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Derzology by The Derz. CD 2002. -
All songs written by K. M. Dersley.
Ragtag Records - rtg 5593502. http://www.raggededge.btinternet.co.uk Check it out!

One knows what one likes even when one can't talk much about it. I am this way with music. So - how can I write about this CD Derzology? So I gotta write that I like it - and talk about comparisons: it makes me think of John Cale and a bit of Lou Reed's talking singing and a bit of The Rolling Stones, when they were still good. And this is blues like rock and roll! And vocals as well the writer of the songs is K. M. Dersley. Dersley runs Ragged Edge (see his web site clip into the URL thing above) I find the music helps me create (like listening to Classical music did for Bukowski). I found I listened closely and wanted to hear. I did, I think, hear one song in a topless bar. It made hippos in the Niger brew double bock beer. It made me wrap red roses in masking tape. The dictionary began to fly. The plumbing in the house worked and the gas bill read zero! And then the electric company called up and said they wanted to give me money! R. L. Stine wrote a Goosebumps about my next door neighbor. My other neighbor died and young beautiful nudists without curtains moved in and they gave me free weed! The price of gas went down and the snow storms that usually hit Buffalo? well they hit Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington D.C. Well - that is how good Derzology is and better, and butter also.

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Sketches by Derz. - by K .M. Dersley.
2001. isbn: 0-9521947-4-0. Appliance books. British as in UK. And the best way to reach Derz is via The Ragged Edge. That is, do it this way if you want book or to speak or to check out the Derz world: http://www.raggededge.btinternet.co.uk Yeah, it is a long one - but worth the trip - see the butterflies flappin around. I can't find a price on my copy but it must be $12.34 or so maybe about 15.67 in pounds. Contact him.

So, as I come upon this text - I see blurb by Gerry Locklin and I see blurb by Steven Berkoff. Well - if you don't know Berkoff he had a one made Shakespeare Festival. I mean, who wouldn't believe a guy who would do that. I am envious. These are good introductions and what blurbs are supposed to do. And then I flip the book to the table of contents and see that he writes on Bukowski - I need not much more, maybe a can of beer (not Bush Beer- no way - even the neighbor's dog wont drink that camel piss). But oh - the BUK and the DERZ. Well, nice to have em together. This is a 200 book of Dersley's articles and stories and if you like your bacon crisp and with eggs that you can dunk in your toast. Hot coffee, black after drinking or a large tomato juice as part of the cure. DERZ. And if you like your car to start DERZ. And if you like to open your car door and ah the sweet odor of woman. DERZ. And if you ever wonder, What the fuck? DERZ. If you wanna ride a panzer in Maine during a tidal wave?never mind? You get it right? Just leave the dishes in the sink? Clam up and get on with this book. • TOP

Sound Mess and Other Poems - CD - by The Be Blank Consort.
Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave. Columbus, Ohio, 43214. A joint production with Press Me Close Eds and StampPad Press. ISBN 1-892280-20-5. Poetry CDs run about a $10.00 bill but maybe check with Luna Bisonte Prods before sending the buck$! .

This is a CD of sound poetry. Well, yeah, it is sound poetry but it is sound poetry also and too to. Well unlike The Beatles first album where I think you got 11 hits here on this Sound Mess you get 42 hits! Yes, friends and neighbors?42 jumping swirling dadareams squirrels and voice melding up and in tune forty-two cuts! The Blanks are K. S. Ernst, Michael Peters, Scott Helms, Josh Carr, Carlos M. Luis and the one and only supreme John M. Bennett. The others in the ensemble are supremes also but that would make them The Supremes and not the Be Blank Consort, what is what they are as a real thing like quick drying water resistant Marks A Lot Permanent Markers! So, enough of this jibber gibber jabber. This is a CD of ensemble choral sound poetry and each selection is a weave of temperaments, pitch and tone. The voices are at one time solo within ensemble and with the other ear you might hear the mess. All voices then compliment and the balance of the mastering and making of this product is then a double wowo wowo because to get the effect of solos with the mesh or mess is mighty hard but here it is pulled off and pushed off and pulled together and gather and tied with a ribbon of sound. How to say about this product I think of braid, rope of distinct parts solo and yet one. Innovative for the egoless presentation and yet allowing enough space for the personality of each voice to exist. The ensemble performs works by its members and works by Al Ackerman, C. Mehrl Bennett, Ficus Strangulensis and Jim Leftwich.

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Appalachian Mule Manifesto. - by Marko X
The Insignificance of Being Marko by Mark Hartenbach. All by Mark Hartenbach, aka Marko X (marko x) Reach him at: 245 Thompson Avenue, East Liverpool, Ohio 43920. No price given on these publications but as group they came in envelope with about $1.00 postage and add another half for an envelope? go for it.

Let me begin my comments or my notions of these small publications by saying that Mark once wrote me that it was cheaper to make these things than to mail them. This is more the case than ever. Let us remember a little bit that the postal employees are union members and in this world of USA that makes them the akin to living and poisonous vomit. So - send Mark Hartenbach some dollars - do it out of the kindness of your poetry because you a leftist or a union member, or a democrat or care about parakeets, pencils whip cream or black-top. Mark will supply you with manifestos or manifestoes? Many toes like at the end of your feet if you have not cut them off to avoid the upcoming draft. And while you are at it send a few more dollars and get also his new: SERMONS, MEDITATIONS LAMENTATIONS & ECSTATCIIES OF SAINT ISHMAEL and THE ASCENSION OF SAINT ISHMAEL. So, now in hand five titles. In all of small press there is no more saintly roving spiritually searching mind artist as Mark Hartenbach, which he shows again like unwrapping a sandwich that casual in these huge sprawling prose poem works here spread out before me. Prayer books I think. - Don't get me wrong - like of the people - not the church. There is a lot of notion of oh this writer and that writer is the heart of small press and the guts and the shoulder and dick and snatch and the asshole. It is all talk jabber gibber jacket and gagitt. There is only wailing soul in all this publishing and he is up and running hard with these new books. Hartenbach is living soul - shivering pondering and roaring. Damn and I came across the word Duende in one of the works! The great earth spirit that moved Fred Lorca! The savage Duende energy that surges into artist at peak creativity. Damn, Hartenbach must have a cord into that source and he is plugged in cracking eggs! By the dozen. By the truck load! Chicken beware. I am a chicken. Sermon on East Liverpool Mount. Hartenbach searches the soul like a brillo at work on some baked on zucchini! I stand in awe. And as he writes: "without insurrection, we have no resurrection."

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Duckwalking Thru the Apocalypse. - by S. A. Griffin
$5.00. Bottle of Smoke Press, 503 Tuliptree Square, Leesburg, VA 20176. 703-779-2004 http://www.bospress.com

I read a line in this little book: The apple of death enters. And the line would not leave. And at night as I looked into the darkness as I lay in my cold bed: The apple of death enters. The apple of death enters. The apple of death enters. The apple of death enters. So, this is what poetry is.

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More Talks on Bill Evans -by Gerald Locklin.
$5.00. Bottle of Smoke Press, 503 Tuliptree Square, Leesburg, VA 20176. 703-779-2004 http://www.bospress.com

I read this as almost a thing of a statement of poetics with the twists and turns of poetry in prose and the secret rhythms that hide beneath the reading in all of Locklin's works, and he here blends music with his intimate knowledge of lit. What you say, well yes, he is an English teacher and a Prof at that. Well, yes he is, but ask during your next encounter with a Prof(UNCLE)fester and even a Profestoring of poetry, say, "What do you think of: "To Juan at the Winter Solstice." And at the end of this Locklin writes, "a life in music is a good life, and it never ends." So now you know one of the secrets of G.L. And well, if these takes are foreshadowing of Locklin writing to come pouring forth, I say, let it ring, flow, harp and sing. A life in music never ends.

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I Know What She Will Say - by Henry Denander.
with Foreword by Gerald Locklin $5.00 Bottle of Smoke Press, 503 Tuliptree Square, Leesburg, VA 20176. 703-779-2004 http://www.bospress.com

So, I came upon this thing of delight! DA LIGHT! And Locklin, Gerald's, intro he says - "? contemporary poetry can be about anything and it can be any format and style (as long as it has the properties of music?" That is what one finds beneath and running pure and then bubbling up in this premier Henry Denadnder book. And I thinking Locklin is very correct, we are gunna read a good bit more of Denander before we are done. He has the humor. He understand the reidculousness and the ironic of each and every day. He likes to overeat. And his art is turly beautifully and yet as simple as rain is wonderful. He holds as master Bukowski and Gerald Locklin. And, it seems, that he has taken a good fist of both and tossed in his own monkey shine and some beer and well - we have a cake baked as fast you can but what such tender sand. Well, you don't want it ever to end. Where is City Lights! Where is Black Sparrow! Where or where has my little press gone? Well, here a bit of it in Bottle of Smoke! And Henry is from Sweden, which makes him I think thank the gods much immune to lots of tainted American stuff so we have a poetry without all the deadly sadness that can be USA. And in Sweden, I hear hardly any one kills themselves and that must be because the women do not shave their legs. Henry, you are Hank The Second. Hail Hank II!

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Hamburger - poems. - By Steve Carll.
Tinfish Press. 2002. Susan M. Shultz, Editor. 47-728 Hui Kelu Street No. 9, Kaneohe, HI 96744 WRITE or email schultz@hawaii.rr.com for more information on this and other books and Tinfish magazine and prices and all.

I couldn't resist this book because it came in a foil fresh hamburger bag - yes - just like the one you might get in any fast burger place. And I have known Steve Carll's name from here and there over the years. And I like books like this - that kind being - various poems playing with the same subject - this subject being hamburgers/hamburger. And what a meal of word plan and variation (again the theme like music/jazz) repeats with endless wonderful and pleasant variation. And here the various ketchup and pickles are the captured words from the mouths stuffed with burger and - wow - hamburgers and beer are really in the news. Let me just write some titles, cause that is better than my rambling: BAD HAMBORG, HA! MBURG! ER, HAM(MINGITUP)BURGER etc. And I think my favorite, a poem called FUN, FUN, FUN, which parodies the Beach Boy Song FUN, FUN, FUN: I've gotta give you a bit or bite:

obtain father's ford under pretext of
studying at library, now
true destination hamburger stand, now
increase volume and acceleration, now
extract maximum pleasure before losing auto
privileges

That is the type of play and joy that Steve Carll brings to Hamburgers. Never clobbers you with politics, never pounds you with art, never overcooks his poetry, never burns your intellect. I just like it that way. And the book itself, the way it is, the design and the graffics used (cows), charm. Well - read it and have fun, fun, fun.

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