Open A Real Book Reviews

Suicide Porn by J. J. Campbell

2011-02-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

Poetry

44 pages

5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook

Interior Noise Press

$8.00

Even though the polished, glossy cover with trimmed page edges on laid paper makes this collection of poetry look like a pretty package, the title alone should let you know what to expect from Campbell: raw, gritty, truthful poems from the estranged underbelly of healthy and happy society. This book is not to be read by the flower girls and lovely poetesses of the soft, functioning world, nor by the sick at heart with razors resting nearby, but it should be devoured by those who crave a dark truth.

The poems are fairly dismal, dealing with a lack of direction in life,

mission accomplished:

[...]

i remember when
i was 13 i never
wanted to grow
up

now in my mid
30's

mission
accomplished

physical pain, talk of death, questioning of faith, music therapy, being overweight, and other unpleasant dark topics, yet interspersing them with talk of finding love and maintaining quite a bit of wicked humor throughout the hard times. There are many juxtapositions that show the complexity of this often-sad man, such as his apparent sadistic pleasure in not caring about the happiness of his own family, yet caring very deeply with heavy remorse and understanding for a fellow peer who is in distress and also suicidal, as if the mirrored understood pain almost makes it more real and sympathetic to him than his own family's feelings.

He often uses winter and nature's harshness as a metaphor for his own cold pain and constant struggle, as in

seven kittens:

[...]

i'm refusing to
name them until
they make it
through a winter
outdoors

[...]

i figure whoever [sic]
makes it to march
will be blessed
with a name they'll
never understand
anyway

[...]

and

like it nearly had a meaning:

[...]

those deep dark pools
of regret
remorse
unrequited love

winter was settling in

the winds bringing the
harsh chill of death to
your door

[...]

and uses death in nature and the failing of crops due to unforeseen natural conditions as a symbolism of his own slow decay and human failings in his own surroundings, as in

lost on the other side of the horizon:

[...]

i've watched a
potentially good
crop of corn and
soybeans turn to
dust right before
my eyes

[...].

This book also touches on love, sex, women, finding the right partner, the ups

like a fading kiss:

[...]

she had the eyes
of the ancient
dead greeks

[...]

and the downs

your wall of regret:

[...]

all the while i still
believe my love for
you exists for a reason

but anytime i try to
express that you run
off to swim with the
shallow end of the
gene pool

[...]

and the spaces in between where love is concerned. But J. J.'s love and emotions run deep and inconsistent, more human than most poets who write even the greatest words of true love. While many of the topics and words of this book deal with dark, quiet, obstinate pain, you would do yourself a misdeed to mistake the darkness for utter brutality. Because out of that darkness comes a perverse and savage sense of humor that makes the wicked, uncouth mind laugh right out loud in unexpected delight. And that's where Campbell becomes a genius; he has the ability to take agonizing situations and make them realistically, yet inhumanely, funny and charming. I'll end this review with a few of my favorite humorous, if sadistic, passages:

within fives minutes of entering the supermarket:

standing in the beer
aisle wondering if the
imported shit is really
worth four extra dollars
when this attractive
black woman fell to
the floor

my first inclination
was to laugh

[...]

i settled for domestic

[...]

and

up by the big barn:

[...]

do you wanna see it?

the yankees just got swept
i've got a stack of rejection
letters and my fantasy baseball
teams have gone to shit

of course i want to see it

[...]

and

deer makes a nice stew:

every time i mow the
grass out here on the
farm the deer that lives
in the front woods pokes
its head out and stares
at me

the kind of stare that
comes off to me as he's
asking just who the fuck
am i to disrupt his day

[...].

Do yourself a favor and buy this book. You might just save J. J.'s life and keep him alive to write another.

From The Marrow #79

2010-09-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Catalog, Reviews
2 pages
8 1/2 x 11 photocopied
BoneWorld Publishing
3700 County Rte 24
Russell NY 13684

John Berbrich's leaflet of reviews and catalogued items from Musclehead Press/ BoneWorld Publishing. Berbrich gives quick paragraph reviews to books and zines he's received in an honest way in the true spirit of the small press: passing on the word. This particular issue contains a review of one of Propaganda Press' books, Billy and Cindy by Stephanie Hiteshew and Dave Church, so we certainly appreciate the exposure and have to extend a thanks to anyone who is willing to distribute (and free, I believe, with each item purchased from their press, or probably just for the asking, as well) reviews to keep the small press alive and give light to all the publications that the reader/writer might not know yet.

On the back side is a catalog of chapbooks from Musclehead Press, including some real gems by Errol Miller (where did he go these days?), Giovanni Malito (R.I.P.), Michael Kriesel, Robin Merrill, Joseph Verrilli, Don Winter (pseudo-R.I.P.), Stephanie Hiteshew, and Berbrich, himself (of course, among others). Do check it out and support the small press.

Finding Solace in the Wind by Stephanie Hiteshew

2010-09-02T22:55:00.000-07:00

Poetry
52 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook
BoneWorld Publishing
3700 County Route 24
Russell NY 13684
Order #MHC-46
boneworldpublishing.com
$5.00

Stephanie Hiteshew has got to be one of the wittiest characters in the small press, and this collection of snappy short poems sums up her staying power perfectly. She's got guts, no one's blushing away from this one, and she's not afraid to make a stand... and man, is it beautiful. Right from the get-go, this book is a study in the short poem, a journey through short bursts of thought and emotion, and it's not just "some poems" -- it's an insanely intricate craft that I can't even being to touch, but that Hiteshew has mastered with the best of them, even her stated "mentor," the late Dave Church, one of the small press' finest short poem writers.

The book is broken into three distinct sections: Muse, Hobo, and Sextets. Muse takes us on a journey that seems to deal mostly with nature, leaving the reader wondering if that is, indeed, Hiteshew's muse, or if her muse lies more in the form of harking after her elders, such as the images that bring to mind the spirit of Carl Sandburg in Hiteshew's poem, Fingerprints:

Fog
left its
fingerprints
clear across
the water

Stephanie's true inner self is revealed in these monumental bursts of thought, and some of them shine a lantern on a bit of insecurity tucked away inside her, such as Tunnel,

To trust a dark
tunnel
to not have
a brick wall
in the middle of it
is just something
I can't do.

which gives away so much of Stephanie's inner questioning, her distrust in what others say/think/do without being challenged. From the words of this book, it is clear that Stephanie is not going to believe that someone didn't put a brick wall smack dab in the middle of all of her dark tunnels, literal or metaphorical, and she is going to proceed with caution until she's sure there isn't one. This caution makes her notice more than the average bear: she's got a million pair of eyes catching each detail

Shadows

A mass
of clouds

freed shadows
from their people

for one, glorious
moment.

and squeezing them into the moment with just a few words, as many words as are needed to describe just one second in time, just one look in one direction on one item or one person, and then summed up with a quick-witted poet's first and fleeting thoughts. This first section deals with a perception of nature, moments of sunshine, clouds, rivers, rocks, scrawled out almost as an obituary for the passing of beautiful days, as

Some days,
despite what
the math says,
are longer
than others.

The words of Despite ring true to a poet's mind and pen, and are a firm segue into the next section: Hobo. These are truly hobo poems, nothing metaphorical here, as Stephanie details the streets, its inhabitants, its pain, its looming eyes, and her time there:

Sharing

The streets
all know
my name,
these two years
we've spent sharing.

There's real pain and grit in the words, a knowing that can only come from experience, a silence in between the short lines that can only be heard by being there. There is a need to change from the unknown, a want to keep the moments that matter and to cling to the familiarity,

Keeper

Days change
without stopping.
I beg
on my knees
to keep this one.

and then this beautiful release of hope that suddenly rises unexpectedly out of the gloom, keeping the thoughts from dipping too far into the dark side:

All Things Found

Of all things
found,

the world
before me
waiting,

was the least
expected.

Thus taking us lucidly and high-spiritedly into the third section: Sextets, which are just that, poems of a more random nature held together by their common thread of containing six lines. This set of poems ranges anywhere from familial and parenting issues:

Daughter You Know

Every time I leave
the world takes on
new meaning.
Never do I come back
the daughter
that you know.

and

Borders

She drew
outside of the lines
confused by
her teacher's reasoning.
Her sight had been
borderless since birth.

to politics to nature to religion to sheer words of wisdom:

Enough of Today

Grasp enough
of today
so that
tomorrow
will take you
seriously.

and ending with a bang that absolutely wraps up Stephanie's charming, witty, humble, sincere, and fragile paradoxical personality perfectly:

Quotable

My last words
will most likely
be 'ouch.'
Not quite the
quotable person
I'd like to be.

The one problem a reader can hit upon with a collection of short poems is that it's easy to rush it. But I urge you -- don't rush it. Hiteshew's poetry is worth savoring, so take each clump of perfect thought and let it roll around in your mind, paint the picture, make it last, and I promise you, her words will stay with you.

[And speaking of painting the picture, three cheers for the awesome, striking cover art by Sarah Walroth! Fits the "falling" and "windy" mood of the poems perfectly.]

California Wolf Center Sticker [Free Sample]

2010-08-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

Sticker
3" x 3"
California Wolf Center
californiawolfcenter.org
[Link takes you to homepage. The free sticker offer is over.]

It's a cute sticker of a wolf puppy. Who could not want it? I wish the sticker were on heavier paper or vinyl or something a little more substantial, but it's just a lightweight paper sticker, not weatherproof and would probably scratch over time. That puppy is pretty freakin' cute, though.

Azure Perfume [Free Sample]

2010-08-21T19:18:00.000-07:00

Perfume sample
Small amount
dreamazure.com

[Link will take you to free sample page. If link is broken, try entering the home page URL in your browser and searching the site; and please let us know.]

This is a teeny tiny amount of perfume, not the deal I expected for having to pay shipping. I don't usually go for those offers that make me pay the shipping, especially not $2.95, since I know most samples don't cost $2.95 to ship. But I figured I'd go for this one because the site looks like someone whose made her own scent, so I thought that it might be a nice-sized sample for $2.95 shipping. But alas, it's not. It's one of those sample perfume vials, filled only about a third of the way. So for value on this one, I say don't go for the free sample, unless you are all right with that, as there are lots of other perfume samples that will ship for free. On the up side, if you end up being really interested in the scent, they send you a code for 50% off a purchase of the fragrance and $2.95 off your shipping cost, so you could get reimbursed for the free sample, if you ended up wanting more.

As for the perfume: Like I said, it appears to be from an independent creator, coming in a puffy envelope with a product sheet printed off an inkjet and signed in pen by AzureRae Turner, the Founder and Product Designer. So that's cool; it's not a corporate product. As an advantage, as well, it's a very clear perfume, which always makes me happy when my perfume gets spritzed onto my clothes accidentally; I always assume the clear liquids are less likely to damage the fabrics, which could be a total conjecture, but I'm okay with not knowing.

The test: The scent is a bit of a light floral feel, very clean and crisp, not powerful, just simple and fresh. If you're a real "scent" person, I feel you would need to use a lot for this to pop out, but if you like light, sweet, soft fragrances, a little will work for you. It almost falls into the category of a fresh cotton or linen laundry detergent or powdery-scented deodorant, like it's not quite perfume-y, just really clean... so basically like you took a shower today. I don't feel like the scent would last all day, but it's simply fresh, soft, and clean while it lasts.

Media Junky #12

2010-08-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Review zine
16 pages
4 1/4" x 5 1/2" zine
Jason Rodgers
PO Box 8512
Albany NY 12208 USA
$1 or trade or nice letter

A zine! I never even get to see these anymore! It almost makes me sad when I get one, thumbing through it, remembering the good old days of cut 'n' paste and how innocent and creative (and sloppy!) all those zines were that I would get on a regular basis, fifteen years ago.

Well, here is one, old school style, cut 'n' paste text on collaged background, black and white photocopied, hand-cut and stapled, and with a mission of promoting "authentic DIY production and cultural engineering. Provid[ing] contacts to increase the nodal connection in the underground to the point of infinite reiteration"... makes me feel good to see it. This one is a review zine of other zines, chapbooks, catalogs, and music, listed alphabetically. The reviews are shorter, but Jason still manages to give his opinions about the zines and not just a list of what's in them or "you might like this if...". Good, concise descriptions that really give you a good idea of what is being reviewed, and how could I not want to check out "a comic all about fighting Mormons and the epic search for coffee in a world of government-forced decaffeination"?

Jason is clever, light-hearted, and honest, all of which are a must for writing a zine that contains only reviews. He could benefit a little, however, from proof-reading his work. Several typos.

facebook by t. kilgore splake

2010-08-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

Poetry
36 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook
Rusty Truck Press
rustytruckzine@gmail.com

I'm from Michigan, and I've seen what those cold, cold winters can do to you, up there in the U.P., where it's frozen for most the year. I've seen how it can freeze an old heart into believing there's no good in technology, but I disagree with this sentiment... and not just because I'm an avid Facebook user... and not just because one day t. kilgore splake was my Facebook friend, and then the next day he had vanished, profile and all, of course dropping my number of friends in my friends list, a collection of which I'm quite proud, down a notch.

No, not these trivial things, but I do find the things Mr. splake says about our generation on these pages a tad bit insulting, with the recurring themes of "adult children," "self-centered," "nothing to say," "no talent," "look at me," and "soap opera," to name a few. But I digress. Let's first discuss the work before we get into the rebuttal of the work, shall we?

This current book, of the many, many books written constantly by the man who never stops writing, is a comment on our society, a younger generation that communicates online, through the webbings of the Internets, tangled in this profile or that social scene, and keeping conversations going through text, rather than face to face. Perhaps splake prefers everyone to sit and have a cup of coffee with him in his brisk Upper Peninsula local shop of choice, but as I have no taste for upper Michigan (except to say that it is beautiful), and I reside quite far away in sunny California where it is mild year-round and where I can't even afford a cup of coffee, that seems to be a bit impossible, especially constantly. So therefore, Facebook, a way that one can stay connected with friends s/he didn't even know s/he had. Brilliant.

But splake doesn't think so, in fact, really quite the opposite. There is so much negativity in this book, that I am quite disbelieving that he could find no good at all in the social device. He comments on it as one of a generation gone by, with talks of Kerouac and Ginsberg, almost as if my generation would know who those people were, and quite disregarding that, while those authors are great, this is the now. And we are the now generation that may or may not fit his lines:

adult children
that never ran away from home
circus long gone

That said: the poems. The poems are short, haiku-ish-style, although not following any rules, just following the whimsy of the moment, almost as if they were all inspired by status updates that turned him off. As set in the series, they can read as one continuous poem or as separate tiny vignettes, almost like fragile sighs of discontentment. Most of them are clearly Facebook-inspired, commenting on people who've said too much or too little, who've given up information that he doesn't feel is appropriate or about which he thinks no one cares or should care, uninspired people who give every detail or who think they're great visionaries:

wannabe visions
narrow and provincial
talkers without frontiers

...Yet, I can't help finding some hypocrisy in these lines, as I think it may be just as narrow and provincial to criticize those who wish to make their visions known, whether those "visions" are awesomely mind-blowing or just untested conjectures. Just as I can't help thinking that, as an ex-Facebook friend of splake's, these are directly or indirectly faced at me, as well. Not that I'm taking this personally. No, no, but I think he's missing the point of the importance of this communication -- how we are connected now more than ever in this day-and-age, how writing a handful of letters or making a couple of phone calls doesn't compare on the smallest scale to the hundreds of people I can reach, to the hundreds of conversations I can have daily, with just a few keystrokes. It's true, the personal nature may be gone, it may be colder and less affectionate, but these are changing times, and this is communication, and it is important. All of it, even when we don't understand its importance at the moment.

Okay, so I don't agree with the message. The poems, however, are quite enjoyable, splake-style in perfect form, loose and cryptic with repeating mantras and visuals in almost a beat-style; and the book is put together beautifully with nice, thick, glossy paper, a full-color cover, vellum inlay, and saddle-stitching along the spine. If you're not a Facebook-fan, I recommend it as a tool to harden your beliefs; if you are a fan, then you may want to have the same conversation with the self-proclaimed "old grey-bearded bard" that I do.

Two Torch Singers by Gerald Locklin

2010-02-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

Single poem
Edition of 125 signed copies
20 pages
4" x 6" chapbook/greeting card
Kamini Press
Ringvagen 8, 4th Floor
SE-117 26 Stockholm
Sweden
Free for friends of the press

A New Year's greeting from Kamini Press in the form of a glorified card booklet, featuring one single poem by Gerald Locklin in a beautiful layout between laid cardstock and colored paper, with a full-color watercolor of two saggy-boobed torch singers by Henry Denander, the editor of Kamini Press, on the cover. The poem harks back to the days when two torch singers aided in the author's puberty and how they shaped his definition of real women. Very endearing poem by Locklin, and Denander definitely takes time with his works, lovingly crafting each word to make this the nicest "greeting card" I've ever received. Limited edition of 125, signed by both Denander and Locklin, free for friends of the press.

I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf by Harry Calhoun

2010-02-27T10:51:00.001-08:00

Poetry
"Forty poems in three acts"
53 pages
ISBN 978-0-578-01634-4
6" x 9" trade perfect-bound paperback
Available from Trace Publications

This paperback is a journey in "three acts" about the passions and relations of human beings, surrounded by nature and questions and expectations, accepting things in the past that cannot be changed and looking ahead to a future that is not just owned, but shared. The title sums up two main "characters" in the book touched on repeatedly: Bukowski and nature, seemingly polar opposites, but obviously the cornerstones of two distinct sides making up Harry Calhoun.

The poems are definitely lavish with nature-speak, naming different flowers, giving them almost humanistic personification, describing the seasons of North Carolina with a fondness in which one can revel only when truly in love with his surroundings. I won't pretend that it isn't a bit much, as the language becomes -- pardon the pun -- quite flowery at times, naming a few too many plants and comparing a few too many things to the taste of wine, but it is, nonetheless, pleasant and not extreme on the negative end of the spectrum.

The book is divided into "three acts," mostly with a set-up, confrontation, and resolution flow, although the divisions offer up a bit of grey area as to a clear distinction between the poems' placement within the acts. The main arc running through is that the book starts on a very depressing, negative note, dealing with past events -- such as the death and subsequent painful forgiving of the author's mother -- and ends up far happier, with the author finding a quite-significant significant other and turning a hopeful eye toward the future.

The poems deal with age, coming to terms with getting older (from Baseball, behind the trees):

[...]if I had a mirror

it would tell me
summer is not the only season
that relentlessly rushes in[;]

the aforementioned dealings with the lonely death of the author's mother (from Bad joke):

[...]finally got to see his mother

[leveled] by a stroke
and croaking like a seal
and unable to speak
and unrecognizing of her own son

[...];

the author's correspondences with Bukowski, and the parallels this had to other parts of the author's life (from I knew Bukowski):

[...]

Never met Bukowski
we just corresponded
I liked Bukowski
and I loved my mother

but I can't say I knew either one
better than the other

[...];

the finding of true love that most definitely lit up the author's life (from A guest in the house of winter):

[...]

I wonder why you have placed this fireplace
in the midst of my chilly unlit life,
made me a guest in the house of winter
[...];

the necessity of beliefs, questioning, having the imagination to create what's around you, not just live in it (from The superstition that sustains):

I've heard that people in Bhutan
now live unbelieving that the yeti exists
[...]

how I could live these many years
without my mythology
how I could live in barren grasses
and stuck in fields the prey of
owls and wolves and foxes

not knowing I had wings
[...];

to the lessons learned from his beloved black Labrador (from At four years old, I asked my mother: will I die?):

my beautiful black Labrador
won't live nearly as long as me
and will give me
a microcosm
of what it will be for me
to age from boy to adolescent to man
to decrepitude

[...].

The topics are universal, and the poems are bursting with personal emotion and the baring of one's soul, stripped down to the sadness and the joys in one equal breath, side by side, taken as the parts that make the man.

I have a couple notes on the presentation of this book, however, having not as much to do with the poems, so much as the book design. The inside is beautiful, with the loving touch of an editor who took care with the book, although I think that longer poem lines that continue onto the next line should somehow be indicated, usually with a slight indentation; stanzas should not be split up across page breaks; and the poems shouldn't start on a left-side facing page. My real problem, though, and yes, this is minor, is that the cover wrap doesn't look as nicely professional to match the inside. It has ten different fonts from front cover to back, pixelated and slightly blurry, some over the top of pixelated pictures, as well; and it just doesn't look as clean and crisp as the poems inside. I think the book could have benefited from a slightly more polished software or layout design, and then the collection as a whole would have been that much better. This really is minor, though, as we small press people are always limited by our incomes and source availabilities; and the layout, look, and feel of this book is still heads above most that I receive.

Overall, a very decent collection of quite pleasant poems. Nothing shocking, nothing crazy, but subtle stories of overcoming a painful past to find a brighter future that will make you want to go water a flower.

Detective Stories by Arthur Winfield Knight

2010-02-27T09:55:00.001-08:00

Short story
16 pages
4" x 5 1/2" short story chapbook
Free Books
1787 Rhoda
Lowell MI 49331
Free

The title makes this little book seem like it's going to have several stories in it, but it's just one short story, called Detective Stories, about a writer hired to find a man's past three wives in the pursuing of an annulment. The writer basically comes to the conclusion that the women, two of whom he finds, just don't want to be found and that he is "liv[ing] in the shadow of other people's sorrow," for which he has no taste for continuation in its lonely grasp.

The writing is a bit disjointed and jumps around a lot; I wasn't quite sure what was happening for half of the story, but overall, it's just an enjoyable little story about having to do the things in life that make you happy and breaking away from the things that don't. A sample:

[...] "I only asked him for three things when we split: a skirt a recently deceased aunt made, a jewelry box my dad gave me, and a book about tips for the kitchen. I had them all before we were married, so they weren't even community property." Her voice rose, echoing in the bar, which was cellar-like. "He wouldn't return anything, even though I'd tried to be as kind to him as possible. I called his sister, who lived near us, and told her, 'Be nice to Mark; his marriage just broke' after I sent him on his way."

[...]

There are a couple misspellings in here, but I think this press just prints all free books as a self-described "non-profit organization dedicated to the free distribution of literature." Can't complain about that!

MUST Deviations #5

2010-02-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

Poetry/prose/artwork
8 pages
4" x 2 3/4" chapbook
MUST
PO Box 282
Painted Post NY 14870

This is a quick little abstract ditty in the vein of editor Aleathia Drehmer's current line, Durable Goods, only far more abstract and freeform, but folded entirely out of one sheet of paper with fairly high-quality photocopying. The mini-zine is comprised of random snippets -- connected only in their usage of, or dealings with, the word "deviation" -- bits of stories and thoughts pulled from the air as if caught on a wire tap or sneaked from @signs on Twitter feeds looking for deviants or any deviation thereof.

On the negative side, the zine is pretty hard to read, with itty bitty text cast against dark grey backgrounds, blending the different fonts of grey tones into the different backgrounds of similar grey tones.

But on the positive side, there is this:

the secret.
by Jason Neese

Then we have What's Her name. I immediately know I will never commit her name to memory. This is because I see an open copy of 'The Secret' lying on her cubicle desk like the decapitated head of Mr. Rogers. Beside it are three other books. Two on the Analysis of Dreams and one on white magic. What's her Name flashes me a smile that says:
I'm insane.
I know that I'm insane.
It's ok to transcend reality through my insanity.
Feel free to find me at the PETCO loading up on kitty litter every Sunday evening.
This concerns me.

Yes. Enough said.

Ko IV by Aleathia Drehmer

2010-02-24T19:57:00.000-08:00

Single prose-poem
8 pages
2" x 2 3/4" booklet
Durable Goods
PO Box 282
Painted Post NY 14870

This teeny tiny pocket book is more a piece of art, almost like a sorrowful greeting card, than a zine or chap in any way. It's just a moment, a fleeting thought, a scrawled handwritten story-poem, as fragile as the broken bird on the cover, folded from one single sheet of paper that looks as though it came from a Japanese comic book, with an older man holding lovingly (and possibly creating a burial ritual for) a dead bird.

The title is intriguing, its many meanings each reflecting the sad inside story of Aleathia's first kitten, the abuse it endured from her stepfather, and its possibly-tragic, possibly-hopeful end. Ko: "go" in Hepburn romanization of the Japanese kana; a mountain, the second highest peak in Sikhote-Alin; an ancient Chinese dagger-axe; the Japanese sound in a name meaning "child"; a Thai word meaning "island"; an abbreviation for "knockout." I could find an excuse for all these meanings to fit the title: letting go of a knocked out child, one drops the dagger-axe to become an island, overcoming mountains. Interesting and intriguing title of endless possibilities.

Very cute, a small labor of love for the craft; and I think it's free if you ask.

Price Reduced Again by Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

2010-02-04T19:50:00.000-08:00

Poetry
48 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook
Shoots and Vines
c/o Backpack Press
PO Box 489
Poseyville, IN 47633
$8

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder is a soul, not a sad someone or one who passes through life littering the way with fairy dust or glitter or good intentions, but someone who lives in the real world among us, someone who breathes and loves and creates. She is a soul, and an open one on these pages, where she rings out the anthems of the working class to write the poems for our age, full of the dustbowl desperation of great depressions juxtaposed with the innocent hope of happiness. These pages are ruined with everything that should make us want to hang ourselves, and yet the glimmer between the cracks makes us happy we're alive and tasting one more day, surrounded by the ones we need, and able to relish the memories we have of the people and places we've loved, even if they were only ours for a short while.

Yes, Julie's lighthearted words are not to be taken lightly, as they echo our time and setting -- speaking of politics, foreclosures, unemployment, hard times for family and friends, tales we all know as we reach a flatline in the middle of a deep recession -- with a crisp sincerity and a tongue-in-cheek sense of equally hopeful and hopeless sarcasm. I really love her writing, and there is very little else to say. She is just so real, so with it; such a powerful voice for women and the underdog and our generation and poetry, in general.

Some of my favorite examples:

In trying to find someone to purchase her home -- a beloved old farmhouse with lots of memories -- Julie touches on very small, personal details that make the foreclosure all the sadder in Price Reduced (Again):

[...]

Five pets died and now lay
beneath yellow bell bushes.
Please buy them all.

[...]

The sadness is there... but so is the please; the hope for something better to come along; the gee yeah, I know it's not a lot, but it's something; the dark humor. And Julie has the perfect bittersweet humor, which makes it equally as enjoyable as it is hard to read her words of desperation, such as these, from She Told Me Money Does Not Buy Happiness, Then She Hopped In Her BMW And Drove Away:

Money does not buy happiness.

But it does buy a house,
[...]

A bra not held together
with safety pins.
[...]

It buys a life where you
have so much dignity
you walk by
a fountain of coins
and have no desire
to dive in.

[...]

Julie is a master of capturing the individual places and people of the Midwest, the small pockets of Americana, the pride in the faces and the pain in the backs, the differences of class and privilege from the points of view never heard on Entertainment Tonight.

From They Call Her Lucy:

[...]

But Lucinda was born
in Wake County, USA.
She speaks Spanish
for the same reason
I speak with
a Southern drawl.

[...]

From Millie Willis Works As A Cashier:

[...]

So Millie Willis
sells organic food
she can't afford
and buys blue
reduced for
quick sale chuck
at a discount store

Her support hose
keeps rolling down
on the night shift

and she listens
to tourists
come down from
their timeshares

to gripe about how
the register scanned
ten cents too much
for vanilla yogurt.

[...]

And Julie is also a pro at putting her own humble life in perspective, taking care to be the observer some of the time and the partaker the rest of the time, laying out her own dreams and shortcomings between the pages. From The Ones In Front, The Ones Behind:

[...]

The ones behind are
quick in the mirror,
pushing
my tail pipe.
So damn young.
So damn pretty.

The lines are not
meant for them.
They pass fast,
devouring wind,
beating me
to job interviews.

[...]

I could list many lines I like, but taking them out of context may not do them the justice they need. The only downfall of this book, however, is that it needs some serious editing TLC, lacking a little on the professional side. It has many of what I refer to as "hanging chads," those little dangling single or double lines that go on to the next page that really shouldn't... those little tabs that could cost you the vote. They don't look clean, and they take up an entire page for a single line that fell victim to someone's inability to squish or adjust font. There are lines that are separated from their flocks at the page turns, too. Unless a stanza goes on for more than the length of a full page, its lines shouldn't be separated from one another within the same stanza; the whole paragraph should just go over to the next page. And the biggest flaw in this book was that half an entire poem disappeared mid-poem with the other half showing up randomly nineteen pages later, tacked onto the end of a different poem, so halfway through Tiffany At The Soup Kitchen, I had no idea how the poem ended, but could tell that it didn't end there. As an editor myself, I just don't like things like that. It looks like this is Backpack Press' first chap, so I'm sure they'll clean 'em up a bit as they go on.

These little things are easy to overlook, nonetheless, when you get a hold of Julie's knowledgeable, charming, witty, and important words. They need no fancy cover, font, or layout to make them shine, as they speak for themselves, if ever any words could. Seriously, you must read this. I would like to buy a copy to send to every member of Congress to let them know how badly we, the People, are hurting.

Falling Up by Jeff Fleming

2009-12-10T07:38:00.000-08:00

Poetry
20 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook
nibble press
1714 Franklin St, Ste 100-231
Oakland CA 94612
nibblepoems@gmail.com
$3

This short chapbook reads as one continuous poem divided into chapters, wherein one poem and title represents one full chapter, one move forward in the story of a strange almost-love, the pull of emotions in many directions, disjointed and sparse, leaving you to fill in the blanks with a romantic or tragic weaving of your choosing.

The book is very blue, right away it looks a sorrowful journey, featuring a girl with her hand on a window, looking at and almost touching spots of stars or lightning bugs or raindrops or a sci-fi stream of alien static. The characters inside are just as melancholy and spotted, as this could have easily been a set of poems inspired by the cover picture or one close to it; two wayward characters, equally as lost together or apart, finding each other and losing each other, as cryptic in their interactions as the poems are to us. You don't know much about the characters, yet you feel you know them well or have seen them in the mirrors of lobbies and purse compacts or in the sordid affairs of neighbors and estranged lovers.

On the technical side, Fleming's poems are very narrative, telling more than showing, lots of good similes, not too experimental, just very crisp and point-driven. And he knows how to give you an ending line. Here are a couple of my favorites:

From Chapter Three: Here to Ride Me Home:

[...]

Petra nods and begins
walking. Paolo follows
like a slow wake.

From Chapter Six: Hiding Her Flesh:

[...] rises
from the crippled
chair and tips
the cap
he isn't wearing.

On the negative side, I'm not a fan of the entire book being in a slanted font with little serifs on every letter, as it didn't look as polished as a cleaner, blockier font. It looked great for the titles, but didn't set the titles apart as much. Another question arises with the presentation of a phantom "you" in the first couple poems, who is unnamed and later disappears. There are clearly two characters in this story we are following; we understand the "he" and the "she," but then occasionally, the person shifts, and there is a random "you" thrown in. Someone I cannot pinpoint, and someone I don't think is supposed to be there. Maybe a quick brush-up rewrite could edit this "person" out, although you might have to be an editor to even notice.

Jeff's work subtly eats you. Nothing shouts abruptly here, but in the quietest way, Fleming gets under your skin to make you want to grab someone you love and not let go, as you figure out all the intricacies of being, tumbling through it, awkward and strange.

Beyond The Cliffs by T. Kilgore Splake

2009-08-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Poetry, prose, and photographs
68 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" trade paperback
Miskwabik Press
Calumet MI USA

This book is a series of old greybeard Beat-poet Bardic ramblings and musings from the master of writing such. It hails from my home state, full of beautiful full-color pictures that make me miss the spring and fall of Northern Michigan, about which most of this book is written. The writing style harks back to the Beat Generation, a mishmash of words and thoughts, line after line going on its own adventure, linear only to the esoteric author, often hard to follow as Splake throws visual after visual at you in speedball fashion; don't blink because you will miss the one ball that connects you to the next thought, thus losing the meaning in any lines that follow.

Beyond The Cliffs contains page after page of homage to the author's home, the cliffs of Northern Michigan, the outdoor life in the wilderness, and getting older as time passes, mourning the losses of fellow poets and long-gone artists, such as Marlon Brando and Jackson Pollock, through rambling poems and prose that travel on for pages. Splake throws grammar rules, punctuation, and capitalization on proper nouns (which I don't find strange in poetry, but it always seems awkward in the prose pieces) right out the window, and there are several misspellings in here, as well, which I hate to see in nicely bound editions. Speaking of bound editions -- and it might just be my copy, as that is always a possibility -- the binding in this book appears to be weak, cracking if I bend the binding too far back, enabling pages to fall out or come unglued if I were to crack it any further. I don't want to have to be that careful with my books, so I think that is unfortunate if it happens on all the copies and not just mine.

While on the technical side of things, I must also say that it is incredibly hard to tell where one poem ends and the next begins, with no distinct difference between titles (if, indeed, there are any) or poem lines. It would definitely help if titles were bolded or set apart somehow, maybe in a different font; it might also help if the entire book were not center-justified, so just the titles could be centered, offsetting them from the rest of the poem. Sometimes I think there is a clear title, often randomly placed in the middle of the page in quotes, only to find that the poem still continues on talking about the same subject as the previous snippet, so I'm not sure if it is actually a new poem, or just a new section, or just a separated line that happens to be in quotes in the context of the poem. On the plus side of this, however, I really don't know if it is necessary, in Splake's case, to need to have titles, as all of the poems are about only a handful of subjects, mostly dealing with the cliffs, the loss of his love(s), and the loss of a man named Jim "Andy" Anderson, who seems to run throughout this book in memoriam; from part time poet:

he boasted
with self-important posturing
writing soulless haiku
premature ejaculations

on weekends
writing thin banal verse
mental masturbation
self-help psychobabble
greeting card nice
[...]

and deafening:

[...]
failing to see
spoken word's emptiness
never reading best selling books
believing author's blurb ignorance
[...]

Splake gets very sexy in some of the poems, even if it is quite non-linear, going from cooking

[...]
tender pink trout flesh
cheddar tomatoes tangy shallots
[...]

[...]
milk naked breasts
nursing dry nipples
[...]
honey wet pussy
[...]

all in the same poem and breath, with no clear segue in between. One thing I will say, for sure, is by the end of the book, you feel like you know something more about Splake -- learning that his third wife had a mental breakdown after the birth of their child and had to be institutionalized, among other personal stories -- and you take away a sense that he has been around the block a time or two and has earned the right to ramble about it in volumes. My favorite personal line, from risks,

[...]
changing wives and jobs
staying right with favorite teams
cubs celts michigan wolverines ny giants
[...]

as if it's no big thing for wives and jobs to come and go, but, man, don't lose sight of your favorite teams. I think this sums up Splake's writing nicely, as the trooper inside still keeps trucking along. No fairweather fans here.

Nothing Unrequited Here by Heather Bell

2009-08-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

Poetry
32 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" handmade chapbook
First impression of 100
Verve Bath Press
Available here
$10

To start this right off, let's talk about product: oh my gosh, the ladies of Verve Bath Press make the most darling of all handmade journals, chaps, zines, and art projects, and this is no exception. This delicate book has a recycled laid brown kraft paper cover, the consistency of a paper grocery bag, with silkscreened or screen-printed words, and an actual paper doily clasped with pewter brads around the book's binding and cover. Holy cute as beans. I must confess, the dainty, beautiful handmade look of this book forced me, out of pure respect for perfect art, to purchase this book.

But the poems are what truly stole my heart. This book is awesome, and I cannot put it in words as dainty as the cover, but this is so worth every penny and moment spent on it. The poems are as they say they are: love poems for JNB, referred to mostly as "you" or "he" in extremely personal writing ripping apart and stitching back together the imperfect-yet-flawless seams of an esoteric relationship.

Some of the poems are tiny stories, easy to follow and visualize, and others are a mish-mash of quick thoughts strewn together, one after another, falling out like crazy drool, tumbling around like windblown leaves at the onslaught of a hurricane, abstract and punchy, tough to follow in an arc, throwing visual after visual at you while you swing at them all.

The author throws punctuation out the window, ending obvious questions and sentence fragments of no who's or what's with periods, but once you get past the stopping and starting, stalling and running-full-force nature of the rhythm (and the fact that the writer seems to have an obsession with the bathroom?), the book lets loose into so many good lines that I couldn't possibly list them all. If ever there were a poet to rip off, Ms. Bell is it, with her sexy and sexual words that test the waters of love, dwelling on confusions of marriage, compromises, outsider views of do's and don't's, from a voice that seems to be quite young, diving into a big love for the first time and growing throughout the words of a love that could also be the last one. The poem, The Reason You Are Not A Poet, could just say it all, with its immense details of even the most minute moment:

He's yelling from the bathroom.
You move close to the door to hear.

He says,
I love your hair in my shower. I love your hair in my shower.

You exhale and realize
he will never be a poet, but you love
the way he called your eyes kettle drums one night,
for lack of anything else to say. The way he carved your
names into his kitchen table, misses his shotgun, could be
an advertisement for Ray-ban sunglasses. The way his graying hair
reminds you of Kafka, that he leaves kayaks in your
living room to dry. The way he says good morning
and good night and aches for you. He half nelsons
you into his arms, you laugh, you laugh,

and tonight you lean your head against
the bathroom door and you know

he will never be a poet,
but he's got better things to say,
more love to generate
than Neruda ever did.

He will never be a poet,
but that is what you are here for. To let everyone know
his eyelids look like blades of grass when he sleeps,
his arms are branches, his roots
are you.

I think the only negative I have for this book -- other than the British spelling of acknowledgments, which still drives me nuts -- is that the margins are slightly wacky, with poems squeezed in to fit onto a single page, margins be damned. There are some stanzas that could have and probably should have gone on to the next page, even a couple of stanzas split up with just one line hanging on the next page where there was plenty of room to move the entire paragraph. I always seem to notice that dangling line like a sore thumb. I would much rather have liked seeing either a smaller font if the poems each needed to be on a single page, or the poems given a slight bit more breathing space with some consistent margins and maybe a necessary extra page or two added to the book to accommodate. Very small price to pay for handmade goodness, though.

I want to leave you with a couple lines I particularly like and the final note to, really, just get this book. Verve Bath Press makes a beautiful product, and the words stand on their own, definitely. Some of the best, most honest and sincere work I have read so far this year. And now, a couple of my favorite lines:

From Instead Of "I Love You":

[...]
Putting your shoes in the shoeboxes, pretending they
are new. Putting your hats in the hatboxes, your voice
in its voicebox. Pretending they are new.
[...]

From The Last Three Poems Left After The World Disappeared:

[...]But prayers
make no difference, says
the priest, when you send
them in the wrong direction.
[...]

From Small Tits (and yes, I laughed right out loud):

Hello Small Tits. Thank you for not growing
beyond the size of trick candles. I put you in
these big padded bras, sigh,
strap you in for a ride. [...]

From Woman Considers Killing Love With A Hatchet:

[...] For men, love
means the soldiers have entered
your mother's house and you can
hear her scream. [...]

Enough said. Buy the book.

Behind The Rhododendron by Amanda Oaks

2009-08-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

Poetry
8 pages
1 3/4" x 2"
Poems-For-All #710
24th street irregular press
1008 24th St
Sacramento CA 95816 USA
Free, plus postage

This is yet another of the teeny tiny Poems-For-All series, itty bitty books distributed for free and containing one poem per book, left behind for the world to enjoy on buses and park benches, in coffee shops and libraries, hand-to-hand with friends or strangers. The books are beautifully put-together, and I am quite in love with them.

This is another of Amanda Oaks' poems, this one not as lovey-dovey as the last one I reviewed, which gives it a little more appeal to me. The poem is actually quite fascinating, about some romp as a younger kid with a love (or even a deep friendship with a close friend, if not a love) out behind the rhododendron, through the gap in the fence, and into great-grandfather's orchard, feeling no fear or shame amidst a gunfire warning and a scrambling home before anyone could catch them. It is a story of innocence, of memory, of true feelings, wrapped up in the tiniest little package you have ever seen. Just darling.

Vishnu: The Train Ride To You by Amanda Oaks

2009-08-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Poetry
8 pages
1 3/4" x 2"
Poems-For-All #709
24th street irregular press
1008 24th St
Sacramento CA 95816 USA
Free, plus postage

This might be the cutest, tiniest chapbook ever, and I am absolutely in love. In love, I tell you. Weighing in at half the size of a business card, this tiny book contains one poem between the most precious little covers ever. Did I mention that I am in love?

The poem, itself, is sweet, a love poem to someone it seems the author has not seen in a while, loaded in metaphors and swinging and swaying like crying willows and gentle rains. The love is real, dealing with personal human moments that are important to Amanda, a talented craftswoman, writing personally, yet universally:

[...]i

could never craft
without you[...]

But the real gem here is the pocket size of this book, and moreover, the idea behind it. The back cover tells it all:

Poems-For-All, scattered around town, on buses, trains, restrooms, coffee shops, left along with the tip; stuffed in a stranger's back pocket. Whatever. Wherever.

That's right, the free little books are scattered all over for the pure joy of spreading poetry to a world that desperately needs it. How lovely. The only problem, of course, is that the books are just too cute to pass on. No stranger or bartender or bus rider is going to get mine. I'm keeping it. Sorry, world, get your own damn poetry.

37 Psalms from the Badlands by Hosho McCreesh

2009-08-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

Poetry
20 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook
Edition of 70 copies
Kendra Steiner Editions #85
8141-B Pat Booker Rd #399
San Antonio TX 78233 USA

I have to say, right off, that I am not a fan of the stapled binding of these Kendra Steiner Editions, stapled flat through the cover and the back. I always wish they were saddle-stapled to make the crease a little easier to open and to give the books -- otherwise beautifully done on colored cardstock cover and thick laid paper, with full-color cover printing -- a far more polished feel. They are, nonetheless, an extremely valuable asset and resource in the small press, a beautiful collection of some of the small press' most talented lot. This is #85 in the Kendra Steiner Editions, with a print run of 70 copies; I believe they are now sold out, but I was lucky enough to get my copy, #59 of 70, from What To Wear During An Orange Alert.

And now on to the poems. It is always such a joy to crack into a Hosho McCreesh book, as his writing is intense, personal yet universal, and unique. He is, hands down, one of my favorite poets out there, and coupled with having been to the Badlands myself on several occasions, even teaching school, building bunkbeds, and cleaning cemeteries on South Dakota Indian Reservations over many a summer, I had been excited to read this book for quite some time.

The chap is separated into 37 snippets of, inspired by, or attributed to, the Badlands -- small buds of color and moments of bursting thought, not always complete or cohesive, but always intense and dripping with visual hot fudge and sprinkles. Some are incomplete abstract sketches, while others are clear observations of truly beautiful moments, each coming together here to form a terrain as bumpy and different as the Badlands, themselves.

McCreesh gives the Badlands intense personification, breathing life, faces, time, judgment, feelings into mountains and skies, rivers and rock, creature and sand, writing many poems from the perspective of the land, and telling the secrets and stories of the indigenous peoples who had not survived here, putting their long-lost voices into the terrain. Psalm #10, for example:

Mountains & indigo sky, two lovers,
stubborn, insistent, tempestuous --

doomed to
eternally
collide.

He captures the sacred spirit of the untouched place, from talismans of long ago people and creatures, to the stillness and emptiness of the rocky desert at 4 a.m., to the peaceful calm of being alone for hundreds of miles in any direction, to the haunted lives of those ghosts now long gone, to the romantic western tales of dead outlaws and gunslingers, the latter demonstrated in Psalm 28:

Billy the Kid
terrified to die,
terrified of being forgotten,
carves his name
in sandstone.

One of the only negatives of the writing is the repeated us of the word "the" -- the this, the that -- and not the this doing something, just the this period, which can sometimes feel very telling. An example is Psalm 12:

Monsoons, & the door jambs swell,
the pages curl, the walls sweat.

The dry-damp must of pock-marked earth --

never enough rain
in the desert.

In this example, when I remove the the's (with the exception of the last one, which I like), I get a clean, abstract-yet-clear poem that is more showing than telling. It might just be me, but I feel like this is one tiny area where the work might be tightened up just a bit. The work is still beautiful, though, either way, and this might be quite trivial in the big picture.

Hosho's words deal with the battles of time and nature,

[...]
& yet, in the battle
between water & stone,
we all know which
eventually wins. (from Psalm 1)

nature and humans,

[...]
& weathered terrain
no longer interested
in human explanations. (from Psalm 7)

humans and time, nature and history, each colliding and struggling repeatedly throughout the ages, each trying to carve out its own niche and exist as long as it can, independent and unaware of outside factors, until faced with them in an endless cycle of balance. This subject of struggle is something Hosho can capture beautifully, and these pages let you know that he can do it in even the simplest and shortest of bursts.

Labour of Love Vol 32

2009-07-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

Poetry, art, photographs
44 pages
ISSN 1192-621X
5" x 7 3/4" glossy chapbook
Labour of Love
47 Marcia Ave, Toronto, Ontario
Canada M6B 2Y6
Free, plus shipping

From the onset, this magazine looks sleek and sexy, full-color with a vibrant cover picture bursting out of an all-black background, although maybe a little too glossy to remind me of the small small press, a bit more upscale, laid out on a computer, and printed with an actual printer, not photocopied. Very classy. The margins are tweaked from page to page to fit each poem on a full page to the best of the editor's ability; and the font is the same for each poem, except for two, which can look a little strange continuity-wise, but is probably only noticed by the uber-obsessive-compulsive, and doesn't really matter, either way. The litzine is nicely chock-full of names that are not littering every small press magazine from here to Timbuktu, which is refreshing, and an overwhelming majority of the writing stems from female poets, which is almost unheard-of in the small press -- I know from my own publishing experience that the male submissions I get outweigh the female submissions probably five-to-one. Kudos for the abundance of ladies, and again, very refreshing.

The poems are mostly very light, dream-like, mythological, heightened, highly poetic, more traditional-style, seemingly not from younger poets, but from a more mature voice, maybe even slightly academic, which is not to sound negative, just more suitable for an older, more poetic audience -- harking back to Yeats, Thomas, Owen, Henley, Hughes, Auden; and less Kerouac or Carroll -- even including a poem by editor Norman Cristofoli written in French and a poem by Bradley Eberhard Hiller that is almost sestina/villanelle-like.

Some examples of the more heightened poetic language, to give you an idea of how I am using the term:

From When I do without by Jude Dillon:

[...]
As the green river swallows light
Through a brown orchard of apple trees
Smallish rain to we few who listen in;
[...]

From Metaphysically Speaking by Laurell Weiman:

[...]
I won't forget the fact, that from light
was born darkness,
and the purpose of light shining
is,
to alight the darkness of darkness.

From Shadow Sister by Jewel MoonSilver Knight:

[...] and when
I do I will stretch myself upon the dark
wings of Night and read the scroll of Stars,
[...]
[...] naked as every liberated raven
that flies toward the Midnight Sun [...]

From [Hades' Resuscitated] by Ann Long (Poetcatt):

[...]
And I will Stand Before you, Shapeshifter
Incline my Throat
Open my Palms
the Rapture that Contains the
Aria Within
[...]

From Where Willows Weep by Margaret Boles:

[...]
I can scarce remember
What the content
I only know I'd written a poem
About where willows weep.

There is, of course, the occasional shocker, and it sticks out how different it seems from the rest of the flow, but the change is a welcome sign of how diverse and open the small press is and has always been. The sudden interjection of foul language, amid poems of nature or starry skies, always leaves me with a sense of fulfillment, that the small press isn't afraid to come right out and say it, the opposite of the squeaky clean mainstream not wanting to offend with dirt under the nails or a less-than-perfect manicure.

From For the Love of Orange by Ann Long (Poetcatt):

[...]
Juice stained fingers as I
slice/dice/squeeze
and I
I'll have your cock
The way I drink my Gin
Straight up with
A twist of Lime
[...]

From Doddsynian Journey by Cathy Petch:

[...]
I've crawled in next to you
a few times now
and always felt like a sister
who still wanted to fuck you.
[...]
I imagine shitting
on your perfect chest
then writing "Cathy and Jeramy
100% true love"
and then smearing it all over the windows,
so it will make the room look
like some war torn Ukrainian hovel
Where we are hiding
from American Flyboys
who are raping and pillaging
their way to us.

There are a few technical mishaps in this issue, mostly in the formatting, probably from electronic submissions being changed over to different software or pulled from online blogs and web-formatting into word processor software, which brings about some dashed lines mixed in with the solid lines; half of the apostrophes in "smart quote" style, while half remain straight lines; the occasional two spaces where there should be one; and a couple spelling errors: seaguls, he when it should be her, shinning instead of shining. Nothing serious, all can be overlooked and might even be the flaws of the authors and their submissions, but as an editor myself, I always look for attention to the tiniest of details. What can I say? I'm a tough editor.

All in all, excellent and beautiful publication with clearly a lot of hard work and thought put into it -- a book in which one would be proud to have poems published. The book is free, which is absolutely amazing, but be sure to include enough to get the package across international borders, if you are ordering from my section of the world.

nibble #8

2009-07-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

Poetry by various authors
28 pages
5 1/2" x 8 1/2" chapbook
Available here

The joy of nibble comes in knowing that editor Jeff Fleming is psycho about his craft and the words he chooses. He lets very few, but only the best, poems squeak by his honed radar, and the ones that pass are usually damn squeaky (...and I'm not just saying that because I have two, count 'em TWO! poems in this issue or because I adore the editor, but also...) because nibble never fails, which is why I have two poems in this issue and adore the editor.

nibble. just. doesn't. fail.

My only complaint is that I wish it were longer. Every single issue I think this same thing, I always just wish each one were longer. As a concept various-author chap with the idea being all poems are 20 lines or less, hence the chap's title, each issue can be a bit of a breeze-through, albeit a very decent and enjoyable breeze-through.

This issue kicks right off with me (!), can't complain about that, with a poem that Jeff liked the first two lines of so much that he apparently made it the first in the book. I'll go ahead and give my sore back a pat for that because that's a big honor coming from him. The poems here are fairly mysterious, often just snippets of a scene or a moment, intense descriptions of a tiny second, not always complete, not always cohesive, but always vividly poetic, leaving you wanting more, poking your imagination through the ear with a cake tester.

There are many greats and many should-be-greats in this issue, as with every one that came before; the Ed Galing poem is the best I've read from him in a long time, which should have some weight coming from a press who published about twenty of his chapbooks; the staples are here: A.D. Winans, normal, justin.barrett; and Father Luke's poem is probably my favorite from him that he's written so far, perfectly sad, touching, honest.

Some stand out gems:

From Consumption by Kip Knott:

[...]
It meant everything then,
and I would carry the evidence
with me the next day like burns.
[...]

From Facsimile by Jenifer Wills:

[...]
In her eyes the sun shines stubborn, casts
the shadow of a smile amidst the bronchitis cough
that persists, pulls at the hem of her skirts
as she works. Born from this sorrow,
a compression explosion, broken glass
and breakfast is served.

And my favorite of the issue, in its entirety and from an author who never fails to amaze, Planting (for Kaya) by Rebecca Schumejda:

As your father pushes soil over seeds,
you dig them back up.

"No," leads to a tantrum
on top of where the summer squash will grow.

Since your father knows how much
of who we are gets planted early;

he wraps explanations
around your trembling body.

in the background, I attack weeds
suffocating roses,

the way I suspect my mother would have
under similar circumstances.

There is another gem here, as well: a poem by a high schooler with Down's Syndrome, and your first reaction is Really? But when you read it, the simple way it flows together, you just collapse into yes, really. The poem fits perfectly, proving that when it comes to great words, nothing has to matter except great words; and kudos to Jeff for stepping beyond a stereotype and not airing differences or age like a CNN plug. Flows and works perfectly and makes the heart feel warm and fuzzy.

All in all, excellent issue, as always... it just ends too soon.

Falling Forward by Rebecca Schumejda

2009-07-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Poetry
80 pages
ISBN 978-1-934513-12-5
5" x 8" trade paperback
Available from sunnyoutside

Falling Forward is an absolute gem of a salute to the married woman, housewife, mother, regular everyday female trooper through this so-called life. The poems are down-to-earth, accessible, understandable, and downright endearingly charming.

The cover, showing a tree with an immaculate root system, should give a few clues that the story is going to run deep, about close issues, family ties, struggles of life and love, familial roots, the deep-seated maternal connections of both roots and branches.

It begins with a beautiful quote from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables that sets the tone remarkably for the rest of the book:

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are
moments when, whatever be the attitude
of the body, the soul is on its knees.

And there it is, all packaged into a few sentences -- family, motherhood, religion, soul-searching, questioning -- the ongoing themes of Schumejda's writing.

The book is divided into four parts, the last part being one poem where the first three lines are the titles of the other three sections, each of those sections separated with dedications and themes to various people and time periods in Rebecca's life. Each section is comprised of little vignettes, scenarios, and moments that have made an impact in, and are metaphors for, her life and traveled paths. The entire book is full of these very human moments and emotions, of real and relatable situations.

From the first poem about relaying the news of a cat that has died after eighteen years as a loyal companion to someone not yet home from work, pondering the breakdown, the reactions, the quiet words:

[...]
I wait on the porch
to avoid the silence
that creeps
around the house
on ghost paws.
[...] (p. 11)

to using kitchen utensils to relate communication to significant others across a breakfast table:

[...]
You stir your coffee
with the handle of a butter knife:
this is how you tell me
that you're not listening.
[...] (p. 15)

to providing insight into a comfortable, yet antsy, marriage with all its questions and compromises:

[...]
Maybe it's marriage,
not the heat wave,
that makes us lazy.
In protest to "cereal again,"
you kneel beside me,
pour milk into
my bellybutton.
While dredging with
my thumbnail,
I can't help thinking
about all the cows
swatting flies with their tails,
waiting to be hooked up
to a machine
that will empty the milk
from their swollen utters. (p. 18)

and all the differences in emotion, follow-through, and reactions of men and women:

[...]you wrap gifts and
stack them into piles without regard for crushed
bows.[...] (p. 19)

Schumejda has it nailed, the human side, the ah-yes moments, the words that say what every woman has thought a thousand times and is thinking right this moment.

Rebecca integrates her background and diverse upbringing -- atheist parents, devout Catholic grandparents, a father who died when she was quite young -- to openly discuss faith, spirituality, the parallels of religion and life:

[...]
My mother handles conversation like
good china and religion -- takes it out
on holidays, but prefers to dine on paper
plates and drink red wine from plastic cups.
[...] (p. 29)

and to invite many interpretations of the repeating line "the truth is too heavy," ringing loudly with both religious and everyday life connotations, charging into other parallels of people and nature, of birds going after earthworms the way the author goes after her partner's toast crust, both leaving little left over until the spring can come again.

Beautiful. Brilliant.

Cokefishing In Alpha Beat Soup: July 2009

2009-07-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

Poetry
2 pages
11 x 17 broadside
Alpha Beat Press
c/o Dave & Ana Christy
806 E Ridge Ave
Sellersville PA 18960
$1 each, $10 year

Cokefishing is a monthly broadside, or in self-description: "a Beat / Post-Beat independent poetry Beatsheet dedicated to the small press and the way it used to be." It is old school cut 'n' paste as submitted, poems, letters, prose, and pictures; and has the feel of the early nineties zines, before the Internet revolutionized (although not everyone will agree on this word) the way the small press worked. The broadside, although sometimes sloppy from the cut 'n' paste, feels good to read, makes me feel like the small press is still alive and kicking and not some corporate whore, as its current state sometimes suggests.

Cokefishing is full of names the small press knows: t. kilgore splake, R. Emolo, the poet spiel, H D Moe, normal, even my name in this particular issue, if I am to say the small press knows my name. The flaw of cut 'n' paste, of course, is that you take the product as it comes, which means typos, misspellings, commas in random places, all preserved on paper from the authors' negligence or poor judgment, but not a flaw of the one laying out the broadside. As an editor, that gets to me every time, and while I understand it's the nature of the beast, I do wish writers would take more care with their work.

The standout poem of this issue is in these final moments by the poet spiel, a poem reflecting final thoughts of a passenger or multiple passengers aboard a September 11th flight doomed for the fate we know so well by now. Some snippets:

[...]i wish for
thirty violins to lift me up and out
of here[...]

for all of my life i wish
for greater bulk in my shoulders
for our united lunge forward
[...]

right this moment oh how i wish that
i could just get filthy sick
directly into the foul mouths

of these arabic looking bastards[...]

One copy, one buck. Can't beat that.

From The Marrow #74

2009-06-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

Catalog, Reviews
2 pages
8 1/2 x 11 photocopied
BoneWorld Publishing
3700 County Rte 24
Russell NY 13684

From The Marrow is the review snippet page from John Berbrich of BoneWorld Publishing featuring his "Skeleton Sketches," short reviews and blurbs of many zines, litzines, and chaps floating around the small press. It's free for the asking. The reviews are not extensive and not too opinionated, mostly just here's-what's-in-it reviews and a few extra kudos if he really likes the material, but it's a good way to see what's going around the press these days.

On the flipside of the page is a catalog listing of the chapbooks available from Musclehead Press, a division of BoneWorld Publishing. Quite an impressive list, including the likes of Errol Miller, whose name I haven't seen around the small press in quite some time, the deceased Giovanni Malito, and others, including delicious treats from Berbrich, himself.

R. Emolo Give-Out Sheets June 2009

2009-06-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

Poetry
3 pages
8 1/2 x 11 broadside
R. Emolo
231 E 22nd St
Paterson NJ 07514

R. Emolo is famous for his give-out sheets, scribbled pages of poetry, pen pal addresses, mail art, blurbed info in an add-to-it-and-pass-it-on fashion. They are mostly quick reads, a few pages in length, and fairly sloppy cut-n-paste, DIY, in the vein of poetic mail art. I am on the mailing list and receive a new packet of give-out sheets periodically, every couple weeks or so, free of any charge. This latest set contains the poetry of R. Emolo and some pasted address contact ads.

Emolo's poetry is experimental, a mishmash of non-linear words crushed together into phonetics and alliterate flowings. They are clearly sporadic thoughts strewn on paper in a rhythmic trainwreck, as if jumping the tracks faster than the reader can.

From Poetry Wafting Thru The Air, an ode to poets entertaining a reader without the necessity of TV:

Hawthorne Muchachos
Marching band.

Mediterranean Ocean.

Make 3-D more 3-D'er.
[...]
They took TV away & didn't
replace it with TV.

Mostly Emolo's writing doesn't make much sense to me, but it's interesting to see the progression of sounds from one line to another, to try to follow the train as it skips the tracks entirely.

For Dave Church, Poet: A Tribute #3 In Memoriam

2009-06-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Letters, poetry

2 pages
11 x 17 broadside
R. Emolo
231 E 22nd St
Paterson NJ 07514

I now have issues 1, 2, and 3 of this memorial broadside series by R. Emolo for Dave Church - the poet who died on Thanksgiving 2008, from a heartattack in the Providence taxi he drove for years - and by the time you get to issue 3, some of the material has fizzled out. This issue is mostly letters to the editor about Dave or regarding the submissions included about Dave by the authors, rather than gritty, deep material. The poems and writing are kind of generic tribute poems, like they could be about anybody, sometimes seeming uninspired, as if the writers never actually knew him, just knew of him. One of the only actual poems here, of which all are taken from cut and paste sources, taped in and photocopied exactly as submitted, is so loaded with misspellings, typographical errors, and missing words that I can't even enjoy the flow of the poem.

This issue also contains letters from the contributors regarding their poem submissions that aren't even included in the broadside, which seems unnecessary and confusing. For example, I have a letter printed in this issue, taken from a postcard that was not ever intended for printing, that was written at the time I submitted my poem, god's lonely man, to R. Emolo's broadside project a few months back; the postcard says:

Here is my Church poem, if you do another broadside. The title of my poem comes from a line in Taxi Driver - - fitting.

But... the poem was included in issue #2 of the memorial broadside series, not in this issue. So it's like a tease, suspension with no release. There are several other instances of this in the issue, as well, which leads me to believe he ran out of material for completion of the project and was in too much of a hurry to get the issue released. I would have rathered he waited until he had more poems and actual writings than printing material that just doesn't seem necessary or reads as filler.

On the flipside, I must say, at the same time, I'm glad he's doing these tributes. As much as I wish he would wait to release them until he has more quality material, I do think it is important and necessary to keep Dave's memory, commitment to the small press, and decades of work and words, alive in our writing community. I just wish there were more here.

One can't complain entirely, however, when the price is right; float R. a stamp, a buck, or just a letter of request, and he'll mail you a copy. Even though it isn't entirely quality material, it's worth it if you are a Dave Church fan or friend, or if you just want to know more about the man and his impact on the small press.

It's Not Enough Of Elvis by Paul Fericano

2009-06-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

Poetry

24 pages
ISBN: 0-1916296-11-3
4 1/4 x 5 1/2 chapbook
The Shave and a Haircut Poetry Series
Poor Souls Press/Scaramouche Books
PO Box 236
Millbrae CA 94030
25¢

This is a nicely-printed, nicely-trimmed, professional-looking, short, thin, quarter-page, saddle-stapled book of one single poem, laid out in an artsy fashion to cover the pages. It blows my mind that this is 25¢, as a huge amount of the printing must be coming out of Paul's (or another press owner's) pocket, since just the colored cover alone is 25¢, not to mention the two stamps it took to mail it. So he isn't making any money on it, which means it must be a labor of love (and made possible by a grant from the Charles J. Parrot Foundation, Chevy Chase, Maryland). You can tell that it is a labor of love by the delicate way it has been lovingly crafted from start to finish.

This consists of nice paper, nice printing, even a vellum sheet between the cover and inside pages; and big fat typeface that stretches the words out so this one single poem fills the space, and even then it's only printed on small chunks of the page, front side only. So, yeah, mostly a novelty and a very quick read.

The poem, itself, is quite vague. I can't entirely tell if it is even pro-Elvis or anti-Elvis, since I could easily read it with an angry tone or a sad tone and get two different emotional results. One thing is for certain, however: it is all about Elvis.

it's not enough of Elvis
it's just not enough
it's not enough of Elvis whiskey decanters
Elvis toilet paper
Elvis condoms
Elvis impersonators singing Elvis songs
to Elvis fans [...]

I would like to know what's not enough of Elvis? What is this random "it"? To what is this dummy-pronoun referring? I can't quite grasp its reference throughout the entire read, as the title line is used over and over. As I said, the poem's quite vague, fairly loose, experimental while still maintaining sense within the individual lines, themselves, although nothing is really pieced completely together for you. You are left to decide what is not enough of Elvis and whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing and how it all affects the author.

After my favorite few lines,

[...]
we dig up the grave
and sell little envelopes of Elvis plots
we pulverize the casket
and market little vials of Elvis coffins
we auction off the corpse
and sell every last bone to the highest bidder [...]

Fericano begins listing Elvis parts being auctioned off to the world, which I think is the elusive reference to what's not enough: every last part of Elvis sold, bought, and gone, and still we can't get enough.

There, that was quite the analysis of one poem, cutely packaged and well-put-together into something that I'm sure Elvis lovers will find quite pleasing. The poem is enjoyable, the price is certainly right, and the author is very pleasant. You can't go wrong for a quarter, and you can easily stick this book inside a card as a great novelty gift for an Elvis lover.

For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed by Hosho McCreesh

2008-10-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

Poetry
52 pages

ISBN 978-1-934513-09-5
5" x 8" trade paperback
Available from sunnyoutside

The book arrives, perfect-bound and brooding, sitting on my desk waiting for devouring. So I have a little time to let the cover sink in while I finish up other tasks, to relish its secret contents for a few days. The title is long, hard to chew into and digest at first, leaving you with questions, for how can beautiful be lumped in with wretched and insignificant so seemingly carelessly? And what things, exactly, are we talking about? I mean, doesn't that really smush everything into the same breath? And isn't everything eventually destroyed?

A further look inside the book shows you that all the titles are long. A closer look at the titles shows you that they are more like stage directions, the setting of the scenery that is important for the characters to know and possess with their entire being, but unspoken to the audience who only gets to glimpse it through the characters' full understanding of possessing it. The long titles, one being actually six words longer than the poem itself, really become part of the full poem, its first breath, its initial opened arms of welcome, a tribute to thought, to making the complete dialog have meaning that no "Untitled #12" or "Chapter One" or "[insert any generic title into these brackets because it sounds like something you might think has something to do with this poem]" can even come close to touching with the full ten feet. The small amount of space between the title and the first line of each poem also indicates that it was a very conscious decision to have the titles remain a full part of the poem, only separated by an italicized text size.

Despite the poetic, long-winded, stalwart titles, the poems themselves are meticulously simple, a paradoxical straight-forward tone lingering among heightened intensity; well-chosen to be small, well-placed to be exact, well-read to become huge.

The book is divided up into two sections, almost like chapters, although I must admit that after several quite clear-headed reads, both technical and emotional, I have not quite figured out these "chapters," how they divide the work or their true meaning. The titles of most of the poems and sections are snippets of genius taken from the poems, themselves. You read them singly, and they leave you pondering, out of context and poetically heightened, leave you wondering what the two sections of the book mean, how they are broken up and sectioned off, how the title of the book fits in with the poems and sections. When you read the lines within the context of the poems, namely with the poem For All These Wretched,/ Beautiful, & Insignificant Things/ So Uselessly & Carelessly/ Destroyed... that contains both the title of the entire book and the subcategory title of the second section, you start to get it, how it is all entwined. The title poem, which expounds on how a pig farmer in Canada has killed 49 prostitutes and fed them to his stock while the world goes on, unaffected and still thriving in the remedial, is really the sum of this book, which lends it quite nicely to being chosen as the book's title. If ever there were an "equal sign" for a book, this poem is it.

The wordplay is powerful, albeit the occasional mouth- or eyeful on the first read. But on a second and slower reading it is captured fully, obviously, becoming clear, as bare as the sketches of skeletons that adorn the pages, dripping with metaphors that are chocolate and butterscotch topping on a sundae, rearing with similes as headstrong as horses, the words are whole and unaffected by trivial things, no matter how uselessly and carelessly destroyed.

McCreesh's words are a beautiful commentary of our times, how we waste the gorgeous and revel in the mundane, how we squander the important and value the unnecessary. The poetic and romantic is contrasted with the raunchy and realistic. Such an example is the very first poem, It Was Paris, Those Rainy Old Streets,/ The Soft Glow of Wrought-Iron Lamps,/ The Sun Setting Behind Grey-Faced Buildings,/ The City Vibrating With Some Kind of/ Romantic, Sad Song..., which speaks of a romantic misty night interrupted by the realism of a floating empty can of dog food down the Seine. This thread runs throughout the book and brings you back again to the book's title that first held so many questions, now getting answered quickly, repeatedly, loudly through each page turn.

There is confusing clarity in the words that find repetition on these pages: "painfully typical," "dizzy," "truth," "death"... tied together with the common bond of destruction. The words are trying to make sense of madness or the finding of curiosity in small collapses of judgment of profoundly ordinary or imperfect or geniusly everyday people. An example from This Dizzying, Senseless Place,/ This Place Where We Simply Waste Time/ While Looking for a Better Way to Die... is:

& what if she would've
just
taken
the
ear,
if that would've helped him,
encouraged him to keep at the canvas

Here McCreesh makes sense of the madness of this well-known artist who needs no introduction, this beautiful, wretched person, all these people being uselessly and carelessly destroyed by each other, in an attempt to say, hey, what if we accepted people's gestures, strange as they may seem? Maybe it would help them out? Help them not be quite so destroyed?

It raises more questions; although blame is a harsh reality, how much of it belongs to us for the destruction of those people and things around us? How many figurative ears have I not accepted from someone reaching out with a token of what he sees as kindness -- or as McCreesh puts it,

a gesture, an offering,
a talisman of something
deep & honest & true,

-- and what I see as disgusting? This touches on another running theme of the book: giving back, how we could have changed the course of things with our actions, from Hitler to Van Gogh to Mussolini, if only they had been showed love, how different it could be -- complete with poem indents like little conversations with one's self, a schizophrenic back and forth of contradiction or thought-switching, a private "what if" in mid-thought.

McCreesh's most recently aforementioned poem, a serious stroke of genius, makes me want to change the way I view the gestures of others. And that is what makes this book, his words, and specifically this poem, so important to the literary world, what separates those who can truly hold a pen from those hacks who started poetry blogs just because their neighbor's friend's cousin did it, too.

The poems are personal, yet universal, which is maybe the hardest challenge of writing poetry, and one that McCreesh masters with the ease of the best of them. One specific example for me is with Homeless Man at a Bus Stop on Central Ave. Here in Cambridge, we have a Central Square on Mass Ave, about ten minutes from my house, that this poem could easily be referencing. In this piece, McCreesh tells a tale of a bum who, before he could ask for change, gets involved in a conversation with a stranger and then can't ask for change because it would look bad. It reminds me of my own anecdote of two bums, sitting outside 1369 Coffeehouse in Central, who got hot chocolate instead of booze money from me because I beat them to the punch before they could ask for change. Any poet who can truly evoke those memories, past thoughts, or personal anecdotes is reaching across the personal/universal threshold to say something that is actually meaningful to the masses, and really quite beautiful, which brings me to my next point:

With death being one of the most-used words in this collection and the whole feel of the black and white book being dark and ominous, it is easy to lose track of the beauty, but don't let yourself. Because it is there with a vengeance, only masked beneath some darkness. There is a reason, however, that "Beautiful" is one of the largest, boldest words on the cover, but it's up to you to unmask the beauty. When you do, it is your hidden treasure, and you will cling to it long after you have closed the cover.

McCreesh's beautiful words aside, there is always the technicalities, hanging around stubbornly like that obnoxious little sister who won't keep her fucking hands off your ponytails. This book has very few, but nonetheless, it is fallible as all wretched and beautiful things are. First and foremost, I always hate to see misspellings in a perfectly glossy gem as this, but I can't overlook the obvious misspelling of Machu Picchu in one of the poems, having been there myself and seeing no way that I can allow the proper noun to be botched by poetic license, but there are no other obvious mistakes that I see, save for that ever-used-but-shouldn't-be "towards" (which for some reason, they say is okay in Britain...ugh) instead of "toward" (as in the line "floating towards me" that should grammatically read "floating toward me," if you want to draw swords).

As with most books, I tend to have a stand-out stanza or line, and in this review, I want to end with one of my favorites from It's an Ugly Gamble,/ An Exhausting Routine,/ All These Days & Nights We Face,/ Ugly, Exhausting ---/ Yet Necessary:

It is, after all, the only way
to truly understand how
too much sorrow
erodes our hearts...

almost as fast as
too little.

Dude, buy it. You will not regret it.