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Hell Has No Speed Limit - (A Poetry Anthology).
36 pages. 2001. FreeThought Publications, PO Box 6011, San Clemente, CA. 92674. For more information see: www.geocities.com/freethoughtpublications

     This anthology features four poets. They are A. D. Winans, Bradley Mason Hamlin, Gerald Locklin and Geoffrey Barber. There is a great introduction by poet Neeli Cherkovski, who points out most clearly the unique qualities of the type of poetry gathered in this book, and there are picture poems throughout by B. L. Kennedy. Usually I don't like picture poems, so to speak, or visuals dropped here and there in books. However, B. L. Kennedy's are the exception. I liked them. I wanted to steal what he wrote and drew. I was pissed that I did not imagine what he imaged. So - compliments to B. L. Hey, Kennedy - you got there first - great work - keep it up. Well, I don't have to write to tell A. D. Winans and Gerald Locklin to keep it going. Both batches of poems by these veterans are mighty worthy of the word poem.
     Locklin's poem Picasso 2000 has a long passage on desire, which was most defining of the great Picasso but also perhaps desire in all poets and people also.
     Winans's poem Poet for the Genius Poets defines clearly the stance (his stance) of the poet of the people verses the stinky verse - the worst of the worst, the tired poet as professional poet. The poet who eats baloney for breakfast, paints hospital rooms, can use a screwdriver (Philips), eats tuna out of the can during a half-hour lunch break, etc. is a poet that says something that is of immediate import. Those who think are always smart! Winans knows that the prizes go to the groomed poodles. It is something that we all must remember. Locklin knows each day - he don't have to remember. Then in this book are these young guys Hamlin and Barber.
      Hamlin's poems twist your ears with a passion for the excitement, joy, and fistfight of life. Nothing laiback in these poems. It is laid out on the bread as a tick layer of mustard and hot peppers and plenty of black pepper and NO bland turkey breast to interfere with the horseradish of words surging up the nostrils. His poetry clears the hands and waters the eyes.
     Barber's poetry ponders the stupid world and grants philosophical insight spun with lusts and wishes. He observes the actions of humanity with suspicion and gives an obtuse spin to the daily routine capturing, for us, what is in most minds but not reported. Seeing what is really there is an art. We are lucky Barber writes it down.
      So there you have it, a great sampler of solid poet work. Some work from the pillars to continue to get us through the days and long nights and then some fresh voices, voices that with the help of strong livers will be around to become pillars themselves.

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Surfacing - by Dave Pishnery and Alan Horvath.
Write for price information and etc. Kirpan Press, PO. Box 2943, Vancouver, WA. 98668-2941

     I mean you come upon this book and the first thing that amazes is how beautiful the damned thing is. Black cover stock and printed in gold and I mean beautiful paper and a disk tucked in the back so you can look at the Bridges of Cleveland. Them the poems that rest in this mind of art (the book) and each page again a wonder and bite bit of shard of poetry that lances and lays in the fingers of the mind as you turn the pages and each poem an instrument from which music enters the mind like a raindrop of lightning or finding a ham sandwich after working on the roof. The poems of these two poets are juxtaposed throughout. They have shuffled their poems so the poets' poems are not clustered together in a particular section. Nice arrangement. I am impressed. Good idea. Therefore the read, because the poets are different, keeps the reader on the toes of the poem. It is a good dance. A worthy book for the home poem library. Get it quick cause the book is a limited run and you will want it.
     Horvath's poem The Secret is a high point in my reading. Here he captures the exact notion of urban space needed to survive. It is not civilization that we live in but a frustrating refined world technology in which we survive in a why-is-this-happening-to-me of savage America. And how creating a space in all of this is a small match in the otherwise when it rains it pours world. Horvath - it happens to me too. Thanks for the light.
     And poet Pishnery's Vampire Lover fuckuses on the seductive, intoxicating, destructiveness of love and lust and sex.
     Yep. And yep these two poets and their poems slice a bit of real pie. Good to know there are real poets in the world working on the craft after a long day of elephants jumping on your eyeballs.

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AlbuzerxQue. Volume 7. - Zerx 037. CD. 2002.
For price and info write: Zerx Press/Mark Weber, 725 Van Buren Place SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108 or Zerxpress@aol.com

     Mark Weber's project recording, CD, studio with musician project becomes more interseting with each CD issued by Zerx. He is the poet using the CD as a unit for his collage composition. This one meshes Todd Moore's voice reading a poem and Ray Zepeda's voice reading a poem (a real poem, a great poem about automobile rims) and Mark Weber's beautiful sanding voice and a 6th and 7th grade orchestra playing a piece called Rainy March 1999. And some ol' time, sounds to me - I ain't no music critic - some old time black and white dance music on the side of the highway played by Okie pickers at a dance on Friday in the 1940s. This is all the people making their music in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am hearing a world of people. And this includes new music also performed in art galleries. It is all a music of the other and outer world. Weber knows also that poetry is music. I mean, and here it is on a CD. Music belongs to all different kinda folk. These things are like gloves in January in Detroit.

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Dillinger - read by Todd Moore and musicted by J. A. Deane.
Zerx 039. 2 CD set. 2001. Zerx Press/Mark Weber, 725 Van Buren Place SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108 or Zerxpress@aol.com

     First, it is a great thing to have Dillinger reborn again being read this time you hear his voice in poem Dillinger and Todd Moore is reading his poem of American hero. His voice (Moore's) and poem enhances J. A. Deane's music and the music fits like a knife in the rare cooked steak of Dillenger served up by Moore. The opening track asks (that is Dillinger via Moore asks) am I gone? Of course, the answer is, no. And above and also more than ever on this CD Todd Moore's poems intoxicate as he moves throughout the Dillenger poemscape. It is a wonderful achievement to create a great realm of poetic imagination with such diversity and spikes and spices of emotion and the crash of cars and breaking glass of words and storms of the mid-west breaking panoramic in it is a pantheon of the Gods singing in chorus and a hero emerging from the darkness of the America and becoming a voice that you hear at the post office, at the gas station, in the hardware store, and liquor store and you can feel the human chemicals in Todd Moore's voice as he drives you about the country, the empire of John Dillenger, radio playing the music of J. A. Deane.