POEM BY LEAH ANGSTMAN IN COKEFISHING IN ALPHA BEAT SOUP 7/09

Editor Dave Christy of Alpha Beat Press published a poem by leah angstman, salem witch house, in his July 2009 issue of Cokefishing In Alpha Beat Soup, available for $1 from Alpha Beat Press, 806 E Ridge Ave, Sellersville PA 18960.

LETTER BY LEAH ANGSTMAN IN DAVE CHURCH TRIBUTE #3

R. Emolo included a postcard sent from leah angstman in For Dave Church, Poet: A Tribute #3 In Memoriam.

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Post:
R.
Good to hear from you. Thank you for the Church broadside. Some of the same authors contributed the same works to me, so there will be a couple repeats in my Church tribute, due out mid-March, but I'll be sure to give you simultaneous credit. Here is my Church poem, if you do another broadside. Best to you.

Together for the revolution,
leah

P.S. The title of my poem comes from a line in Taxi Driver -- fitting.
End Of Post
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SHORT SHOTS REVIEWED BY HUGH FOX

Shorts Shots by Alan Catlin was reviewed by Hugh Fox for Small Press Review.


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Review:
Short Shots
By Alan Catlin
2009; 64pp; Pa;
Alternating Current,
POB 398058, Cambridge,
MA 02139. $3.00 + $2.00 for
shipping.

Forget the [2 1/8 x 2 3/4 inch] size (which makes it look toyishly and unnecessarily weird [,]but at the same time fascinating) and get to the poems themselves, reality-bound, ironic, sarcastic streetwise, 100% realistic world-photos of the essential US of Now:

Drunk young woman
sleeping on the bar

a pair of angel's wings
tattooed on her shoulder blades,

where she was headed
she was going to need
all the help she could get. (p. 14)

Anywhere you go in the contemporary US, any bar, street, park, you name it, and you'll see a plethora of the reality that Catlin is talking about. Especially bars. After all, Catlin (one of The Master Poet's Gang since the 70's) worked for twenty-five years as a bartender in Albany, New York's Washington Tavern, so you're going to find a lot of bar-lore here:

He drank the way he
was talking, all sloppy
and confused, like any
minute now he'd turn
into something evil
like in the movies,
turn into something
you didn't want to see
again ever, but would
never forget, no matter
how hard you tried. ("Dead Head," p. 37)

It's refreshing to leave abstractionism, surrealism, you-guess-it-isms and Victorian romanticism for a change and get into the real world in real time, a world away from bytes and economic game-plans into the reality of the marginal population on the edge of totally dropping out/dropping dead. Especially in this kind of direct real-talk mode.
End Of Review
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BODY ENGLISH REVIEWED BY KIRBY CONGDON

Body English by Joseph Verrilli was reviewed by Kirby Congdon for Small Press Review.


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Review:
Body English
Joseph Verrilli
10 1/2 x 14 cm (4 1/2 x 5 1/2") stapled (56)p
illus cover
Cambridge MA 02139: Alternating Current, 2009
PO Box 398058
alt.current@gmail.com
$5. Purchase online at alt-current.com

The first item, "Story," is a verbal translation of an experience that I think most of us have when we become conscious of our own consciousness. We ask ourselves how do we fit into the reality of being alive? This question arises most keenly when someone else close to us dies, and reality splits in two. Joseph Verrilli doesn't bring up any event; nor does he see his sense of who he is as that much of a problem. He only asks in a quiet moment, how did I come to be here, with no passport, no guide book, no map. There was no implication of despair, even though the passage of time was referred to. I took it all as a prose-poem that was, as I say, a verbal translation of a kind of epiphany of self-awareness that did not need to lean on a doctrine, or moral lesson to be convincing. It was a shared confidence that did not need explanation and, so, was successful in communicating what is almost beyond expression.

We can understand Verrilli's wanting to produce his small-press magazine, Drama Garden. It is an extension of his commitment to being involved and to being alive. So, too, in this new collection of poems and prose, Body English, we see the dance of life in which the identity of seven little girls becomes the alter egos for that opening essay, "Story," in suggesting in detail once more the super-real time of memory.

The reader insists on knowing more of the kinship between the girls and the author but even the very last line of this group is

Francoise wasn't even your real name.

Verrilli explains himself as having been devoted to his wife and her own girlhood, but the overall concern is about, as he puts it,

surviving childhood itself.

While I wish Mr. Verrilli had not dispensed with punctuation, I have to admit that his work exemplifies the function of poetry in its purest form as in the phrase from "Adagio,"

The vulnerable
the strived for balance
not always feasible
never clearly stated
promises
sometimes meant to be broken
the lives like dreams like reality.

The phrase does have a specific grammatical reference to growing up, but it is poetry all by itself.

The collection seems to prove that if we listen to what our poems are trying to tell us, we will learn and communicate knowledge that transcends analysis and touches on what we mean by the term universal truth, however individual the source of our experiences may be. I can see why the editor, [l]eah [a]ngstman, wanted to put this collection out. It's very good.

Kirby Congdon
End Of Review
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ADS PRINTED IN SURVIVOR #19.8 2BX

Tom Evans advertised for next exit by leah angstman; poem poorly written by leah angstman; The Literature Collection by various authors; and Medusa (now called Poiesis) by various authors on page 11 of his issue 19.8 Part 2BX.

~~BUY NEXT EXIT~~

~~BUY POEM POORLY WRITTEN~~

~~BUY THE LITERATURE COLLECTION~~

~~BUY POIESIS #1~~

~~BUY POIESIS #2~~

MORE PUNK-ROCKIER THAN YOU ADVERTISED IN R. EMOLO GIVE-OUT SHEETS 7/08

R. Emolo advertised for Banshee Records' CD More Punk-Rockier Than You on page 3 of his July 2008 Vol. 2 Give-out sheet series. The CD will be added to the website for purchase soon; thank you for your patience while the Banshee Records portion of our site is still under construction.

BOOKS ADVERTISED IN R. EMOLO GIVE-OUT SHEETS 7/08

R. Emolo advertised for i have seen war today by leah angstman and Real-Life Poet by various authors on page 2 of his July 2008 Vol. 2 Give-out sheet series.

~~BUY I HAVE SEEN WAR TODAY~~

~~BUY REAL-LIFE POET~~