A Gin-Pissing-Raw-Meat-Dual-Caburetor-V8-Son-Of-A-Bitch From Los Angeles
- by Dan Fante
collected poems 1983-2002 - (with original ((and excellent)) art by Michael Napper. 2002. $15.95 (cloth over boards - like hard bound!) 127 pages. Sun Dog (who are: Al Berlinski) Press, 22058 Cumberland Dr., Northville, MI 48167.
Well, this was an introduction to a poet I have heard howling over in the thick woods by them unexplored and uninhabited (by the sane) universe. Perhaps the title says it all and it goes a way as the only definition and blurb needed. But I must be humble on the sidewalk and mumble some verbiage: "real heroes/ sleep alone listening only to the beat of their own wild heart" two lines by Dan Fante stuck in my ear the day long like a wasp sting singing. The poet handles a metaphor like a Musketeer with blade. Not Muscatel! But he has handled a good deal of that with metaphors and without. And yet, around the night light of this poetry are the moths of innocence and some of them always escape the burning volt jolt and heat of a life, his, yours, mine, all of us who have to walk close enough to the sewer to look into it and to catch, to often, a strong whiff of puke and pain and shit. And while love leaves and is leaving. Love is also arriving, as do these poems from Fante. Well, I see from the many blurbs on this book's dust jacket that he, Dan Fante, is compared to this writer and to that writer (He likes, by the way, Raymond Carver) and to that poet and to this writer from here and there and that writer and this and that, that and this. enough. Nice for the novice reader shopping in a literary supermarket, a reader without tainted heart and eye pallet. Fante stands above the smorgasbord of over cooked, too often reheated, dry, tasteless, pathetic works and words of other poets. And look! What's he doing?! Dan Fante! Look! Dan Fante has his dick out! He is? look at him up there on the table! ? the poet is peeing in the salad!
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The Leper's Kiss - by Alan Catlin.
(book Four in Alan Catlin's Killer Cocktails series) 2002. 32 pages. Four-sep Publications, PO Box 12434, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53212 www.four.sep.com. check it or write for price (Hair of the Dog that Bit Me by Catlin also available from Four-sep Press.) Or write Catlin at Alan Catlin, 143 Furman Street, Schenectady, NY. 12304. When you write him ask for poems for your wonderful publication and send him some money for some of his many, many readable, insightful books.
At various points that make up the long line of living, it is bartenders that help us, in silence and with their bar skills most often, thanks, or simply as all ears. Yep, they help us just be for a spell so we can again get a moving along the many dots and periods that make up the thread of existence. Now when a barmaster (a super bartender) is a poet you pitiful slob asking for a drink becomes the clay of the poem. Alan Catlin is a barmaster and Alan Catlin is a poet. Each poem in this Catlin book is titled with the name of some wild and out-there super drink - or cocktail name like: Wet Spot, Zipperhead, Corpse River etc. and the recipe of the drink is just beneath the title and beneath that in the poem. Each poem is a form of portrait of the drinker. I am sure that Catlin has served them all and more than once. The poems ring and smell and taste of all the bars I have been in and the one you are in at this time - look around - there are poems and you a poem also! A delightful collection here. You can find the person next to you in here and down the bar and I got to thinking of al the poems I meet over the decades. Catlin's poems paint accurate psychic portraits of a diverse and strange oddly common set of personality types that make up us as humanity in this bar of America. Barmasters are therapists for sure and priests. Catlin, with the skill of a bat flying the dusk sky after a fat flying insect, can whip a drink with no doubt two fingers while watching TV and capture in a blink or a flick of a match, with poet pen the constellation of pathologies that make up any one individual. I like that. I like that but I am afraid to drink at Catlin's bar (Jesus - what am I?).
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Whitewall of Sound. No. 32.
$10.00 (price includes postage) checks or money orders made payable to Jim Clinefelter. Jim Clinefelter, 411 NE 22nd No. 21, Portland, OR. 97232. Email: jcline@teleport.com
In the tradition of the little magazines that made modern poetry, from Two Worlds Monthly to The Wormwood Review, from Big Table to Ole, from Transition and The Owl to The World and Lost and Found Times, Jim Clinefelter offers his Whitewall of Sound, a magazine of singular wonder and beauty that expresses and exhibits an editorial sensitivity to detail and which captures and magnifies the exploratory instinct that fuels and then drives poetry. He brings together here a community of writers who dare to be more than mundane, who think more of poetry than careers as writers, who refuse an ordinary poem. With this praise, some must be named, and they be: Crag Hill, John Byrum, derek beaulieu (and if you like your poetry concrete and ponder about Canadian visual poetry ? then check out Whitewall No. 33, what are edited by beaulieu - and has now captured this visual poetry instance and insistence in writing from all about Canada). But back to Clinefelter and Whitewall. Clinefelter's project has been to move like some great subterranean river under the ordained poem and be a true patriot of the poetry. I must write again about his careful, artful editing because each issue has the mark of someone who recognizes that we are all stewards of poetry. He puts the time in and in this issue are black and white photo images (real like ones) affixed to pages and sacks of poet's poems. Each issue of Whitewall of Sound is a gift. Take part in this poetry party. Lights out. Candles on. I am. You?
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POSEY - Posey.
A Publication for Poetry and the Arts. $12.00 a year. C/o Brian Morrisey, PO Box 7823, Santa Cruz, CA. 95061.
I sit here with this 20th issue Anniversary issue and Jack Hirschman is on the cover. And I open the magazine and it is dedicated to the memory of Wendell Metzgar and on the next page reading to see who is involved I see Doug Holder of Boston. And I flip the pages and read poems by Susan Landon and Mark Wisniewski and ed galing and Joan Jobe Smith. Well, this is quite the gangs all here I think. This is a thing of love to ponder this picnic, this dance at the gym - 20 damned times! 20 printing bills to pay, 20 postage bills, a billion letters and emails and ten billion poems. Well, I wanna shake hands with these words here and say, Hell, Damn, Holy Crap! Brian! 20. 20! 20 cigarettes in a pack! What else has 20 in it? Eggs, rolls of film? 20 to One is a long shot but I would back Poesy anytime. Here is the back bone, here are the legs, here are the lonely men and women fixing the streets and picking up the garbage. They are the blood of Lorca. And that poetic blood prints this magazine. Here is the real revolution and the other people making the poem in the face our imperial government that slices the ass off education and libraries and arts and boot-kicks the poor like dogs. Here is Posey. But dogs have the pen! Oh Posey! Oh Posey! A pocket full of and ashes of Rimbaud burning. Oh Posey. Be 40 and 50! And damn us all asshole poets of the planet! Why not send the guy some few stinking worn out and worm out and nose snot, tear stained paper money. Do you really think that the government should do it! Look at the government, your city, county, state and … in Wash D.C. Do you really want a government, or a church to run your poetry magazine? Not me. Oh Posey! Be 40 Be 50 Be 60 and more. I thank you.
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CorrespnDances No. 2. - Editor: Tartarugo.
Apartado 822, 36280 Vigo Spain. http://www.geocities.com/tartarugo
Ah, a great magazine for those interested in pushing the visual poetry/mail art Flux-work wing of this small press of ours. Nothing of the ordinary – therefore packed full or the extraordinary! And smart too. John Held Jr. essay and essay by Anna Banana in here and also Tom Hibbard writing on Luc Fierens. Get in the mail art vein with this magazine and go for it. To write, write that is with pen and ink and glue and walk to the real post office is a political act in this very repressive time in which we exist. Get off the internet. I agree with that song by Le Tigre! And a way to get back into the political and to be in art is simply engage primary creativity. Do it here. Here is a portal to a network. There are ample pages of reviews and addresses of a heap of other mail art/visual poetry/flux stuff. Here is a great fate of experimentalism in one united joy out there in mail land. Again Lots of engaging Vis poem here also draped on the pages. No fraud poisonous insect poets passing around their egos! Stop hiding your visual poetry in your socks! Stop sending your mail art only to your grandmother. Get ye to CorrdenaDance and do dance – polka, twist, bend Limbo locomotion of worts into wroms and waort and wAAAArt!
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The Moon Makes No difference to Me - by Frances LeMoine.
2002. 85 pages. $12.95. Asterius Press – Editor John C. Erianne, Publisher.
Theeditor@asteriuspress.
Objects, a sneaker for example, so named, make these poems particular to their moment, moments often between men and women, women and solitude, between alone and the act of poetry, the poet engages in her otherness, some broken glass, Richard Brautigan’s body, the moon, plums, cookies, covers, an empty lot. LeMoine empties herself and mingles with the space and so makes her poems, clocks, pillows, pink, Mass, the smell of coffee, just a kiss.
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