This promising first issue features a wealth of recent writing, plus a very beautiful portfolio of nude photographs by, and interview with, Jock Sturges. There's also work by John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, Leslie Scalapino, John Taggart, Rod Smith, Michael Heller, Raymond Federman, Stephen Dixon and many others. All of the work printed testifies to the editors' stated strategy of presenting material "that intersects and renegotiates the modernisms of Stein, Williams, Duchamp, Stieglitz, et al." Best of all, though, are the essay and poem contributed by Rachel Blau DuPlessis. "On Drafts: A Memorandum of Understanding" documents originating impulses behind her ongoing long poem DRAFTS. "Conjunctions," the poem, enacts "part of a running script on the running subject." Pithy and pivotal, this work alone is worth the price of subscription.--Tom Beckett
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #2,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.