Just got in from Peter Riley Books Charles Madge’s Selected Poems (Anvil, 1994).

Madge (1912–1996) was an interesting, but uneven poet. I’ve been fascinated by his work since coming across it in Kenneth Rexroth’s old anthology of British poets. Here’s an example from 1937:

The Birds of Tin

The birds of tin
We cannot eat.

We play with them
They cost us nothing
The birds of tin
Municipal

They fly, they float
They wave to us
From far away
They come to rest
Perfectly flat
medals
Of innumerable sizes
On the surface of the sea.
Some are enormously large
Some are six feet high
Some you can hold
Some you can put in your mouth
Some slip through your fingers
And there are microscopic
tiny birds.
In vain we speak to them
In vain we call to them
Or entreat them to open their wings.
They are affixed to walls
Pinned to the sky
attached by screws
Tied by chains
The birds of tin
Are dead.

Ralph Lichtensteiger Two Places (2005) for Matthew Rogalsky. Music CD. Minimalistic piano with environmental sounds. Since receiving this CD a few days ago, I’ve become a fan. Please see www.lichtensteiger.de.

A Quick thumbs up here for Tony Baker’s Three Part Invention & Other Scored Occasions from West House Books.

The following is a short excerpt from “Mutual Credit; an elegy of sorts for Bob Cobbing”–

4.

eat/one/tok
total panic
hard place & a rock
barb/moot/daylights
but chose Bartok
in front of all those people

(who, at two legs each, measured
nearly four thousand ankles to the hall)
knock

twice/yes/man
can talk, is the difference, between
mouthfuls, oh yes let’s talk

Which gives us, if I’m not mistaken, a sampling of Bob Cobbing’s spoken lingo, having heard it myself for one memorable afternoon, in 1983, or thereabouts. This is a grand book worth getting for this and the title poem. No time to give you more, as I’m off for Central Florida University for ten days. I’ve thrown this volume in the back-pack. Jesse

O, Vozoque Pulp is a collaborative venture from www.calamarispress.com (no price, saddle-bound, 40 pages) that features the visual poetry of Carlos M. Luis and the prose-poetry of Derek White. The art is a compelling scitter of pen and ink with washes of color. Some appear to be based on the old trick of creasing paper across an ink bead and working from the resulting pattern. Others appear to feature Mr. Luis on a straw puffing a bead of ink across a blank page. Don’t laugh! Justinus Kerner used the former technique to create his powerful portraits of the dead, which he published in 1857 under the title of Klecksographien. (To see an on-line version of this interesting combination of poetry and prose go to here) And Henri Michaux used the latter method to produce some of his most interesting graphics.

Derek White’s words enlarge the resonance of the visuals in an interesting manner. Here’s an example from page 29:

(h)ALT(O)HE(ME)

There’s a host in “ghost” but the “h” is silent. He lived in the same building with us, on the floor above. The (g)host occupied his time by occupying the building. His hemorrhaging was indicative of everything going on upstream. The hourglass sand dripped from his brain, diffusing and lining his esophagus.

When it finally happened, he was thinking of something else. He was considering the permeability of his own skin and how it was able to let certain molecules diffuse out and not let others in. He raised his hand to hail the taxi. He opened his mouth, but did not speak. It was too late. A man living inside him was jostled loose. It was nothing he was proud of–harboring this being inside him this whole time.

Both have new books. Another Way by David Axelrod. (order from here). Also, Turco’s The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco/Wesli Court, 1953-2004. (order from Starcloud Press).

Interrupt this Program (Liberty Lotus)

Of badly behaved humans and pallid dust
Split screen shows tall buildings in New York
Make good targets for aeroplanes
And the Pentagon burns like any other place.
Screen cuts to FBI files, witnesses, the flimsy
Evidence (a flight manual in Arabic)
And the President informed seems stunned
Though eerily unsurprised. The two gleaming
Towers collapse again in slow motion.
³The first time an event of such magnitude has
Been broadcast using entirely digital technology²
A savvy CNN anchor comments &
Afghanistan¹s back on the US radar.
Special effects have improved since the Gulf War
Events can be more easily edited and enhanced
e.g. an instant retrospective beautifully
Counterpoints Osama¹s calculated obsessiveness
With a New York fireman¹s utter decency.
Terror moves fleshing out its agenda.
A talking head asked ‘How do we process our anger?¹
Now¹s not the time to ask who armed and trained the zealots
And why there always has to be an enemy?
Who helped destroy Afghanistan
Why in some places peace can only mean sleep or death.
When do land mines come home to roost?
To whom do we address our regrets?
Or remember Hiroshima set the standard
For breaking glass and Nagasaki was signed
Off to test another kind of atom bomb
Well, one nuke would have been enough
How terror burned for years in Vietnam
To satisfy unquenchable domestic thirst for fire. Evil
Pure and simple rained on the Vietnamese people.
The Vietnamese might forgive yet cannot forget
Quite as easily as we can. They say no more war
Plant forests where the napalm burned.

S. K. KELEN

Hanoi Girls

Hanoi most sensible of cities
at night the traffic finally does stop
and a great hush of sleeping
descends: a curtain drawn
down by good spirits
and ghosts about to start work
not a sound for kilometres
except a cough deep in a house
a lonely bicycle bell, a word called
out from a dream, a stray bird drunk.
It¹s dark on the pavement
but the sky glows with smog.
Quiet all night until a rooster crows
sunrise somewhere in the rice fields
behind the rebuilt suburbs
north of the river.
The people who sleep
in the street hammocks are first up
and busy. Everyone¹s going to work
in an office, school, a sweatshop
or a street stall, hot days get louder
with all the talking it¹s as if everyone¹s shouting
Slow rivers of traffic meander.
Suddenly the girls are there, dozens
then hundreds riding motor scooters
braking gently at the traffic light in Ly Thai To Street
now the traffic flows like waves on a quiet lake.
Cyclo drivers and labourers
might stop for a moment, consider
the day¹s hot slog is almost worth it,
to see their city¹s young women growing beautiful
and rich. They remember to be kind to strangers
who try to compare their less cultivated worlds,
What greater joy could there be than to see
Hanoi girls ride motor scooters,
pillion sisters sitting side saddle.
When the traffic slows they gossip
like tigresses with girls on the other scooters.
Silks and nylon made sure the war
was won by the mini-skirt allied with knee-high
leather boots or diaphanous sandals.
Hanoi girls out-glamour the Italians
they fit imitation Gucci so much better
and bring a sense of reticence to leather.
Their mobile phones ring urgently
lightning strikes Hanoi¹s holy mountain
friendly rain clouds gather.
Dial an ancestor‹mothers and grandmothers
were the bravest women warriors
Vietnam had seen for centuries
they fought the invaders and lost husbands,
brothers and sons, sisters and daughters.
Everyone lost somebody
when the heartless and stupid ruled America
sent over soldiers and bombers.
The war ended, and lots of granddaughters,
lots of grandsons came into the world.
Over time the hard times got better
there was food for almost everyone.
The population skyrocketed, as they say, and
Hanoi¹s granddaughters grew up and dressed to kill.
Commuting on their scooters they chatter: are love poems
more romantic more sincere than a gift of flowers,
or just cheaper? there¹s the wicked past of a Government
Minister who used to be a Saigon pop singer‹
too wicked to mention. French football stars
are heading to Vietnam to help improve the local game
ha ha it won¹t work ­ the boom in Hanoi¹s real estate
goes through the roof, So-and-so is starting up
a new business, the new style of Hué cooking
is not so new, those horoscopes in Sport and Culture
magazine are so vague to be almost always right
and the interview with David Beckham
is almost the same as last month¹s.
To ensure good daughters have everything their mothers
and fathers missed, the sacrifices made are tougher
than to much loved ancestors‹
money to buy a good scooter comes harder
than fake banknotes burnt at an altar.
Hanoi girls pull up at the traffic light
knee high boots and sheer sandals
rest on the road, mobile phones ring in
a business deal, an old apartment to renovate,
lunch at West Lake. As grandma said,
Œwhen no bombs fall on the polity
it¹s fine to indulge frivolity¹.
Hanoi girls are serious, study and work
their way to the top if that¹s where life leads.
And by magic, motor scooter and miniskirt
they make the city truly powerful.

S.K. Kelen

E-chaps from:
Eileen Tabios.
Kelvin Corcoran.
Peter Riley.
David and Christine Kennedy.
Rane Arroyo.
Gerard Casey Page.

Some recent books, magazines, and CD’s of note:
Eileen R. Tabios. I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved. Marsh Hawk Press.
Derek White. Bodh[i] Circu[it]s www.calamaripress.com
Rick Peabody. Last of the Red Hot Magnetos. Paycock Press.
” ” ” Sad Fashions. Gut Punch Press.
” ” ” Buoyancy And Other Myths. Gut Punch Press.
” ” ” Open Joints On Bridge. (Stories) Argonne Hotel Press.
” ” ” Sugar Mountain. (Novel) Argonne Hotel Press.
” ” ” Mood Vertigo. Argonne Hotel Press.
” ” ” Paraffin Days. (Stories) Cumberland.
” ” ” Grace and Gravity; Fiction by Washington Area Women. Paycock Press.
” ” ” Gargoyle 48. The Great Cover Issue.
” ” ” 31 Arlington Poets. (CD) Paycock Press.
” ” ” Gargoyle 46. (CD) Paycock Press.
Elizbeth Friedman, ed. The Laura [Riding] Jackson Reader. Persea Books.
Alan Halsey. Wittgenstein’s Devil. (Selected Poems) Stride.
Geraldine Monk. Collected Poems. Salt Publishing.
Jonathan Bate. John Clare. Picador.
Shearsman 61.
David Jaffin. These Time-Shifting Thoughts. Shearsman Press.
The Paper, Issue 8.
Heliotrope 7.