SECTION
EIGHT
POETRY
REVIEWS PAGE ONE
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-THREE, SEPTEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 The Blacklisted Journalist)
An Inventory Of Fragile Knowledge by Mary Kennan Herbert.
44 pages, $10 check made out to Mary K. Herbert, 20 South Portland Ave.,
Brooklyn, NY 11217. A fine chapbook of mature observations on life and love and
nature and childhood reminiscences. Sex
is about the pre-Aids 1960's, when Mary meets a cornet player and becomes a
groupie: "?He just knocks me out. Image,
image. His musical gifts are icing
on the cake. One night I go to hear
a few sets by myself. If a young
woman alone shows up for the last set, that means she is available for the
night. Oh, yeah.
Mr. Coronet Player comes out and sits by me for a while, in between sets.
He asks me if I'd like to go home with him.
We walk all the way to Sheridan Square, where my coronet player buys
orange juice and eggs ("for a great breakfast, baby"), then we grab a
cab up to his loft in Chelsea. The
loft, a dark and cluttered aerie, is the kind of place where a lone jazz
musician can maintain a semblance of domesticity.
In short order we are in bed -- my heart is pounding in anticipation.
Mr. Coronet Player is tired, but determined to make love to his groupie.
His groping is perfunctory, but not ill-intentioned. Like a ram in an urban barnyard, he pushes determinedly
against my virginal brush, to no avail. He
suddenly stops, looks long and hard at me.
After a while he asks, "Are you a virgin?"
When I confess yes, he sighs, swings his legs over the side of the bed,
lights a cigarette. He stands up, naked, skinny, pale, kind of vulnerable in the
early light. Then: remember this
always -- he plays the cornet for me, a piece he wrote."
The last piece, Assume Crash Position, is
nicely poetic, about the last words a pilot says before he crashes: "?But
others may opt for spectacular car crashes, plunging airplanes, torpedoed ships,
sharks, flames, drownings --an instant to pray, or do as poets must do: spew out
last minute poems in quick, condensed spurts.
Like a box one opens, and out comes sweet stars, comets, Milky Way, the
universe -- all this dazzling stuff compressed into a moment at the wall when
all you have time to say is "I love you"."
A fine collection of heartwarming verse.
Bathtub Gin poetry magazine published twice a year, chapbook
format. 52 pages, $6 single issue
or $10 subscription for two issues from Christopher Harter, C/O Bathtub Gin, PO
Box 2392, Bloomington, IN 47402
email: Charter@bluemarble.net http://www.bluemarble.net/~charter/btgin.htm Although a little thin and expensive at $6 an issue, this is
a professionally done, nice looking small poetry magazine with nice textured
paper. Good mix of poems from
well-known and lesser known writers. An
incredibly beautiful yet sad poem from issue 3 by John Grey entitled Third
Floor Apartment reads: "the silence of the syringe, dream damsel
floating atop a motorcade of thoughts up and down his arms, lacerations fight
like children to be heard the woman
is a whore this setting says, and yet how can you afford not to follow her, to
save her where she lives below,
traffic exudes its bellicose vulgarity, one more grim way of getting
places." Some great stuff in
there, with writer bios, reviews and black and white photographs, check it out.
The Dark Pages. Artwords
by Barb Yordy. Poetry, photocopied
and side stapled, 16 pages, $2 from Barb Yordy, 5001 West Walnut St., Lancaster,
PA 17603. This work of art lives up
to it's name, with artwork and poetry of dark beauty.
The poems are mostly about how the main character survived child
molestation and must live with the haunting scars and demons.
The first poem is an introduction to the rest of the chapbook:
"Tossing and turning?furniture blocking a locked door?could he get in
anyway? I wondered -- he's still in
the house, lying on the couch he molested me on?I need to sleep?my science
project is due tomorrow and the teacher will never understand if I'm not there
with bells on?I could surely use a weapon
to place under my pillow'this empty rum bottle would work just fine?mama, if
he's just playing, why do I feel pain when he chokes me??why do I feel so
traumatized when he gropes me? Why
do I feel so angry that I wish for the Nuclear Annihilation of the human race?
No! Can't turn away mama!
This man is the reason why I believe in demons!
NO! Don't collapse under his weight, weak mama!
This man has slaughtered angels!"
And that's just the first poem! This
collection draws you in and makes you feel compassion for the main character,
and that's rare in poetry these days. The
artwork is first rate, with gripping detail and a hint of 19th
Century Art Nouveau or 1960's Pcychedelia in the background details.
I look forward to more work from Barb Yordy, or how about a compilation
of all the Barb Yordy/Phillip Buster (Kevin M. Hibshman) pieces?
That would be cool. This is
well worth the price, do check it out.
Funk/Works Poetry chapbook by Catfish McDaris and Mark
Sonnenfeld. 28 pages,
$4 check made out to Mark Sonnenfeld, from MaryMark Press, 45-08 Old
Millstone Drive, East Windsor, NJ 08520. An
interesting chapbook with drawings by various artists and poems by two wildly
divergent poet styles. In Funk,
the first half of the chapbook, Catfish writes with tongue firmly planted in
cheek, of boozing, carousing with women, shitting, pissing and fucking, a good
measure of humour and dark wit thrown in; yet somehow Catfish is also serious
and soul-searching. In Works, Mark Sonnenfeld
writes in a post-modern constructionist way, his words like a puzzle one has to
crack and think about. His poems
are challenging to say the least. Confessions
On Easter Under A Full Moon
by Catfish reads: "A quiet anger lives inside of me.
A volcano of rage. It feeds
on atrocities that exist in many shapes. Women
shrieking at unwanted children in shitty diapers. Husbands slapping wives, cursing their love.
The blackhearted parents in Colorado of the dead little girl.
Blackassed O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson.
Rich prospering and promoting racism, eliminating the workers of America.
Politicians being bought and sold like $5 whores.
There is a grim darkness in our world.
Maybe we should start over? IS
there a solution? Prayer?
Suicide? Revolution?
Answer me God if you're sitting up on that big yellow moon.
If not, Fuck your mama!" I
like to go for the cheap laughs, myself! Contrast
that with the poem Deep
Eleven by Sonnenfeld: "; fog-ice-a quintet that's right
psychic park pieces of red candy Look
not. Me?
Like beginning to take in long talks
Falls-to keep physically Seen unable
wheels s onnenfeld 17th person in Force Pathway Odor Upon Color
prayers : tire : to mental exhaust : strobe dim dull draggy frock coat
{aluminum} upset stomach : out loud rock music is identified. I exist
therefore." It's kind of like
the enigmatic lyrics of rock singer Michael Stipe of R.E.M., without the music
though to carry you along. Still, Mark's style grows on you and makes you think.
An interesting meeting of two distinct poetic minds, check it out.
The Hit-Man poetry chapbook by Harry R. Wilkins $5 US cash or
check made out to Harry R. Wilkins, plus sase to Harry R. Wilkins, 86 rue
Montbrilliant, CH-1202 Geneve, Switzerland.
I didn't care much for these pretentious blatherings by Harry, who was
born and lives in Europe. Some of
these poems are politically incorrect and anti-American. What's the word I'm
looking for? Ah yes. Snotty. The poem Politically
Incorrect reads: "Joy overwhelmed us when that evening the newsboy
passed by our table at the Geneva caf? shouting the headline: "Kennedy
assassine a Dallas!" Three
years later, freezing as a newsboy on Vienna's Kennedy-Bridge, the remembrance
of this joy helped me to keep warm." What
is the point of this viciousness? To
be "cool"? Talk about
Ugly Americans, how about Pseudo-Intellectual Asshole Europeans.
Another poem compares US soldiers visiting brothels in Germany to
cockroaches slithering away before they get caught.
Other poems are just inept and pseudo-intellectual bullshit, as in Inside
Out: "Is there a little dancing girl inside every old woman?
Or is there an old woman inside every little dancing girl?
And could there be a little dancing girl inside every old slut?
Or an old slut inside every dancing girl?"
How profound. One almost
imagines Maurice Chevalier breaking out into Thank
Heavens Fore Little Girls. I
think I'm going to be sick. You
might like this monumentally awful drivel, but I didn't.
It is one of the few chapbooks I have ever received that has rubbed me
the wrong way.
Nixies poetry chapbook by Robert Edwards.
50 pages, $4 please make check out to Robert Edwards, Pemmican Press, PO
Box 121, Redmond, WA 98073. Finely
polished poetry that bristles with a wonder for nature and man.
Little
Myth reads: "All the doors in the universe explode their locks!
Quasars pulse deep within the brain!
A thunderous music migrates through our blood!
Now the empty bow is drawn back and aimed at the rising moon.
The old woman, older than tools, is reaching for our hands.
Rain clouds roll above the ripening corn.
We are no longer attached to our names."
I don't know what the title Nixies
means, but I enjoyed this collection very much and went back to it again and
again. Fine poetry that deserves a
read.
Oh Amsterdammers! Oh
Amsterdammers! Poetry book
by Lee Bridges. 62 pages, $8
check made out to Dave Christy, 31 Waterloo St, New Hope, PA 18938.
Another delightful book of Post-Beat observations on humankind and life
in and around Amsterdam, Lee's home. The
sights, the sounds, the smells, the hash bars and red light districts, prayers
for a new day and the alternating sadness and joy-de-vrie of life.
Travelers,
Roads Twist reads: "Once they saw the same star what brilliance
love, gaiety and wit in eternal bliss spring
waters spurting like some virgin maids of gold
How bright the dawn when hearts unfold.
Once they heard the same voice sad dissonance drab, dreary and unfit
mourns of what is missed and of how hard it is to come in from the cold
the weeper's song of souls being sold.
And don't you know they never got paid just look at the way most folks
get laid into holes in the floor when they've prayed and prayed.
Signing over this and crying over that while taking life as a matter of
fact and of holes in the floor when they've prayed and prayed.
Once they touched the same women Discontinuance
Indeed, the truth of it so few can resist a whore's naked thigh
a mother's sweet endearing kiss. The
tale never grows old but travelers, roads twist."
A fine collection of memorable poetry and wisdom, take it out every once
in a while like the Bible to treasure and behold.
Pemmican Annual
poetry magazine edited by Robert Edwards. 74 pages, $5 single copy, checks made
out to Robert Edwards, Pemmican Press, PO Box 121, Redmond, WA 98073-0121.
Professional looking poetry magazine with finely polished poems of
diverse styles. A simple but
powerful poem by Teresinka Pereira called Passion,
reads: "Time can't ever bend me down.
I have a panoramic tongue, hungry eyes and invisible feet: I'm in
love" The Hunter by John Smelcer
reads: "This evening I walk across tundra, it's long silence unrolling
towards me, plunging in the wind. In the distance, whiter than bone dust, a bear
listens to the shape of the wind
and the snow, smells the far scent of an ivory-toothed whale gripped in death's
right belly. It ranges up through
ice, through air, to night where pale dots of light appear beyond the far edge
of a blue frontier, and the moon is a hole torn at the top of a barren sky.
It is a scene slowly dying until all that remains a solitary bear
clutching at emptiness; in a moment the sun too will be gone, hiding even it's
spare embers as darkness gathers in folds in a far recess of winter."
Nicely crafted poetry by some fine poets.
Poems Of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to The Back Ward,
poetry chapbook by Douglas S. Holder. $4
from Alpha Beat Press, check made out to Dave Christy, 31 Waterloo St, New Hope,
PA 18938. Tightly constructed
poetry with interesting imagery dot this chapbook.
Poems about life in and around Boston and on a Psychiatry Ward at a
hospital in Boston. Fallen Cherub Outside A Liquor Store reads: "A rainy night
with the sudden wasted light of the store's neon sign -- I saw him first his
head his crown topped with a manicured puff of cream colored curls swirling into
each other like the top of some celebratory cake supported by the abrupt ends of
his crew cut rising from the sides of his head.
He turned his face towards me -- a smiling mouth that had turned cruel in
a fresco of smoky, wet mist floating in a menthol cloud."
This is a very well done chapbook with poems that offer enigmatic,
heartfelt, well-turned phrases and colorful ideas.
Well worth seeking out.
David Portolano: Prayers Of A Punk. Spoken word poetry cd with jazz music. 30 minutes, $10 check made out to David Portolano, 163
Overmount Ave Apt H, West Paterson, NJ 07424.
lonemonk@aol.com. Excellent
poetry written and read by Dave Portolano, with spare music.
The second half sounds a little better, less muffled, but overall a nice
production. Nice photos and
graphics, the back photo showing the poet at Kerouac's grave.
The poems evoke images of Kerouac and the Buddhist religion of which Dave
is an ardent practitioner. Some of
the poems have appeared in Lucid Moon, and Dave gives a nice dedication to me
and my magazine. Producer Brian
Aliano plays sax, bass and synthesizer and Dave also reads over some excerpts
from Charlie "Bird" Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, Slim and Ravi Shankar
(which might be excised on the second pressing due to copyrights. That would be a shame).
I have listened to this over and over and each time I listen to it I get
more out of the readings. The music
is spare, just enough so that it doesn't overpower the readings.
A very enjoyable production, good work Dave!
Random Kisses 4 Poetry mini-zine, c/0 Brian John Mitchell, ed.,
Random Kisses, PO Box 18062, Raleigh, NC 27619. http://members.xoom.com/hrthrt/randomk.html
Each issue is two 34 cent stamps plus one sase.
Published irregularly. 24
pages, a new charming mini-poetry zine, 2" by 3 1/2", with brutal
poetry that encourages the word "fuck".
Rimbaud would be proud. Boring #14 reads:
"Pull all this out of me so I'm purer
than you Cut all this past
out make me new Make me beautiful
Make me blind Because I want to love you.
Untitled next to it reads: "I muss your taste
I need to cut off apiece of your flesh to chew and suck on to fulfill me to
keep me sedated to keep
Reality away to build my new
religion on." Writers are
credited at beginning, not underneath each poem, so poetry seems to flow
together. A little downbeat, not
for the faint of heart, but we can't all read about happy fluffy bunnies all the
time! A cool idea!
Time Blades Short
stories by Dan Buck. $4 from Alpha
Beat Press, check made out to Dave Christy, 31 Waterloo St., New Hope, PA 18938.
These very short stories are deadpan and dryly humorous, often with a
twist ending. Light reads:
"The sunlight skipped across the lake as Fran dreamed about her fifth
husband. "He'll have to be
strong and wise," Fran whispered, "Rich and handsome."
And of course her next husband was the answer to her dreams.
The trouble was she woke up too late."
Okay. The question is, does
Dan Buck realize he is being facetious?! It
gets a little repetitive and downbeat after a while, but some of it makes you
smile.
Waking In A Cold Sweat: 3 a.m. Recollections And Ruminations by
Douglas Holder. 32 pages,
self-published poetry chapbook, $3 to Ibbetson St. Press, 33 Ibbetson St.,
Somerville, MA 02143. Nicely done
clean looking poetry collection featuring poems reminiscent of childhood, Jewish
ethnic food, the city of Boston, and family.
The Last Hot Dog reads: "Long after he was hungry -- it was
the last thing he asked for with any appetite. She brought it up to his sick bed biting through the red casing
the familiar orgasm of juice hitting the roof of his mouth in some
facsimile of his youth. Bites of
memory: the Summer ball parks. The
steam rising from the carts in warm fragrant clouds against the shock of Winter
cold. The mysterious, darkened
delicatessens under the elevated tracks the
Bronyx gray afternoons dining with his father
the sullen, colorless meals though,
the franks fully garnished the bright yellow and green of mustard and relish.
HE swallowed hard but it was all too much to digest."
The family relationship vignettes, such as Final
Screams Of A Spinster and In
Bed With Your Wife are especially touching and poignant.
A wonderfully humane collection of inspiring poetry,
at a low price too. Well worth checking out.
Whew! Poetry book
by Lee Bridges. $8 from Alpha Beat Press, check made out to Dave Christy, 31
Waterloo St., New Hope, PA 18938. An
enthusiastic potsmoker (the cover features a bong like my grandmother has in her
living room and my Uncle Teddy was
once caught smoking pot out of!), the African American poet Lee Bridges writes
in a matter-of-fact Post-Beat style. HE
reminisces about being thrown in jail for smoking illegal weed, and he sometimes
writes in song verse or prayer form of his sorrows and dreams and hope for the
future. Every
Goodbye Ain't Gone reads: "Searing bolts branding trademarked
chests heaving with all of the fears of Humankind trembling, tried and denied
while submerging so deep into the abyss until all that can be hoped for is to
wake up in the morning breathing "Thank God" every goodbye ain't
gone." A highly unusual and
refreshing collection of poetry that recalls the Blues and soothes the soul and
makes you want to toke up! Well
worth checking out.
Please send poetry books, chapbooks, cds, broadsides or whatever for review to Ralph Haselmann Jr. at 67 Norma Road, Hampton, New Jersey 08827. Include price plus postage, who to make check out to, and address to order from. I will review them within 2 weeks and send you a copy of the review. Publishers have my permission in advance to reprint any part of my reviews as long as they send me a copy of what it appears in. The reviews go out to several small press discussion lists, including David McNamara's poetry )ism( list, Doug Holder's list, Kelly DeSaint's list, J.J. Campbell's list and Frank Moore's list, after which they will be archived on my Lucid Moon Poetry Website. My reviews are also picked up by 5 websites, including Al Aronowitz' The Blacklisted Journalist website (http://www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj), Joe Grant's BookZen website (http://www.bookzen.com/ ), Andre Cordrescue's Exquisite Corpse, (http://www.exquisitecorpse.org), Carlye Archibeque's The Independent Review Site (http://www.irs.theroadlesstraveled.org), Brian Morrisey's Poesy magazine and website (http://www.geocities.com/bmorrise2/) Don Hoyt's Web Writer's Workshop (http://www.webwritersworkshop.com). My telephone number is (908) 735-4447, e-mail ralphy@lucidmoonpoetry.com and my Lucid Moon Poetry Website is http://www.lucidmoonpoetry.com. Please visit my website often and sign my guestbook!
Ralph Haselmann Jr.
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