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