Matthew Stolte is a young friend of mine whom I know only through the mail and the Internet, and John M. Bennett is an older friend of mine whom I’ve actually been within a foot or less of more than once!  They both do work I greatly admire, so you should understand that when I call their chapbook collaboration of 23 pieces (which includes the graphics on both sides of each cover), Jem Tabs, lunacy, I mean greatly to compliment it.  See below for its final interior piece and the inside of its back cover (and left-click it to see it better):

Fantasy Scenario Number Two: Jesus pays a visit to me and tells me I have two choices: (1) live healthily to the age of a hundred but continue having the sort of days I’ve had all my life–i.e., neither horrideously crappy nor particularly whoopeeic, or (2) spend a week with a 100 wacks like Matthew and John (hmmm, Jesus and Matthew and John?), each of whom has been hypnotized, if necessary, to want to spend twelve hours of each day we’re together, collaborating on works like the ones in Jem Tabs, and then leave this mortal coil in some innocuous manner.   Easy choice.  In other words, John and Matthew’s collabs make me drool to collaborate with either–or with the many others in our field known to enjoy collaboration.  In fact, I can’t think of any such collaborations I’ve seen that don’t have a similar effect on me.  Why aren’t I begging people to collaborate with me, then?  Too much else on my plate at the moment.

One general thought about the two pieces above: that one unarguable thing they convey is the pleasure (I almost want to say, “the ecstasy,” but that would be an exaggeration) of the search for meaning, even though it may often not fully succeed, and even sometimes find hardly any large meaning.  Most do lead one to enough discoveries to make one feel good, though.  That’s all that almost any search for meaning will do.  In the piece to the left above, I see, “shut close facet,” with the latter suggesting “focus,” because the its first four letters could be “focu,” and it ends in the center of a focusing wheel.  Then comes the whirl of the request of the reader, or someone, to “set the dribbling/ from (the speaker’s) trembling/ face,” etc. around a triangle of visimages that include what looks to me to be a human ear that is also a tunnel.  Much of a where keeps those caught in anthragreement with John and Matthew’s map willing to explore further. 

Is its verbal content enough to make it a visual poem?  I’m not sure.  The expedition is there for those lunatic enough to see it regardless.

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Safe and Secure