book reviews w/basinski

book reviews with michael basinski


    blarrow.gif - 62 Bytes Cuba - by Michael Kelleher.
    Phylum Press, 69 Clark Street - 2R, New Haven CT. 06511. www.phylumpress.com (Check it out for price and other list of wonderful and beautiful books available. Don't wait - Phylum Press books are all numbered editions).

    blarrow.gif - 62 BytesBuncamps Trolls - by John Crouse and Jim Leftwich.
    Xtant books 2002. Send bread, maybe $5.60! to Jim Leftwich. 1512 Mountainside Ct., Charlottesville, Va. 22903-9797

    blarrow.gif - 62 BytesThe End of the Road that Never Ends - by M. A. Solars.
    imited to 50 hand-numbered copies with holograph by the author. 18 pages. $5.00 (includes handling etc.) Make checks payable to Alan Horvath. Kirpan Press, PO Box 2943 Vancouver WA. 98668-2943.

    blarrow.gif - 62 BytesAs Girlfriends Will, As Women Do - by Donna Michele Hill.
    The Plowman, PO Box 414, Whitby, Ontario, Canada, L1N 5S4 or see: www.donnamichelehill.com - Write or send bucks (remember Canadian exchange when buying this book or sending money in support of this press) and when writing the postage difference also - wake up - there are other countries!)). 28 pages. 2002. The price is $5.00 from Donna - dmhill@shaw.ca - heck, ask for some poems for your magazine too!

    blarrow.gif - 62 BytesSack of Drone Gothic by Al Ackerman.
    Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus, Ohio, 43214. 2002. 16 pages. $6.00

    blarrow.gif - 62 BytesSpread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry Write to C. Dusterhoff
    FREE. Write to C. Dusterhoff - editor, PO Box 224, Seattle, WA. 98111.

    blarrow.gif - 62 BytesECOPOETICS. No.2. Edited by Jonathan Skinner.
    Fall 2002. 106 Huntington Avenue, Buffalo, New York, 14214 USA. Single issue $6.00.



 

Cuba - by Michael Kelleher.
Phylum Press, 69 Clark Street - 2R, New Haven CT. 06511. www.phylumpress.com (Check it out for price and other list of wonderful and beautiful books available. Don't wait - Phylum Press books are all numbered editions).

A poem of 11 numbered sections that plays, hops, skips and manipulates language with the best poets of the last century and allows fissures in the world words so that the reader can actually cast her own runes and read a fortune in the essence art of this poem's poetry. It is not often these days that I find a poet whose poetics, that is the way the poems are made and the words used, balance so completely with the poetry and the poet's intention. The poetry is innovating and interesting. The seam between the art and the other here is invisible and I like not knowing where I am. Better than wine! And here it is! What I want from poetry. Wish there was more to this fortune cookie! Fortunately, many readings do not wear the poetry thin. And each time this mojo bag opens it reopens and the real magic of poetry permeates and percolates this world with that.

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Buncamps Trolls - by John Crouse and Jim Leftwich.
Xtant books 2002. Send bread, maybe $5.60! to Jim Leftwich. 1512 Mountainside Ct., Charlottesville, Va. 22903-9797

Here are 33 (Christly!) pages of colored printed collage poems that are made from words and worded crumbled paper, manipulated text, drawings, alphabetic manipulations, found language, cartoons etc. It is contemporary word and collaborative contemporary word art at that! Both artists are established experimentalists and this bonding strengthens the bond of their network and enhances the exchange of experimental and progressive poetic ideas that has manifested itself in combo art, of which this is a fine representative chunk sample. This form of poetry is the venue in which Charles Olson's composition by field in currently applicable. Only in contemporary visual poetry does Olson's notion of poetry come into place and play. And here composition by field is developed, experimented with and in this poem those notions are evolving in compositions of found field visual poetry. All things can and do and may come into the poem. Truly, we can trace these poems back to Ezra Pound. However, one must twist and weave that tread with the visual underground as it matured in the 1990s. This is an exciting and innovative poetry. If you are interested in where poetry is going (and leave the history with Pound and the rest to pedants), then contact Leftwich and Crouse. See address above. And it does not hurt to send a buck or a twelve pack of eggs. Maybe some bananas.

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The End of the Road that Never Ends - by M. A. Solars.
imited to 50 hand-numbered copies with holograph by the author. 18 pages. $5.00 (includes handling etc.) Make checks payable to Alan Horvath. Kirpan Press, PO Box 2943 Vancouver WA. 98668-2943.

Here's another beauty book made by Horvath of Kirpan! He is the great maker editor of books of the small press. Write for his catalog and get them all before the book dealers start to charge an arm, leg, tooth, first born, mother, last rhino, pyramid. And Solars here is a delight earth poet collection - thank the Democrats that there is still enough nature for poets like Solars, who meld and merge with that ancient thing of ours. Yep, poetry and earth nature here one thing the partners becoming one dance. Solars's poetry sprouts from the earth, earth poet and nature exchange images for contemplative juxtapositions with humanness in its many pleasantries and complications. A beautiful forest and comet reflective and wonder cake! Have a piece! It's your birth earth day.

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As Girlfriends Will, As Women Do - by Donna Michele Hill.
The Plowman, PO Box 414, Whitby, Ontario, Canada, L1N 5S4 or see: www.donnamichelehill.com - Write or send bucks (remember Canadian exchange when buying this book or sending money in support of this press) and when writing the postage difference also - wake up - there are other countries!)). 28 pages. 2002. The price is $5.00 from Donna - dmhill@shaw.ca - heck, ask for some poems for your magazine too!

Well, the book of 24 well-crafted, pondered and pounded to fine lace and sensitive, soul defining poems is dedicated to Hazel, who died of cancer, so there are 8 cancer poems here in and I must write the last line of one, which is, "resolved to live out the wind." What more can one do but to live out the wind and this is then an essence of this work that grabs a wind of life and rides with it as the words twist and whirl around the poem as a tree the poetry floats and whips. You can hear it as you read. And I dedicate in honor and memory of the endless, delightful wind of Michele's friend: This review: For Hazel.

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Sack of Drone Gothic by Al Ackerman.
Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus, Ohio, 43214. 2002. 16 pages. $6.00

The ago (ago in this context means a deep reading with imagination into the game of poetry)? the ago of course of finding oems in other peoples poems and making them peoms and omaps is upon us a poetic throat and a form of writing that, as far as I know, no one has yet to write about but it is now a form, a form of found, like it or is - well yes - it is a collage among friends. This constructed combine good poem are by that poetic Coyote of the poem, the trickster of dictionaries and the Pan Loki of the throne of the theseurallasoarus - dada Da Da: Al Ackerman - who made this puzzle from the works of John M. Bennett, and JMB's collaborations with Stacey Aliam, mIEKAL aND, Ivan Arguilles, K.S. Ernst, Scott Helms, Lady C, Jim Leftwich, Sheila E. Murphy, Lanny Quarles, Ficus stgrangulensis, Tito Smith and the Lonely One. Jesus! No, not Jesus too, I meant Jesus Wow! A collaboriantal rug upon collabortory - the one only and the only one: the great one: Al Ackerman. He takes the poetics to the tops of London and into the peach ice cream! Fun and House!

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Spread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry Write to C. Dusterhoff
FREE. Write to C. Dusterhoff - editor, PO Box 224, Seattle, WA. 98111.

Composed of single sheets of paper, some with color, folded together - signed and with inserts, Dusterhoff here carries the small press into 2003 with issue 26! His is SPAKSTRA PRESS and if you wish, write: spankstra@hotmail.com Me know that he is tasted the bite of the alligator and knows the concrete, the damp, a shard of glass in the eye, the circus of moldy steaming camels, the poetry of sobbing pencils and the poems that fall like teeth from the mouths of clowns like endless rain, endless. But not without the joy of wine and beer and the rollicking revolutionary Ing of banquets of the flesh! And wining at gambling. And missing out on the war! And releasing all the animals form the zoo - they run wild in the streets of Seattle and swim back across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to live free again in China and Africa! Oh yes. Write him. Send poems. Send him stamps. Send him money. Send him pages from your apples and large sections of dishwater. The sea turtles are coming ashore! Sea Horses! Send him.

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ECOPOETICS. No.2. Edited by Jonathan Skinner.
Fall 2002. 106 Huntington Avenue, Buffalo, New York, 14214 USA. Single issue $6.00.

Let's start by writing (what small press has now known for decades) that the poem and poetry can't be separated form from that real world of what is happening. And this real natural world is under attack by organized oil lusting egos, to name some, and a lot of insensitivity and a lot of unconcern and dumbness. This proposal of ECOPOETICS then acts as a bridge between the art writing world and the natural world. That bridge, that Bridge of Hart Crane's and that rainbow bridge! ECOPOETICS is published biannually and dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between writing (with an emphasis on poetry) and ecology (The theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings). So - we got wild art and the wild earth! Seems like a seam to me and a seemingly steamingly good stew. Jonathan Skinner, one can't say enough about his commitment to a democratic world. So cheer him on with a few dollars. He is the best-committed editor and poet of true merge ECO-live-writing poem. Damn, I just wish there were a few more poets like JS and editors like JS who would guts come out and step to the left! We could all have a blast! And live better at that. So, in the midst of all the art for arty arty art. There is ECOPOETICS. Hear ye here some of the last names of those within: And, Barron, Bellamy, Berrigan, Collom, Kostelanetz, Manson, Quasha, Rothenberg, Spahr, Skinner, Swenson, Zanzotto! And a lot more more. 178 pages. Printed on recycled paper. The covers are tree free. Yeah, it can and must be done.

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michael basinski
Michael Basinski
Assistant Curator
Poetry/Rare Books Collection of the University Libraries, SUNY at Buffalo.

     His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including: Proliferation, Terrible Work, Deluxe Rubber Chicken, Boxkite, The Mill Hunk Herald, Yellow Silk, The Village Voice, Object, Oblek, Score, Generator, Juxta, Poetic Briefs, Another Chicago Magazine, Sure: A Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Moody Street Irregulars: A Jack Kerouac Newsletter, Kiosk, Earth's Daughters, Atticus Review, Mallife, Taproot, Transmog, B-City, House Organ, First Intensity, Mirage No.4/Period(ical), Lower Limit Speech, Texture, R/IFT, Chain, Antenym, Bullhead, Poetry New York, First Offence, and many others.
     For more than twenty years he has performed his choral voice collages and sound texts with his intermedia performance ensemble: The Ebma, which has released two Lps: SEA and Enjambment.
     His books include: Idyll (Juxta Press, 1996), Heebee-jeebies (Meow Press, 1996), SleVep (Tailspin Press, 1995), Vessels (Texture Press, 1993), Cnyttan (Meow Press, 1993), Mooon Bok (Leave Books, 1992)and Red Rain Too (1992)and Flight to the Moon (1993) from Run Away Spoon Press.

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Send books and magazines for review to:
Michael Basinski
Poetry/Rare Books Collection
420 Capen Hall
SUNY at Buffalo
Bflo. New York 14260

• include all info you want posted with your review: name, address, press, email, website (if available) and price  •

Creative Writing Poetry Submissions

and Paper Proposals on Popular Culture Poetry sponsored by michael basinski and maura gage --- Poets for the 2003 Popular Culture Association Conference to be held in New Orleans, Louisiana.....more info


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