A handsome magazine, very striking covers (well-executed, or too slick?), more progressive visually (Greg Boyd's photo-collages, Marco Saslo's photos) than literally, but good open/wild work from Robert Gregory, Steven Hirsch, Jonathan Brannen, fiction by Stephen-Paul Martin & Kirpal Gordon, and more mainstream work from Antler, Cynthia Hogue, Joseph Donahue.
This magazine declares its focus up front, a focus that cuts across known poetic subgroups (language art, Naropa-influenced post-beat), but the work itself shows the limits of what's declared: "This issue... will make a clearer departure from marginality, moving toward and then becoming immersed in the surreal and eidetic, the psychedelic and pre-rational, the sub-therapeutic and the spiritual." They may get there, but bringing the home to heaven (and vice versa) may require spontaneity and be hindered by intention. While I prefer to find my own path, others may appreciate guideposts along the way to heaven and/or bone and appreciate the itinerary staked by this magazine.--dr
A stunningly beautiful slickmag leaning toward the surreal and generally experimental otherstream. Editor/Publisher Steven Hirsch brings it together in a seamless mix quite unlike any other magazine, especially magazines with this type of production. Coverart by Eric Gendell conveys the interior with a colorful hallucination of wings, eyes, serpents, swan, and gems, sorta like St. John on peyote. Like CENTRAL PARK, OPEN, and very few others, HEAVEN BONE brings work ordinarily restricted to xerox obscurity into a format even the most stilted might read. Leave it on your coffee table and watch the innocent victims fall.--Jake Berry
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #3,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.