SECTION ELEVEN
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-NINE, MARCH 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
BOOK REVIEWS
WE
DON't NEED YOUR STINKING BADGES
by John Bennett,
Butcher Shop Press
Introduction by Mark Terrill
(Copyright
" 2001 Joyce
Metzger)
John
Bennett became a dynamic word to contemporary poets from his earliest days with
Vagabond, in the sixties, when his publication was produced on a hand-cranked
mimeo machine. Bennett was quick to
recognize other poetic genius, catch their words, then add them to Vagabond.
Genius recognizing the same?
Now,
we are into a new millennium and John is still slinging out words from his heavy
caliber gun-belt, aiming that business end
of his double-barreled buffalo gun straight at your eyes, or heart, or mind.
Choose your soft spot. Chances are, scatter-shot words will deeply pierce all those
areas and buck shot shards are
difficult to extract from soft brain cells.
The
ability of the shard is to divide, then sub-divide like protoplasmic acellular,
or unicellular amoeboids (which includes the naked rhizopod life cycles within a
parasitic habitat), and that isn't just pot-cheese curds, fellow readers.
The shard lives like still surviving gar-fish which existed during the
dinosaur age. The shard, many
believe, was an offspring from stream-of-consciousness musing. But rather than
throw in the blanket after interest waned, the shard took on the form of a
jagged-edged glassine implementation, thanks to John Bennett.
Who
can understand the workings of nature? John
Bennett has mastered the art-form of shard writing; that is our only concern in
this book review.
--Let's all pitch in. Lend a hand. Roll up our sleeves and tie off for
the shot
in the
arm. PA-FUMMM, and in goes the joy juice. Synthetic
nirvana?
--Five hundred words is all it takes to get you from cradle to grave.
All
it takes to catch a bus, buy a turnip, get laid.
Five hundred words and pocket
change, a
portfolio full of caption-less photos, a hand cranked victrola.
--Cowards curl up in tornadoes.
--There are at least a million ways to skin a cat, to get fat in the
outback of
a
drunk-tank Australia, to round up suspects who drift willy-nilly thru the
checkpoints?
--Life is over before it begins. There's childhood and death, nothing
much
in
between.
John
Bennett throws out shards like bonfire sparks.
And a tiny fragment of either can cause a rip-roaring brabble
brain-twister conflagration. After
the forest fire, new green begins. After
John's shards burrow to the bone, those afflicted shake their heads, stunned
by the accumulated wisdom. They have absorbed more in one day from this book,
than in a year of reading other, mundane versification.
Bravo
to John Bennett for these audacious shards, and to Butcher Block Press for
zeroing-in on an authentic poetic genius.
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