Burton Watson, Philip Rowland, and I have a special lunch club that meets every three or four weeks near Tokyo station. Philip took this shot of Burton and me at our last meeting in December.

At that time, Philip gave us copies of the fifth number of Noon; Journal of the Short Poem. Noon is always beautifully done; a real collector’s item. This issue features fine work from a wide variety of writers–some established names like Bob Arnold, John Martone, Gary Hotham, Jim Kacian, David Baratier, Alistair Noon, Chris McCabe, and rob mclennan and new names (at least to me), like Joseph Massey and Kit Kennedy who gives us:

tomorrow

indecipherable
damp napkin

The “smells like teen spirit” award of the issue goes to John M. Bennett who is forever young but forever the same, flogging away at the same ham, the same glans, with the same roar and the same whiff that he’s been flourishing since the 1970’s in one zillion trillion littles. But, just for fun, here he goes again:

sog

the long fog the dancing
whiff the blam hog the
glancing roar the ham dog
the rancid elf the glans
log the stammered hip the
grease bog the antsy drip
the wrong cog the massif

For whatever anyone wants to think—I admire Dr. Bennett—because he embodies exactly what Howard Nemerov told me one summer’s day way back in 1978, when he said that every writer finds the audience he or she deserve if they keep at it long enough. Dr. Bennet’s case should give hope to every aspiring writer. Bennett is a nice fellow and his generosity is well known. On the other hand, he appears to have a cadre of well-meaning “supporters” who refuse to let a balanced view of what he does appear on Wikipedia or other places. This is really a shame, but I’m afraid that the person most harmed by this is Dr. John himself, whose experimentalism does have its good points, but also its obvious limitations. I really don’t think that Dr. Bennett’s work needs to be shielded from the truth. Do you?

Noon’s a great read as always, and a treasure. For more information about submissions, subscriptionss, etc., please contact the editor at noonpress[at]mac.com.

What a great day we had—Burton, Philip and I—talking about cabbages and kings. We hope to continue our meetings well into the new year and beyond.

Jesse