeff Conant, and a
review of a book of Bataille's by Tyrus Miller. All of this work
is challenging and stimulating and pushes the boundaries of
literature. My favorites here are the long poem "Ing Trance" by
Vassilakis, and the three texts by Anderson with their word-play,
syntactic conflation, and lively images and concepts: "the wind in
and out of mental institutions succumbs an airplane/ eating the
air above eyes nested in newsprint close like two/convenience
stores and or day is edited for tragedy latenight/ dangerous
deskset perfumed with adjectives a sky blue vase balanced."--jmb
MA!/MAN ALIVE--(#4, Summer 1993), PO Box 221, Oceanside NY, 11572.
20 pp., $2.50. While some of the articles and such here are a
little bit more traditional than I would normally read, MA! has
decent writing and fills me in on a few things I wouldn't
otherwise have know about. In this issue for example, coverage of
a Spoken Word Review of T.A.Z., a Bay Area extravaganza of well
known writers (Hakim Bey, Robert Anton Wilson) and performance
artists. Then there's a brief discography of The Fugs, several
poems (some good, some so-so), a review of Bob Geldof's "The Happy
Club," some Zine reviews, and some great illustrations scattered
throughout the issue.--o
THE sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssspondence issue; Tony
Anello, Todd Kalinski, Batya Goldman, Peter Magliocco, Diane M.
Calabrese, Ron Androla and others participate with letters, poems,
and short stories. There is much text here, all of it reduced
down to eye-strain mode on a copier--too many '90s zines need to
include plastic magnifiers with the subscription. Especially
prolific in this issue is Chicago writer Batya Goldman, who
describes the revenge of prostitutes in her story "Medusa Goes to
Traffic Court." Ron Androla draws a caricature of himself at the
bottom of one letter reproduced here; his bizarre story, "Alien
Friend," posits a sullen and drunken worker insulting a friendly
E.T.-like creature. Drawings by Walt Phillips and Gwym. Finally,
in a parting editorial shot, Greg Carter indicates that if the
readers of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN do not like his aesthetic theories,
they "can, you know, kiss my ass."--kn
MAJENTA--(Vol. 1 #2, May 1993), 2300 Central SE Suite B #116,
Albuquerque NM, 87106. 36 pp. Subtitled, "for the amusement of
the lost girl of april". Diverse and unique, irresistibly-charged
with mythical images, witty enchantments, spell-binding hoaxes,
poetry, short stories, sardonic advise, music reviews with a
slant, wandering columns, irony, line art, ink blots, odes, a
movie review, and (generally) the unexpected. Uncensored but not
raunchy.--rrle
MAJENTA--(Vol. 1 #3, Fall 1993), 2300 Central SE Suite B #116,
Albuquerque NM, 87106. 32 pp. Basically a collection of
anonymous slams, one an editorial against New Age Mysticism of the
kind that trades self-reliance for blind belief in the stars. But
it also includes poems, and a lot of satire. Energetic, crude,
and amusing--"Preferred by 40 out of 303 Popes."--bg
MEAT EPOCH--(Fall 1993), 3055 Decatur Ave., Apt 20, Bronx NY,
10467. 4 pp., SASE. The usual assortment of what I'm now calling
"burstnorm poetry" (for poetry that's neither conventional free or
traditional formal verse)--although Mike Kettner's "open sea/an
empty parking lot in the moonlight" [his slash] is close to
conventional (but I like it a lot), and editor Gregory St.
Thomasino's "Exphrasis No. 15" is clearly a variation (and a fine
one) on Shakespeare's sonnet about the "bare, ruined choirs."--bg
MYSTERIOUS WYSTERIA--(#5, Spring 1994), 335 East Erie, Lorain OH,
44052. 30 pp., $1.00. A magazine that goes straight for the gut,
knocking the breath out of you, then kicking you hard again, in
the same spot, to make sure you got the message. Paul Weinman
fucks & bleeds & seduces, Terence Bishop gets busted on the subway
for hustling a female cop, J. Csiki gets us ripped off and knocked
off in a burst of energy, and Eric E. Scott gives us the anger and
fear and hysteria . A zine with an edge, getting sharper every
issue.--o
NANCY'S MAGAZINE--(Vol. 9, Winter 1993-1994), PO Box 02108,
Columbus OH, 43202. 32 pp., $7.50. Great news, it's back!
This is the Ground issue. This is a complete miscellany in the
tradition of (perhaps) the nineteenth century miscellany. The
sort of thing a bunch of librarians might come up with. And it is
indeed informative: baby-perspective landscape photos, cartoons on
scientific topics, recipes, a poll, personal reminiscences, a few
poems, and even some seeds you can grow. Most of which relates to
soil in some way.--ar
NEW MUSE OF CONTEMPT--(October 1993), PO Box 596 Stn. A,
Fredericton New Brunswick, CANADA, E3B 5A6. 32 pp., $3.50.
Among the first artzines I've seen with poems (by Arthur Bull)
containing printed music intended to visually and conceptually
work off the texts rather than just conventionally accompany them.
Lots of interesting graphics, too, including one by Patrick
Oulette called "Research & Development," in which a backward
rendering of "3%" is set right--which to me seems a wonderful
satire on commercial "creativity."--bg
NORTH AMERICAN IDEOPHONICS--(Spring 1994), 227 Montrose Place;
Apt. C, St. Paul MN, 55104. 7 pp., $1.25? One in a series of
essays concerned with poetry, poets, poetics, etc. This one is
called, "Culture War III: Ecstasy," and is by Donald Byrd. It's a
first-rate rant against modernism, but Byrd is sometimes as
foolishly narrow as modernism's most obtuse defenders, as when he
says "not a damned thing depends on that red wheel barrow nor the
careful structure of Williams' most famous little poem."--bg
O!! ZONE--(#9), 1266 Fountain View Dr., Houston TX, 77057.
48 pp., $4.00. Scattered throughout this issue are photos of
women in various states of undress--but there's a wild abandonment
and freedom and passion here that has less to do with sex than
with pure creative energy. Complimenting the photos are gentle,
honest, and intense poems from around the world--I actually read
some of them several times through so I could see how the textures
worked. Bob Grumman does a short essay on John M. Bennett, which
Bennett then illustrates in his unique verbal style. Robert
Peters also kicks into high gear with a poem about 1945, his
uncle's death, and a love for other men. Well written poems by
practiced poets who want to make you think and feel and recognize
what their worlds are all about. The pictures aren't bad,
either.--o
O!! ZONE--(#10), 1266 Fountain View Dr., Houston TX, 77057.
48 pp., $4.00. Two more issues of this still very active almost-
monthly. The first has a number of sex-centered but not
necessarily sexy photographs, and some good plainstyle poetry by
Cheryl Townsend, Lyn Lifshin, Alice Olds-Ellington and others.
The second has drawing instead of photographs, and some more
technically-adventurous poems like hand-printed one by Ken Grandon
whose protagonist "...clumb// to/ her/ theights// zen/ jumbed/ the
100 ft./ pole of no/ vocabulary," which I found numbily fleshful.
--bg
O!!ZONE--(#11, 1994), 1266 Fountain View Drive, Houston, TX,
77057. 44 pp., $4.00. Defined as "A pamphlet of words, lines,
and images," O!!ZONE is way out there. Artwork based on very
symbolic, iconographic, pseudo-Olmec/Aztec -geometric-Chicano
black-and-white line drawings somewhere between surreal, native,
cubistic inspired, which caress the Jungian core. The poetry is
very imagistic, sparse, minimalistic, and in one case (Ken
Brandon) integrated with the artwork. "Getting laid/has nothing
to do with/ Ancient agriculture," chants Jo, one of the poetry
contributors. The single short story in this issue reminds me of
absurdist drama.--rrle
OPEN UNISON STOP--(#1), PO Box 2373, Santa Cruz CA, 95063.
42 pp., $3.00. This is an unpretentious, straightforward litmag
from the folks who put out PAISLEY MOON. O.U.S. features an
eclectic mix of poetry, from the familiar (Lyn Lifshin, Errol
Miller) to new voices (Jane Blue, Jim Tyack). But their strong
point is not in any particular genre or style; rather, the
magazine provides a pleasing variety and unharried format.
t. kilgore splake has a 'Nam poem in here that is also
naturalistic and flowing, and there's a nice surprise from Gloria
Potter, a four-part poem that really clips along and keeps an
interest despite language that borders on colloquial.--rkk
OXYGEN--(#10, Winter 1994), 535 Geary St. #1010, San Francisco CA,
94102. 44 pp., $2.00. I still believe it's possible to cause
emotional upheaval without drawing blood or whipping out the
weapons, and OXYGEN carries a fine crew of traditional and
rebellious writers who know how to pull reality out from
underneath your feet. Kimi Sugioka's "UnNatural Selection"
carries fine-tuned lines like: "Trouble with city living is/
everything tends to look Darwinian/ beginning and ending with/
pigeons/ the way they/ peck at and walk over/ the wounded and
sick." George Tsongas takes us on a great slogan infested journey
with: "no/ matter/ who/ you're/ killing/ it's/ always/ the wrong/
person." Hugh Fox's great short story, "The Anesthesiologist's
Wife," left my throat dry and my brain tap-dancing inside my
skull; an excerpt from David Fisher's novel in progress and poetry
from Edward Mycue &others round out this package.--o
PENNY DREADFUL REVIEW--(#6, April 1994,) 6680 Charlotte H9,
Nashville, TN, 37209. $1.00. Imagine Edgar Allan Poe, the
Marquis de Sade, and Charles Bukowski growing up in the streets
together in the later half of the 20th century and publishing a
mag and you'll get a sense of what's going on here. Bondage and
pagan imagery combined with sex, death, and dementia poetry (the
only three categories that matter--the beginning, end, and what
goes on in between). The quotes from Crowley's "Book of Lies"
seem to fit perfectly here. Editor C Ra McGuirt is a wickedly
brilliant intelligence and has assembled what amounts to a blunt
instrument of subterfuge, and with streetwise surreality perhaps
holds closer to the original meaning of genius as an inhabiting
spirit.--jb
THE PLASTIC TOWER--(#17, December 1993), PO Box 702, Bowie MD,
20718. 52 pp., $2.50. A magazine that leaps right into your
face. Michael Newell's "The Intruder" left me with the same
paranoia my wife & I felt after finding the passed out gangbanger
sleeping next to our apartment door. John Elsberg's "The Painter
Works" (John is the editor of BOGG) captures art and poetry in
fine swift strokes of exploration. McNeilley's poem about his
first beer, and all the beers that followed, struck a chord
(although I hated my first beer, and he loved his). Todd Moore's
"Hurricane Johnson" carries that bitter existential angst you'd
expect. Graphics by Walt Philips, tolek, and Menchen.--o
POEMCARDS--(Postcard Series #2), PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614.
12 pp., $3.00. Now here's a new angle: a postcard with a poem on
one side, on the other, a review of the poetry collection it's
from and bibliographic info so you can order the collection if you
want. Sesshu Foster guest-edited this series, and the postcards
serve as both a reference and review source of international poets
(Middle Eastern, Latin American, Native American, Pakistani,
Asian, etc.) and American poets with strong ethnic ties. Some of
the poets: Martin Espada, Luci Tapahonso, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Leonel
Rugama and Amy Uyematsu. It's an interesting idea, and the
careful selection of topics, poems, and reviews mix together
in an impressive and innovative way.--o
POETIC BRIEFS--(#14, Dec. 1993/Jan. 1994), 19 Southern Blvd.,
Albany, NY, 12209. 16 pp., $10/6 issues. This issue, inspired by
David Antin's "What It Means To Be Avant-Garde", is devoted mainly
to pithy discussions of just that question. All kinds of
interesting takes, among them these excepts from Shelia E Murphy:
"False novelty after a short time. Hair and clothing in the
Sixties. Multiple rebel syndrome." and: "Who writes it matters.
To the point where anything that person spills is avant-garde."
--bg
POETIC BRIEFS--(October/November 1993), 19 Southern Blvd., Albany
NY, 12209. 16 pp., $10/6 issues. The now-usual assortment of
provocative and intelligent essays, reviews, et ceteras on the
contemporaneousest poetry afield--such as Mark Wallace's timely
response to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry bashing that's been
going on of late, and which Wallace perceives--rightly, I
think--as strong evidence of the continuing importance of such
poetry.--bg
POETIC SPACE--(Fall 1993), PO Box 11157, Eugene OR, 97440.
19 pp., $10/yr. A bunch of poems and stories, two essays, a
Shakespeare review, and a loose sheet of micro-reviews. Pete
Lee's "Lust" gives the flavor of the majority of it's offerings:
its narrator brings home a Burger King waitress who, knowing "the
drill," will "wait/ until the lights go out," then crawl inside
the narrator's wife. The latter "has a thousand faces" and also
"knows the drill".--bg
THE POETRY PROJECT--(December/January 1993/94), c/o St. Mark's
Church, 131 E. 10th St., New York NY, 10003. 18 pp., $3.00.
A pretty mainstream publication, this issue had a prosy but nice
poem by Tony Towle about a recent party in honor Of Frank O'Hara.
Also, the second part of an article covering the recent Buffalo
Festival of New Poetry, whose first part I'd found almost PEOPLE
MAGAZINE-level--author Tony Door does better this time but still
doesn't say much about the actual poetry at the Festival.--bg
PRIME POETS SERIES--(#1), 1992, PO Box 7392, Van Nuys, CA, 91409.
4 pp., $1.35. One long, three page poem "Her Bitter Heart," and
an experimental one-page prose piece "flight pattern" by Elizabeth
Ziemba, an award-winning journalist and poet from the L.A. area.
"...did I have any/ pictures of her, you know, before/ she snapped
herself in two, before she splintered herself/ right off the edge
of the world." Ziemba has a cold snap in her images, and the pace
is so swift we don't need a lot of filler, in fact it would only
distort the clarity of her harshly explicit situations. "She wants
to die/ but I know she won't/ not ever..."--rrle
PUCK: The Unofficial Journal of the Irrepressible--(Winter 1993),
900 Tennessee, Studio 15, San Francisco CA, 94107. 78 pp., $5.55.
Editor Brian Clark, described on the masthead of this finely
produced zine as "Buck Stop and Chief Procrastinator," pulled out
the stops on "a turgid cast of graphics" and repro quality for
PUCK. Cover art is computer generated and 4-color process.
Inside are poems, articles, stories, and columns by the likes of
Belinda Subraman, Rane Arroyo, B.Z. Niditch, Bob Z and others.
There is a good solid section of reviews by Kurt Putnam, Arthur
Winfield Knight, and Brian Clark. B.C. Quark, in "Random
Jottings," describes "wild anarchies of plant and beef arch-echo
behind... quantum announcements." Ace Backwards' "Twisted Image"
cartoon strip appears, along with additional graphics by Barbara
del Rio and Freddie Baer.--kn
RAW--(#13, Winter 1994), PO Box 120661, Nashville TN, 37212.
8 pp., $1.00. In this single-artist issue of RAW BONE, Tom
House's work is highlighted by a strange collection of poems that
border on rants: "sure you're free to speak in America/ LONG AS
NOBODY HEARS YOU", or "from/ CALIFORNIA/ land of make-believe/ and
military hardware", or "twist the world/ to your liking"--
a charged & encapsulated political anger. There's also a
wonderful sex poem, "a slow disintegration", which carries a
heated seduction in the only direction it can go. This is a small
sampling of Tom's work, but a great place to start if you're
interested in insightful anger, mixed with earthy desire.--o
RED DANCEFLOOR--(Vol. 1 #2), PO Box 7392, Van Nuys, CA, 91409.
104 pp, $8.00. Strictly poetry, seventy poems exactly, by such
writers as Dennis Saleh, Gerald Locklin, Lyn Lifshin, Wayne Hogan,
Robert Arroyo Jr., and dozens more. This issue includes a feature
poet, Marsha Muscato, who started writing poetry when she was ten.
"My country 'tis of blues/ howling in the wind/ one whole note
black,/ no tail or flag,/ just dry tired flesh/ full of patriotic
fire." Although struggling to survive, it still maintains its
quality.--rrle
RED DANCEFLOOR--(Vol. 3 # 1), PO Box 7392, Van Nuys CA, 91409.
76 pp., $ 5.00. David Goldschlag and Elizabeth Ziemba are at it
again. This time they have assembled forty-one poems and three
reviews--all by aspiring poets from across the country. New kids
on the block, like Carol Davis: "Your hometown spilled on to me/
like the spray which coated our faces..." radiate intuitive heat
in bold imagistic strokes. "His mother back home/ prays for his
soul, /but when he returns/ she doesn't recognize him/ for he has
grown old/ and speaks only in poems."--rrle
REPORT TO HELL--(Vol. 1 #3), PO Box 44089, Calabash NC, 28467.
48 pp., $1.00. This is truly one of the weirdest literary
magazines I have ever run across. There's a review of Jurassic
Park (they liked it), strange poetry, an article on "Adultery: New
York's First Ground for Divorce", an essay on art by Mike Hazard,
a weird conspiracy tale of Kennedy's and Chuck Davis'
assassinations, and more strange tales that make me wonder about
the sanity of the writers. I don't know, maybe I prefer getting
my brains bashed out by a junky, knowing what the jerk's motives
are, than trying to guess what's going on here. Or maybe I don't
have enough brains cells left to figure out the mazes in this
magazine. Or maybe, and I'm just saying maybe, they aren't so
sure of what they're trying to do, either.--o
SACRIFICE THE COMMON SENSE--(#9, Fall 1992), c/o mez, #15,
1251 S. Magnolia Ave., Los Angels CA, 90006. 52 pp., $5.00.
This issue's a typical STCS effort; heavy on big, roughly-hewn
b&w graphics, heavy on political rantings, but with a few good
poems sprinkled in. A strong essay on Leonard Peltier is followed
by a questionable rant against U.S. relief efforts in Somalia in
'92, penned by Roxanna Gomez. Well, STCS has a history of loud
and from-the-gut politicizing; agreement with their editorial
opinions is not sought nor coddled.--rkk
SACRIFICE THE COMMON SENSE--(#10, Summer 1993), c/o mez, #15,
1251 S. Magnolia Ave., Los Angeles CA, 90006. 50 pp., $5.00.
This STCS has a psychotic nature--on the one hand it preaches
altruism and first amendment rights with sound and fury, on the
other hand the editors get on their knees and plead for money like
a Republican preacher. That aside, this is more typical STCS: the
poets scream, they rant, they bay at the moon. Highlights include
a parcel of work by Karen Reyes Bernhard where she bares it all
(visually and metaphorically) and a nutty bit by Sigmund Weiss.
Low points: too much from Humberto mez, the editor.--rkk
SHATTERED WIG REVIEW--(#10), 523 E. 38th St., Baltimore MD, 21218.
84 pp., $5.00. There must be some strange chemicals in the
environment around Baltimore because this thing is unreserved,
blistering, screaming-down-the-hall, french kiss your grandmother,
insanity. The WIG has always been shaky in terms of cognitive
skills, but this is over the top. Perhaps it was Rupert's
(Wondolowski, editor) stay in the hospital, Blaster's
preoccupation with the mole people, the evacuation of Wig House,
or some secret Masonic evolutionary mutation curse, but I'm not
sure this is safe without Thorazine or a liter of Tennessee
whiskey. There are breasts in keyholes, there are breasts with
faucets, there are white bats and radar showers and demons
exposing their genitals to maidens, Zappa and Yeats hash it out
incognito, there are hypochondriac baths and mother's on acid, and
suddenly I'm compelled to say, "Don't be a dweeb, buy this
magazine!"--jb
SHIT DIARY--(#8, December 1993), 3113 Bernadette Ln., Sarasota FL,
34234. 24 pp., SASE. Once a journal of descriptions of actual
defecations, SD continues to mutate in form and content. And
while I miss the shits, I love what has replaced them. This one
came folded origami-like and contains an assemblage of various
writers, sometimes as a single text. A rough draft of part of a
Willie Smith story reveals the mind behind the madness at work and
a small two part surrerotic drawing by Bob Grumman are personal
favorites here. But an excerpt from Rane Arroyo's take on Hamlet
that includes Sid Vicious and a variety of other weird turns is
excellent as well. Not a slack spot anywhere. A good shit
indeed.--jb
SHIT DIARY--(#9), 3113 Bernadette Ln., Sarasota FL, 34234.
24 pp., SASE. This one-story issue made me realize that Billy
Graham's initials are the same as mine so I'm not going to write
anymore about it, except to say that it contains the following
epigraph, attributed to Richard M. Nixon: "The only thing that
really bothered be was lack of sleep and centipedes."--bg
SHIT DIARY--(#10), 3113 Bernadette Ln., Sarasota FL, 34234.
24 pp., SASE. The usual combination of irreverent humor and wacko
art--such as a loony letter by "Gladys Knapp" to AkPharma Inc.
(maker of Beano, which she uses "in just about everything,") and
AkPharma's reply to her inquiry about what to use with Velveeta;
and a neato Hillian transform of "beer," in steps, to "Pee," by
Ficus strangulensis.--bg
SILENT BUT DEADLY--(#2, April 1994), 3113 Bernadette Lane,
Sarasota FL, 34234. 18 pp. Second issue of a magazine devoted
to critical responses to short poems from a variety of schools.
This issue has 10 sets of responses to 4 poems, many of the
responses opposing each other--which demonstrates, for me, the
good health of the zine. Anyone can volunteer to critique, and
submissions of poems to critique are welcomed. Great for those
with a craftsman's interest in poetry--bg
SITUATION--(#5), 10 Orton Place #2, Buffalo NY, 14202. 20 pp.,
$2.00. SITUATION #5 leads with the work of Bruce Andrews--which
is not because his writing dictates the issue but because his last
name begins with an "A" and the writing is therefore arranged
alphabetically by the author's last name. SITUATION is a magazine
that, "explores how writing creates, dismantles, or reconstructs
the possibility of identity." Ray Federman, George Chambers, Jean
Donnelly, Gary Sullivan, Carolyn Steinhoff Smith among others do.
There is not one form of writing here but the writing is art.
Oasis. Elegant with space. One is not overwhelmed with too much
to read, and everything there is to read is readable. Been
wondering in what bin it's been hidden? Here is the good
writing.--mb
The usual formidable selection of cutting-edge nearverse and
textual poetry--among which a piece of absolutely flat prose by
George Chambers and Raymond Federman about games in society that
ends with a gold anecdote. Appearing in a poetry zine under the
title "Race, Gender, Class, Aggression, and Golf," it becomes as
oddly unsettling as any of the other pieces in the issue.--bg
Leads off (should that be "explodes?") with Bruce Andrews'
"Jupiter 2"-- "Actions doubt louder than words"--no doubt; "Ob-
...ceaseless positing,/we cultivate that irrelevance shook shock--
" but these days some are answering Andrews' "reference is
unimportant ?" with a "You got it, pal!" in neo-Melvillean
thunder. (Stay glued to your TRR for the latest news on these
poetry wars.) Coming up on the severity of Jean Donnelly's non
sequiturs after reading Andrews is like plunging in the snow after
a sauna: "Sex is either pleasurable or offensive/ When tolerance
tolerates the tall order/ I have a bizarre sense of the American
Mid-West as being this vast expanse of claustrophobia." Michael
Basinski's "Matches" dismembers the alchemical marriage in its
aleatory retort; his treatment is a kind of homeopathic remedy for
the usual disjointed but solemn fooling on this theme. "The whole
thrust of the pattern of sounds ravish rhythmically patterned
wounds." Raymond Federman and George Chambers contribute "Race,
Gender, Class, Aggression, and Golf," a short, hilarious work of
meta-anthropology involving an incident at the 13th hole of
Westwood Country Club on Ladies' Day. And more.--cp
SITUATION--(#6), 10 Orton Place #2, Buffalo NY, 14202.
16 pp.,$2.00. Joan Retallack's "The Woman In The Chinese Room...
A Prospective" takes John Searle's thought experiment on the
possibility of artificial intelligence as its base: "how do you
know the person locked for all those years in the Chinese room is
a woman there are few if any signs if she exists at all she is the
content of a thought experiment begun in a man's mind this is
nothing knew & perhaps more complicated." Two of Amy Sparks'
Tarot poems follow, intertwining voices in a nonstop rush as if
determined to kick through the door of that Chinese room:
clairvoyance, memory, confession and scraps of poisonous advice
tangle with one another, not paratactically; there's an emotional
field here being defined by these vibratory phrases. John M.
Bennett, "in's charred shirt's blinking before the steps where's
lacerations... where's scarification" pairs interestingly with
Peter Ganick's "iceman to an impartial fluid whose nominal surface
is ridden of willful portage"--referents become shifters in the
mouth that enunciates, letters that form them; signals from the
other side of the Chinese door? Susan M. Schultz' thoughtful
poems ask questions and seem to expect they will be answered.--cp
6IX--(Vol. 3 #2, 1994) 914 Leisz's Bridge Road, Reading PA, 19605.
36 pp., $4.00. Graced by Gil Ott's subtle cover collage of a
Japanese-calligraphied whale swimming in a steno-pad of fluid
handwriting, this beautifully edited issue features a selection
from Elena Rivera's "Wale: or, the Corse," inspired by Melville's
Moby Dick and Charles Olson's Call me Ishmael, as well as the way
"whale" disintegrated in the echo to "wale," which are welts that
rise up after a lash. Jenny Gough's "two poems" resonate, with
"what better way to underscore the/ flower than allow the blister
to appear in the light of stamps."--ssn
SLIPSTREAM--(#13), PO Box 207l, Niagara Falls NY, 14301. $5.00.
SLIPSTREAM casts a wide net across the bleak and sometimes cruel
ultra-realistic poetic world. Some of the great ones in this
issue: Bukowski, Knight, Hugh Fox, Todd Moore, Gerald Locklin,
Cheryl Townsend, Lyn Lifshin. And then what is amazing the
editors come up with Michael Ketchek, Alexia Lyn Dolton, Richard
Zabransky, R. T. Swank and more. Dozens. SLIPSTREAM is a
gathering, a dance. And you know that these editors, Sicoli,
Borgatti and Farallo actually read the manuscripts that arrive in
Niagara Falls! Well, here is a picnic basket, a refrigerator full
of beer, sinking the eight ball, steamed windows, an extra twenty,
pizza, your birthday, a good night.--mb
STICKS--(Spring 1994), Box 399, Maplesville AL , 36750. 32 pp.,
$3.00. Beautifully-produced little collection of poetry that
ranges from a mainstream but fine sample of X. J. Kennedy's work
to; well, one of my mathemaku (with an author's explanation!).
One of my favorite selections was Mark Fleckenstein's "Ritual
As Morning Light":
Useless as we are, we are.
Morning again; light; God's laughter.
Coffee. Clothes making us up,
re-telling and forgetting the same story.
--bg
STRONG COFFEE--(Vol. IV #8, April 1994), PO Box 1958, Evanston IL,
60204. 12 pp., $2.00. If you want to know about what is going on
in Chi-town in performance art, poetry readings, art shows, and
coffee houses, STRONG COFFEE can fill you in on the action.
They tell you who is doing what where, always have great
illustrations by local artists, and update you on local literary
publications. Plus fiction, poetry reviews, some of the strangest
horoscope columns I've ever run across (this month, mine reads:
"In April you attract every creep and asshole on God's created
Earth. Expect plenty of leering and lots of hissing, and all
because nature blessed you with a pretty ass."), listings for
local coffee houses, and everything else you need to know to hit
the city in style. Free locally.--o
TAB TO BLOCK BICUSPID: THE JOURNAL OF WARM SOFT FACTS--(Vol. 2 #1,
Vol. 3 #2-4), PO Box 315 station A, Vancouver BC, V6C 2M7. (or
from We Never Sleep, PO Box 92, Denver CO 80201) This is
blackhumour's quarterly progress reports on the "arrrow of
entropy." A sample: "MODELING THE CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW: "you know,"
a friend said to blackhumour, "what eye really like about french
fries is that no two are alike." "i feel the same way about
orgasms," blackhumour replied. two different personalities, two
different expressions of interest. susan's husband bill at the
corner store, standing beside the freezer section, attempting to
decide between the many flavours of ice cream available." A page
of this may give you a headache, but after several pages, it all
makes sense. Little mundanities enlarged & scripted into ergodic
prose. If you want to catch up, We Never Sleep has printed a
compilation of the first 46 blackhumour reports.--ar
TALKING RAVEN--(Autumn 1993), PO Box 45758, Seattle WA, 98145.
16 pp., $3.00. A tabloid of "imaginative trouble" that features
reviews of movies, books and TV; miscellaneous essays; and a
scattering of drawings and poems, the later mostly near-prose in
protest of stuff like the Persian Gulf War and Cover Girl
mascara.--bg
TAPJOE--(#11, Summer 1993), PO Box 632, Leavenworth WA, 98826.
35 pp., $3.00. Subtitled, "The Anaprocrustean Poetry Journal of
Enumclaw." Twenty-eight poems on subjects ranging from cabin
fever "These hills know nothing of time" to a communal sauna
"...bareback across a lonely field/ and dared the stars to climb
down and mount her," to UFOs "...prototypes/ for a brand-new/
species..." to Sisyphus "The ground slides under my foot." This
issue evokes mysteries and thoughts about the human experience,
the contrasts, the coherence, or lack of, while spilling out
surprising observations and truths. It's vibrant & diverse,
humorous & balanced.--rrle
TENSETENDONED--(#14), PO Box 155, Preston Park PA, 18455.
A Fluxus-inspired assemblage publication, to which the
participants must send 56 or more copies of an item to be
included. All these bits are put together in a printed folder and
distributed to the participants. Issue #14 is full of delights,
mostly visual or conceptual in nature, with some literary visuals
and cut-ups. One of the liveliest and longest-running recent
examples of this genre.--jmb
TEXTURE--(#5, 1993), 3760 Cedar Ridge Dr., Norman OK, 73072.
60 pp., $6.00. Some excellent poems from the language-poetry
school, and various hard-to-categorize prose texts. Also,
critical attention to figures like Gertrude Stein, Paul Celan and
William Burroughs. Well worth a scan, too, is editor Susan Smith
Nash's "interview" (2 short questions followed by page-length
answers) of Gerald Burns.--bg
A rich and cleanly presented collection of poetry, visuals,
prose texts, brief essays, and reviews. The selection is a
generous cross-section of innovative writing, and thingking about
same, in the general area of "post-Language" poetics and parallel
trends. Many of the pieces in this issue revolve around the theme
of History, an appropriate topic for this journal, which exhibits
a great sensitivity to the development/evolution of non-mainstream
writing, seeing it, in its essays and selections, in a deeper
context than other publications which focus more on the present.
This journal is one of the best in its field in the quality and
contextualization of its selections, and contains work by some 50
writers, including Ficus Strangulenses and Colleen Lookingbill,
Spencer Selby and Gerald Burns, Crag Hill and Thomas Lowe Taylor,
and Mark DuCharme and Sheila E. Murphy. If one were to choose the
2 or 3 top reviews in this field, this would be one of them.--jmb
THRUST--(#2, 1993), 4301 Belle Terrace #6, Bakersfield CA, 93309.
29 pp., $2.00. Fairly conventional but charged poems (including
a grisly one by Ron Palmer that ends, "So many women--/ so few
knives..."), stories (including one by Ryan Mercer about an
altercation with a convenience store clerk), and graphics
(including a soft-porn centerfold of a nude male photographed/
composed by Rebekka Haas). Also a good short (byline-less)
discussion of how to go about starting a zine.--bg
TIGHT--(Vol. 4 #5, December 1993), PO Box 1591, Guerneville CA,
95446. 72 pp., $4.50. TIGHT covers all points of the poetry
otherstream about as completely as a small mag can. It seems that
Ann tries to present a representative sample of everything known
to her, and this is probably the fairest thing an editor can do,
but so few even try, preferring to opt for some particular bias.
Some of the things that caught me on first pass were the excerpts
from Al Hellus's "pieces of 13 dreams": "the bones of the catfish
assemble/ and form an act of leaving", or from "Revelry" by Mahdy
Y. Khaiyat, "The bodies fuse/ Under the shadow of the alpenglow."
There is much accessible free verse, etc. here as well.--jb
TIGHT--(Vol. 5 #1, March 1994), PO Box 1591, Guerneville CA,
95446. 72 pp., $4.50. With this issue, TIGHT continues to be one
of the best selected and broadest collections of current small-
press American poetry, which makes room for all but the most
extreme kinds of experimental writing and excludes the most
tedious forms of current academic rhetoricisms. This issue
includes excellent work by John Grey, Sesshu Foster, Muriel Karr,
Peter Layton, Jim Leftwich, Grace Grafton, Albert Huffstickler,
J. Griffin, Jonathan Falk, Glenn Bach, editor Ann Erickson, and
many others. A generous selection of of current poetry.--jmb
TIN WREATH--(#27), PO Box 13491, Albany NY, 12212. $2.50, TIN
WREATH has gone visually berserk. This always interesting but
fairly polite mag has become a linguistic gestalt with this issue.
Each 8 1/2 x 11" page has a poem or two but is filled with word
fields of various sizes. Some of the fields are letter-chunks,
some are magnified pieces of other poems in the magazine. The
reader can mask away everything but the poems and have a normal
reading experience of better than average poetry (including John
Crouse, Sheila Murphy, and Jeffery Skeate), but the total
experience of each page serves to redefine the processes of
reading and perception. I am overwhelmed--dn
TOMORROW--(#11), 1993, PO Box 148486, Chicago IL, 60614. 30 pp.,
$5.00. Tim Brown edits with a sharp eye, and in this issue he
branches out of Chicago and goes national in focus. While there
will still be a decent showing of Chicago writers (Goldman,
Mihopoulos, Namest) he'll also be including the likes of Weinman,
Lifshin, and Townsend. A decent cross-section of midwestern and
national blood scattered across the highways of America.--o
TRANSMOG--(#12, December 1993) Rt. 6 Box 138, Charleston WV,
25311. 6 pp. The usual wild assortment of otherstream agitries,
but especially strong in graphics this time, with Musicmaker
leading the way. Some great found texts by Andrew Russ; too,
such as (in its entirety):
CAUSING
IMMO-
RALITY
which; for some reason; strikes me as the best satire on the
Moral Right as I've seen. ("IMMO-," for one thing, seems so...
silly.)--bg
TRANSMOG--(#13, January 1994), Rt. 6 Box 138, Charleston WV,
25311. 26 pp. (E-mail: far@medinah.atc.ucarb.com) The cover of
this issue has a recombinatory face by Bill Paulauskas that looks
almost normal--but it has two reduced eye-images below its eyes,
and a reduced image of a lip above its smile, and thus looks just
right as an out-box for the fascinatingly computer-distorted
weather map it shares the cover with. Within; more of the same
kind of stuff--including, I now just noticed, a sonnet of sorts by
Don Webb in praise of many of the contributors to TRANSMOG 10 for
setting "the words-in-a-rowlock guys runnin'."--bg
An eclectic mix of extreme otherstreamness, beyond avant-
garde and post modern, the glittering razor's edge of human
imagination. Along with LOST AND FOUND TIMES, and POETRY USA,
TRANSMOG is the best source for important work at this end of the
spectrum. This issue contains a large selection of texts
accompanied by equally experimental graphics. Collectively the
work cultivates a genuine alternative to the usual ruts within
which consciousness travels--the artists are reinventing
themselves to reinvent art, expanding our ideas of what we are.
And it does it with an enormous sense of humor. This is the
philosophers stone in a sea of livid data.--jb
TURBULENCE--(#1, October 1993), PO Box 40, Hockessin DE, 19707.
32 pp., $3.00. "The power of our alternative institutions of
poetry is their commitment to scales that allow for the
flourishing of the artform, not the maximizing of the
audience"--Charles Bernstein, in "Provisional Institutions:
Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation." David Nemeth's new
magazine is one more continuation of the "mimeo revolution"--eight
word-processed, photocopied sheets of paper and one sheet of card
stock, folded in half and stapled, containing work by Susan Smith
Nash, Peter Ganick, Sheila E. Murphy, John M. Bennett, and Luigi-
Bob Drake, among others. Bernstein himself contributes a
homophonic translation of Antonio Calvocressi (1538-1574): "We
leapt together like matching porcelain doves/ Before the curtain
ripped/ To its predestined hemorrhage!" Dennis Barone, in an
excerpt from "Nothing," writes: "Now in some battle I saw money
and the police. The hippies went home. A matter of minutes."
Mark Wallace, the "romantic materialist," writes: "So what if he
thinks/ I'm being too affirmative, billowing the current/ to seize
a luminate thread, it's where/ we might make again" ("No Stream
Can Damn This Carry Ear Away"). The strength of TURBULENCE #1
is in its content; design and typeface, however, are spartan,
bare-bones.--cp
UMBRELLA--(October 1993), PO Box 40100, Pasadena CA, 91114.
39 pp., $18/yr. For years Judith Hoffberg's UMBRELLA has been a
leading guide to mail art and books by artists. It also contains
perceptive reviews of pertinent books whether mainstream or micro-
press, and a smattering of news-items--such a story here on Conde
Nast's copyright-infringement suit against artist Christof
Kohlhofer for unfairly "competing" with VOGUE (Kohlhofer
constructs variations of said slickzine about as likely to compete
with it as a sculpture of a bra labeled "Maidenform" would be to
cut into the sales of real Maidenform bras).--bg
UMBRELLA--(February 1994), PO Box 40100, Pasadena CA, 91114.
36 pp., $18/yr. Another full trove of art news, reviews,
announcements, etc. concerned with book art, mail art, and visual-
art-in-general. Includes an excellent common sense discussion of
book-art terminology by David Stairs, who thinks that carburetors
and one-of-a-kind sculptures should not be described as "books."
--bg
VOX POPULI--(1992), PO Box 7392, Van Nuys CA, 91409. 38 pp.,
$3.75. This publication is the result of a four person poetry
reading at the Student Union at CSU-Long Beach. All four poets
are West Coast regulars and the reading was politically motivated
to promote the vote. Topics include South Africa, the Bush War,
the American Dream, and death by racism, among others. "I saw an
African-American/ blast an African-American/ Dead in a doorway.../
My sixth grade classmate died/ ...shot by her friend// My cousin
blew his fingers off/ ...I say, Eat your own bullets,/ Mr. Man."
Intelligent, poignant, deliberate protest, as often delivered in
a campus setting.--rrle
W'ORCs/ALOUD ALLOWED--(Vol. 9, December 1993), PO Box 27309,
Cincinnati OH, 45227. 8 pp., $3.00. Editor Ralph LaCharity
smorgasbords this with whatever's handy and has to do with poetry,
including--most interestingly--ongoing correspondences about kinds
of poetry, readings, zines, poets, etc. The highlight of this
issue for me was Randall Schroth's "Channeling Olson," an Olsonite
poem on a 1991 Olson Conference full of satire, poetics, auto-
biography--and larger moments.--bg
W'ORCs/ALOUD ALLOWED--(Vol. 9 #3, March 1994), PO Box 27309,
Cincinnati OH, 45227. 8 pp., $3.00. A wild, crashing of voices
on the page mag where anything is likely to happen. A wonderful
open music pervades this issue and all others I have seen. The
pages vary in size and color producing an inspired cornucopia.
This issue begins, following the always excellent cover collage,
with a long metalanguage free jazz feeling poem by editor Ra's Elf
(or Ralph, or who knows what as his name mutates constantly, like
his poetry and his mag), somewhere out beyond a combination of
Charlie Parker and James Joyce dosed on mushrooms in Paradise.
And the rest of the issue's poetry is equally extended. But in
recent issues an equal strength has developed in the conversations
between readers/contributors and the editor. It's like eaves-
dropping on a table of freethinking poets and philosophers while
they drink and consider and discuss the various topics that have
entered the discussion from previous issues. This is one of the
strengths of an aesthetic movement via correspondence, it becomes
an open document, charted as it develops among the minds of its
participants. Between the work and conversation WORC's is
charting, at least partially, the theoretical course of the
experioddic otherstream.--jb
WET MOTORCYCLE--(#3, March 1994), 3055 Decatur Ave. #2D, Bronx NY,
10467. 1 sheet. One in a limited edition, doublesided broadside
series, edited by St. Thomasino, who in this issue presents his
own work. Collaged over two images from some pulp film of the
1950's, he has placed ironically contexted phrases which,
ambiguously, could be the thoughts of the characters in the
images, or commentary about those characters. The effect is
subtly ominous, and goes several steps beyond being mere satire
--jmb
WET MOTORCYCLE--(July 1994), 3055 Decatur Ave.; Apt 20, Bronx NY,
10467. 2 pp., SASE. A sur-electric broadside of poetry-
collaborations by Keith Higginbotham and Tracey R. Combs such as
"Dieting": "Yesterday I ate a grape/ then it ate me// today I
remember/ the taste// of me in its mouth// from now on I/ will
always/ eat/ inside-out".--bg
WIND--(Fall 1993), RFD Rt. 1, Box 809K, Pikeville KY, 41501.
127 pp., $5.00. In one of the poems in this issue of WIND, John
Elsberg brings up "The doctor's wheelbarrow,/ caked in mud,// left
in the rain." In another, Marvin Solomon refers to "the chiming
of the Joycean dead." Nothing wrong with such allusions, but they
are (forgive me) pretty standard academicisms, and for me they
typify the kind of cultured but safe mindset that WIND seems to
operate out of.--bg
THE WORMWOOD REVIEW--(Vol. 33, #4), PO Box 4698, Stockton CA,
95204,. $4.00. WORMWOOD is something of a miracle--it's been
around since the late 50s, and continues to publish some of the
best (and largely ignored) poets in America. This issue has cover
art by Saul Steinberg (who did illustrations for the long defunct
THE EVERGREEN REVIEW); inside we find poems by Charles Bukowski,
Lyn Lifshin, Gerald Locklin, David Barker and others. Every issue
of WORMWOOD has a special section where a poet is featured; this
issue publishes Steve Richmond's "Desenex Every Night." Bukowski,
who readies himself for the crass indignation of death, writes:
"If you think Berryman, Plath/ Dylan Thomas were over-idolated,/
wait until you see what they/ do with me."--kn
XEROLAGE--(#24), Xexoxial Endarchy, Rt. 1, Box 131, La Farge WI,
54639. 24 pp., $5.00(?). The focus of this publication,
according to co-editor Miekal And (who coined the term "xerolage,"
from "xerox" and "collage"), is the marriage of collage, copy art
and visual poetry with xerox technology. Each of its issues
features a single artist, or art-group. This one consists of a
surrealistic scientific encyclopedia by James Koehnline that is
mind-jarringly entertaining--and very sophisticated.--bg
XIB--(#6, 1994), PO Box 262112, San Diego CA, 92126. 70 pp.,
$5.00. Dense with direct poetry & prose (about 50/50), and
centered on fairly visceral concerns. Several stretches of
thematically related pieces--as in stories by Ulvis Alberts,
Richard Ploetz, Jordan Faris, all variously depicting sexuality
sans intamacy. Errol Miller's "Paper Salad Days On Casa Grande"
fragments together a portrait of ambivalent survival--its gray-
ness typical of much of the work here. And tho I'd seen it
before, Patrick McKinnon's powerful "Poem for Gramma Lavis" was
well worth another read. All presented in a fittingly stark &
varied graphic format that holds things together by giving each
piece it's own distinctive setting--stopping just short of
intruding on the texts.--lbd
ZYX--(#7, Spring 1994), 58-09 205th St., Bayside NY, 11364. 5 pp.
Discussions by Arnold Skemer of "Huthism;" or G. Huth's approach
to literature, which consists of a "microverbointensive aspect"
(in my lexicon) "infra-verbality") and unorthodox publication
techniques (e.g., poems on strung-together price tags); Jack
Saunders and the potential of serial strategies for making
otherstream novels marketable; the theoreticofiction of Jean
Ricardou; and a valuable reprint of Don Lancaster's "Books-on-
Demand," a guide to using a computer to print a given book only
when ordered rather than printing a bunch and then hoping someone
will buy them.--bg
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Issue #5.0, section a: zines 8/94
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