Book Reviews  by Ralph Haselmann Jr.
Lucid Moon Poetry Website (Jan/Feb/Mar 2000)

Abstract Still Life. Poetry chap by Christopher Harter, 30 pages, $3 check made out to Pathwise Press, P.O. Box 2392, Bloomington, IN 47402. Charter@bluemarble.net This is a strong collection of descriptive poetry, aptly titled Abstract Still Life, for the poems seem to describe objects and emotions from a distance. The best poems are the shorter ones, such as Ophelia's Choosing: "Ophelia drowns down by the siren's call / Left helpless, remote despite her screams / If she would change her tune to a passion song / from the depths of Hell she'd loft herself up on angelwings." And Softness Like Pillow Down: "softness like pillow down / dreaming while still awake / thoughts issued forth as childbirth / never straying far from home." Here Christopher soars on poetry word wings and dazzles. In these two poems Christopher gets to the meat of the poem quicker, in other poems he takes his time to get to the heart. Modern Nursery Rhyme and the closing poem Requiem For A Clown: The Lead Story For The 11 O'clock News adds much-needed humour., if a little black. This is an impressive collection of top-notch poetry, but I was left with a sinking feeling that all is not right in Christopher's world. I wanted to hug him and buy him a beer to cheer him up after reading this!

All The Days, All The Things poetry chapbook by Hosho McCreesh. 46 pages, $5 from Stonehenge Studios, 2013 Erbbe NE, Albuquerque, NM 87112. Hosho McCreesh had a shitty life of poverty when he was younger, and he writes poems about how shitty life is. To paraphrase William Shakespeare, "Methinks thou doth protest too much." C,mon, Hosho, life isn't all that bad now, is it? Because once in a while we write our hearts outs and despite all the negativity we come up with a diamond in the rough, a pony underneath the mountain of horseshit, a beaut of a poem, like Appreciation, the best poem in this chap: "There's this old guy sitting on a bus stop bench in Vegas, holding a piece of cardboard torn from a casino alleyway dumpster & scribbled on it, the following: "Why Lie, I Need A Drink" As if preordained in the heavens, the roll-out bed we got for our hotel room full of bachelors was stuffed with secret, stolen booze, 3 bottles of beer (Bud) (warm) & a pint of J & B, resealed after the virgin nip with scotch tape around the lid & I stuffed them into a Planet Hollywood bag, (somebody had to have a goddamned T-shirt earlier) & beers downstairs in the casino bar were a quarter apiece so I bought him a cold one & I cut down there to the bus stop. "Hey man," I said, & he looked up with broken, bright eyes so bright I could hardly look into them, "thanks for not lying to me, I appreciate that." & in Pavlovian, almost-shakes elation he grasped my hand, shook it, hacked out a "thank you." A passing tourist scoffed his disapproval & I could just feel his handshake all over my hand, even an hour later, every crevice, every hard wrinkle fold, calluses, squared, tattered fingernails, the way it clamped around my hand in genuine fellow-human appreciation & just sat there, almost burned. & there's a temptation to wipe off your hand in such situations, but I resisted it, refused to, because I remember what it felt like to need & be appalled because of it." One wishes Hosho would edit out all the griping and write with more imagination, like this poem Appreciation. Because when we see outside of ourselves we open up and see others and the world in which we live, and we realize there are others worse off than us. That's why we write poetry, to affect change and make one think or feel. I could piss and moan about my life too but no one wants to read that. Get past all the deitrus and let your words sing, man.

Blood On The Floor poetry chapbook by normal, with art by charlotte. 48 pages, $6 ppd check made out to The Lummox Press, POB 5301, San Pedro, CA 90733-5301. Get ready for the perpetually amazed, the poet normal, in his first collection of poetry, part of the charming Little Red Books series. With these powerful poems, normal sings, cries, rants and screams from every rooftop, a voice of social consciousness that begs to be heard. Homesickness without an address reads: "In this sordid wilderness under all this mess it is homesickness keeps us alive / we go because to stay is not / we arrive because we have not found / we move through the mist of indifference / we are egged on by notions of a 4th dimension / we are lost in the theaters / humored amongst the metaphors / ignored in the language of machines & tigers / there is no song of songs, just noise / there is no silence, just sound / it is homesickness without an address / homesickness that urges us on / to be still is to merge with the mire / to move is to be possible / we survive because we are lost / we arrive because we are going." The poems are dynamic in their imagery and each poem has several memorable lines, like Charles Bukowski's writings, but normal is a better poet than Bukowski because he writes about things that matter, war, famine, the Holocaust survivors, the sordidness of life. Normal is a voice that needs to be heard. I urge you to check this fine chap out and to seek out his other collections in the future.

Blue Forms: Selected Poems 1990-1998 Poetry chapbook by Robert L. Penick, 48 pages, $7 check made out to Michael Hathaway, Chiron Review Press, 702 N. Prarie, St. John, KS 67576-1516. This is a handsome looking chap, the winner of the 1998 Chiron Review Chapbook Contest, filled with exquisite poems of rare beauty. Robert writes in a plainspoken style that is deceiving, for the poems are breathtaking in their tender beauty. The final poem Small Comforts reads: "I do not think of cardinals upon rising in the morning until their summer songs cut through my malaise / I often hear them while brushing my teeth or pissing and know that once more a fragment of beauty has outlasted night and it is small comforts that move me forward into the next trench the next day, the next task to get through / to simply get through / the next bridge to burn or engine to stoke / the next flower to grasp with stained open hands / It is small comforts that move me forward -- a pretty girl's smile across a quiet room, eyes saying, "I know, and it is not so bad." / Perhaps the morning walk down the hallway to get the mail or a midnight call to Tokyo to talk with angels in a language better than my own. / If I've learned one thing, it is this: Enemies are not worth time to think of and kind words are too precious to be lost in memory. / It is small comforts that move us forward." Robert L. Penick writes with the soul of Woody Guthrie and the heart of Walt Whitman. Robert is a caring gentle soul and a gifted poet. I enjoyed this chapbook the most out of all the ones I reviewed this issue, and it is well deserving of winning the Chiron Review Chapbook Contest. I highly recommend it.

Days Done Dry poetry chapbook by Lindsay Wilson. 24 pages, $3 check made out to John Berbrich, Bone World Publishing, 3700 County Route 24, Russell, New York 13684. A beautifully wrought poetry collection by Lindsay Wilson with a fine woodcut graphic on the cover by Kathleen Johnson. This is a well-crafted collection of poetry, infused with surprising metaphors and descriptions, as dry and arid as the Santa Ana Winds blowing through the valley, parched like the thirst for a better life, an escape from the mundane reality of it all. Swaying reads: " God's gone and even though I know we brought Him with us I'm still searching the plains, but all I find is drying soil. Some people see Him like heat on the road. He is the water out of our faucets quenching more than the masses. And though I can not find him today on the plains I roll back and watch the big sky fill in. Rain clouds hang low at 7200 feet, hefty humus clouds heading east down interstate 80, giving all they can to a land that languishes in mediocrity--and wasteland's weeds swaying their goodbye as the Wyoming wind pushes off, the only savior they'll ever feel." It's in the details, and Wilson expresses the details lovingly.

Erratic Sleep In A Cold Hotel poetry book by Maria Kazalia. 68 pages, perfect bound paperback with jacket sleeve, $4.95 from Phony Lid Publications, P.O. Box 2153, Rosemead, CA 91770. E-mail phonylid@earthlink.net Charles Bukowski once said that "poetry is a hairy cunt". If that's the case than this poetry is a hairy cunt oozing festering sores and 6 weeks overdue for a douching! This is really powerful, provocative, gritty day-of-the-locust poetry, ripe with rotting garbage spilling out into rat-infested hallways of abandoned run-down hotels, cruddy boarding homes, and third world countries swarming with prostitutes, creepy johns, alcoholics, junkies, rapists and the homeless. Not a pretty picture, but some light pours through the holes in the wall, and a sense of humour and fighting spirit comes through, a determination to make it through. Mother Adventure is a recurring character, a prostitute who keeps getting arrested. She eggs on the female cops who are about to give her a cavity search, with an "ooh baby!". Tokyo Party Girl has better luck, and better writing, more alive: "The European man thought this American woman from Oklahoma probably quite loose / they'd only known each other five minutes/ already she called him HONEY when she started selling Keith Haring T-shirts on the street while he sold drugs / both dodged the Yakuza / became lovers / in time she graduated up to club hostess in the trendy Roppongi district / rode on the back of his motorcycle flying high on hash and acid / adopted her boyfriend's macrobiotic diet for a few minutes, I mean after all he knew people who'd been in Warhol's Interview Magazine, but he wouldn't introduce her though she stood right there beside him while he talked, ignored party girl Roppangi girl / one yen in the bank drinking every night for a living, with Japanese men, while her boyfriend goes out she spends the night in a love hotel with a club customer who gives her one hundred dollars taxi fare / considers prostitution as a trendy possibility / it impresses her boyfriend as exceedingly tough / all this happening as I stood alone on the balcony listening to the monsoon rain pour of my schizoid world." This is not pretty, but then all poetry can't be fluffy happy bunnies! This gritty poetry is informed by Kazalia's four years as an expatriate living in Japan, India and Hong Kong, and by her several years living in cheap run down hotels in San Francisco. She endured a lot, and captures quite another world in her work. I admire her spirit. Only for the strong of stomach and heart.

Inspired By Their Spirits. Poetry book by Charles Portolano. 78 pages, $12 check made out to Wyndam Hall Press, 52857 CR 21, Bristol, IN 46507-9460. Charles Portolano writes with passion, pure love, grace and dignity about how he and his wife first met, and then about how the birth of their daughter changed their lives forever. The Portolanos' daughter was born with hearing impairment, a rare form of Congenital Scoliosis, and a rare form of Spina Bifida. The traumas they went through together only made their marriage stronger and made Charles become more of a man, more in touch with his emotions, as he showered his daughter with love and attention. Along the way Charles experienced doubt and the fear that he would not measure up to the task of raising and caring for his daughter, but the light of the setting sun is like a metaphor for the emotional map of his heart and mind. Charles captures this sense in the beautiful mature poem Out On A Walkabout later in the book. "My unrelenting fears wake me to the dawn for my grief grows so great in the night / I can barely breathe as my thinking overwhelms me / I am dragged down by my demons who won't let my heart be heard / so I start to walk alone with tears streaming down my burning cheeks raw with redness / I aimlessly walk numb with despair hoping to heal my heavy heart / I walk all day stopping to stare into the setting sun / fills me with wonder for the light is life as I grow so tired returning home now emotionally ready to finally collapse into the coming darkness." The light in his daughter's eyes is enough to lift his heavy heart. Life's challenges just make us stronger in the end, and throughout this book we see Charles mature and grow as a person. Charles is a warm-hearted poet who has been triply blessed, with a wonderful wife, a wonderful daughter, and a wonderful way of expressing his emotions through his uplifting poetry. He is a brother of the road.

Loose Ends Poetry chapbook by Ed Galing. 52 pages, $10 from Peerless Press. Send $10 check to Ed Galing, 3435 Mill Road, Hatboro, PA 19040. A bit overpriced at $10, this is an otherwise enjoyable collection from the prolific and always entertaining Ed Galing, Poet laureate of Hatboro, PA. Ed writes with a nostalgia for the times when men wore Stetson hats and looked good downing a drink and women were dames and danced with guys…guys and dolls. Ed's poems usually have a kicker at the end or a humourous last line to sum everything up. The Old Shoe reads: "My wife sez I'm like an old shoe that has seen a better day. She sez I'm run down at the heel, that she should throw me away. She sez that all I'm good for, now that I have retired and have no cash, is to sit around and gripe a lot…, and take out the trash. And then, she smiles, and chuckles too, and jumps into my lap, and then we kiss and smooch a few (then we take a nap)." More seriousness and nostalgia informs Ed's other new chapbook Prayers On A Tenement Rooftop, $3 from Doug Holder, Ibbetson St. Press, 33 Ibbetson Street, Somerville, MA 02143. Ed writes about his experiences growing up Jewish in a tenement on New York City's Lower East Side. The sights, the sounds, the smells, pungent and alive in Ed's memories, all create a beautifully wrought expression of his fondly recalled youth. Ambition Yearned For reads: "I struggled between growing up Jewish and needing to be American / to bridge the difference was difficult / my parents brought old tradition to the lower east side; and they were content to stay within this enclave; to pray in the synagogue, and observe the Jewish holidays was enough for them / my mother loved to cook made the finest tzimmis, sweet potatoes, chuck meat, prunes, and oh the aroma…ess, ess, my kind, no matter how much I ate, always not enough…my father read his Jewish paper, went out with his Jewish cronies on the lower east side to argue Jewish lore, and I was the only child; wanting to be loyal to my roots, yet yearning for a breath of new air…the lower east side my beloved home / trying to understand." Ed's poetry is full of love and the comforts of home, and peaceful nostalgia. He is performing an important service by preserving his memories of growing up poor in New York City, and his other books which deal with WWII and visiting concentration camps after the war. He is a kind gentle soul, and his poetry and prose sings with spirit and soul. We need writers more like him. He is a real Mensch, as Doug Holder says in the introduction to this chap (Mensch is defined by Leo Rosten as "someone of consequence, someone to emulate, of noble character"). Ed Galing's writings are like chicken soup for the soul.

one shot, maybe more Poetry chapbook by David Michael McNamara and John Sweet. 36 pages, $2 from Crimson Leer Press, 8772 State Route 80, Fabius, NY 13063-9769. Damn, another sad chapbook filled with poems of despair and savage beauty. What price art? David Michael McNamara writes about drinking and relationships and dining alone. His sweet poem entitled Chemistry reads: " I heard someone tell her that she always looks sad, always appears to have been crying. She said it was her eyes, always glossy and full of water. I wanted to tell her I think your eyes are beautiful, could I buy you my company? This is the fingerprint of a loser. I always get going around midnight, just before the bars close, just after all the singles have been paired. What is there to do, the next day, when faced with contrasts as wakening as black coffee and her? I take one last look at her and then at the check she has placed before me, and it is then that I realize: This is the composition of big tips." It reminds me of a line from David's favorite rocker Bruce Springsteen (just kidding David): "There's a sadness, hidden in that pretty face.." from Bruce's song Candy's Room. Indeed, a faraway look in a pretty girl's eyes can drive a man to drink, and these poems resound with sweet beauty. The second author in the chap, John Sweet writes poetry here that burns with savagery, about rape, slaughter, and people on fire, but rays of hope & light & love pour through in love poems mixed in with the brutality. It's an odd and disconcerting mix of messages, but it works. Man On Fire reads; "Man on fire runs down Washington Ave. / the smell of burning flesh is everywhere / we watch until he's nothing but charred remains and cooling bones / this will be something to tell our families about at the dinner table tonight." A macabre sense of humor amidst all the chaotic poems, but then a few poems of love and beauty pour forth: Room Of Tears reads: "afraid of this room of tears / these thin walls that let nothing in / the first time I surrender is the last time you smile / all I want is your soft touch in a collapsing building / everything else is deep water." John Sweet and David Michael McNamara write intelligent, thoughtful, vibrant poetry of devastating beauty. This is one of the best chaps I have read in a while and I look forward to more of their work, separately and in possible further collaboration. They go well together, like a whiskey and coke, so set one more up Joe, it's 3 a.m… Highly recommended, at a bargain basement price, with intriguing b& w photo compositions by McNamara.

Poems For The Poet, The Working Man, And The Downtrodden. Poetry chapbook by A.D.Winans, with photos and artwork by Winans, Richard Wilhelm and Mark Green. 28 pages, $4 check made out to Doug Holder, Ibbetson St. Press, 33 Ibbetson Street, Somerville MA 02143. A.D. Winans is a fine poet of the Beat Generation, though he is not necessarily a Beat poet. He was friends with Charles Bukowski and sometimes emulates him, but Winans has a softer heart and his words ring out with truth and beauty. Sometimes a cynic or a poet longing for fame peeks through Winans' work, but that's just his honesty showing through: we'd all like to be famous poets, and inside the heart of a romantic is a cynic trying to break free. But Winans softens the cynicism with humour and street smarts and wisdom learned from forging his way through the poetry and art world. Advice To A Young Poet reads: "Walt Whitman said to have great poetry we must first have great audiences but I think he had it backwards / remember that betrayal is but a built in concept of the way things are / the blade will never be as sharp once you know it's been there. Keep to yourself / you are your best friend / always remember that street vendors fisherman and newsmen standing on the corners of America know more about life than the average poet / remember above all else that poetry is not a holy thing that poetry is only poetry when it forgets its holiness and that, like a good poet, is rare." I genuinely enjoy A. D. Winan's work, and this collection gives us much to muse about the subject of poetry, poetry slams, and art. A.D. is the last of a dying breed, and I highly recommend his poetry to you.

Saltpetre Vol. 1 Quarterly 70+ min poetry cd, various poets. Available for around $14 at all Borders, Virgin, or Tower Records or send $20.00 International Money Order to Saltpetre, P.O. Box 20698, London NW6 6FF. A terrific sounding audio collage of poetry and jazz music background, read by 30 U.K. and U. S. poets including A.D. Winans, Jack Philips Lowe and Salena Saliva, all featured in Lucid Moon. This is modern contemporary poetry, and while it sounded great, I couldn't help but long for the majesty of a poem written by a Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Arthur Rimbaud, even an Allen Ginsberg or Jim Morrison or Octavio Paz. I guess that isn't fair, no one writes like those people anymore, and I shouldn't review the poetry on what it isn't rather than what it is. Okay, let me start over. There were mostly good poems and a couple annoying ones, the annoying ones by poets who seemed to be out to only impress the audience by reading at lightning speed, as if they were doing a comedy or experimental piece. Overall an enjoyable cross-section of modern poetry styles, much like a decent night at a poetry reading at your local café of choice. A lyric sheet would be nice for the poetry. Some highlights were Roxanne Escobales' Tijuana Dreams; Jack Scott's Three Fury's Mourning At The Base Of The Crucifixion; Ivan Penaluna's Street Walking Beat Poet; A. D. Winans' D.A. Levy Was Dead Right; Paul Lyall's Postcard From Nowhere; Cheryl B.'s Motor Oil Queen and Salena Saliva's Magpie. The poetry was a mix of live readings and studio recordings. I look forward to hearing future volumes of Saltpetre, and I think Salena Saliva and the Peyote Coyote did a great job of production, the sound quality is great, now just weed out the dross and try to add a majestic poem or two to the mix maybe. Like one of my poems! Ahem. Hint hint, nudge nudge wink wink knowhatimean?

These Nights Nothing Can Keep Us In. Poetry chapbook by Errol Miller. 18 pages, $4, check made out to Phony Lid Publications, P.O. Box 2153, Rosemead, CA 91770. Errol Miller is one of the most prolific poets in America, along with Lyn Lifshin and Charles Bukowski. That's not to dismiss his poetry, which is very good. Errol calls himself ""The Woolworth Poet Of America", dusty, shopworn, on the shelf for a while…" and at first glance that about describes his long epic poem that makes up this chapbook. Yes, Errol uses shopworn phrases and ideas, but he puts them together in a blender and comes up with colorful new thought designs and patterns by way of juxtaposition. No, Errol is more like the reincarnation of Walt Whitman, his poetry full of desire, dreams and wonder. He throws out metaphors in a manic rush of ideas, and often comes up with memorable lines. The ending of These Nights Nothing Can Keep Us In reads: "…Really, does it matter? Does it seem so casual? A reception in a hotel in Paris in the Nineteen 20's? Bright autumn moonlight lights the way. Pastoral things are so important. In this season nothing moves. Dancing? Yes, dancing, and endless time. We were just yellow butterflies with crumpled wings, a breeze, a shadow, authors rowing on drenched in sweat. This is the light and way. From Alpha to Omega. The earth endures, they say in acceptance speeches, but pray never to be caught bleeding face-down in the dust of Yazoo City. Board up your dreams. Go to a tavern and wait. Lady, empty your barrel elsewhere. You are an awful lover, an awful lover. You know where we went for guidance. These nights nothing can keep us in. We sit alone by a cherry fire hoisting fishnets up to Heaven. Stone drums echo from Somewhere Else. It is an awesome distant charting, a story rising and falling, then vanishing into a long dark poem. Beyond the rainbow's edge there are no bright city lights, just the Damsel's Queen's bittersweet revenge and men selling spoiled produce. These nights nothing can keep us in." This is candy for the mind, sweet and savory, not the same as junk food for the mind, which is empty calories. This is a good read, and I dig Errol's other work as well. Write on, brother!

This Groovy Movie. Poetry chapbook by Joseph Verrilli, with art by Margaret Crocker. 20 pages, $2 from Crimson Leer Press, 8772 State Route 80, Fabius, NY 13063-9769. This is a fine chapbook of poems with the theme of movie-going, and it catches that strange heart-stopping moment when the piped-in loudspeaker music goes silent and the lights go down and the screen opens up, that mysterious anticipation of what lies in store for the moviegoer…will we witness bare flesh and a couple making love? Will we witness a murder, a comedy or something more profound? Joe has a way with words and word images. Basically, we are all teenagers watching a movie, Joe says with the first poem, We're All Teenagers: "It's all sweet and grotesque / a multimedia silk-screened freakshow where hendrix comes on after the world news and promises from green-gilled aliens with dayglo eyes that porno isn't sinful that it isn't porno it isn't anything but the way things are supposed to be / welcome to the shrine / guitars are frenzied / behold what you don't know / ageless vixen of the whorelands / the papier mache consciousness of our disposable world." I like that last line, and I like a lot of cool lines and imagery in this work. Also provocative with a hint of darkness are Margaret Crocker's cryptic drawings; they go nicely with the poems. A fine chap, at a cheap price, definitely check it out!

Unlocking The Exits. Perfect bound paperback poetry book by Eliot Katz. 175 pages, $13.95, available through Amazon.com or special order from your local bookstore, or Coffee House Press, 27 North Fourth Street, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401. On the blurb on the back cover, fellow poet Alicia Ostriker writes that "Eliot Katz has been for years an exuberant heir of Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and Allen Ginsberg…" Indeed, the ghosts of those great poets linger in the air that Katz breathes; their atoms inform his being. This fine collection brings the best of Katz' recent work together, work full of passion, politics, and poetics, delivered in a rambling rant style, infused with humour and social conscience. The epic poem Liberation Recalled which ends this collection powerfully intersperses an interview with Katz' mother about the Holocaust, with Katz' own political and social commentary, to great effect: "3. After a holocaust, who counts the breathless bodies lying shackled beneath slaveship floorboards? Who invents theory justifying tourists' annihilation of a newly visited continent's outstretched-hand inhabitants? After a quarter of its people x'ed out by U.S.-backed Indonesian army, how many American Phds can even find East Timor on a map? What recovery path will end the full-spine shivers at the word "Soviet" felt by so many who believed in utopian ideals? After the extermination of European Jewry--after this holocaust--how does one learn to sing in a shower again?" This is contrasted with testimony from Katz' mother, her memories of Auschwitz recalled like the testimony in the 9 hour documentary Shoah: "4. --What did your parents do? --My father, Elias, was a businessman dealing with fruit, wholesale fruit. And my mother, Freida, stayed home because she had kids, almost every two years another baby. --What about your sisters and brothers? --We were eight kids. I was the oldest. Three of us survived Auschwitz and were always together. The younger kids they killed in Auschwitz the day they took us to Auschwitz--there was Etu, Bila, and Tsira, the youngest kids, and then we had two brothers, Srul and Mandy…" Then more from Katz and then more from his mother, she in simple matter-of-fact plainspoken detail and ashen memory, he in broad colorful strokes, all to devastating effect, the angry son, full of defiance and social activism, compassionate and passionate for a world he has inherited, eager to record a world he cannot understand, a world of horrors that engulfed his mother's family. This poem is just heartbreaking in its sincerity and cumulative effect. Throughout this collection Katz is at his peak, writing about things that matter to him. But Katz goes beyond the wheelbarrows and plums and baseball of a pastoral W.C. Williams to arrive at the meat of a world in chaos, tempering it with humor and pathos and compassion. He reaches the sincerity and beauty of Whitmans' When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed, the famous poem about the death of Abraham Lincoln. Poetry should be news, a famous poet whose name escapes me now once said. At first I disagreed, thinking that poetry should be pastoral, majestic, beautiful, and timeless, not topical. Now I see there is room for both styles of poetry, and often the poems that record news outlast poems of pastoral beauty because their importance makes them leap to the fore, commanding your attention. Such is the case with Eliot Katz' Unlocking The Exits. It is a record of modern times, The Wasteland we live in. Eliot Katz unlocks the exits and lets the brilliant light of day pour in, a glimmer of hope on the cusp of a new century of compassion and understanding of our fellow man. This is a compelling collection of poetry that will hold your attention to the very end. Highly recommended.

Wildflower Land Art Collection Group. Poetry magazine by various authors. $5 from Wildflower Land Art Collection Group, P.O. Box 34, Mae Sot, Tak 63110 Thailand. E-mail: Wildflowerland@hotmail.com . This chapbook-size magazine contains beautiful poetry written by Brad Kammer and his Burmese refugee students, living in Thailand and trying to express their freedom from a dictatorship government and oppressive rule in their homeland. Asian culture by nature is almost haiku-like in its serenity and beauty despite the oppressive rule of their government. The poetry is like a Joshua Tree surviving in the desert. There is the fierce will to survive against all odds. The poetry is in both Burmese and English. The poem Ashamed Of Myself by Kaday Myat Kyaw reads: " In the first era, plant / then water / In the second era, shelter from the sunshine. Then break its branch. In the third era, cut the tree. Then dig its stump. That's enough, for the future I'm ashamed." The poem is almost polite in its political message, but the struggle for freedom comes through in most of the poetry. This poetry touches the heart and begs to be heard. Please buy this magazine and donate more money to their annual budget of $2000 for 6 issues, of which they desperately need the money, for this very important voice of freedom.

         Please send in poetry chapbooks, books, cds, broadsides, and cassettes for review to Ralph Haselmann Jr., 67 Norma Road, Hampton, New Jersey, 08827. Include price including postage, who to make check out to, and address (where to order from). Also include a sase so I can tell you which issue it will be reviewed in. Publishers have my permission in advance to reprint any of my reviews as long as you send a me a copy of the issue it appears in.