Featured poets Robert Creeley and Benjamin Friedlander contribute spare, symmetrical pieces that confront the abbreviations within language itself. For Friedlander, language's compressions may rob the signified of essence ("as noun never pronoun / because it is a thing"). Creeley's "Echo" poems replicate the process the reader engages in each time it must decompress a word so that it balloons up in the mind to evoke an entire thing or event. Creeley points out that the problem is that the balloon is slippery, and variegated with colors and size.--Susan Smith Nash
One of the best kept secrets in contemporary poetry is :THAT:, a monthly (more or less), deftly edited by two Stephens (Ellis & Dignazio). The format pits five pages each of two poets with &/or against each other; this issue feature Robert Creeley & Ben Friedlander. Creeley is flawless as ever--"all you/ said you wanted fainted"--still writing his "Echo" poems. Friedlander seems to present an untitled "cat" series--"chipped in chatter these/ teething expressions/ marble in their perfect character." --Mark DuCharme
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #4,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1995.