Parandularios - by Carlos M. Luis
Probably about $15.00 includes postage.
Contact: Carlos M, Luis 10099 N.W. 4 Lane, Miami, Florida 33172. karmaluis@aol.com
Part of the new contingent of visual poets making the point these last few years, Jim Leftwich, Michael Peters, among them, is Carlos Luis and this is Carlos Luis’s latest contribution (write him for his other and earlier contributions – worth a verbo/visual time). This poem work is a most delightful combination, combine and constellation of work/text… POEM! Poem! of many languages, and various linguistics summer-salting and hand standing, springing and generous language acrobatics, with strains and streams of visual imagery and neologism, again in various tongues, recognizable, speaking-able and not. Carlos Luis is the great gesture writer of visual poetry. All, all aspects of language come into his field of activities. On his pallet are so many tools … … his explore-presstionistic poetry is a smorgasbord of variation and innovation.
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The Post-Contemporary Concerto - by Andrew Topel.
36 pages. $6.00. Avantacular Press, RR 3 Box 16A, Rushville, IL 62681 or
andrewtopel@netscape.net
A tradition of typographic/typewriters art (now computer typing/typographic word processing, of course) what begins with Guillaume Apollinaire is here carried on by this century’s Apollinaire: Andrew Topel. Yeah, more I think about it – his play with the letters carries on and pushes us into remembering that the alphabetic manipulation is the origins and base form which all visual poetry srings/srrpungs/springs. And he has meshed it with other deformations of words but has not neglected the sonics involved. So we have some very pleasant noisy Apollinarian poetry visualities in this book of visual music. Again, from G. Apollinaire to A. Topel Apollinaire. It works with letters and sound and eye. Damned, seems like he have hear defined a poetry!
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Bottle No. 1. Bottle of Smoke Press - Edited by Bill Roberts.
Bottle of Smoke Press 503 Tuliptree Square, Leesburg, VA. 20176. Limited to 126 copies.
$25.00 plus $1.00 postage. (They are hot and will be gone soon…do it now!).
orders@bospress or visit: www.bospress.net.
Bottle No. 1 is a collection of 12 broadsides in portfolio, with color Bukowski picture on cover by Michael Monfort, and linocut by Marc Snyder of FIMP Press (www.fimp.net). And them what aret among poets is: Gary Aposhian, David Barker, Neeli Cherkovski, Henry Denander, Dan Fante. And then, what the hell, the rest of the poets are: S.A. Griffin, Bradley Mason Hamlin, Gerald Locklin, Michael Madsen, Ann Menebroker Charles Plymell and A. D. Winans. So, you see that this is the club of new and old small press poets, poets who choose as a form of poetic to be sharply personally expressionistic, funny, open also utilizing all sorts of people daily language and the cadences of real speech – finding here IT the populace talking - meaning the true fruit of William Carlos Williams, Bukowski and Whitman all in one pack. Each item most really beautiful (and many in color) and each a delight and different, unique – poem and presentation. Bottle No. 1 – a labor of passion and dedication. A bell ringer. A load loaf of octopus bread with Genoa Salami and fresh butterfly butter, mixed with banana genitalia.
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xPressed - edited by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen.
http://www.xpressed.org - Contact and manuscript inquiries to info@xpressed.org
Xpress(ed) is an e-chapbook publisher devoted to experimental poetry. All items are in electronic format (Acrobat PDF or PalmPilot DOC). Downloads and free. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen is this master publisher. He is committed to twisting the hell out of words and, therefore, making the new meaning so desperately needed in these very strange times of word untruths by governments (ours and them) and master(bators – alligators!) of industry. Damn if we don’t need new eyes and ears and definitions of everything now. When is now and Kervinen has stepped forward with his ocean of lightning. He has just published ten new eChaps in http://www.xpressed.org The new books are by this cast of poets: Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Jesse Glass, Catherine Daly, Nick Carbo, Nico Vassilakis, Andrew Lundwall, Chris Sawyer, David Dowker, Halvard Johnson and Hugh Tribbey. Going in there and reading around you see this wave of works has an edge that explores spaces and holes in contemporary world poetry. It is an intoxicating night long party! I like the way Kervinen organizes the site and provides a biography of each writer represented. Always sensitive to the work, it is a friendly site also. Ifin you wish to learn how to really publish useful echaps, here is the place to go. If you wish to discover some cutting edge poetry, do it here. If you wanna figure out where IT (the poem) at least one part of it is, here is a depot. And Jukka-Pekka does this form Finland. We are a small world of poets, are we not.
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Out of the Blue, Into the Black - by Dave Pishnery.
2003. Stegosaurus Press. $10.00 (or so) Contact: Dave Pishnery,
35124 Euclid Ave. Apt G-201, Willoughby, Ohio 44094. or dpishnery@yahoo.com
The poems are made from short, cadence rich, lines that propel you along, pull you along into the rhythm of Pishnery’s poetry. And pretty soon you are rattling around on the Pishnery poetry express. Comfortable, insightful, relaxed without straining, without restraining oneself from their intoxication. Trusting his insights, which are all real, one gets relaxed and you trust in his real. This is not a thing that occurs often in the land of the poem. But IT is here. And as I close this book and look at the cover I think of the image of a heart drowning in a river of beer – that’s enough to bring me back around for a full second read. And then after you get done with Out of the Blue, Into the Black, check into his 12X120, which is 60, 12 lined poems form 200l and 60 more from 2001-2002. 2001/02 were good years, productive years and he, Pishnery, in his form travels along with insight and outsight. Contact Dave P. Stegosaurus P. for this item then also – probably around the same price as the other above mentioned book. Write him. A ripe banana on the side. This is eating!
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Big Hammer. issue 6 - 2003. - Edited by Dave Roskos.
$6.00. Iniquity Press/Vendeta Books. PO Box 54 Manasquan, NJ 08736.
www.iniquitypress.com - iniquitypress@hotmail.com
Always a shot of good bourbon, Big Hammer this issue is its usual delight and it begins by CHRIST! I pulled the issue out of the envelope and there is this five piece rock-and-roll band: all women and all topless! Took me awhile to get into it – that is open the pages and read the poems, which are all about life in New Jersey and your neighborhood and mine, what is to say: about aging, alcoholism, domestic violence, drugs, getting laid off, police brutality and working nights. It is the poetry of the usual batch of insanity that holds American to together. I guess we are all nuts. The other day my wife asked me what are most people like? I said all you gotta do is look at your spam email - this spam appeals to the exact needs of Americans. Americans are broke, perverts, lonely (alone) and degenerate. To feed us there are 100 pages of works in here. Edited to a fine sharp point by Dave Roskos, who cuts a good slice of lime and lizard pie and serves it up, baked with the inside cold and raw, with big mounds of moth icecream and fish fingers. Yelp this hear is on a Big Hammer diner plate, and the poems are slivers in your tongue after reading this and the death of Christ isn’t quite as real as living on the streets of New Jersey from which this issue is from and foaming at the smiling poetic mouth (even with poets are from everywhere). Ands the picture of this wonderful guts spilled and bleeding poetry is thus then and are defined by eyes held open by used and dull toothpicks, with little bits of chicken meat, life like torches of q-tips. You get the picture? Johnny, you get it?
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On Either Side of the Charles - by Doug Holder.
Ibbetson Street Press, 25 School Street Somerville, MA. 02143.
Write him for price but about $7.65
Doug Holder’s the circus-master of a whole slice of Boston banana pie poetry world. Great to greet him here on these pages with his poems. This I write because mostly he is busy introducing this poet to that poet and promoting, promoting promoting the poem and poets. He is a person that makes a community of writers, which no one may and or can deny, and he should be made a Knight of the Round Word by the great Popes of the Poem and Popeye! He is already that in my eyes. So when I read his works, it was with great gobs of joy that I felt such bubbling joy at his very easy way of capturing instances of the common and making them high holy. Ginsberg asks at the end of Howl, “Is baseball holy?” Or was it Kerouac in Pull My Daisy – doesn’t matter. Holder does make it all holy… his poetic sitting and pondering by the Charles River, like young Whitman penning the happening which he and Walt Whitman, and Ginsberg and Kerouac all know is the happening, ever rolling, running river of poetry.
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Voice–Over 1.0 & 1.5 - by Rob Mclennan.
2002. Camenae Press at www.rackO.com/camenae
Occupant - by Rob Mclennan. 2001. Apostrophe Press, Ottawa.
The bestest way of checking into the Mclennan world is to contact him at:
858 Somerset St. W., Main Floor, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada KLR 6R7. or
az421@freenet.carleton.ca or www.trackO.com/rob_mclennan
When first eyeing Rob Mclennan, there he is, oh regal and poet of mustache and long coat with peering eyes into the soul, ouch – the point sword of word of it pulling and slicing deep into IT! the poetry of the universe and clawing it out in handfuls throbbing. And if you wish your poet smart and deeply read in post WWII realm of the poem, find it in Mclennan. His tight lines, strong with word steel, pry and bold hold poem beating live those poem places where in words define the soul and he wraps them, his words about, tender about all that is human experience and with the bow of poetry is a present and presence that one often only hopes to behold. You, in these two books, will find introductions to the magic of self via Mclennan and what else is poetry for but the locating.
