Any education of contemporary poetics would be vastly inadequate without a thorough reading of the work of Jack Foley. He is quite simply inventing entire new regions of linguistic and paralinguistic space. His poems have an effect on the mind that literally forces it into these open spaces to make its own discoveries. Gershwin is a brilliant example of these qualities and much much more. It includes a tape so that the reader/listener can experience the pieces more fully through the voices that sing us out. While on the surface the poems are juxtapositions, collages--as we dig deeper and listen more closely we hear a multitude of individuals, ideas, images, and complexes of these unifying all around us, indeed a part of each of us, to compel us toward a moment of liberation; and then, like a symphony the music begins on a new level. Gershwin is an education for the soul as much as it is a menagerie for the senses. Poetry that will change your life.--Jake Berry
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #1,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1996.