From au462@cleveland.Freenet.EduMon Aug 21 11:09:07 1995 Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 10:33:49 -0500 From: Robert Drake To: au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu Subject: TRee #6a--zines ----------------------------------------------------------------- TTTTTTTT AA PPPP RRRR OOOO OOOO TTTTTTT T A A P P R R O O O O T T AAAAAA PPPP RRRR O O O O T T A A P R R O O O O T T A A P R R OOOO OOOO T ----------------------------------------------------------------- Issue #6.0, section a: zines 2/95 ----------------------------------------------------------------- TapRoot is a quarterly publication of Independent, Underground, and Experimental language-centered arts. Over the past 10 years, we have published 40+ collections of poetry, writing, and visio- verbal art in a variety of formats. In the August of 1992, we began publish TapRoot Reviews, featuring a wide range of "Micro- Press" publications, primarily language-oriented. This posting is the first section of our 6th full electronic issue, containing most of the short ZINE reviews; the second section contains most of the chapbook reviews. We provide this information in the hope that netters do not limit their reading to E-mail & BBSs. Please e-mail your feedback to the editor, Luigi-Bob Drake, at: au462@cleveland.freenet.edu Requests for e-mail subscriptions should be sent to the same address--they are free, please indicate what you are requesting-- (a short but human message; this is not an automated listserve). The archive site for back issues is the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo: gopher to: . Our thanks to Loss Glazier et al for maintaining this resource. The paper version of TapRoot Reviews contain additional review material--in issue #6: survey of recent anthologies and local poetry newsletters, features on work by Richard Kostelanetz, Michael McClure, Bern Porter, Harvey Pecar/Joyce Brabner, and excerpts from _Chain_, _Synaesthetic_, and _The Al Ackerman Omnibus_. Plus more. TapRoot Reviews intends to survey the boundaries of "literature", and provide access to work that stretches those boundaries. It is available from: Burning Press, PO Box 585, Lakewood OH 44107-- $2.50 pp. Both the print & electronic versions of TapRoot are copyright 1995 by Burning Press, Cleveland. Burning Press is a non-profit educational corporation. Permission granted to reproduce this material FOR NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES, provided that THE CONTENTS ARE NOT EDITED OR ALTERED IN ANY WAY, and provided that THIS INTRODUCTORY NOTICE IS INCLUDED. Burning Press is supported, in part, with funds from the Ohio Arts Council. Reviewers are identified by their initials at the end of each review: Michael Basinski, John M. Bennett, Jake Berry, Luigi-Bob Drake, R.R. Lee Etzwiler, Bob Grumman, Susan Smith Nash, Oberc, Andrew Russ, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Mark Weber, Thomas Willoch, and Karl Young. Additional contributors are welcome: drop an e-note or send SASE. *** Many thanx to all of our contributors. *** ----------------------------------------------------------------- ZINES: ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1 CENT--(#299, February 1994), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 2 pp. Nice verbo-visually-augmented haiku-like winter scene by jw curry.--bg 1 CENT--(#300, March 1994), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 36 pp. Special anniversary collection of 36 "kernular poems." Each page a different size and coming out of a different part of the binding. Wide variety of poems like one by Brian David Johnston that's called just "A Poem": "Art is long./ Life is short./ Brian is heavily medicated." There are other, seriouser, equally good ones in the batch.--bg 1 CENT--(#301, March 1994), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 1 pp. A single visual poem called "New Age Blues" by Stephen Cain that makes a pinwheelish game of the word "naive."--bg 1 CENT--(#302, April 1994), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 2 pp. A one-paged poem, or set of 3 poems, by bp Nichol that includes the lines, "'Your poetry is so tight/ it squeaks.'" This issue was dispersed the afternoon of April 30th, 1994, at Toronto's newly christened "bp Nichol Lane."--bg 1 CENT--(May 1994), 1357 Lansdowne Ave., Toronto Ontario, CANADA, M6H 3Z9. 8 pp. Some excellent reviews of otherstream material by publisher jw curry, including a visual poetry anthology from Germany. Great quote attributed to MB Duggan in one review that exactly, parodically states what makes so many published haiku very bad: "Nature is nice./ Civilization is evil. Suffering is to be pointed out and pitied." Also scatter poems and graphics, including the anonymously-rendered "Connect the Dot" puzzle. Yes, it's just one dot.--bg 6IX--(Vol. 3 #2, 1994), 427 W. Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia PA, 19119. 36 pp., $4.00. (914 Leisz's Bridge Rd., Reading PA 19605??) Graced by Gil Ott's subtle cover collage of a Japanese- calligraphied whale swimming in a steno-pad of fluid handwriting, this beautifully edited issue features a selection from Elena Rivera's "Wale: or, the Corse," inspired by Melville's Moby Dick and Charles Olson's "Call Me Ishmael", as well as the way "whale" disintegrated in the echo to "wale," which are welts that rise up after a lash. Jenny Gough's "two poems" resonates, with "what better way to underscore the/ flower than allow the blister to appear in the light of stamps."--ssn ABACUS--(#85, October 1994), 181 Edgemont Ave., Elmwood CT, 06110. 18 pp., $4.00. A text by Carla Harryman to be used in a film by Abigail Child assembled from the work of three writers. The premise of the film, in Harryman's words, is "to challenge the concepts of private and public space by creating a melodrama in which domestic life is filmed outside, much of it in a house without walls." Lots of politics, and the characters have names like "Technique," Fulcrum," and "Property," but the dialogue is jauntily natural-sounding and flows. Makes me eager to see the Child film, which is called "Rubble".--bg ABUSE--(Summer 1994), PO Box 1242, Allston MA, 02134. 104 pp., $4.00. Every once in awhile I run across a project I have to part of because it's so damn good. ABUSE is one of those. It's theme this issue: DEATH AND DYING. This reads like a strange cross-section of America, with students and academics, artists, writers, psychopaths, comic publishers and drawers, all smashing together in a jam-packed euphoric worship of the dying process. There is sadness, anger, and satire, as well as a strange acceptance of the inevitable, but what stands out is the way all these different perspectives seem to blend together and form a strange logical cohesion.--o ALIEN RELAY--(August 1994), c/o Jake, PO Box 11407, Shorewood WI, 53211. 24 pp., $1.00 (?). This reminds me of the mid-'80s when zines were new and fresh, and there was a combination of anger and innocence in the small presses. However, we're running into the mid-'90s with only an illusion of being in control, and the Slacker mentality has overgrown its DIY roots, and I don't know, maybe I've lost touch with the youth of today, or maybe I just wish that more zines today carried a little bit of fight instead of a passive acceptance.--o ALTERNATIVE PRESS REVIEW--(#3, Spring/Summer 1994), PO Box 1446, Columbia MO, 65205. 82 pp., $4.00. This issue includes a moderately interesting short history of fanzine publishing by Michelle Rau that seems a work of genius next to TIME's September 5th discovery of the genre. APR continues to slight the art wing of the "alternative press" (in my admittedly biased opinion), but this issue does have a number of articles worth reading, including Leora Tannenbaum's "Sex, Fear, and Feminism On Campus," which argues against the position that rape is whatever causes a woman to feel violated.--bg ANT, ANT, ANT, ANT, ANT--(#1), PO Box 16177, Oakland CA, 94610. 48 pp., $3.00. "A journal of haiku, small poetry, and minute experimentalia" such as editor Chris Gordon's "the house darkens into the rain i hold her approximation." Three poems by Robert Creeley, and some fine unattributed graphics including a terrific misfocused photo of a cat turned Franz-Marc-sculptural as it boldly starts downward into some mysterious somewhere.--bg Mostly haiku, but also some non-haiku, a couple longer pieces (some of which are like haiku sequences), and some photos and drawings. A lot for $3. And a lot of it is very good. I especially like editor Crhis gordon's one-liners (e.g. "desire blossoom sinside me the teeth of an atrocity"), but there's a lot of creative nuggets in here. The best parts come from the authors i hadn't heard of before, such as this (by a. daigu): approximate space of a haiku conceived and later forgotten --ar ARTHUR'S COUSIN--(Vol. 2 #2, Summer 1994), c/o Joshua, 2501 Wickersham Ln. #2132, Austin TX, 78741. 14 pp., $1 and one 29 stamp. I still love to drift through zines, because they often carry information and writing that takes chances, and isn't concerned so much with social acceptance as challenging society itself. In this issue Joshua takes on BARNEY, demanding his immediate destruction so children can be freed from television's corrupting effect. He also takes on 90210, criticizing the unrealistic representation of heroin addiction, large breasted simple minded women, pregnant sluts, etc. But then I looked on the next page, and there was an ad for The Rollins Band's Weight CD, and I got this ugly feeling that I was in one of the tv shows that were getting criticized. Overall I really like this zine because it asks a lot of questions, and brings up issues that most people would never think of because they are too busy following, not thinking, or questioning the world around them.--o AVALON RISING--(#25, June 1994), PO Box 1983, Cincinnati OH, 45201. 24 pp., $1.00. Two or three texts from four different poets and a series of True-Romance-dictioned excerpts from Michael Estabrook's grandmother's diary (that seem authentic but I think are not), followed by a poem by Estabrook about her suicide after being caught by her husband with another man in 1932. Among other contributors, poets John M. Bennett and Lyn Lifshin celebrate language, while Robert Howington and Errol Miller story. Good mix.--bg AVEC--(#7, 1984), PO Box 1059, Penngrove CA, 94951. 150 pp., $7.50. Strong, challenging work that requires active and erudite reading--at least a nodding acquaintance w/ Dante, f'rinstance, would be helpful, as well as more than a bit of PoMo literary theory. Several pieces usefully cross genre boundaries: collaborative dance/spoken work from Ney Fonseca & Aaron Shurin; a graphic improvisational score written for the ROVA sax quartet by Bruce Ackely; and writing to & thru graphics (Susan Gevirtz responding to photos by Kristine Larwen; Micheal Palmer to drawings by Mica‘la Henich). David Levi Strauss also combines word & image in "Odile and Odette", a series of letters from Berlin; there's also another section from Nathaniel Mackey's ongoing epistletory fiction "From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate." Kevin Killian, Margy Sloan, and Dodie Bellamy are all given a chance to stretch out for more than a couple of pages, while Leslie Scalapino, Kevin Magee, Jean Day, Myung Mi Kim, Susan Clark, Ben Hollander and Laura Moriarty have longer works excerpted--leaving one to wish for more.--lbd Editor Cydney Chadwick has done a consistentland a concluding tercet. Amazing that in this age of free form or form manipulation creation, form being an extension of content, etc. form, that there would be 62 pages of sestinas out and about in poetry world. But herein collected they are with their end words patterned: 123456, 615243, 364125 etc. More amazing the list of those who are included herein: Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Clayton Eshleman, Maxine Chernoff, Kevin Lillian, Susan Wheeler, Nina Zivancevic. A unique, innovative editorial twist. This issue obviously has a program of writing. Let's end with tercet pattern: 2,5; 4,3; 6,1.--mb opera" by Nathaniel Mackey-- not Mackey's best work, but still well done, with a salutary sense of humor. Mei Mei Bersenbrugge--excellent, as usual. Edmond Jabes's "Dante's Hell"--one of the most engrossing, and unusual, of Jabes's meditations in the ongoing series of translations by Rosmarie Waldrop.--ky B-CITY--(#8), 517 North Fourth St., DeKalb IL, 60115. Special Sestina Issue. The traditional sestina is a 39-line poem written in six sextets and a concluding tercet. Amazing that in this age of free form or form manipulation creation, form being an extension of content, etc. form, that there would be 62 pages of sestinas out and about in poetry world. But herein collected they are with their end words patterned: 123456, 615243, 364125 etc. More amazing the list of those who are included herein: Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Clayton Eshleman, Maxine Chernoff, Kevin Lillian, Susan Wheeler, Nina Zivancevic. A unique, innovative editorial twist. This issue obviously has a program of writing. Let's end with tercet pattern: 2,5; 4,3; 6,1.--mb BAD NEWS BINGO!--PO Box 33388, Austin TX, 78764. 34 pp., $3.00. I don't know very many people who had a decent childhood, so it's no surprise to see so much viciousness and psychological scarring in the latest issue of BAD NEWS BINGO!, who's theme is family. You get photos of Charlie Manson's bald headed family women, juvenile arrests, the death of one's mother to cancer, and so much confessional turf you read on out of curiosity, while feeling guilty, like you overheard somebody's words while they were talking to a priest. There is truth here, and a lot of it is ugly.--o BALLPEEN--(#4, 1994), PO Box 55892, Fondren, Jackson MS, 39296. 55 pp., $4.00. A stimulating art zine, engaging to the eye as well as to the intellect. Genuinely learned essays. Witty fiction, expert poems, graphics and eidetics. A deconstructionist-cum-conceptualist point of view less the all- to-common juvenile butt-head logic. William Whallon's "Greek Cognates of the Vilest Words in English" is rewarding. Michael Kirby's "Melodrama Manifesto of Structuralism" is useful for students of film theory and comp. lit. Artfully produced by Mr. A. di Michele.--gvst BANGTALE INTERNATIONAL--(1994), PO Box 83984, Phoenix AZ, 85078- 3984. 40 pp., $5.50. Rod Farmer has poetry here, as does John M. Bennett, B.Z. Niditch, and Lyn Lifshin. Pure emotionally direct poetry, sometimes experimental, other times tight and dynamic. "I smoked the near finished Silk Cuts/ of another man's dream." There is a world-weary feel here, as if it's all been done before and now all that's left is the echo of polytonality and taut white flesh. "We've built fairy bridges/ of balsa wood and cellophane..."--rrle BASEBALL AND THE 1,000 THINGS--(Vol. 1, #1-#3), 3016 French St., Erie PA, 16504. 4 pp.@, SASE. Edited by Rick Lopez. Lots of off-beat information and opinion, much of it about baseball, or about something else with baseball spliced in--for instance, a quotations about infinitesimal in math that Lopez uses to illustrate the diminishing powers of the baseball commissioner. Among the non-baseball material, this quotation from Pound's Cantos: "'You damn sadist.' said mr. cummings,/ 'you try to make people think.'" These 3 issues contain just one poem and nothing I'd call otherstream (unless you count the plug for Harper's), but it's lots of (intelligent) fun.--bg BASURA--(#1, October 1994), PO Box 3232, Aurora IL, 60504. 20 pp., $1.00. It's good when you see a debut issue that has some decent planning behind it, and with Cheryl Townsend, Paul Weinman, Todd Moore, Lyn Lifshin, John M. Bennett, Eric E. Scott, and others on board, you got a crew that is trained and ready for an all-out assault. Lifshin's "The President's Forfinger" is "intent as a penis/it has a mind of its/ own..."; Moore's "Jerry" wasn't supposed "to have his old man's/sawed off..."; Townsend's "It Was Like" "butter he said..."; and an interview with Weinman are just a sampling of this fine first effort leaving scars.--o BEET--(#9, Summer 1994), c/o Joe Maynard, 372 Fifth Ave., Brooklyn NY, 11215. 28 pp. (with a 28 pp. insert), $3.00. I wish I had hooked into more of the local action when I lived in Trenton NJ, especially after reading BEET. You got kids having kids committing suicide (Allison Goodwin's "Photosynthesies"), coming of age realizations (Steven Sipes' "Our Hitlers, Ourselves"), and a great insert that documents a performance including Sparrow and Carl Watson, previous Chicago trickster. There are graphics that carry one liners that evolve into a lasting curiosity, and the realization you have been to new places you might want to visit again, only next time you'll be prepared and have the weapons to defend yourself.--o BLACK BREAD--(#3, 1993), 100 Magazine St., Cambridge MA, 02139. 78 pp., $5.00. Edited by Jessica Lowenthal and Sianne Ngai. The fourth moral of Lyn Hejinian's "A Fable," presented herein, reads: "Various women writer's will take up the philosophical quest for uncertainty." It would be wildly speculative, and gender-biased, to suggest that women are more likely to quest for and embrace the real, uncertain, world--while men are apt to try to impose their own limiting, ossified vision of how things are & ever shall be. I would never suggest that. But the nine women contributors to this magazine do seem to gracefully evoke a vision of a world in flux, fragmented and flimsy and alive (and, therefore, dying). I've read writers who seem dismayed by the imprecision of memory and language, or fight against their "lost" author-ity over text. Compare them to Laynie Brown's fertilizing insect: "A bee gathers/ They absorb the world through their senses/ Everything is in a ferment."--lbd BLADES--(#31, 1994), 182 Orchard Rd., Newark DE, 19711. Edited by JoAnn Balangit and Francis Poole. A small and quite personal publication, BLADES has been appearing for many years and always contains material of great interest, not to be found elsewhere. Each issue includes poems and drawings, interspersed with found texts, some quite strange and exotic. This issue includes a poem or letter by Nistina, a 19th century Algonquin woman, and some translations of 12th century Andalusian poems. One of the issues' high points is a long poem by JoAnn Balangit, "Dreams, Night of the Eclipse," of which part 3 follows: my sister's arm was straight as she handed me half a snake. She kept the half with the head. I pulled the body through my fist, squeezed tight, tail first, Wet slices of the snake slapped against the tile floor. There is not a dull moment in these pages, which also include work by "Goya", D.P., Bukowski, P.J. Cooper, Francis Poole, as well as found and anonymous texts.--jmb BLANK GUN SILENCER--(#9), BGS Press, 1240 William St., Racine WI, 53402. 52 pp., $3.00. Nielson is on of those editors I'd hate to get in a fight with--This fucker has some bad literary backing. The issue leads off with a Bukowski poem that captures the cynical bitter outlook of a man who found little use for humanity, then leaps immediately into a Gerald Locklin poem about a homeless man catching on fire and starting a blaze that destroyed fifty luxury homes. Mark Weber captures an Albuquerque morning in just the way I remember them back in 1974. Cheryl Townsend drags us through an angry confused teenaged abortion; Jay Marvin has those she done left me blues; and Michael Estabrook captures that married man confusion when a young girl flirts with a condom. Bite sized slabs of reality, not all of them pretty, but all of them so real you can't help but to nod your head in recognition.--o CAFE REVIEW--(Vol. 5, #2), 20 Danforth St., Portland ME, 04101. $6.00. Wonderful poetry of deep observation here by Helene Swarts, and an image rich piece by Tom Clark, but the heart of this issue is an interview and new poems by Michael McClure, and Jack Foley's "Exile". These two act as a scatological quasi- hallucinatory dose to the soul rendering almost anything else in the mag as adornment by comparison. McClure's vitality and authentic voice combined with Foley's polyspirit manifestations shed stark light on even the darkest corners of the psyche and inspire us to do the same. Great issue.--jb CHAIN--(#1, Spring/Summer 1994), 107 14th Ave., Buffalo NY, 14213. 282 pp., $7.95. Central to the whole project that is Language Poetry is the refusal to take for granted the tyranny of meaning, a questioning of the authority of language. Even given this stated "resistance to the established power structure," it's still welcome surprise how strong a presence women seem to have in the "second generation" coming out of (or against) the LangPo traditions. It's a singular occurrence in the avant guard, as in the mainstream. This presence is reflected in sheer numbers of women editing important publications in & around the movement: Rosmarie Waldrop at Burning Deck, Jessica Grim & Melanie Nelson's Big Allis, Lee Ann Brown at Tender Buttons, Susan Smith Nash's Texture Press, Cydney Chadwick's Avec, Black Box's Jessica Lowenthal & Sianne Ngai, Jennifer Moxely's The Impercipient... and now, CHAIN, edited by Jena Osman & Juliana Spahr. This debut issue takes one further step, from questioning the authority of language to questioning editorial authority, the filtering mechanisms that come between writer & reader in the form of editor/publishers. Most of the above-mentioned editors contribute to the discussion on Gender and Editing, as well as folks as diverse as Andrea Juno (RE/Search's "Angry Women" issue), Heather Findlay (On Our Backs), and Holly Laird (Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature). Their experiences as women editors are both diverse & similarly informed by an awareness of issues of power--issues that one hopes (but somehow doubts) is shared equally by their male counterparts. The second half is devoted to another kind of discussion, actual Chains of correspondences between several writers, chain letter poems, with one writer re-sounding/ responding to the instigations of another, resulting in linked energies and exchanges that are generous & engaged/engaging. Here at TRR, I've avoided the usual "editor's picks" or "top ten lists", but I guess I'll be a man about it and put this one toward the top of my list of faves. Issue #2 will address "Documentary," & the editorial "we" will be looking forward to it.--lbd CHIP'S CLOSET CLEANER--(#11, Fall 1994), 826 Aspen St. NW, Washington DC, 20012. 24 pp., $4.00. Chip Rowe's "personal zine" deals in "Pop Culture, Humor, Trivia, Fun." In this issue he reviews various books and periodicals he's read, perceptively discusses the value of cuss-words, presents a quite thorough report on the eight-track tape scene, and reprints items he likes, or thinks absurd--like, 50 euphemisms for "masturbation." --bg CHIRON REVIEW--(Vol. XIII #2, Summer 1994), Rt. 2 Box 111, St. John KS, 67576. 32 pp., $3.00. Editor: Michael Hathaway. A poetry tabloid that's been going for 39 issues now. The poetry is mostly plaintext stuff about the day-to-day, like one by C.S. Fuqua about calling a girl he's interested in only to find out she's about to get married--strong & agreeable in voice but not adventurous. Good selection here, too, of work by featured (& interviewed) poet Gerald Locklin--including one about "the new male", whose sperm-count is reportedly dropping: "hypotheses include environmental/ pollution and snug undergarments;// private investigator locklin suspects/ feminist intimidations." Also in the issue: a short story, a few dozen micro- review/announcements, and photographs.--bg CHIRON REVIEW--(Vol. XIII #3, Fall 1994), Rt. 2 Box 111, St. John KS, 67576. 32 pp., $3.00. Editor: Michael Hathaway. If I had to list a hierarchy of publishers that were true to their ideals and truly serious about their love of literature, Michael Hathaway would be at the top--he's got a rock solid stance on poetry and fiction. Some great in depth interviews with Ron Androla, John Bennett and Dan Nielsen in this issue. And when I read Kristine Sanders' poem "Hit While Running", her lines "when I see the bullets skimming towards/ your face I think of skillets burning/ eggs hissing in a pan, your eyes/ as shiny as potatoes cut in little squares" slapped me back in time to greasy-spoon breakfast hangovers after a wild night of love. Throw in an excellent essay on Ron Androla by Todd Moore, long insightful reviews of poetry chaps that actually give you an idea of the poetry, and updates on literary events--this is what it's all about.--o COTTON GIN--(Vol. 1 #2, Fall 1994), 1605 Wright Ave., Greensboro NC, 27403. 28 pp., $2.00. Nice mix of what I call "plaintext poetry" and more experimental stuff. A story by Kevin Keck called "In a Waffle House With Jesus" (a Bruce-Jay-Friedman-sort of jest, but funny in fresh ways) shares one page with a Paul Weinman/White boy analysis of beer commercials. Very nice full- color illustration by Laura Dawn Roberson on the front cover, too. It's labeled "special" and consists mainly of 42 solid blue circles surrounded by white, arranged to form a rectangle--not very exciting-sounding but oddly absorbing.--bg Like a garage band on the verge of breaking out. What's special about COTTON GIN is that, amongst other things, they publish song lyrics--how many zines are doing that? What's special about song lyrics is that they tell a story, and when the lyricist is a Southerner that story's likely to teach a life lesson, a life lesson with universal relevance. Such is the case with Chip McKenzie's "Dear Amelia" and Tami L. Conner's "Angels in Bluejeans" is, simply, perfect.--gvstat's at once susceptible and vulnerable. Laura Dawn Roberson's "Collage 59" uses excerpts from I Corinthians, lauding honesty in love. And Tami L. Conner's "Angels in Bluejeans" is, simply, perfect.--gvst CROTON BUG--(# 3), PO Box 11166, Milwaukee WI, 53211. 76 pp., $8.00.. Bob Harrison, editor. Contributors include: Anne Tardos, Clemente Padin, Gil Ott, Ron Silliman, Franz Kamin, George Quasha, Paul Dutton, Jackson Mac Low, Juliana Spahr, Richard Kostelanetz, Eva Festa, Ge(of Huth), Sheila Spargur, Jeff Poniewaz, Marina Pillar Gipps, Bruce Andrews, John M. Bennett, Kimberly Lyons, among others. If you find the contributors interesting already, the present works won't let you down. If they don't interest you, this magazine probably won't do much to change your mind. A major feature of this issue is the close and sagacious integration of work with a semantic base with work based in visual principles. Spanish language work sometimes includes English translation; sometimes, as in the case of work by the Uruguayan mail artist and visual poet Clemente Padin, translation isn't necessary. CROTON BUG has been consistently worth reading through its first three issues--a pretty good record for any new zine. Poetry well chosen. Not only a zine to check out now, but to watch in the future.--ky DIE YOUNG--(#7, Aug. 1994), PO Drawer 44691, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette LA, 70504. $3.00. Editors Skip Fox and Jesse Glass have assembled their strongest issue to date. DIE YOUNG #7 is a lucky one. Those within: Stephen Petoff, Stephen Ellis, Stephen Thomas, Susan Smith Nash and Susan Best and Spencer Selby. Also the poetry of Kevin Killian and Kenneth Warren marks what words as art can form. And there is a chapbook supplement and translations from Finnish, Polish and Spanish. Yes, all good fish in a dish and nothing much more to wish. The poet Robert Gregory, first from Pittsburgh and last I heard from South Florida (who by the way is one of the ones who will last) kinda sums this issue No. 7 up: "although people are standing still, the wind tastes like milk/ and the world is dancing inside itself as always."--mb DREAM WHIP--(#1, 1994), PO Box 53832, Lubbock TX, 79453. 24 pp., $2.00 (?). This is an interesting chap filled with scraps of dreams. It runs the gamut of nightmares, astral projection to other lands, fears of losing all control in situations where you're a pawn, contemplations on death, earthquakes and tornadoes and other natural disasters, and infatuations that seem to avoid becoming real situations. This short publication really does feel like the world of dreams, with those short jerky awareness that you tell yourself to remember, but can't seem to hold onto in the morning. Send them your dreams and see if things start to happen.--o DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES--(#43, 1994), 1300 Kicker Rd., Tuscaloosa Al, 35404. 20 pp., $2.00. Urgency balled up into a package of fantasy and surreal poetry. The mood here is melancholic, desperate, coming full steam from the dark core of the brain, bubbling up from the brain stem: sorceresses, wolves, transmogrification, atonement, broken flesh, urchinesses, savage sub-species, solar winds, worm webs, succubi, and resurrection are just a few of the horrors found here. What is created is a chilly acute publication with an oddly internalized focus and sense of pressure. The shorter pieces are honed to a taut and dynamic edge. This zine cuts to the Gothic quick.--rrle DREAMTIME TALKINGMAIL--(#6, Summer 1994), Rt. 2 Box 242W, Viola WI, 54664. 40 pp., $3.00. Miekal And, Liz Was, & Patrick Mullins, editors. Not a poem in this magazine but this is the map of poetry (perma) culture. Where progressive imaginations exist, like Dreamtime Village, art is all things. Soul sings. Being involved in place, merging with the natural, living in the nature of it all: it is all a poetics. Be free. Anarchism has always been a part of part (look it up: Jackson Mac Low, Robert Duncan). So to Utopianism: Walden Pond. Don't get drunk on the Paris Commune or lost in Shelley and Byron: We have got it here. Wake up. Support. Get with the program--this ain't Shake & Bake.--mb Life as experiment as art as documented here. Theory, correspondence, discussion of how we might sustain ourselves creatively and without damage to the environment. Articles here by Hakim Bey on social disintegration and the possible details thereof, and Liz Was on learning from illness, color, number and generally the magic of being alive and knowing it, continue the work the Xexoxial folks have been doing now for twenty years. There are also reviews, events and much else. By living beyond the normal delusions and abstractions the inhabitants of Dreamtime Village suggest what might be possible if we pursue an ethic of self-reliance and life as experiment as art asx--jb DRIVER'S SIDE AIRBAG--(#13, Summer, 1994), PO Box 25760, Los Angeles CA, 90025. 24 pp., $1.70. I don't think I've ever seen a small press reach so far, and build such a strong foundation, in such a short period of time. But Mike has pulled it off, grabbing writers that count into his PO Box so fast you'd think there was a creative suction device sucking all of this energy in his direction. How else could he get the likes of Terry Everton, Lyn Lifshin, Cynthia Hendershot, Ana Christy, Todd Moore, Howington, Androla, Weinman, and C.C. Russell into one envelope without a dozen injuries. This is one of those presses that makes you know what is going on, whether you want to know or not.--o DRIVER'S SIDE AIRBAG--(#14, Summer 1994), c/o Mike, PO Box 25760, Los Angeles CA, 90025. 32 pp., $2.25. Mike keeps coming back for more, tearing up the streets of LA with a publication that has some of the best sucker punches ever thrown by Todd Moore, Mark Weber and Ron Androla. Even Ana Christy's "post office" strikes home, with lines like "i'm a poet in drag and what about my nails?" and "but they hired me a woman (i wanna bitch)". The excerpt from Cynthia Hendershot's upcoming novel "Body" makes me want to tie her up, tight, and tell her about the things that make me happy. This is a fine read, filled with the things you expect to find from some of the best small press writers around.--o DRIVER'S SIDE AIRBAG--(#15, Fall 1994), UBP, c/o Mike, PO Box 25760, Los Angeles CA, 90025. 30 pp., $2.50. I remember reading a contributor's column in a lit mag years ago that said when Lyn Lifshin is good, she is damn good, and in "Falling Not Far From the Tree" we get "My dad,/ the loins of my fruit,/ divorced his wife, my mother,/the fruit basket,/ and married a big-screen TV". Kurt Nimmo screams at us from the shadows of America, capturing the fucked up aspects of a world gone so wrong it can't do no more wrong no more, and C.C. Russell's "Red Mustang, Gravel Dust" ("We haven't talked/ in over a month/ so I call you up/ and say/ 'If we can't talk,/ can I at least have my clothes back?'") brought back experiences I would have rather done withou. With Todd Moore, Paul Weinman, John M. Bennett, and even Howington, this is real entertainment and a read that won't easily go away.--o DROP FORGE--(#3, 1994), 13450 Mahogany Dr., Reno NV, 89511. 32 pp., $2.50. (e-mail--seanw@shadow.scs.unr.edu) A well paced mix of prose, poetry, collage, drawings, and computer visuals. The writing is often delightfully scatological bordering on magical. Often the prose is at least as inventive as the poetry. Keil Winchester's hysterical invention of a summit of best- selling authors in Transylvania to critique the late Bukowski has the whole crowd mumbling glossolaic poesis that actually is a vast improvement over what any of them have written. This is a great otherstream mag. Check it out.--jb DUSTY DOG REVIEWS--(#18, Summer 1994), 1904-A Gladden, Gallup NM, 87301. 15 pp., $2.00. Twenty-one quirky, sometimes runaway but always interesting reviews of small and micro-press poetry. The taste of its sole reviewer, David Castleman, runs to dominant- mode poetry, but he does not neglect otherstream material, and fully engages everything he writes about. And he always fairly quotes from what he reviews, to give us a chance to judge it for ourselves. Here's the first line from his review of Steve Richmond's Demon Country: "Mr. Richmond sends onward another of his delightful and very casual, insistently iconoclastic memoirs chockful of rambling poeticalities many of which might easily be honed into close dense poems, which he will not do."--bg EAT POOP!--(#23, Summer 1994), 193 N. 5th Street #A, San Jose CA, 95112. 36 pp., $3.00. Nathan Nothin', editor. Bell's cover art of Bukowski made me a lover of this zine immediately. Then, as I slowly wandered into its pages and saw the likes of Howington ("A guy sat at the bar and he told me he didn't have a gun so I gave him one of my guns."), Nate's "We're All Gonna Die In The End", bootlegged photos of Buk lifting weights (all of fifteen pounds worth), and obnoxious music reviewz and comix, I knew I was on familiar ground.--o ELECTRIC REXROTH--(#2), Tetsuya Taguchi, 8-35-314, Tsuchiyama- cho, Nada-ku, Kobe, Japan, 657. 142 pp., $25.00. Journals devoted to important literati usually contain scholarly articles, biographical notes, etc. on the figure after whom they are named. This one has very little commentary on Rexroth. A bibliography of Rexroth studies since 1982 by Morgan Gibson contains only 22 entries. Rexroth was not the kind of poet who left a lot for the mills of academe to grind out, as did, say, Pound or Zukofsky. The result in this instance is a miscellaneous collection of beats, neo-beats, & near minimalists, often presented in bilingual format. For me, Sharon Dubiago turns in the best poetry, though others might prefer contributions by Robert Bly, Cid Corman, John Solt, Ira Cohen, James Laughlin, Nina Zivancevic, or a dozen other poets. Perhaps this nicely designed, small format magazine does a better job of paying tribute to Rexroth than a scholarly journal could do. It would do better if it weren't so outrageously priced.--ky EXPERIODDICIST--(1994), PO Box 3112, Florence AL, 35630. 4 pp. An issue devoted to BREATHPOINTS by Shiela E. Murphy, as part of the lively ongoing broadside series edited by Jake Berry. These eight formally varied poems are an illuminated meditation on domesticity, and are remarkable in the strength with which they reveal a sense of self in its place--to such an extent that that place seems connect to all other places, or to "place" itself. The language is resonant, luminous, and charged: Neighbors I like about them cotton colors and their soft, engaging smiles. One woman tells me about falling (after I have fallen). Pool water in another season is young blue. We live in desert town all five of us by heart. Is there much custom (tantalize). First run envy sequences a falderol that I accept of me. We mirror as we can. Some beauty, some sandpaper. And release the muscles of the hand. --jmb EXPERIODDICIST--(June 1994), PO Box 3112, Florence AL, 35630. 4 pp. "Malok's Tissue Issue." Includes another stanza of Malok's famed "Fuck Dirge" that begins "Fuck well all the whatevers," plus other inimitable poems, drawings and tabloidy lyrico-loony collages by the Waukau Hermit. All kinds of mega- yucks in the collages like these arrangements of found texts: "our big NOTHING Beyond beans" and "ENJOY grief: mental health with a grin, mental health, pink and pudgy."--bg EXPERIODDICIST--(May 1994), PO Box 3112, Florence AL, 35630. 4 pp. This issue contains a first-rate set of poems by John M. Bennett but--to my disappointment--no author's statements of the kind other issues of this zine have featured, and which I hoped might become its special contribution to the field. None of Bennett's formidable talent in illumagery is on view here, either, but, hey, the poetry makes up for any lacks--like where's "Where's tall-lurched doubting's yearned!"'s at the bottom of the last page.--bg FACE THE DEMON--(#1 July/August 1994), 3077 Gardner Creek Rd., Dickson TN, 37055. 28pp. D. Madgalene, editor. A lot of faith and a lot of fantasy here. Starts off with a couple of poems praising God, and then does a 180 degree reversal to poems centered on Gen-X pro-suicide, prison, go-go bars, the atom bomb, sixties revivals... even a poem about a tractor pull. This is a mixed bag, sometimes intense, sometimes fuzzy, always shifting focus. Rod Farmer and Tom House have poetry here, in their work the reader can feel the intensity, the spontaneity, of the poem. Overall, this publication is effective in a passive/aggressive sort of way. And I suppose I can ignore the rough sketch of the masturbating Republican elephants in the centerfold.--rrle FACTSHEET 5--(#53, 1994), PO Box 170099, San Francisco CA, 94117. 134 pp., $3.95. Seth has finally given up on the Herculean task of promising to review every-fuckin'-thing that comes in, and that's probably necessary for him to survive &/or keep his sanity. And he's come under attack lately for reviews that miss the mark--the inevitable result when you go for breadth of coverage rather than depth. But no other publication comes close to matching the broad reach of zines that FACTSHEET 5 covers, from anarchy to Zen (and Bob, Bondage, Comix, Girlzzz, Punk, Queer, SciFi... etc. in between)--with particularly strong coverage of quirky, fall-between-th-cracks kind of stuff. Still an indispensable, if not-quite-"definitive", guide to the zine revolution.--lbd FEEDBACK--(#17, Summer 1994), PO Box 2, Gibbon NE, 68840. 14 pp., $1.00. On the surface you'd think this was a fanzine, but after a few paragraphs you realize that there is an intelligent conscientious woman taking on the world here. And tho this is DIY made to look slick, under all the veneer is one of the strongest editors I've seen in a long time. Tho it's a one (wo)man show, contributors from all over the place, and it has a vicious free-wheeling love of controversy. At the same time, it's so real and rational that I felt like I'd just dropped into a party of old friends, instead of being tossed into a room filled with strangers. If you want fiction, articles, poetry and reviews of music and books, this is a down home great place to be.--o FEH!--(#17), 200 East Tenth Street #603, New York NY, 10003. $3.00. There's been a shakedown at FEH! Namely Simieon and Morgana, the editors, have split, so I suspect this may be this last issue in the current form. But knowing Simeon, who will remain as sole editor, things will only worsen--with FEH!, this is a good thing. The high & noble herald of all that is odious and profane, this issue turns in some real gems in the garden of foul delights. Al Ackerman's "Lamentable Haircut" suggests a "linguini wig"; "Leper's Orgy" by Ian Ayers reminds us that if you're a leper you'll likely attend only one; and the holy script of "GOB" comics is a mutant of pure offense. This stuff will pervert every decent impulse you ever had. You'll become rude, obnoxious, the bane of your family and friends. I recommend it highly, and soon!--jb FIRST INTENSITY--(#3, 1994), PO Box 140713, . , $9.00. This magazine presents a gathering of solid poem work. No trash. No self-serving ego get ahead show boat editorial I publish your poem and you will write me a blurb junk. No ass kissing. No sleep with me I slept with Walt Whitman bull poetics. Unafraid the red giant stars shine with the twinkle twinkles. Writers have batches of work. Within No. 3: John Yau (writing fiction), Robert Kelly, Theodore Enslin, Diane di Prima, and Susan Smith Nash, Clark Collidge, Will Alexander. A community of writing. See great poetry on Michael Boughn, Leonard Schwartz, George Albon pages.--mb FOUND STREET--(Vol. 3, Summer 1994), 2260 S. Ferdinand Ave., Monterey Park CA, 91754. 26 pp., $3.00. The usual wide range of otherstream material including one of Cliff Dweller's found- headline poems, which includes the following three lines: "Angels handcuff/ themselves to trees,/ knowing when to be gracious", and Crag Hill's resonant pwoermd "Travellled." Also, a couple of collages by Steven Hartman--in one, a man (whose head is a partially cut-open... squash?) seems deep in thought in front of a greatly-enlarged cut-away section of epidermal tissue, while a sphere out of a solid-geometry textbook hangs in the sky above-- the combination speaking eloquently if mysteriously about the flesh and (Platonic?) abstraction.--bg FROZEN HYPNOSIS--(#9), c/o Malok, Box 41, Waukau WI, 54980. (or c/o Bern Porter, 22 Salmond, Belfast ME 04915). free or trade. FROZEN HYPNOSISis an ongoing collage collaboration between two of the genre's finest. They do to media essentially what media does to us--they rip it to shreds and reassemble the pieces, in the process allowing us to see how images are connected to produce desired results. As the title suggests, what we have here is a snapshot of indoctrination in process. It does nothing less than gives us an opportunity to reconsider what is happening and maybe reassess what we do with what we are asked to swallow. More liberating in a few pages than any politician could manage in a lifetime. --jb FUEL--(#7, Spring 1994), PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614. 66 pp., #3.00. Andy (that's Ms. Andy for those of you who don't know) Lowry's back with another, and I should say the damn best yet, issue of FUEL. David McCord (San Francisco's sweetheart) kicks us in the reproductive organs with a story that, well, makes a married man wonder if he can trust his wife. Kurt Nimmo strikes with a story that brings the hard times to your door, and leaves the footsteps bouncing against the inside of your head. Dan Grzeca's graphics are, as always, powerful, and the whole issue leaves you with that existential confusion you get on Monday morning, knowing what the next five days will do to the little sanity you got left. This is real writing from people who've been through it all, and survived intact.--o FUEL--(#8, Summer 1994), PO Box 146640, Chicago IL, 60614. 46 pp., #3.00. There are only a small handful of lit mags that incorporate visual layout with text in a balance that'd make the professionals scream out in jealousy, and FUEL is certainly at the top of that list. Andy edits with a sharp clean eye that captures some of the best poetry and fiction around the country, then sets the words against a visual backdrop that puts layers beneath the writing. In this issue Vincent Zandri's murderous adventures of a writer in search of a story slams the senses against a wall; Lisa Manning takes a boy, a knife, a city bus, and an apology, and makes it work just right; Michael Shores' illustrations make dreams into reality with edges you can almost touch; and John Goldfine takes McDonald's shattered economic dreams into a family scene that has become all too real today. That's just a glimpse, and there is so much in every issue you could almost write a review as long as the magazine. This is the stuff that dreams, and nightmares, thrive on.--o GLOBAL MAIL--(September--December, 1994), PO Box 597996, Chicago, IL, 60659. 8 pp., 2 stamps. Another in Ashley Parker Owen's dizzyingly thorough listing (400+ entries from 39 countries in this issue) of "all kinds of art projects, collaborations, and mail-art events." For instance, you can send your mail-art images to an address in France and they'll be shown on French television. Somebody at another address wants the names of all those voted most likely to whatever from you high school yearbook. Fun browsing for almost anyone--but an indispensable resource for mail-artists.--bg GOD'S BAR: UN*PLUGGED--(Vol. 1 #3, March 1994), 112 Dover Parkway, Stewart Manor NY, 11530. 32 pp., $1.50. According to the credit's page, GOD'S BAR is "originated by disenfranchised computer bulletin board poets. Don't know how that happened, but there is some fine work here, beginning with editor Virgil Hervey's piece on two paintings of Li, the early Chinese poet, and a Chinese woman's response to one of them. Then there's Paul Weinman's "Vegetable Sex" for which I will allow you to use your imagination and almost guarantee you you'll be wrong. For the most part confessional, beat influenced poetry & an excellent additon to the genre.--jb GREEN FUSE--(#28, Spring/Summer 1994), 3365 Holland Dr., Santa Rosa CA, 95404. 52 pp., $5.00. Ecologically cynical, mildly satirical, liberal-activist-oriented work which includes a large range of PC subjects: the homeless, gun control, exploitation of living things and the earth itself, species extinction road kills, trapping, war, Jesse Helms, homophobia and the media... even an eulogy for Wiley Coyote. The poetry here is often obsessed, pastoral, and charmingly bitchy. But, it's also intense and mournful as incendiary emotions are balanced against poetic form. Honest verse with a bracing message, as in David Austin's poem "Dear Jesse": "In this poem/ no crucifixes are/ submerged in/ my own piss/ ..no men are/ urinating into/ other men's mouths/ In this poem/ there are no smiling/ naked children," which goes on to provide the reader with an artistic victory over the arch-conservative. Hard-edged and tight-skinned eco-poetry for the people.--rrle HEAVEN BONE--(#11), PO Box 486, Chester NY, 10918. $6.00. The great value of HEAVEN BONE is how, with poems, stories, articles and graphics, and pieces that contain elements of some or all of these, it opens the door into the other world. We are so accustomed to degenerated commodity that passionately open imagination seems almost insane. But HB provides exquisite evidence to the contrary. By publishing material such as the interview here with Akhter Ahsen (who understands the psychological and political implications of imagination unbound), the translation and discussion of Rene Dumal, the divinely organic photographs of Paul Winternitz, as well as recent high poetic script by Belinda Subraman, Michael McClure, Dan Raphael, Diane DiPrima, among many other visionaries, the light breaks cleanly through the contemporary illusion of fear and malaise, revealing what lies beneath and beyond our paralysis. A shamanic device, a Sufi oracle, a blast of authentic ecstatics, HEAVEN BONE is the transfiguration of the species as it happens.--jb HOME PLANET NEWS--(#37, Summer 1994), PO Box 415, Stuyvesant Sta., New York NY, 10009. 24 pp., $2.00. There are times I want to write NYC off and hope that my aunt in New Jersey is right about there being a planetary shift that will wipe out California and flood the east coast all to shit. But then a new issue of HOME PLANET NEWS comes out and I think, yeah, none of us live forever, but let's put that planetary shift off a few more years. After all, there's a great interview with my favorite dirty old man, Gerald Locklin, poetry by a poet that is so prolific (Lyn Lifshin, who else?) you know there'll be mail flying with her name on it long after that dreaded shift takes places, and a stack of reviews that made me pick up my checkbook and order a handful of pubs hoping they'd send them to me before the checks began to bounce. This sat on the radiator across from my toilet for three days as I read every word--pretty good, considering most publications get a day and a half at best.--o HOUSE ORGAN--(#7, Summer 1994), 1250 Belle Ave., Lakewood OH, 44107. 16 pp., $1.00?. Editor: Kenneth Warren. Work herein by Joe Napora, Richard Peabody, Peter Ganick, Gary Sullivan, Johanna Drucker and more. And also herein a critical review of Kerouac's "Old Angel Midnight" by Kenneth Warren. This is not a review from a passionate knight defender of the great Beat King. It is a frank encounter and there should be more of this in the Beat Kerouac world. Also collected herein this issue a review of Todd Moore's "Dillinger; Books I and II" by Gerald Burns. He trashes old "Toad" with an intellectual ugly stick-pen and leaves him crushed, maybe hushed, with his poetic guts fading in an acid pool of critical ink.--mb Due to the editorial selections HOUSE ORGAN has a somewhat different feel from most other mags. Experimental and more mainstream poetry follow one another on the page, and there are always interesting essays. This time for instance, Eva Shaderowsky's "The Serpent of Chaos," and "Kerouac's Heavy Load" by editor Kenneth Warren. In selecting the poetry Warren has a good ear for what works well together. He manages to do it without coming off pedantic. Always a good read.--jb HYPHEN--(#9, Summer, 1994), 330 South Green St., PO Box 516, Somonauk IL, 60552. 72 pp., $3.95. Out of all of the local Chicago magazines, HYPHEN is the only one that dances across the creative arenas and consistently introduces me to new turf I would have run after sooner if I had only known that it was there. Nat Krieger's "Dying for Culture in Sarajevo" gives us the arts striving for survival amid an evolving madness. If you want to see photos of Chicago's notorious slam poets (Marc Smith, Tony Fitzpatrick, etc.) and catch up on the latest news, this is the place to catch the action. Plus plenty of damn good fiction, poetry and art (I'm still staring at Helen R. Klebesadel's watercolor with a bad case of jealousy).--o I AM A CHILD: Poetry After Robert Duncan And Bruce Andrews-- Tailspin Press, 418 Richmond Avenue #2, Buffalo NY, 14222. 1171 pp., $8.50. A new journal (and a hefty one) edited by William Howe. As you can hear from the sub-title it is a far gazing and inquisitive magazine. Work by Susan Howe, Robert Creeley, Charles Bernstein, John Clarke, Duncan, and Andrews. And combined in these diverse literary roots Jeff Gburek, Ben Friedlander, Pat Reed, Juliana Sphar, Rod Smith, Joel Kuszai and Miekal And. And there are many others, and there is an information here, a program of writing. Here is a spectrum of representation. This Poem is your Poem. This Poem is my Poem. From California to the New York island. Beautifully orchestrated and mechanically splendid. One of the brilliant and hard songs on the jewel path poemtree.--mb THE IMPERCIPIENT--(#5, May 1994), 61 East Manning St., Providence RI, 02906. 48 pp., $5.00. "Divide the world from yourself and you die. See. Separation equals contempt."--Joe Ross, from "Equations = equals." What kind of fin de siecle decadence is possible after a century of excesses--excesses of technology, violence, and alienation? Optimistically, the end of this century might be marked instead by a re-engagement with the world--and excellent work presented in THE IMPERCIPIENT ("silent pillow of a generation") would seem to bolster that optimism. Strong opening pieces from Jessica Lowenthal ("I am a Deist"), Peter Gizzi ("Imitation of Life: A mini series"), and Lisa Jarnot ("Diary of a Rough Trade Angel") confront various aspects of power (power of belief, brute force) and individual response/responsibility. Lee Ann Brown and Magdalena Zurawski reclaim body and passion from both sentimentality and cynicism. Throughout, the poems are carefully wrought, crafted in order to communicate (rather than merely obscure, or impress).--lbd IMPLODING TIED-DYED TOUPEE--(#3, Summer 1994), 100 Courtland Dr., Columbia SC, 29223. 32 pp., $4.00. Fine collages like the front cover by Michael Shore and fine poems like "The Sirenes"; an infra-verbal gem by Gregory St. Thomasino worth quoting in full: aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and away into and some first-rate M. Kettner compositions, one a haiku whose last line speaks of "head: light as a lawn chair."--bg INDELIBLE INK--(Seventh Edition, Fall 1994), c/o Lauren Salmi, 3142 West Belden, Chicago IL, 60647. 50 pp., $3.00 (?). Every time I get ready to write the Chicago literary scene off another magazine comes along that forces me to change my mind. INDELIBLE INK is one of these miracles, with poems that run the gambit from academic workshop to hard core vicious street. My favorite piece was "War and Marriage" (perhaps because I could identify with the subject matter) by Michael H. Brownstein, which captured the conflicts with lines like: "She followed him spouting out anger like launched hand grenades. The more she yelled, the more insane he knew she was." Tina Dugay-Khan captures the poetry slam world in "The Contest": "We were lined up/ like rival gang members/ Our 3 minute poems were like/ drive-by shootings/ The words were hot as bullets/ No truce-this time/ Let's rumble"; and Kurt Eisenlohr's EAT showed just how important a good meal is before you die.--o INTERTEK--(Vol. 3.5), 13 Daffodil Lane, San Carlos CA, 94070. $4. (e-mail: tek@well.sf.ca.us). One can always rely on INTERTEKfor intelligent stimulation regarding things digital/cyber. This issue consists of two excellent articles that meet that standard. Editor Steve Steinberg discourses on "The Ontogeny of RISC" and Alex Cohen "On The Origin of Artificial Life--Some Assembly Required". In the first article word maps illustrate the "evolution" from CISC architecture to RISC and the manipulation of industry and market to achieve this end. In the second we see how the criteria for what life is might be changed by machines who build other machines, etc. etc. until we are defined by something that is entirely other to what we now consider to be ourselves. Stimulating stuff whether you agree or not. Guaranteed to keep you on your toes (at least while you have them).--jb JOEY AND THE BLACK BOOTS--(#1, Summer 1994), 718 Lewis St., Laramie WY, 82070-3236. 16 pp., $1.00 (?). C.A. Miller, editor. For a first issue this reads like something edited by someone who's been around the block a few times. Cari grabs the likes of Lyn Lifshin, C.C. Russell, C.F. Roberts and Cheryl Townsend, and let's you know up front that this is just the beginning of what is going to be a great relationship. Get in on the ground floor.--o JOEY AND THE BLACK BOOTS MONTHLY--(#3, September 1994), 2143 Garfield #5, Laramie WY, 82070-4342. 20 pp., $1.00. I enjoy poetry publications that carry the feel of a zine, but pack the wallop of a semi out of control. In this issue, Janet Kuypers grabs us with lines like "I wanted to feel the sold sharp rocks/ cutting into my face/ and slicing my skin./ I wanted pain to feel good again.", while C.C. Russell's "Lover" touches the heart with "Somewhere along the way/ it began to feel/ like a catheter tube;/ pain on the way in/ at the end/ but in between,/ just an uncomfortable/ release." When you add in the likes of Howington, Townsend, Lifshin, and comix by Phil Labrie, you got a mix that can only do you right.--o JOEY AND THE BLACK BOOTS--(#4, October 1994), 2143 Garfield #5, Laramie WY, 82070-4342. 16 pp., $1.00 (?). C.A. Miller, editor. Cheryl Townsend is one of those erotic writers that has to leave a wet spot on every seat she writes a poem at, and between the lust of friends and lovers her poems continue to explore the sensual world of female sexuality. And she's here in full force, along with Lyn Lifshin, C.C. Russell, Mark Hartenbach, and a feastful of others, all redefining human existence, and making those who don't know wonder what the hell is going on. This is a small magazine, but one that carries the guts and strength you need for your everyday survival.--o JUBAL--(Spring 1994), 2 Garden Lane, New Orleans LA, 70124. 40 pp., $3.00. A "Literary Magazine"... with poetry, short stories, an essay (on Unknowing), comix by Trippin Cat, and plenty of b&w full page sketches which seem to dominate this intense yet diverse publication. Going solely to a digital format in 1995. Prowling the edges of romantic obsession is Colette Bennet's poem "Nightfuck," one example of the startling turbulence found here: "Silk against my skin/ the moon likes to fuck../ it's only a couple of times a year/ when the sun climbs on her..." On the other hand, in Kyle Cassady's "Plague Diary": "You're/ giving me/ AZT and you say that smoking/ would be bad for me?" Here is an impulsive energy, repeatedly jolting and yet, very accessible.--rrle JUXTA--(#1, 1994), 977 Seminole Trail No. 33l, Charlottesville VA, 22901. $4.50. Editors: Ken Harris and Jim Leftwich. The inaugural issue of an ambitions and impressive new journal of innovative writing, one in which innovation is widely enough conceived to include a broad spectrum of differing styles and approaches. If future issues are as well-edited and inclusive as this one, JUXTA will become a major forum for the best and liveliest of American poetry. The magazine is neatly and cleanly produced, perfect-bound, and includes textual and visual poetry, and some criticism: Susan Smith Nash's article on Language Poetry is one of the clearest and most balanced discussion of that phenomenon I've read. The contributors are many, but just to give an idea of the variety here, include Sheila E. Murphy, Cheryl Townsend, Hugh Fox, Marcia Arrietta, Jake Berry, Bob Grumman, Crag Hill, Spencer Selby, Harry Burris, Mark DuCharme, Peter Gannick, Nico Vassilakis, Linsay Hill, M. Kettner, John Byrum, Thomas Lowe Taylor... and many others. Highly recommended.--jmb An absolutely astonishing first issue. The poets and work assembled here are some of the most provocative current. The tone of the manifesto intensity of the essays is one hungry for blood and consummating inspiration. The poetry has all the authenticity and organism of Beat as well as the revelry of Blake's prophecies or Breton's automatism. JUXTA is one of a handful of mags now wise to the rising storm of poetry yearning to be restored to its essential impetus while not divorcing itself from the brink of the contemporary world abyss whereon we must dance to survive with vitality. As with Heaven Bone, Poetry USA, Lost And Found Times, and a few others, it holds the promise of what might be if we'll shed the scales and drink the sky raw.--jb JUXTA comes roaring out of the wilds without the look of a virgin, and with the feel of practiced flesh. They studied the field, grabbed the right writers (Sheila E. Murphy, John M. Bennett, Jake Berry, Hugh Fox, etc.), and kicked out an issue so strong I'm still trying to work my way through it, having read every page to make sure I missed nothing going on. This isn't your usual poetic verse, but rather an exploration of breaking all the rules with language shifts that rip electrical discharges out of brain cells that aren't used to being tugged. Lines leap at you with sporadic bursts of: "It's hangers and bones it's sticks and stones/ The weather is the handsome tarp of God" (Lindsay Hill's "The Method of Steepest Descents"); "It is women in a place where nerves converge in a central system" (Nico Vassilakis' "She Looks Up Mythology"); and "gripped by the part shriek fast/ got sweat strip and into book sheer/ roar a long breaklanding only slow" (Peter deRous' "Desired Trope"). You'll be confused, and delighted, for a hundred hours or more.--o Here is something new and unknown. Ambergris floating in the sea of tired magazines. And it is a goooood magazine. A thing like this needed. Reminds me of the first issue of Jon Edgar Webb's THE OUTSIDER: A wonderful magazine of the 1960s that published Olson next to Bukowski. It is good to see that the editors drink wide the map of poetry. The juxtapositioning includes: Spencer Selby, Cheryl Townsend, John Byrum, Hugh Fox, Crag Hill, Rod Smith. If Santa Claus wanted to give poets a present it would be more mags like JUXTA. The Easter Bunny would do the same. And the Ground Hog. And Venus.--mb KIOSK--(#7), English Department, 306 Clemens Hall, SUNY, Buffalo NY, 14260. An annual of "new writing" that actually emphasizes the experimental. This journal looks like most academic literary journals: a piece of art and a title on the front, the names of the contributors on the back. But a number of the names on the back might be familiar to the readers of TRR (but not to many readers of academic journals): Jake Berry, John Byrum, John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy, Tom Beckett, Amy Sparks. Not every work is experimental, and not every experiment works, but there's enough good work to make it worthwhile. I liked some of the fiction the best: Mark Jacobs's "The Albino Pheasant", Daniel Kanyandekwe's excerpt from "The Last Writer", Susan Shaio's "Heels", and Frank Green's resonating "Scarlet Letters: Part One (The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale talks about AIDS)". Poems by John M. Bennett and Amy Sparks also stand out.--ar The poetry/literature schools at SUNY are not at all what one would usually finds in academia, at least judging from the material they publish, KIOSK being a fine example. This issue contains mostly experimental, or at the very least innovative work. Some Language poetry, but not bound to that as criteria. Charles Bernstein is here, but also John M. Bennett, Lyn Lifshin, but also Sheila E. Murphy. This combination of poets could cudgel imagination from the rock in a heartbeat. Very encouraging to know that education and inspiration do occasionally intermingle.--jb LAUGHING HORSE BROADSIDE--PO Box 2328, Norman OK, 73070. $1.00. Cydney Chadwick's "Noun Descending a Fire Escape" explores the perversity of gender role-constructed bondage, as a woman becomes disenchanted with her snoring lover, "especially after you discover a whole wad of money stashed away in his shoe box." A tableau-vivant that reminds one of French new-wave cinema, Godard's "Breatheless", or Louis Malle's more recent incest- insinuations in "Damage".--ssn LETTER eX--(August/September, 1994), PO Box 476920, Chicago IL, 60647. 20 pp., $2.00 (?). What do you do with a tabloid that has too many pictures of Lydia Tomkiw on the cover? Inside LETTER eX, however, it's another story, and Chicago's performance art poetry sweetheart gets quickly lost in the shuffle. There's an excellent overview of local poetry publications and events, and a slobbering great review of a really bad poetry collection (Chicago Cherry: Wicker Park Erotica), and a decent overview of Allen Ginsberg's latest romp through the Loop. This is the place to go if you're a poet wanting to know where to go in Chicago.--o LETTERBOX--(#3, May 1994), 3791 Latimer Pl., Oakland CA, 94609. 52 pp., $4.50. Scott Bentley, editor. Another in the recent crop of publications cross-pollinating between various aesthetics. Stephen Ratcliffe opens w/ 8 sections from "SOUND/system", delicately problematizing issues of identity (of author or subject)--slam up against Errol Miller's self-assured "God Almighty, we're/ human-size, avant-garde individuals/ snaking through the timestream, students/ of an ideal world..." Arethusa Stevens' romantic surrealisms contrast w/ John M. Bennett's hard-edged surreality; Michael Sylvester's tale of graverobbers at Robert Frost's tomb bumps hard up against Pasquale Verdicchio's lyric travelogue of Beuyes in Italy. It's a fine gray-area between eclectic & scattered--fortunately, the unifying factor here is the consistently high quality of the various works. Praps appropriate that the binding is a fairly fragile scratch-pad glue.--lbd LILLIPUT REVIEW--(#56), 207 S. Millvale Ave. #3, Pittsburgh PA, 15224. 16 pp., $1.00. Petite pamphlet which could, in a steamy laundromat situation, be mistaken for a religious tract. But this is no you-are-not-alone reinforcer of existential abandonment: Jim Cory's "232-9212/Tight Ass" is a warm reminder of the power of advertising; Scarecrow's "nothing heals" is a 4- line whisper into a corpse's ear. A neat little packet, punctuated with Rorschach graphics reproducing the experience of being interrogated in a windowless room by a psychiatrist gone ragged-in-the-mind.--ssn LILLIPUT REVIEW--(#57), 207 S. Millvale Ave. #3, Pittsburgh PA, 15224. 16 pp., $1.00. A tiny booklet packed with kernular poems, some as short as tolek's hilarious "/more/," which consists of just the line: "perfect, belittled"; or the even shorter "NowHere" of Richard Kostelanetz. Then there's my favorite contribution to the issue, Ficus strangulensis's 7-step transformation of a handwritten "Be" to "blank"--a visusual treatment of the original by John M. Bennett. Most of the other poems are longer and fairly conventional, but generally enjoyable.--bg LILLIPUT REVIEW--(#60, Summer 1994), 207 S. Millvale Ave. #3, Pittsburgh PA, 15224. 8 pp., $1.00. David Wentworth, editor. This publication is an act of love, incredible dedication, and touches on what poetry always talks about being, but so rarely is. Wentworth's eye for poems that are precise and filled with emotion is one of the finest in the small presses, and he can coax the best out of any poet, and give it to the world on a golden platter. In this issue Cheryl Townsend takes on the Pro- Lifers, Weinman throws white racism against a wall, C.C. Russell gives us Mother paranoia, Ana Christy hands us a haiku kid on dope. You get the feeling that all of these poets have been the places they're writing about, welcoming us into their worlds with a light touch of words inside our head.--o LOGODAEDLUS--(#7, Summer 1994), PO Box 13193, Harrisburg PA, 17104. 30 pp., $7.50. An unbound collection of verbo-visual pieces, several in full color, by such artists a John Byrum, Spencer Selby and Karl Kempton. One example: Guy R. Beining's "Beige Copy: Post-Text," a collage with annotations (e.g., "cerebrum" and "cephalic") in varied colors around two rectangles, one containing a geisha in blue with a two-tiered red parasol, the other using the first's red and blue--and circles--with an x-ray of a wrist, and young-girl images... all to suggest fascinating things about brain function, waking, and dreaming.--bg MEGAZINE--(#13, Spring 1994), PO Box 86803, Phoenix AZ, 85080- 6803. 8 pp., $1.00. This is a wonderful ranting piece of pure hatred, with a prison poem by Weinman, a poem from Frank ('s Depression) about greyhound bus travel so close to life that my butt hurt from the long ride, and other scraps of anger and madness. Sometimes bordering on the pointless though--to be so vicious without a target that deserves it.--o MESHUGGAH--(#10, June 1994), 200 E. 10th St., New York NY, 10003. 56 pp., $2.00. A "special religion issue" that features this quote from Tammy Faye Bakker: "I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain.'" Also includes serious material, such as a little-known essay on Christianity by Robinson Jeffers, a caustic slam on religion by Bob Black, and an even deeper piece by Dr. Al Ackerman called "The Gospel According to Peanut Butter."--bg MILK--c/o The Poetry Project at St. Marks, 131 E. 10th St, New York NY, 10001. 18 pp., $3.00. "Signed sealed & delivered: the letters issue", an assemblage of correspondence to & from various including Bernadette Mayer, Ted Greenwald, Richard Hell, Jill Rapaport, Ted Berrigan (circa 1971)... more than a little muttering on the difficulty of the poet life, but mostly a miscellany & no noticeable theme. A bit of a Cleveland connection, w/ Frank Green on tour with his Scarlet Letters performance, Lola Rodriguez dissing the town she can't seem to leave, and several from or to expatriot Mike Decapite. An equally random index picks out "crush," "God," "Alice Notley," "people," "poems," "smile," "streets," and "Wordsworth" as worth multiple citations.--lbd MISSIONARY STEW--(Vol. 2 #3, May 1994), 100 Courtland Dr., Columbia SC, 29223. 6 pp., $4.00. Fifteen 2-word poems, some illustrated (as Gerald Burns's "canned poem" and Harlod Dinkel's "elementary drowning"), the rest typographically or in some other way illumagistically-enhanced, sometimes to the verge of visual poetry as in John M. Bennett's scriggly-rural rendition of "corn belt." A fun collection for people with a taste for minimalistic poetry.--bg MONDO HUNKAMOOGA--(#8, July 1994), Box 141, Station F, Toronto Ontario, Canada, M4Y 2L4. 4 pp., $2.00. A revival of Stuart Ross's much-missed (for 6 years!) newsletter of the cutting-edge literary scene in Toronto, and linked areas elsewhere. Some excellent short reviews of books Ross picked up at the Toronto Small Press Book Fair, and a wonderfully-casual but pin-pointedly informative discussion by jw curry of an exhibit of illumagery and visual poems by bill bissett. Also, an ad for a movie called "The Four Horsemen Go To Mars" (with "actual Hollywood poets!", among them Leonard Nimoy, Richard Thomas, and Suzanne Sommers).--bg MYSTERIOUS WYSTERIA--(#6, Summer, 1994), 335 East Erie, Lorain OH, 44052. 38 pp., $1.00. Ironically I often find the best writers and publications come out of the most unexpected places, and while most people would look to either coast for writing with an edge, there are people in the midwest and even, yep, Ohio, who draw blood when you touch their pages. Here's one such, with a Scott Holstad poem about a stripper and dreams of rescue; Erroll Miller observing a sex craved female looking for another fuck without obligation: Weinman striking a few sexual notes, and a Lifshin poem I actually liked.--o MYSTERIOUS WYSTERIA--(#7, Fall 1994), 335 East Erie, Lorain OH, 44052. 34 pp., $1.00. Eric Scott, editor. In the latest issue of MYSTERIOUS WYSTERIA you get prison fiction by Jon R. Campbell, a sex poem by Lyn Lifshin ("Like The Floor/ I want you/ there waiting/ for me spread/ out, no bitching/ if I walk all/ over you..."), a story by Terence Bishop about that strange lust you have for people you can't have, and Paul Weinman ripping apart another piece of our reality. Eric captures the best that he can find in each issue, and often it's the best that can be found.--o NEW BRAND--(#6, Summer 1994), PO Box 184, Vinton VA, 24179. 40 pp., $1.00. When you toss great band interviews (Youth Brigade, Rhythm Collision), huge romantic notions by Thomas Wells who takes on controversial subjects like what the hell is gay pride and do we really need it, White Boy Poems (come on Paul, kill the motherfucker before I do) by Weinman, and music reviews, you get a damn good read by a wildman in Virginia who isn't afraid to throw the first punch, even if someone else started the fight.--o NEW BRAND--(#7, September 1994), PO Box 184, Vinton VA, 24179. 33 pp., $3.00 (?). Music reviews, interviews with bands, a weird fucking letter columns from people you hope you'll never meet in person, zine reviews that call something shit when it is shit, and poetry from Weinman and other wired out illuminated souls. This is the perfect bath-tub read, a fun thing to mix it all up in just the right doses.--o NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW--(Vol. 17 #4, 1994), 20 Werneth Ave., Gee Cross, Hyde, Cheshire, U.K., SK14 5NL. 36 pp., 2 Pounds/$5.00. Poetry without borders from poets residing in mostly England, but also Canada, Mexico, Austria, Spain, Brazil, Bulgaria, the USA... even the Vatican. Belinda Subraman is here, as one of two representing the USA. Translations and original script, churning ambient soundscape with tantalizing possibilities. It retains some diffuse poetic grandeur, as perhaps only an English editor can channel it--often too floating and sacred for me. "These are the eyes that never fit/ and this is the mouth that can't forget." chants Peter Howard in his mantra voice. Still, the world needs more international vehicles for poetry.--rrle THE NEW RENAISSANCE--(#27, Fall 1994), 9 Heath Rd., Arlington MA, 02174. 181 pp., $7.00. A beautifully-packaged collection of fiction, non-fiction, illumagery and poetry from the middle outlook of our culture, but which includes a breakthrough article by David Impastato on the nature and failings of "dominant-mode poetry. Also a worth-the-price-of-admission set of reproductions of the neo-Boschian unmiddle-outlook paintings by Samuel Bak (b. 1933).--bg NO LONGER A FANzine--(#5, Summer 1994), 142 Frankford Ave., Blackwood NJ, 08012. 54 pp., $2.00. Joseph A. Gervasi, editor. When someone takes on the world without flinching, and gets interviews with William T. Vollman (author of THE RAINBOW DIARIES), Randall Phillip (editor of FUCK), and even talked to Dennis Cooper in the last issue, you know you're dealing with somebody who isn't afraid to take on the crazies. This is what fanzines dream of being--independent, xeroxed, DIY--but almost never achieve because there isn't the intelligence and gall in most people to pull this thing off right. This is the stuff, the place, the thing you got to see, like talking to somebody you really want to know.--o O!! ZONE--(#12), 1266 Fountain View Dr., Houston TX, 77057. 48 pp., #4.00. A highlight of this issue is a grittily anti- sentimental but moving elegy for Bukowski by Robert Peters. Representing the opposite end of the overt-passion scale is C.L. Champion's "poema cocci," which consists of four scattered rectangles. In the middle of one is the word "cloud"; in another is a "c"; and "clod" is in a third. The fourth is empty. Earth, sea and sky... and mystery.--bg O!! ZONE--(#13), 1266 Fountain View Dr., Houston TX, 77057. 48 pp., $5.00. Harry Burrus, editor-Publisher. Thirteen, what a pleasant number, but not bad luck--good luck for Harry Burrus. Here's one that is moving it along. Writers from about the round orb on which we live (some of us at any rate). Represented writers from: Papatoetoe, West Yorks, Berlin, Aukland and Baltimore! Well, we are all poets and here is this maga going all about it. It communicates: A phone call of poetry with a free package of gum. Fine cut-up collages too. A Fine mix of poetry forms and no arrogance. Obviously no one in this maga has a polo pony. Some tributes to poetry of Anna Leonessa and some nude shots. Some visual poems and some confessions. Names in the news: Crag Hill, Bob Grumman, Ergee, Trish, Hergo and fine work from these: Zauta, Bertola, Akmakjian, Weslowski. Sing these names and get more poetry. Poetry-o. Poetry-ski. Us the word fine a lot.--mb ONE HUNDRED SUNS--(#2, Spring 1994), PO Box 30186, Long Beach CA, 90853. 68 pp., $5.00. This enticing zine has included so many well-known micropress poets I can't mention them all. Suffice it to say that this publication is an exploration of the spirit of poetry in the '90s, represented in almost 40 poems, plus b&w collages, two-tone photographs, reviews and even three comix sketches. Amid the clarity of well-worked verse and reliable voices is a sense of mission; to present tasteful but not tame poetry; to create something enjoyable and lasting. For example, Todd Kalineki attempts to paint, "& made a few random attempts at the abstract./ Fuck this, i thought--/ nature's more powerful..." Todd Moore interacts with his father: "he grabbed/ my hand &/ made me/ touch the/ pulse going/ up & down/ on his wrist..." vivid images abound. Elsewhere, Cheryl Townsend contemplates age, "...someone let the air out/ of my tires..." Poetry by poets with focus and confidence.--rrle OPEN 24 HOURS--(# 10, 1994), PO Box 50376, Washington DC, 20091. $3.00. Buck Downs, editor. Twenty-four contributors include Alice Notely, Bruce Andrews, Robert Fitterman, A.L. Nielsen, John Elsberg, Mark Wallace, Keith Higginbotham and Spenser Selby, among others--this should give an idea of the great variety of styles presented. What holds them all together is a lively concern with innovative or intensely engaged language as the essence of poetry. There is very little in the way of merely formal exercise here, however; all of these selections reflect an immersion in human experience and an active engagement with it: an American's an American's lacy way around attire a frozen rule misled stance of lessening value a take charge kind of sick, surrogate winds we got a situation here dismissive shipment of over- designed blouses the forever shift, all grunt, gamely a linked-up way about him from first to third in no time --Robert Fitterman An excellent compilation.--jmb OXYGEN--(Summer, 1994), 535 Geary St. #1010, San Francisco CA, 94102. 50 pp., $3.00. Richard Hack, editor. This is one of San Francisco's serious literary pubs, and you feel a fine tooth edge in its editing. With one of Arthur Winfield Knight's better short stories about a run in with the traffic legal system, a poem about Victor Martinez's hatred of the street and hatred of responsibilities that keep you from the alleys, and a cynical bite of surrealistic reality from Richard Hack, you know you're on to something. It carries an edge, and an academic touch-- proof there are still people outside of the margin that know what all of this is supposed to be about.--o PEARL--(#20, Spring 1994), 3030 E. Second St., Long Beach CA, 90803. 96 pp., $6.00. Some literary magazines are so tightly structured they read more like a well edited fine tuned anthology, than just a small press magazine. PEARL is one of these, tearing along like a wild out-of-control car looking for new speed limits to break, while, at the same time, running so smooth you forget there are flashing blue lights trailing in the distance. In this issue we get some of the best stars of the literary presses including poetry by Laurel Speer, Tolek, Mark Weber, Dan Nielsen, and Robert Peters. You also get great illustrations by Ann Menebroker and Daryl Rogers, among a cast of thousands. Add into this mixture of flammable fumes a chapbook, CODE GREEN, by Donna Hilbert (tasty lines like "The pain is dark green/ I feel it in my bask when I sleep", "I loved the flat sassy/ bodies of my paper dolls", and "Because I can't breathe,/ i try to sleep/ on the drive up the mountain"), plus Tolek, Laurel Speer, Ron Androla, Mark Weber, Gerald Locklin... well, you know you're going to be in for quite a ride.--o PHOBIA--(#8, Summer 1994), PO Box 23194, Seattle WA, 98102. 44 pp., $4. Edited by Ezra Mark. Near the end of this collection of otherstream collages, poems, fictions and related utterances are two sideways white zeros by Andrew Klimek that join each other against a black background. One is larger and slightly higher off the ground that the other. It takes their title to make one realize that they form "infinity, skewed." Minimal, to be sure--but full of hints of nothing/something out of darkness, of chains, of the elegant exactness of mathematics gone pathological in the subtlest of ways, of the universe in process... Much else here is of similar bent & quality.--bg PIEDMONT LITERARY REVIEW--(Vol. XVII, #4, Fall 1994), c/o Piedmont Literary Society, Bluebird Lane, Rt. #1, Box 1014, Forest VA, 24551. 44 pp., $3.00. There are times I get tired of the anger and hysteria, and want to read something that gets bask to the basics. When I get philosophical I read _The Art Of War_, but when I want thoughtful poetry I go to an issue of PIEDMONT LITERARY REVIEW. Bruce Thomas Boehrer is the first poet to capture what Kevin Cosgriff, a friend of mine in KY, called a diet ("eat less food, drink more beer") in the form of poetry. Kathleen Thomas' poem, "The Typest", scared me half to death when she wrote "Speed, accuracy, and diffidence/ Account for her precise movements/ And bland face./ None of the executives detect the rage...". A lot of these poems are, on the other hand, gentle, thoughtful, and bring that strange smile you can't take off your face when you're walking down the street and remember a moment only you would understand.--o PINK PAGES--(#5, Summer 1994), c/o Joe Maynard, 372 Fifth Ave, Brooklyn NY, 11215. 28 pp., $2.00. Where else would you find explicit digitized sexual illustrations of bondage, venereal diseases, sexual confessionary fictions that would moisten the driest surfaces, poems that would provoke the gentlest feminist to military action, and creative individuals who have no mercy, coming back for more, over and over again, until the edges are so rough they feel like they're on fire. Where else, but the PINK PAGES? Who else would have this kind of fun?--o POETIC BRIEFS--(#17, August/September 1994), 31 Parkwood St. #3, Albany, NY, 12208. 16 pp., $10/6 issues. Starts with a sensible article by editor Jefferson Hanson against the Language poetry bashing currently going on. Ends with an epigramful short essay by John de Wit including such as: "keeping understanding in mind makes a poet a part-time teacher, a noncommissioned officer of the artistic forces" (which I like a lot, tho I'd add, double- ahem, that keeping understanding ALWAYS out of mind makes a poet a lieutenant-colonel of the anti-artistic forces...). Much in between that is equally fun to reflect on, into, or away from.--bg RALPH--(#19, July 1994), PO Box 505-1288 Broughton St., Vancouver BC, Canada, V6G 2B5. 4 pp., $1.00. I found this in a coffee shop, and Ralph must travel a lot because he covers San Francisco this time with a bit of Punk history, a Jennifer Joseph reading, a trip to North Beach and City Lights, and a poem that almost makes fun of poetry. There's also a list of Ralph's latest reads, and a feeling in this short publication comes from the heart and travels of a man who wants to know what life is all about.--o SCHISM--(Vol. 3 #11-#24, 1985-89), PO Box 2977, Iowa City IA, 52242. 8pp. @, $10.00 (cash). A collector's packet of back issues a zine edited by JanetJanet. In "Up the Garden Path", she sez of it: "SCHISM was never intended to be a serious art movement; it was a rather slight joke. A humorous way of exposing the stupidity of organized art movements." Nonetheless, the 14 issues here are full of manipulations of text and visual, and other moves that any otherstream artist could learn from.--bg SEATTLE SMALL PRESS POETRY REVIEW--(June 1994), 6226 1/2 Stanley, Seattle WA, 98108. 4 pp., $??. Three verbo-visual works each by Trudy Mercer, Ezra Mark, and Joe Keppler, with critical commentary by yours truly. A full range of "vizlature," from a textless jumble of scribbling by Mark from which one or two letters might be emerging, to a piece by Keppler that is all text--the word "err" repeated enough times to form a large rectangle, to something by Mercer that looks like a diagram of sub-atomic events somehow concerned with the origin of language in the half-text/half-graphic middle of the range. A short survey of vizlature, and introduction to what's going on in the Seattle otherstream.--bg SEMIQUASI REVIEW--(#1, Summer 1994), Box 55892 Fondren Station, Jackson MS, 39296. 12 pp., SASE. Good long reviews of otherstream fiction (if Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book, $35 from the University of Nebraska Press, qualifies as otherstream). Lots of deconstructive insight--and extra helpfulnesses such as a note that there's an interview of Ronell in RE/Search #13 for those interested. Halfway through a sequence of highly idiosyncratic langpo/haiku responses to a ballet competition begins a flourish of improvisational riffs on various artworks and who knows what else that are good reading but not illumination as criticism, if that is what they were intended to be.--bg SHEILA NA GIG--(#9, 1994), 23106 Kent Ave.,, Torrance CA, 90505. 100 pp., $6.00. This yearly publication can be counted on to yield high-energy poetry every time. In this issue, along with poetry by Charles Webb, Gerald Locklin, Lynn Lifshin and others, we have three poetry contest winners with two representative poems from each. Plenty of conscious space in this publication, and each word is boiled down to it's essential nucleus. When Ilie Ruby tells of her sister in one poem called "Triple Slut," "Sister had a way/ of peeling the sun from the sky/ with a word..." we can feel her torment, see the sibling rivalry. Most of these poems are earnest and piercing; for example, Candace Moore tells us of her personal abuse; "I'm willing/ to be beaten. Your bruises are like/ trophies..." No sappy innocence here, a verbal alchemy of free verse resides on each page.--rrle SHIT DIARY--(#12), USF #3182, 4202 East Fowler Ave., Tampa FL, 33620-3182. 44 pp., $1.00. Setting the tone for this issue are a black-comedy tale by Andrew Urbanus about a wack who is literally shit on (and into) at some kind of sadistic fraternity's night of entertainment, and a nutty story by Tom Lavignino about a guy who gets his kicks sneaking into a woman's apartment and leaving his unflushed turds in her toilet.--bg SHIT DIARY--(#14), USF #3182, 4202 East Fowler Ave., Tampa FL, 33620-3182. $1.00. Editor Surllama has had a bit of address trouble lately, so you might try sending any funds or queries to Surllama, c/o Kevin D. Kelly, just to make sure it reaches him. This issue is yet another howling fine bowl full, including a delightful pic of child turds described as, "Two Californias and the Panhandle of Texas." Now where else are you going to find something like that? There's a couple of steaming wonders by Willie Smith including a murderer who drowns his victim in a toilet and goes on to become a preacher. "The Dervish Unwinds" by Bill Kaul-puta is a tale of grisly science with roadkill. After that the mag gets weird. SHIT DIARY has become a very unique place to be, very tasty--like giving your lover head and he or she farts in your mouth and you cum instantly. It's just that intense. An enema for the soul.--jb SHOCKBOX--(#10, Summer 1994), PO Box 7226, Nashua NH, 03060. 58 pp., $3.00. Editor: C.F. Roberts. Some of the small press' most vicious psychopaths (Cynthia Hendershot, Robert W. Howington, Blair Wilson, Gerald Locklin, Paul Weinman, and another thirty or more equally dangerous souls) flying at you, in page after page of rabid euphoric hysteria. Alfred Vitale's fight between his parents (YOU JAB ME???WITH A KNIFE???FUCKIN' CUNT.. .I'LL") reminded me of the fights I never saw as a kid, and even Chicago poets like Batya Goldman get to fart and go to Heaven in this world. This is writing from the edge--the knife edge, not the artsy avant-garde.--o SHORT FUSE--(#58, Summer 1994), PO Box 90436, Santa Barbara CA, 93190. 24 pp., $1.00. One of those electro-dynamic every- square-inch-crammed free-on-the-streets poetry & graphix publications. Mostly dark, as inna poem by Edward Mycue whose lonely protagonist should spend the night at a motel but can't bring himself "to fill/ any empty room/ between two sets/ of lovers." Good otherstream work by the usuals (Jake Berry, Guy R. Beining) too.--bg SILENT BUT DEADLY--(#4, August 1994), USF #3182, 4202 East Fowler Ave., Tampa FL, 33620-3182. 24 pp., $1.00. More critiques by subscribers to this equivalent of a poet's workshop. The poets whose work is treated this time are E.E. Cummings, John Be. Denson, C. Mulrooney, and Jake Berry. Lots of hilariously dumb critiques, plus a worth-th-price-of-the-issue spoof of High Literary Seriousness by Eel Leonard (aka Dr. Al Ackerman). Great reading for those with a sense of humor who enjoy reading about literature.--bg SILENT BUT DEADLY--(#5, October 1994), USF #3182, 4202 East Fowler Ave., Tampa FL, 33620-3182. 28 pp., $1.00. Poets critiqued in this issue: John M. Bennett, Gabriel Monteleone Neruda, Tom "Tearaway" Schulte, and yours truly. C. Mulrooney claims he hasn't gotten any poems to criticize, "just a bunch of bric-a-brac junkmail, because the editor can't tell the difference"; he proceeds to "criticize" the poems with poems of his own & others. Robert Peters calls Bennett's poem "horrible, horrible." And like that. The usual much fun; and tho I enjoyed being the victim of critique, I was disappointed that Bennett got it worse than I did.--bg SITUATION--(#7), 10402 Ewell Ave., Kensington MD, 20895. 16 pp., $2.00. A simple but cleanly produced compilation of poetry and texts by eight writers, all of which (according to editor Mark Wallace) address the "possibility of identity" in "formally innovative" ways. The innovative strategies here are largely of the neo-Language type, to use a term of less stylistic than associational meaning. The selection of texts is excellent, showing a wide variety of approaches, from Sterling Plumpp's incantational "Mfua's Song," to Ron Silliman's obliquely related prose paragraphs, to A.L. Nelsen's elusivly framed examination of character, to Kevin Killian's dialogic invocations of popular culture and language.--jmb Includes Ron Silliman's "Under," a section of his long project _The Alphabet: all the high fizz of surrealism and jump- cut langpo--and even lyric grace at times, as in: "The trees at first catch, then amplify, sounds of the storm. Baby at the stage when he can pull himself up but not take a step without support." A funny short play about Barbara Hutton by Kevin Killian--strikes me how far the Language poets swerve from newsprint for diction, tho to it for subject matter. The other good items here once again confirm the position of SITUATION among the best outlets for langpo and related materials going.--bg SMALL PRESS REVIEW--(Vol. 26 #7, July-August 1994), PO Box 100, Paradise CA, 95969. 40 pp., $5.00. The annual double issue, edited by Laurel Speer, devoted to the observations of a handful of small press (never micropress) editors. These people always say the same kind of things, but I always enjoy reading them--for that matter, I always say the same kinds of things myself when asked to comment on my experiences as a publisher).--bg SPIKE--(#4, 1994), PO Box 20183, Boulder CO, 80308. 90 pp., $8.90. Peter Lamborn Wilson's essay "The Wild Man," identifying the American myth of white man turning into a "savage" Indian as central to our cultural psyche, appears half-way thru this collection, and it seems relevant to other of the work here-- Coyote, & various western/wilderness settings, show up in more than a couple of poems; while Adrian Louis's "Ancient Acid Flashing Back" poems extend the psychedelic generation's claim on an LSD/shaman connection. Several pieces each from a dozen contributors, including Charlie Mehrhoff, Jack Collom, and Bruce Barrows. LA performance poet Akilah Oliver successfully translates her impressionistic word collages to print. And Tom Cooper's longish "Ides of March Poem" is upstaged by the preceding series of four photographs--in the first three, he's holding signs that read, serially: "Hello," "I have AIDS," "Now you see me..." & of course, in the final frame he is gone.--lbd SUBTEXT--(#1, Summer 1994), PO Box 23194, Seattle WA, 98102. 44 pp., $3. One particularly nice thing about this magazine is that it includes statements about their craft by most of it's (Seattle-based) contributors--through not by Kirby Olson, whose entire contribution, in quotes, is "POETICS: hatred disguised as gentle comedy; gentle comedy disguised as hatred." The poems and fictions are wide-ranging and risk-taking, as in this excerpt of an excerpt of Tom Malone's "Puget Safe," "by wind structed/ obser light/ rapid light brances/ on shore up"; excerpts from Ezra Mark's NARTHEX; and John Olson's "Fluorescent Frontier," which begins with a "laryngeal jalopy."--bg SYNAESTHETIC: A JOURNAL OF POETRY, PROSE, AND MEDIA ARTS--(#1, Spring 1994), 178-10 Wexford Terrace, Apt. 3D, Jamaica NY, 11432. $7.00. Alex Cigale, editor. The debut issue of a literary journal devoted to "found forms found text" (this issue includes some photography, which raises the question of whether or not all photography is "found" art). Most of the texts are presented as poems, and involve some degree of manipulation and/or selection by the artist. In some cases the source of the material is indicated by a note, but in others there is no such information: in the latter cases the texts often sound rather flat, which suggest that the detailed knowledge of a poem's "foundness" plays a major role in its aesthetic success. In spite of the occasional dull moment, however, there are many excellent and stimulating contributions here--for example, the work of Rochelle Lynn Holt, Tony D'Arpino, Sesshu Foster, Halvard Johnson, Bennett Capers, Jesse Glass, Gary Aspenberg and John Bradley. This journal is an important contribution to the literary scene in its focus on found technique as a serious process in contemporary writing. It is professionally produced in large format, typeset, perfectbound, with well-reproduced photographs. I look forward to future issues.--jmb TAGGERZINE--(#5.5, Spring 1994), PO Box 632952, San Diego CA, 92163-2952. 28 pp., $2.00 (?). I love the layout of this magazine, with clean white space offsetting the words and art. There's a conscientiousness to it, with a touch of love and dedication. Weinman's playful gory rabbit killer poem showed his taking on new territory, which renews my respect for his creative tendencies going another eight steps up the road. Adrienne Droogas' piece, "I Was Raped Today," was so powerful, so spontaneous, that lines like: "I washed and I washed and have yet to cleanse myself with tears", "I don't want to hear your voice and taste you in my mouth", "I don't want this smell in my room anymore", still echo in my head. Frank B. Hobbs' "Achey Breaky Dreams" capture bits and pieces that create a gestalt of the senses, and the graphics compliment, don't over-ride the words. This is a balance that most publications should learn: that anger tempered with insight and well written words rips apart the senses more than anger overwhelmed by noise.--o TALISMAN--(#12, Spring 1994), PO Box 1117, Hoboken NJ, 07030. 262 pp., $6.00. A central publication for American poetry. Each issue features a wide and deep selection of various new poetries, and also showcases an individual well-known poet with samples of his work, critical commentary on it, and an interview with the poet--this time around featuring Theodore Enslin. Also here, a large selection of contemporary Chinese poetry in translation. TALISMAN may not quite have caught up with the latest pluraesthetic and infra-verbal poetry but it's not ignoring it, and it's first-rate on everything else I know about in contemporary poetry.--bg :THAT:--(#18, February 1994), PO Box 85, Peacham VT, 05862. 10 pp., $1.50. Feature: Daniel Zimmerman's "Tattoo's for Proteus," a lyrical festival of intonation, symbol-making, and forms as fibrous as crystals shattering in the screech of dawn. "Lisa's Rag Doll Devil" toys with the monsters of the unconscious that say hey-I-won't-be-tamed: "my mother prays St. Anthony/ no. it's just as well." Light-hearted juxtapositions of Greek myth, 20th-century culture, and philosophical inquiry. Strangely moving.--ssn :THAT:--(#24, Aug 1994), PO Box 85, Peacham VT, 05862. 24 pp., $1.50. Stephen Dignazio & Stephen Ellis, editors. Issue No. 24 is a set of work, writing, poems by Robert Grenier. They are notebook poems--not poems from a notebook. Grenier's most recent work uses the note book page(s) as a unit of composition. The pages are unlined so that the words as material locate themselves in a wide variety of fashion: some approaching the non-verbal and the completely visual yet maintaining a link with an alphabet, which is a concept that is also stretched in this poetry. :THAT: is always farther and for-word. Issues 19-23 (all published in 1994) featured: Kenneth Irby, Patrick Dowd, Stephen Jonas, CLayton Eshleman, Halliday Dresser, Bruce Andrews, Ray DiPalma, and Nathaniel Tarn.--mb THIRTEEN POETRY MAGAZINE--(Vol. XIII, October 1994), PO Box 392, Portlandville NY, 13834-0392. 52 pp., $4,00 (?). It's always sad when a great literary magazine comes to the end, and THIRTEEN was one of those publications you hoped would go on forever. There was always a gentle touch, an almost sensitive approach to editing, and while I tend to lean in the direction of vicious psychopathic outlaw writing, there was always a beam of light that caught my eye as I drifted through the poems. Often I had no idea of who the writers were, confused by all of the names I had never heard of, but there were gems shining in each issue, and an awareness that there is more than blood and guts and sweat to writing. This issue is packed to the gills, and is a decent finale for a magazine that I will truly miss.--o THORNY LOCUST--(#3, Summer 1994), PO Box 32631, Kansas City MO, 64171. 36 pp., $4.00. Rigorous poetry, prose, line art and b&w photos. Often warm, and sensual, even humorous, at other times cerebral and self-conscious ranging to the dark and extreme: from lies we tell our children to serial cannibalism with a lot of fragments in between. Not exactly focused but provocative anyway. "She begs for another jolt,/ her body strapped down safely,/ electrodes sizzling forgetfulness," Robert Cooperman whispers to us, while Carl Bettis contemplates the infamous serial killer: "Jeffery Dahmer's/ Grown no calmer."--rrle TIGHT--(Vol. 5, # 3), PO Box 1591, Guerneville CA, 95446. $4.50. Editor: Ann Erickson. For several years now a crossroads of the underground poetry scene, TIGHT collects in every issue an assortment of almost all kinds of poetry currently appearing. This issue begins with an excellent, considered piece by Crag Hill, "At The Louve"--the second verse: "Safe art is a damnable confession,/ that kneeling figure on the fact,/ for the state can conceive of us." And what follows ranges from confessional, to descriptive, to experiment, to sentiment. This is like a poetry menagerie shaped without intrusions by the editor's keen sensitivity for the broad diversity of poetic voice.--jb TO--(Vol. 2 #3/4, Spring 1994), PO Box 121, Narberth PA, 19072. 320 pp., $10.00. Very high-grade production values with a neat cartoony painting by Philip Guston of a ghost-sheeted, cigar- smoking painter painting a self-portrait of himself on the cover. Within is a section devoted to Guston that contains 16 reproductions of his paintings followed by one poem on each painting by Clark Coolidge, followed in turn by commentary on Coolidge's poems by Debra Balken, a memoir of Guston by William Corbett, and other Guston-related material. All kinds of other interesting poetry and prose, including some "sonnets" by Jenny Gough that do fascinating things in and about their 14 lines-- their 14 literal (plane-geometry) lines.--bg TRANSMOG--(#13, summer 1994), Rt. 6 Box 138, Charleston WV, 25311. 24 pp., $1.00. Ficus Strangulensis, editor. Although this is in a zine format, and carries that edge you'd expect, there are some damn good pieces amid the sloppy layout, which you wouldn't know are there unless you really dig. There are tons of "found" poems, utterances from the insane, short insightful bursts from Sparrow, poetry by Weinman, surrealistic word combos from John M. Bennett, a Bob Z poem, strange disorienting graphics, and a friendly feel that makes you read through everything again just in case you missed something the first time through.--o TRANSMOG--(#14, May 1994), Rt. 6 Box 138, Charleston WV, 25311. 22 pp. More talents new to me, like Ehel--one of whose two illumages comprises 25 fouled-up renderings of rectangles stamped, always incompletely, with phrase, "FIRST-CLASS MAIL." Perhaps the centerpiece here is "The Invaders," a plaintext poem by Robert Kelly that takes up six columns. It begins as a discussion of language as "an invasion/ from outer space"--each word being an alien that has move into our brains. It ends with the speaker having found them after many vain attempts to. It is "a kind of shapely pouting silence/ a bunch of words beyond my grasp/ all I could do was say them so I did."--bg TRANSMOG--(#15, Fall 1994), Rt. 6 Box 138, Charleston WV, 25311. 28 pp. There's something about a one staple lit mag that brings me back to my Boston days when Bob Z's BAD NEWZ used to haunt my mailbox. Lyn Lifshin, Sheila Murphy, John M. Bennett, Sparrow, Paul Weinman, Jake Berry, Lainie Duro, Alan Catlan, John Grey, Paul Weinman, and a mailing list fly at you like a thousand sucker punches gone astray, making me wonder how the hell Ficus managed to throw so many fiercely individualistic poets together without having the pages shred themselves.--o Just crammed with sparkletic visual and verbal items: the best buy around for otherstreamers. One happy specimen of the contents is a story by Don Webb that features sentences discussing themselves and the text they're in. Example: "This sentence believes that no one will read this far, and so occasionally goes out for coffee." New this issue (I think) is a short review section by editor strangulensis.--bg U-DIRECT--(#1, August 1994), PO Box 476617, Chicago IL, 60647. 42 pp., $4.00. Produced by Mary Kuntz Press, in conjunction with this summer's Underground Publishing Conference at DePaul University. Hence, it has a few pages on the conference itself-- but the bulk of it consists of strong articles whose titles tell it all: "Don't Let State Artists Become the State of the Arts," by conference organizer Batya Goldman; Merritt Clifton's "20 Years of Collating"; Mike Basinki's "White Boy and the World of Poetry"; or Stuart McCarrell's "On the Five Types of Poets"--this last item from 1966 and thus amusingly "wrong" about the then- just-starting Language poets, but still pertinent food-for- thought.--bg VEINS--(#2, Summer 1994), c/o T. Bishop, 2220 Walnut St. #402, Philadelphia PA, 19103. 34 pp., $3.00. Editor Terrence Bishop's piece, "Tales From The Workplace," captures a dance club monotony with such clean precise lines you can feel the garbage ooze over your fingers as he writes about dragging the trash outside. Mel C. Thompson's CARRYING THE TORCH carries intensity to an extreme with lines like: "You wanna' hear some bullshit?/ I still love your plump, junkie ass,/how you keep (almost) dyin' young--your scratchy, nervous whiskey talk." Throw in some Nicole Panter (my favorite real life nasty girl), and you are on the road to a place so vicious that your best weapons won't keep away the dreams.--o VISIBLE LANGUAGE--(Vol. 27, #4), Rhode Island School of Design, Graphic Design Dept., 2 College St., Providence RI, 02903. 112 pp., $10.00. Special issue: VISUAL POETRY: AN INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY. This collection came about as a result of discussions held at the Third International Biennial of Visual Poetry in Mexico City, 1990. The general editor for the collection is Harry Polkinhorn, who also edited the section for U.S. poets and translated the commentaries of the other editors. The other editors are: Philadelpho Menezes (Brazil), Pedro Juan Gutierrez (Cuba), Enzo Minarelli (Italy), Cesar Espinosa (Mexico), Fernando Aguiar (Portugal), and Clemente Padin (Uruguay). This is not a block buster anthology like those of Solt or Williams in the '60s. Because of its sketchiness, the collection tends to be more suggestive than definitive. This is a distinct advantage because visual poetry in all countries has moved away from classic concrete into new approaches and new media, including computer and video poems, which can't be summarized or simplified. One of the advantages of local editors is the capacity of several of them to be sharply critical of visual poetry in their countries in a way that an outsider could not be. As a suggestive venture, this collection is a good place to work from, whether for readers or editors.--ky WHOLE NOTES--(Vol. 10, #1, Spring 1994), PO Box 1374, Las Cruces NM, 88004. 28 pp., $3.00. Contented poetry with a feeling tone, emotional honesty rising above mere cage-rattling. This is not technique for technique's sake poetry. This tenth anniversary issue is richly textured and bracing: includes a German translation of a pseudo-haiku by Karl Lubomirski, "So many storms//and now/ ivy." Rhymes when necessary, plus the obligatory Lifshin poem.--rrle WORD OUTA BUFFALO--264 Summer St., Buffalo NY, 14222. $1.00. Ah, yes, from the turf that was once the home of Charles Olson and Mark Twain we have this new magazine: WORD OUTA BUFFALO. This fresh magazine, now in its second issue, has as its program the multiplicity of poetic voices that make their home in Buffalo. This is not a magazine simply cloistered at "the University" or restricted to friends. Without pomp, camp, or bias a good sounding of all types of poetry spawned in this old time eastern city by Lake Erie. Snow will not stop the Word Outa Buffalo. No, the writing is not restricted to the street and schooly poets of Western New York. There's a healthy batch of others with words that then bellow from Buffalo, among them: Nava Fadae, Michael Tritto, Michael Millay, and Heather Griffiths.--mb X-RAY--(Vol. 1, #3), PO Box 170011, San Francisco CA, 94117. $15.00?. Edited by Johnny Brewton. Probably the most elegant, physically and visually pleasing assembling-type magazine I've ever seen. A fat, 7 x 8.5" nicely bound compilation of visual, conceptual, and literary pieces, some of them hand-made; in fact, most of the pages have been produced by the artists themselves, who have been chosen or invited by the editor. Included are several beautifully printed small booklets inserted in envelopes tipped into the issue. There is really not a dull moment in this production, which includes work by, among others, Alice Borealis, Charles Bukowski, Neeli Cherkovskky, Jack Foley, G. Huth, and Ray Johnson. Among my personal favorites are a collage by Eysekutz, a booklet of skeletons by Generic Mike, Foley's poem, a letter from India (in an airmail envelope) by Arun Lele, and Brewton's own found poem "Pharmacy." X-RAY is a labor of love and great beauty and is fast becoming a collector's item. Don't miss it.--jmb XIB--(#6, Summer 1994), PO Box 262112, San Diego CA, 262112. 68 pp., $5.00. I always welcome Tolek's clear focus. Here you got Keith A. Dodson's lines related to wearing his daughter's underwear and getting caught by his wife; then Wayne Hogan's insightful perceptive justifications for killing his wife; Patrick McKinnon's "Poem for Gramma Lavis"; and Lyn Lifshin's poem about things getting blown up and ugly. This is one of those lit mags that rip open psychological scars: the brutal realities that are here now, and the ones you thought had healed over.--o YOUR DAD IS...--(#1, 1994), PO Box 3756, Erie PA, 16508. 8 pp., $2.00. Jam-packed with abraded realism where confession and personal perspectives converge at an eccentric depth. We have Lifshin, Huffstickler, Kollnski, Kuypers, Nichols, Androla, and others; including almost a dozen of Paul Weinman's short but intense "White Boy" poems. In this publication we are talking explicit rogue poetry, poems which have escaped from authority and tradition. As Robert Nichols exhorts: "reality-based poetry/ that stretches the imagination & aggravates America/ to anarchy, to sexual anarchy..." Yes, well this might be the definitive point. Hard poetry for hard people and hard times. Whatever the point is, this is not poetry for the weak.--rrle ZYZZYVA--(Vol. X, No. 3; Fall, 1994), 41 Sutter Street, Suite 1400, San Francisco CA, 94104. 160 pp., $9.00. Howard Junker, editor. Many high points in this issue: "First Time In Print" section, something more zines should try--of the three presented here, Colleen Sullivan is someone to watch, though the others should not be ignored; self-portraits by local artists, many of them funny, most intentionally so; Karl Kempton's "Om Suite", one of the first, if not the first, publication of Kempton glyphs since he went from typewriter to computer, and in the process set aside the x-y grid in most of his visual poetry to date for more fluid forms; and Sherman Alexie's "The Writer's Notebook": loose and free graphic and textual interaction.--ky ----------------------------------------------------------------- End, TapRoot Reviews Electronic Edition (TRee) Issue #6.0, section a: zines -----------------------------------------------------------------