This is an extraordinary new magazine edited with intelligence and grace by Kim Rosenfield and Robert Fitterman. I can't think of enough good things to say about it. The work of sixteen writers is presented. The roster is an interesting mix of younger and more established practitioners: Stacy Doris, Benjamin Friedlander, Kim Rosenfield, Bruce Andrews, Barine Bellen, Hannah Weiner, Andrew Levy, Chet Weiner, Charles Bernstein, Sally Silvers, Alan Davies, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Pat Phillips, Robert Kocik, Paolo Morini and Melanie Neilson. It is also an interesting mix of genres--poetry, prose, review, essay, choreographical notations and aphorisms.
Robert Kocik's essay "If Poetry Leaves Too Much To Be Imagined" deserves special mention for the determination and verve with which it seeks to sketch a practical ontology of the poem. To wit:
"...poetry is not a practice but that which applies to any practice. Poetry's potential drawback--its impracticality, is the penetrating thing about it. Its groundlessness allows it to cover ground. To jump fence. Its privileged role within language--to speak without proofs, to critique without consequence, demands in return an out-of-the-ordinary social ardor as it meets its criteria as verse."
This is so sweetly to the point of what allows Charles Bernstein to take "popsicles to the center/ of importuning"-- as Alan Davies notes, "The body doesn't lie."--Tom Beckett
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #3,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.