"The power of our alternative institutions of poetry is their commitment to scales that allow for the flourishing of the artform, not the maximizing of the audience"--Charles Bernstein, in "Provisional Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation." David Nemeth's new magazine is one more continuation of the "mimeo revolution"--eight word-processed, photocopied sheets of paper and one sheet of card stock, folded in half and stapled, containing work by Susan Smith Nash, Peter Ganick, Sheila E. Murphy, John M. Bennett, and Luigi-Bob Drake, among others. Bernstein himself contributes a homophonic translation of Antonio Calvocressi (1538-1574): "We leapt together like matching porcelain doves/ Before the curtain ripped/ To its predestined hemorrhage!" Dennis Barone, in an excerpt from "Nothing," writes: "Now in some battle I saw money and the police. The hippies went home. A matter of minutes." Mark Wallace, the "romantic materialist," writes: "So what if he thinks/ I'm being too affirmative, billowing the current/ to seize a luminate thread, it's where/ we might make again" ("No Stream Can Damn This Carry Ear Away"). The strength of TURBULENCE #1 is in its content; design and typeface, however, are spartan, bare-bones.--Charlotte Pressler
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press
Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1996.