single ply and soaked through reviewed in Heeltap

single ply and soaked through by Leah Angstman was reviewed by Richard D. Houff for Small Press Review, but did not make it to print before SPR editor Len Fulton's unfortunate passing.  The review was instead printed in the Heeltap Book Reviews Supplement #15:

Review:
single ply and soaked through, poems by Leah Angstman

Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, California 94302

alt.current@gmail.com

Here we have another excellent example of fine poems, each one, a panel falling into the next panel: poem for poem they belong to each other.  It’s rare when I find a book that flows thematic without changing course.

In this outing, we journey both coasts without forgetting all those little stopovers in between.  All the elements are here, and we feel them right up to the end poem—which is the strongest piece in this collection: sometimes gwen stacy just has to die.  This book goes to the winner’s circle!

Rock 'n Roll Jizz reviewed in Heeltap

Rock ‘n Roll Jizz by Doug Draime was reviewed by Richard D. Houff for Small Press Review, but did not make it to print before SPR editor Len Fulton's unfortunate passing.  The review was instead printed in the Heeltap Book Reviews Supplement #15:

Review:

Rock ‘n Roll Jizz, poems by Doug Draime

Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, California 94302

alt.current@gmail.com

Doug Draime’s poems hit me like a ton of bricks.  The terrain he covers is a familiar ride for me as well.  Brilliantly written, the poems go together hand-in-hand like a fine memoir.  From the opening “Molly’s Place,” where the juke throbs Muddy Waters and Wolf for the whores and johns.  And under a big tree there are two teenage boys soaking it all in—leaning toward life; experiencing death. This one poem sets the pace for what’s to come.

This work lives and breathes through the fifties and sixties.  And if you look real close, you will find comparisons to the present.  Each and every generation has something to offer.  Don’t let this wonderful book slip through your fingers.

Making Love To The Rain reviewed in Heeltap

Making Love To The Rain by Catfish McDaris was reviewed by Richard D. Houff for Small Press Review, but did not make it to print before SPR editor Len Fulton's unfortunate passing.  The review was instead printed in the Heeltap Book Reviews Supplement #15:

Review:

Making Love To The Rain, poems and prose by Catfish McDaris

Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, California 94302

alt.current@gmail.com

There are very few poets who can turn a smile into a wicked grin these days.  Of course, I’m speaking entirely in defense of yours truly.  The last decade has brought on a new world sense of apathy and disillusionment.  Musicians play the clubs to the sound of one hand clapping, and the poets read in empty rooms from their unpawnable chapbooks—yes, I’ve painted a pretty grim picture, and at the same time, left out more than you, the reader, can imagine.  It would take a book to cover all the negatives.

Catfish McDaris has struggled with all of the above like the rest of us survivors.  If it’s a question of who throws in the towel, and who opts to continue, you won’t be disappointed, because McDaris is a true fighter.

And in this new collection, he won’t let you down; an excellent mix of the work we’ve come to know over the years.  There are too many highlights, but I’d have to say, the prose piece: The Nineteenth is a killer!  Highly recommended.

The Bloodhound Works Serb translation reviewed on Urbana riječ

The Serb printed translation of The Bloodhound Works by David Stone (printed and translated by Ivan Glišić) was reviewed on a Serb literary website, Urbana riječ.  The review appears below in untranslated form, followed by (probably a rough) translation form.

Review:
DAVID STOUN / KRVOŽEĐE (ODABRANE PESME) / M.O.D. - Šabac / 2011.

Iz recenzije:

David Stoun zvuke i slike surove i opore, metalno gorke, Svakodnevnice, urezane u našu svest i podsvest, pretvara, poput alhemičara, u reč i njome ih prenosi na papir, kao svojevrsno, grafičko, upozorenje na krvožeđe u nama. Samim tim, njegovi zapisi nalik su na kinesko i japansko slikovno pismo, ali i na pisma mnogih drevnih, iščezlih, naroda, i vapaj su za zgaslom poetikom suživota Čoveka i Prirode.

Dejvid Stoun/DAVID STONE, rođen je 1949., godine u Čikagu. Diplomirao je filozofiju, a studirao je na De Pol/De Paul Univerzitetu u Tel Avivu i na Univerzitetu u Ilinoisu. Živi i radi u Baltimoru, kako često kaže – sa cimerom, to jest duhom Edgar Alana Poa. Uređuje i objavljuje jedan od najpoznatijih i najuticajnijih svetskih fanzina za andergraund i eksperimentalnu umetnost Gavran/The Blackbrd. Dejvid Stoun je napisao 17 knjiga poezije, 3 novele, i jedan pozorišni komad.

Ovo je prvi prijevod njegovih pjesama s engleskog jezika.

Nabavljivo na: ivangl@sbb.rs

Iz zbirke:

PRO
CEDURA

Zločini
Uzgajani
I odgajani kroz
Kamen temeljce
Putarina
Odapinju u naplatnim
Rampama

Neki se spašavaju
kroz led
Ledeni
& ako je za
Utehu

Zalogaj mandragole

Nacirkan
Krvlju zemlje

& neuspelo
Izrežirano suđenje
Sa vrhovima igala
U obliku čiodnih sisa
& podvizi
steroidnih mišica

Rough English translation:

DAVID STONE / KRVOŽEĐE (Selected POEMS) / MOD - Sabac / 2011.

From the review:

David Stone's sounds and images are cruel and harsh, metallic bitter, life, engraved in our consciousness and subconscious, turns, like the alchemists, in a word, and it transmits them to the paper as a sort of graphic, warning krvožeđe in us.  Therefore, his records are like Chinese and Japanese symbolic language, but also to the letters of many ancient, vanished peoples, and the cry for zgaslom poetics coexistence of man and nature.
David Stone, born in 1949, in Chicago.  He graduated in philosophy, and studied at De Paul University, in Tel Aviv, and the University of Illinois.  Lives and works in Baltimore, as has often said - with roommates, it is the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe.  Edited and published by one of the world's most famous and influential fanzine for underground and experimental art, Raven / The Blackbird.  David Stone has written 17 books of poetry, three novels, and a theater piece.  This is the first translation of his poems from the English language.

Obtainable at: ivangl@sbb.rs  [Only the Serb translation in print; for original English translation, see Propaganda Press]

From the Collection:

THE PROCEDURE

The victims
were herded
through memorial bricks,
collapsed in tolls

some escaped
through the ice
& crawled to solace,

bit mandrake,

drank
the blood
of the earth

& failed
the censorship trial
w/tit
anium pins
& steroid
muscle feats.

Search tag: The Bloodhound Works by David Stone

The Hogbutcher Poems reviewed by Mike Begnal

Mike Begnal reviewed The Hogbutcher Poems by David Stone:

Review:

Following on from David Stone’s previous chapbook The Bloodhound Works of last fall, Propaganda Press/Alternating Current has released his newest installment, The Hogbutcher Poems.  Though Stone is based in Baltimore, both of these collections are set in Chicago where he has spent time, and the title of this latest must certainly be in part a reference to Chicago poet Carl Sandburg, who famously described the city as “Hog Butcher for the World.”

That said, the term “Hogbutcher” here can have other resonances.  Where Stone’s previous chapbook dealt with our present economic upheaval, this new one seems to focus on the environment, the food industry, and our alienation from the processes by which we glean our own sustenance, all of it poisoned and redolent of death.  In one poem, 

The

incandescent DEAD

[...]

[...] splash

& crispen

on the oily griddle.

In another, the water supply is full of sulphur, benzene, radioactive waste.  In “In Hogbutcher City,” 

Odors

of death

[...]

[...] prepare carcasses

with seasonings

for family picnics

[...]

“Production Scheduling” is perhaps a comment on the factory farming system — baby piglets are slaughtered according to a production model, and, 

[...]

Wait, one is alive

and blinking.

OK, I can fix that

with my tire iron.

Stone’s vision is often violent and apocalyptic, but it is little details such as these that make us see the connection between the horror and our daily lives.  These are not poems for the faint-hearted, but both subject and form (often clipped, prose-like, philosophical iterations of ideas and images) force us to reexamine contemporary society and the wider world in which we live.  Stone’s work is highly recommended.

Black-Listed Thoughts reviewed by Wolfgang Carstens of Epic Rites Press

Wolfgang Carstens, editor at Epic Rites Press and author of Crudely Mistaken For Life, reviewed Black-Listed Thoughts by Mike Meraz and included a charming little picture that we thought quite suited the chap.

Review:

Black-Listed Thoughts by Mike Meraz is reminiscent of two of my favorite authors: La Rochefoucauld and Nietzsche.   Like these two masters of maxims and arrows, Mike Meraz is an expert marksman -- each well-placed arrow splitting the one previous.  This small black book which contains roughly forty epigrams is not something to be read and then forgotten, but words and ideas to be mulled over, tested, and put into practice.  Here is a book upon which to rebuild yourself.

Review also featured by Mike Meraz here.

Management Gold Not Me reviewed on Clockwise Cat

Management Gold Not Me by K. M. Dersley was reviewed by J. S. Watts on Clockwise Cat:

Review:

Management Gold Not Me, the latest chapbook from the Suffolk poet K. M. Dersley, is quoted as being a booklet that “takes no prisoners.”  I would suggest that it does take prisoners, but is then happy to expose them to all the tricks listed in the CIA Bumper Annual of Water Boarding and Other Fun Techniques.  I mean that in a positive way, unless, of course, you happen to be on the receiving end of the sarcasm, jibes, and wit that flow through this small publication.

K. M. Dersley is without fear and enthusiastically takes on all comers in the form of management think and speak, poetry small presses, the world of work, and his own misspent youth.

In the poem "Going His Own Gait," one butt of the joke is the world of management “blue sky thinking” with its courses which,

we hear

had people climbing trees.  literally.

they scratched themselves like monkeys

to please a supervisor.

Elsewhere, in poems such as “That Baffling Repute,” “Did They Actually Pay Any Rent?”, and “The Importance of Ronald Garvey,” poetry itself takes a bit of a pasting with references to poems that,

are daunting.

they rumble on

as if he’s got some obscure

grudge against the world

(though it’s hard

to say what they are really

about at all).

Poetry magazine editors, though hopefully only specific ones, also come in for some flack on the grounds that they,

have long been perpetrating the atrocities

of a number of boring twats

without much encouragement.

The Derz, as K. M. Dersley is sometimes known, is in full spate in this brief, but bitter, selection of poems.  Just keep your fingers crossed that you’re never on the receiving end.

Management Gold Not Me by K. M. Dersley is published by Propaganda Press.