Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 07:25:05 -0400 From: Joe RossSubject: Re: New from Buck Downs Books A Must Have . . Sonnets of a Penny-A-Liner Poems by Mark Wallace Prints by Lawley Paisley-Jones Orders to: Buck Downs Books P.O. Box 50376 Washington, D.C. 20091 ($9.00) "The road to wisdom / has lots of stores and restaurants" Mark Wallace's wonderfully sharp, self reflexive, and darkly humorous sonnets are wisdom teeth stolen from the golden mouths of metaphysical husksters, penny-a-line journalists, late 20th century loners, liars, and poetic hit-men. Death and the double keep Wallace company on his forays into the tumultuous twister of the American psyche. Whether playing a ghostly stranger from a Burrough's cut-up or a Kafkasque desk clerk "chopping off fingers and facts," Wallace is always the witty, wandering versifier behind the dry jibe and existential stool. His poems and essays have played a major role in helping to define what has become post "language" poetry. -Charles Borkhuis In this new collection of poems, Mark Wallace shows that the obstensible strictures of the sonnet form can be liberating, can be an enabling constraint allowing the thought to branch and scan. A distinct sensiblity emerges here, one that is preoccupied with a past that interweaves with the inexplicable details of daily living, and which struggles with the effort to establish human connection against the odds of indifference and unthinking reflex. Rounding out the words are Lawley Paisley-Jones's highly evocative digitized images. -Daniel Barbiero Mark Wallace creates a poetics of paradoxes. The reader is stunned by the sheer intelligence of it, yet there is warmth and an almost frightening vulnerability. Mark Wallace is a visionary who refuses to deny what he sees. His poems are sensitive and important. -Susan Smith Nash from: Sonnets of a Penny-A-Liner $1.54 Poetry doesn't care who loves it warehouses howl of debris, random fetters of work, business seizes ground Who could possibly be superior when countries are filled with all they don't know Whoever comes forward to take the mantle in the history of kings is a fool and I hate them Stand me in my house Stun me to know where art is a prison A graver stain is in the blood then who will be the next and latest greatest thing I'll drink to complaint and go on plying trade turned to a wing, above this boat, to fly so not to float