the cruelest month review series #6

last fall, i think it was last fall, my memory is kaput, i think, if only to remember, but last fall i received in the post a lo-fi publication edited by portland, or poet jesse morse, POP SEANCE #27. the zine is a stapled little number with the pages that fold up in the manner of a legal tablet. inside are four regular contributors who each, i think, take a turn editing an issue. #27 happens to be morse's turn to edit.

i dig small-press work like this which hearkens back to the mimeo revolution. the only difficulty of such small-press work -- the zine is not supported by either a blog or website -- is its scarcity. if one were to read this brief review and want an issue i'm not sure where to point to get a copy.

and these are poets that should be better known. i believe all of them are younger, like in their early 30s, and if you google a bit you'll find bits and pieces of their work. but not a whole lot and not enough to satisfy a hungry reader.

the contributors are erik andersson, richard froude, ryan newton and jesse morse. each are solid writers and each different in style from their fellow contributors to make this zine spark up. each poet is hopped up on pop culture, language, literature and friends. theirs is a clubbiness that, at least to me, does not seem exclusive. rather, the texts within these pages are redolent of the lushness of the beats and the sensual details found in the 1st generation nyc school.

newton even conjures the late, great lew welch in his poem 'welcome to the city of portland and the city that works' by addressing welch directly. there's that much of newton within to really make me want to read more of his work.

froude's piece is a prose poem-essay that is an investigation of the hybrid and concludes with a list of source texts. froude is more akin to the investigations of post-language writing. here's a taste.

Hybridity is not a costume, for the human or the text. The hybrid text is a naked text. . .

andersson's poems are sonic paeans to the harshness of art and life, the art of living. andersson's texts sound at once old, world-weary, yet hungry for the lived text of experience.

morse, i'll confess, is a lived-in, rumpled shirt, comfy jeans sort of poet. i mean that as a high compliment. i find his texts thoroughly winning and i hope that he starts a blog where he can post more of his poems and the texts of the miscellany of living.

i'll conclude with a piece by morse that illustrate what i mean.

1/10/05

thrilled really -
      fire calm in front
tv muted to basketball
stereo playing
      writing poems
on speed

these are a few
of my favorite things,

ted,

all senses clicking

all time
over

pop music lyrics embedded in the text, drug taking, tv watching, brain humming, poem writing as it is addressed to, what i assume to be, his friend ted as the life is so full it is hardly contained.

as much as i like paper i'd rather see these poets shift their publishing to a blog. it'll still be the same poems but just more accessible. moreover, POP SEANCE, and that is one cool name for a zine, is a fine addition to the small-presses.