path
by John Phillips
Longhouse Publishers & Booksellers, 2002. No price listed.
1604 River Road, Guilford, Vermont 05301.
www.LonghousePoetry[at]sover.net

Language Is
by John Phillips
Sardines Press, 2005.
303 Ortega Street
San Francisco, CA. 94122. Ten dollars.
sardinespress[at]mac.com

One Day And How It Was
by Theodore Enslin
Granite Press, 2005. No price listed.
27 Treverbyn Road, St. Ives, Cornwall,
England.

More gifts in the mail, this time from the fine Cornwall poet John Phillips. John runs Granite Press and is the best negotiator of the short, short and the minimal that I have read, this side of Cid Corman and David Jaffin. Where usually “less is [indeed] less,” John’s poems are of the “less is [actually] more” variety. I’ll include two examples here:

BIRDSONG

gives
sight a path
to bend towards

[from path]

Thinking that I must
I’ve left & what I’ve done
the body is becoming
at least a moment for
what is & cannot be
I have of words to say
forgotten where once was
many the name does not concern
their meaning left over
in which the acts occurred.

[from language is]

Ted Enslin’s One Day And How It Was is a collection of delicate lyrics, the spacing of which this blogging program does not allow me to reproduce accurately. Small gaps in the text must be represented with a / and indentures must, unfortuntely, be left out, but still, I hope this fine poem will shine through:

Stay a minute/ if you will
before you go downstairs
the night was long we
slept apart/ and must
our habits differ and intrude
one way/ or such another
if you will stay still
a minute at this time
is all we have

stay/ stay

Like Cid Corman’s Origin Press, Longhouse, Granite, and Sardines Press keeps the tradition of the miniaturist alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic. One hopes, however, that someday a larger audience will get to enjoy these works. Truly, today’s trip to the mailbox was a good one!