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Appalachian Koans - by Mark Hartenbach.
A Peshekee River Mini-chap. 2002. Peshekee River, P.O. Box 689, Eastpointe, MI. 48021. For price, info and the like write to Tom Blessing at above address or peshekee@hotmail.com

As if I were really sitting, really, for once really hearing, really in the church of my choice, to a saint of Ohio, working class belt, socks, the poetic voice of Mark Hartenbach. He's not yelling, scolding, bitching, berating or asking for money but he understands the absolute confusion about the ordinary spirituality that we - as people hardly a few thousands years out of the trees in Africa - ponder. He speaks about that philosophical pondering, someone, you, me, she, whoever, one has when there are only a precious few seconds of spiritually, wondering and pondering, and then it is time to go back to work. Why am I here if I am a spiritual being and still have to punch in? Mark H. knows that the answer is the question. He's the poet with the biggest soul, maybe all of ours total together and … he's worried… and he is wondering.

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Slipstream 22. 2002. - slipstream press.
PO Box 2071, Niagara Falls, NY 14301. Edited by the Robert Borgatti, Livio Farallo and Dan Sicoli. Christ - these three fuckin guys deserve a pot of gold or at lest a pot to piss in. Send them a few dollars anonymously - you will just piss it away on cards or turnips or socks. So? What are you dunna do?

So…I'll tell you. First you begin by coming up upon this cover. The most moist erotic cover that I have allowed my eyes to have a good sleeping dream wish for the longest time. And this is with taste. Vanilla. Oh wait. If I write vanilla and then some reads one of the poem in this issue by Lyn Lifshin, It Was Vanilla She Said, and they - you readers - find out that the taste of vanilla is really the taste of… Read it folks. But back to the cover. It is by Vincent Tortora, photographer. Oh. I might never get inside this issue. But then the back cover is by Norman Olson and it is majestic, a drawing like one of his poems all multiple of this world and images of the inside the What the hell? head. Now, in these things you're supposed to say about the works within and I am writing on here and have to get to it but as I wrote before these editors are editors and these issues are more like anthologies than just the poems of friends. It is with the most focused intensity and dedication that these three editors of Slipstream assemble these most fantastic issues and this is another grand one. Let me say that Gerald Locklin is here represented with three works and one poem is a lighthouse by David Hernandez. There is First Bra a tremendous poem via the memory eyes of Terry Godbey and also a great one by Nikki Roszko - I mean keep your eyes out and ears out and go out and look for these poets. And then I like always when the editors stick some of their work in here (Sicoli and Farallo do) and I should think that they wanna do that more and more often. I mean, if you got the car - it is Ok to beep the horn. I mean if you got the beer. I mean - you should drink it? I mean if it is your moldy orange, wipe the mold off and give to one of your co-workers. Am I right? AM I? Am I right? Or What? Each poem in Slipstream always makes it and all of these in this one do. This issue an exceptionally 2002 great. Three great editors. Issue 22. Hip Hip Hip Hurrah!

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Big Hammer No. 5 - Edited by Dave Roskos,
P.O. Box 54 Manasquan, NJ, 08736. Send Money. Feel free to send work.

Big Hammer being the baby of Dave Roskos is then also the magnificent, magnificent and majestic beginning this issue with Other Alfred Kreymborg and having within this surge of verity the wonderful populace and department store of poetry works by Beth Borrus, Gerald Locklin, Lamont Steptoe, A. D. Winans - ah so many more of our great lean and hungry word panthers creeping about the bus stops and eating carrots in the night by fire engines and dreaming of zebras and bowling alleys, worrying about the price of cigarettes and gas, but giving us, the we the people, a solid stiff shot of dose of poetry - nope not DOZE - I said dose as in sweet and bitter real shoes.

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Uncertain Relations - by Joel Chace.
2000. 52 pages. $14.50. Birch Brook Press, PO Box 81, Delhi, NY 13753. ((Luxurious paper and beautiful designed and printed - the book itself as object a joy toy to hold))

This work of these words by Joel Chace operates as the mind in moments, slight ones, as mind and imagination play across an entire life of words. Here is the past and the future and the present in relation to each other. These incidents, moments are captured in bits of images and words and sit on the page as in the mind in relation to each other and those bridges between such are there and not as they are in mind/imagination. And reading this, one is then into one's own mind and builds, in the creative sense, the bridges also. Interactive! So the poem here is the life, the life of the mind represented. And yes, it is much punctuated with silences and there are references to John Cage here and there, which relates that even in the silence between the words of the poem the mind is talking and making music in those silences. And in the mind also where the poem manifests at its origins. Each moment in mind has its own reality as does then each constellation of words in Chase's work. What are the relations? They are always uncertain but when making a work of art that so clearly mirrors creative reality that uncertainly is the art of reality so each segment then captures the rhythm of life and the periodic table of elements, so frequently mentioned in this poem, then is a form placed upon the poem from the real word in an attempt to order what is already there as real. And it words, works here and is a metaphor. Life, in the end, is the mind and mind's operation is at best uncertain and fluctuating. And Joel Chase has captured that uneasy yet undeniable truth.

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Stoker. Issue 73 - Edited by Irving Stetner.
4-2-6 Chiyoda, Hanjo City, Saitama 367-0054, Japan. 3 issues - $20.00 or 900 yen per issue.

Ah - good to have in hands again an issue of Stroker. Irving Stetner is still at it and his passion for spreading the wonder of Henry Miller hasn't slowed although, as you can see, he is up to 73 issues! This issue has several most interesting articles on Miller written by Japanese authors and works by, for example, Jesse Glass who has a great poem page in this issue. And then there are these most wonderful and marvelous prose passages - autobiographical like - like Miller like passages by Stettner about his life gone by way back when in New York City he a young tiger and horse. These passages so alive then one is locked on each word and drawn down the page - it is horses seeking water, it is moths the moon, it is lions wishing, lusting, and seeking meat in the African night - so one falls into and speeds along in Stettner's prose. Japan suits him well. Write to him there. He is a champion of small press and champion him on.

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Murderous Signs - Issue 5. 2002.
Murderous signs, c/o Grunge Papers, PO Box 53106, Ottawa, ON, K1N 1C5, Canada or www.achilles.net/~grunge/msigns or: grunge@achilles.net $5.00 (Can. Dollars) for sub of 2 issues.

Murderous Signs is a literary zine and although it calls itself a zine, and it is, is also mighty literary. A most amazing editorial by editor Grant Wilkins about books and bookstores - like in his local bookstore - 55 feet of shelf space for self-help books, 70 different for Dummies titles but no books by the Greek poet Hesiod. And the issue features the epiphanistic poetry of April A. Severin and a selection of letters by most exciting innovative poet J. W. Curry, in which his vast intelligence comments on the state of Canadian poetry and poetry in general. His most excellent and expansive mind and intellect roar a lighthouse lightning storm in our dull darkness. All that a zine should we have here - it carries us to a new place in poetry. DA LIGHT! DA LIGHT! SEE DA LIGHT

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