Column065 — March/April 2004
Ramblablurry
Small Press Review,
Volume 36, Numbers 3/4, March/April 2004
The Compact Duchamp Amp after Amp.
Guy R. Beining. 72 pp; 2003; Pa;
Chapultepec Press, 111 E. University,
Cincinnati OH 45219.
www.tokyoroseserecords.com. $23.
Literature Nation.
Maria Damon & mIEKAL aND
2003; 85 pp; Pa; Potes and Poets Press,
2 Ten Acres Drive, Bedford MA 01730. $16, $21 ppd.
Sack Drone Gothic.
Al Ackerman. 2003; 14 pp; Pa;
Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Avenue,
Columbus OH 43214. $6 ppd.
Several Steps from the Rope.
Guy R. Beining. 34 pp; 2002; Pa;
Anabasis Press, PO Box 216,
Oysterville WA 98641. $15.
the whispering ice cubes.
Rupert Wondoloski. 51pp; 2003; Pa;
Shattered Wig Press, 425 East 31st Street,
Baltimore MD 21218. $8 ppd.
www.normals.com/wig.html. $8 ppd.
Xtant3. Autumn, 2003.
Edited by Jim Leftwich. 208 pp.;
Xtant, 1512 Mountainside Ct.,
Charlottesville, Va. 22903-9797. $20 ppd.
I don’t know what makes what I’d call conversational writing, of any kind whatever, so frequently excruciatingly difficult to do for me (and many others); no, not actually do, but start to do. In my case, I think it’s primarily a fear that I’ll say something rilly stoopid or stoopidly or both (any of which will bother me just as much if I say it to myself only as it will if I say it to a friend or even the general public, like you–which, now that I think of it, is probably because I megalomaniacally believe everything I write will eventually be read by some public). No, wait: it’s more likely due to laziness, or a combination of laziness and an excessive feeling of high responsibility. That is, I feel it my duty to say Important Things, but finding facts to back them up with, and working out the right way to say them is hard work (much harder than just thinking of Important Things To Say). I guess fear plays a role there, too–in this case, fear that I won’t be able to find the facts I need. Fear of misexpression, too, but–oddly–not fear that what I think are Important Things aren’t, however unlikely others will have as respectful a view of them as I. For some reason, I’m close to unbudgeably confident that what I think is Important, is! Like poetry. Like, in particular, the kind of poetry I compose and write about, though not necessarily my specimens of it, or my writings on it. Which, as I’ve said, I fear may be stoopid or expressed stoopidly.
My usual solution to the problem is to do what I’m doing here, which is writing super- casually. First off, this gives me an out, even to myself, for whatever sins of thought or expression I commit: I wuzn’t rilly trying! It also allows me to leave my opinions unsupported, if I can’t readily find some fact I need. A beauty of the method is that once I get going, I can sometimes break through my neurosis and actually do all the work necessary to back my views. I may have done that as many as five times in the sixty odd columns I’ve now written for SPR, in fact. No chance I’ll do it here–which is okay, since I’m sure that by now I’ve lost all my readers. (“Elimination of Witnesses” is surely one an appropriate name for my method.)
I will, however, finally start ramblabblurring around the texts this column is supposed to be about. I’ll begin with otherstream, which is what all these texts are. I mention that because “otherstream” is my term, and people aren’t using it enough. It’s better here than “experioddical” because the latter is supposed to refer to periodicals, and four of the texts I’m covering are books. It’s also intended to be less of a nonce word than “experioddical.” It does not mean “not mainstream,” it means “not knownstream.” “Knownstream” refers to art of a kind almost any college arts department would know about. Hence, it would include mainstream art, However, it would also include sestinas about Bavarian lesbians cowgirls who love to make carvings of elephants, say, which would be knownstream (in kind) but not mainstream.
Of the texts I’m reviewing here, the whispering of ice cubes, by Rupert Wondolowski is the closest to “mainstream.” It is only insane. More precisely, it is a collection of surrealistic poems and prose pieces. While “surrealism” has long been mainstream, Wondolowski’s kind certainly hasn’t. To put it very roughly, mainstream surrealists (in general) dip from the everyday into surrealism, otherstream surrealists dip from surrealism into the everyday–and the grammar of the first group tends to be much less improper than that of the second.
Wondolowski reminds me a lot of Al Ackerman (which should not me surprising, considering that they are friends and work in the same Baltimore bookstore–which, I believe, Wondolowski owns). A main difference is that most of Ackerman’s characters seem driven to accomplish great, if insane, things whereas the majority of Wondolowski’s are simply telling us what’s going on with them. The narrator of “bathtub,” for example, tells us, “I am in the bathtub having a cough syrup moment and the sun feels warm and personal. I stare into the light and I am with the light. It’s kind of like LSD except I don’t want to eat my face off.” I think an Ack Wack would be trying to eat his face off, and expecting the reader to understand the Grave Importance of this and sympathize with his failure to achieve it. At any rate, both writers are similarly funny, but easy to tell apart, And their personae break unexpectedly often into high (and lyrical) emotional truths, as when the speaker of Wondolowski’s poem, “you’ve just gone to a place where you have no hair,” says, “Good Christ, I realize I’m/ older than Gerry Sandusky/ who is waiting out in the/ dark wooden shack of the photocopy.”
Ahoy, it looks like mission accomplished already: i.e., I’ve almost finished this column. You can’t tell, but it took me two go’s, the second occurring four or five days after the first. Of course, I’ve barely begun reviewing anything, but the point is to get my column done! Which I could probably say that I have now done. Before I stop, however, I should quote a stanza of Ackerman’s Sack Drone Gothic to give you some idea of it: “A scam and a lumbar/ Drain the coughers/ And Godhood fame loosens up for cool animal gobber lung hole guy/ The old story, drawers and side and ledge.” I love this, mainly, I guess, because it so marvelously summarizes not only this but all my columns–especially with its reference to “ledge!”
I feel dutybound, too, to inform you that there are terrific collages and more in the books by Guy R. Beining listed at the start of my column, and that Walter K. Lew said this about Literature Nation, Maria Damon and mIEKAL aND’s collaboration: “uncanny ecstasies strengthened to pt of no return… poseproseplosively synchzynch intraterrventriclist…” As for Xtant, the last of the things I should mention here, it’s huge, and full of pursueworthy awaynesses. I will say more about these, I hope, in my next column. Meanwhile, to find out more about Sack Drone Gothic, and a host of other texts not easy to find reviews of, check out Mike Basinski’s corner of a literary website called The Hold.Com. Its url is http://www.the-hold.com/library/basinskilibrary03.html.