Basinski Showers You with April Reviews:  New Jersey Bowel and Bladder Control, No. 2 - from Iniquity/Vendetta Books,
edited by Dave Roskos, PO Box 54, Manasquan, New Jersey, 08736.I don't know what it costs or how much a subscription is. My guess, if you
send him a few bucks, postage, a shoe, your book of poems, a stack of poems with a $Five$, you are in the favor/fever of Dave Roskos and the issue will turn up in your mail slot or might be pushed through the crack in your wind-shield caused by flying brick or Enough! It will get to you and you
should do it. Look, if you don't buy some of this sometimes, you won't ever
get anywhere anytime anyway. . .
Love Sex Death Dreams - by Kevin M. Hibshman. Green Bean Press, PO Box 237, New York, New York, 10013. E-mail: gbpress@earthlink.net 36 pages. A chap. Very nicely did. Costs: $5.00
Free Thought Vol. 2, No. 2. - Free Thought Publications, Gary Aposhian, PO Box 238671, Encinitas, CA. 92023. Subscription: $10.00 - four issues.
 FOR SCOTTY AND TANYA - by Dave Roskos, Art by Angela Mark. Iniquity/Vendetta Books, edited by Dave Roskos, PO Box 54, Manasquan, New Jersey, 08736. No
price - two poems. Send a few dollars maybe SASE. Remember the buck or two.
New Jersey Bowel and Bladder Control, No. 2 - from Iniquity/Vendetta Books,
edited by Dave Roskos, PO Box 54, Manasquan, New Jersey, 08736.I don't know what it costs or how much a subscription is. My guess, if you
send him a few bucks, postage, a shoe, your book of poems, a stack of poems with a $Five$, you are in the favor/fever of Dave Roskos and the issue will turn up in your mail slot or might be pushed through the crack in your wind-shield caused by flying brick or Enough! It will get to you and you
should do it. Look, if you don't buy some of this sometimes, you won't ever
get anywhere anytime anyway. . .
Anyway. Let's begin. Most of these poets assembled here by God Roskos of the
Bowel and Bladder hail from New Jersey. Each state should have its own
bladder. I've been to New Jersey. There are a lot of poets to choose from.
This is the Roskos stable: Lamont Steptoe, Matt Borkowski, Joe Weil, Beth
Borrus and a sack of others I have just now begun to read. Now, I think
that other poets can get in, because Harvey Perker from Cleveland is in
here. Now Cleveland might be like New Jersey in a lot of ways, bars,
potatoes, thoughts about Denmark… things like that. It is truly, a New
Jersey of the mind that Roskos has crated here. He is a fine editor -and
like us all - he does it out of pocket (Not trust fund). Maybe he fishes
cans and bottles out of stinking rivers? I don't know. Convince him that you
belong in his New Jersey. Often times I have found myself on the floor of
his New Jersey. Nevermind. Within here, this issue, is a long interview with
Herschel Silverman. Herschel is a great, fine, spectacular poet. He once
owned an ice-cream parlor. He is now all poet, all poet, all poet. You can
define him as a good part BEAT. He is for sure BEAT and he has the BEAT in his poetry. If you get to hear him, you will know that the Beat Generation
is still generating. AH, I hear the music. Friend of Corso, Ginsberg and
Danny Shot and other NJ poets, Silverman is essence of Bayonne, NJ and the urban life in America, heart soul and music. In fact, you should even write Herschel Silverman himself and dig his poetry personally. He has got a lot
of poetry in mags and he gots a few books. So after writing Roskos for B and B Control No. 2 - write Herschel a fan letter at: ______…. Well, now I'm thinking, I should NOT be giving out his address. Write to Roskos and send in letter to Roskos, $6.oo and 35 cents. And send him, Roskos, a letter for Herschel and Roskos will get that letter to Herschel - and send envelopes
and stamps also. Get busy.
• TOP
Love Sex Death Dreams - by Kevin M. Hibshman. Green Bean Press, PO Box 237, New York, New York, 10013. E-mail: gbpress@earthlink.net 36 pages. A chap. Very nicely did. Costs: $5.00
Hibshman edits a poetry magazine called Fearless. He's been around and you can read him in a liquor store full of poetry magazines: Midnite Toast, Sink Full of Dishes, Coke Fishing in Alpha Beat Soup, Not Dead But Dreaming and quarts more. So, I said, alright, let's go. What does this fearless lad have to offer. And I must admit, I was surprised because Hibshman can spin the line:
Jesus was strung up at thirty-three/ I am just strung out - - - innocence being fucked in the men's room of life's last bus top - - - I feel like the first cunt ever fucked as liquid hands grip my prick in a glorious spasm draining infinity from the center of existence silver disc skim a river of sand whirling with the soft hum of the ages as I come a lifetime….
And there is this riff from his poem Sylvia Plath:
little
black
frightened
pigeon
splattered in
the chrome grill
• TOP
Free Thought Vol. 2, No. 2. - Free Thought Publications, Gary Aposhian, PO Box 238671, Encinitas, CA. 92023. Subscription: $10.00 - four issues.
There are those among use infected by William S. Burroughs. This issue, most wonderful, feeds the need, lust, craving. It's called a Burroughs retrospective and features interviews, with a Burroughs focus, with Anne Waldman, James Grauerholt and Charles Plymell, and photographs of Burroughs and Burroughs with friends, and publishes a previously unprinted Burroughs audio classic. There is an essay called Back at to Pond by Arthur S. Nusbaum and an essay titled The Junky Essay by Bradley Mason Hamlin. It has been a good while since I checked into Junky, but after reading Hamlin's piece, Junky summons me again like some siren and I, some lost sailor, must obey. And there is an essay by James McCrary, himself a fine artist poet, called
Allen Visits William. The Allen is Allen Ginsberg and not Edgar ALLEN Poe. But thinking of Burroughs, it could be Poe. Lots of ands in this note, and here's another, and there are a good thirty plus poems as a center to this issue of Free Thought, and they all by MFA students of Gerald Locklin from California State University, Long Beach. Now this is what a magazine should be. Think poetry locally, act poetry globally. Free Thought always takes the notion of populace poetry as the most important poetry. Good for Free
Thought and our free thought. I once saw Burroughs. He read sections of
Naked Lunch, acted the part of Dr. Benway, and a troop of actors acted some of his skits. A strange night. A guy in the audience stripped and charged Burroughs, screaming, tell us the words. There was a fire in the auditorium. It was all very oddly real. Once, I was sitting in my apartment, reading, I don't know, The Ticket That Explored, something, Exterminator, I don't know and then I went out to a bar. Everyone in the bar was in the prose I had just read. It was all very oddly real. No got. Come Friday. Relax, Johnny.
• TOP
FOR SCOTTY AND TANYAr - by Dave Roskos, Art by Angela Mark. Iniquity/Vendetta Books, edited by Dave Roskos, PO Box 54, Manasquan, New Jersey, 08736. No
price - two poems. Send a few dollars maybe SASE. Remember the buck or two.
Well, I talked a bit above about Dave Roskos as an editor, and again, a good one he is. He takes good care, careful care, and supports his New Jersey poets. He's like our beloved Cait Collins, taking care of us lost black sheep poets. We her poets as pets. Alone in a mountain meadow with Cait Collins…. But let me get back to what I mean or something. How's this: Cait is a poet and so is Roskos. And the book under review is by Roskos. Now the two poems in this mini-book are about junk and junkies. See, this fits in after Burroughs. But there is no romance of junk here in Roskos poetry. Reading the poems they are part gut feelings of sadness for those stuck on junk, hooked and the recovering and falling back into abyss of junk and addiction. And outrage that society, people voters of New Jersey and the politicians will not help junkie or addicts. His particular raging against New Jersey who by law will not transplant a liver into a recovering junkie, which seems typically Christian and Right Wing. Well, Angela Mark's art on the cover is the best prologue to this little book. The image is a broken, breaking heart in tired hands. The face of the character in the image is also cracking, shattering breaking and falling apart. So heart and life shatter with junk. Addiction most horrible. All, who know of addiction,
alcoholism and the like, know this sadness. Let's stop here. Time to think
about what forms of being we be, who don't give a flying Republican about
this. So the poems made me ponder, alter my thoughts. And that is the worth of such poems.
• TOP
Michael Basinski
Assistant Curator
Poetry/Rare Books Collection of the University Libraries, SUNY at Buffalo. His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including: Proliferation, Terrible Work, Deluxe Rubber Chicken, Boxkite, The Mill Hunk Herald, Yellow Silk, The Village Voice, Object, Oblek, Score, Generator, Juxta, Poetic Briefs, Another Chicago Magazine, Sure: A Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Moody Street Irregulars: A Jack Kerouac Newsletter, Kiosk, Earth's Daughters, Atticus Review, Mallife, Taproot, Transmog, B-City, House Organ, First Intensity, Mirage No.4/Period(ical), Lower Limit Speech, Texture, R/IFT, Chain, Antenym, Bullhead, Poetry New York, First Offence, and many others.
For more than twenty years he has performed his choral voice collages and sound texts with his intermedia performance ensemble: The Ebma, which has released two Lps: SEA and Enjambment.
His books include: Idyll (Juxta Press, 1996), Heebee-jeebies (Meow Press, 1996), SleVep (Tailspin Press, 1995), Vessels (Texture Press, 1993), Cnyttan (Meow Press, 1993), Mooon Bok (Leave Books, 1992)and Red Rain Too (1992)and Flight to the Moon (1993) from Run Away Spoon Press. Send books and magazines for review to:
Michael Basinski
Poetry/Rare Books Collection
420 Capen Hall
SUNY at Buffalo
Bflo. New York 14260
|
|
to forum