The latest in these annual anthologies of experimental poetry. I was happy to see more of the visual in here, perhaps a result of GENERATOR's role in putting out the excellent CORE reference last year. While not every piece appears to follow the theme, there is lots of interesting writing here. Some highlights: Bob Grumman's redefinition of "The Intellect At Work" (a visual poem that derives from the 1980s work of Crag Hill), Jane Reavill Ransom tuff guy deconstruction raps, Paul Widenohoff's visual contribution, George Hartley's noble but unfollowable multitrack analysis of Nick Piombino's poetry (there's a visual analogue to Talmudic texts with commentary), Richard Kostelanetz's storyboard (which looks much more interesting on the page than it would on screen, i think), William Benson's "Farewell Reminder", and i'm sure i missed some...--Andrew Russ
John Byrum's "international anthology of visual and language poetries" has a broad and inclusive focus in this issue; it's a magazine written by and for people interested in experimental work, not a curriculum vitae inflator, though some of the contributors are very well known (Bruce Andrews, Stephen-Paul Martin, Susan Smith Nash)and at least one is a tenure-track professor at a major state university. A good list of contributors: Will Alexander, Nico Vassilakis, Sheila E. Murphy, John M. Bennett, Bob Grumman, Andy Levy, Joel Lipman and George Hartley appear here. Michael Basinski deconsonates Edgar Allan Poe's "Eldorado"; Jane Reavill Ransom (like a dog I once had) pulls famous theorists' socks down and grins at their discomfiture; Gregory K.H. Bryant juxtaposes Machiavelli's maxims with technical diagrams; William Benson's "Farewell Reminder" collects the "errors" his typewriter correction ribbon recorded; W.B. Keckler's "My Egypt" visually reworks evocative, heterogeneous, broken phrases. Each page of this magazine is almost a genre in itself; compare to the standardized layouts of mainstream journals, which totalize the form of their supposedly diverse contents. Contact addresses are given for all contributors.--Charlotte Pressler
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
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