DROPPED IN THE DARK BOX by John M. Bennett

DROPPED IN THE DARK BOX

John M. Bennett

 

Poetry makes things happen, makes us happy, makes us happy by making things happen.

Concoct meanings as you wish, sort and sift them at your pleasure, discard them in the end and simply (which in context means complexly) enjoy the machinery of the poem at work. This is the what and the why of many a Bennett poem. It takes some effort to get to it, but it is always worth the work. Poems make things happen. Little things, yes, but worlds are made of little things, lives are made of little things. A poem should mean and be and do, simultaneously and sequentially. 

Open this book to page 12 and read "found the fistula," which might be thought of as a kind of mini ars poetica...Read a poem once and you know that it exists. Read it twice and you might think you know some of what it means. Read it three times and you suspect it of nonexistence. The poem will not sit still for your inspection. It will not stand for scrutiny. While reading it the fourth time you suspect you have some sort of slithering, slippery, shape-shifting chimera before your eyes. It is made of signs and sings and sounds and sooouuunds, slimy shifting symbols and sticky surfaces...Poetry makes things happen, makes us happy, makes us happy by making things happen.

 - Jim Leftwich

$15

146 pp.

ISBN 9781938521539

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I reMEmber petrOLeum by Jim Leftwich

I reMEmber petrOLeum

Jim Leftwich

242 pp., $18.00, ISBN 9781938521522

I reMEmber petrOLeum is a single long poem of 391 cantos or a series of 391 poems, both structures are valid, that can be read or experienced as a vast mirror in which you will see yourself and the world which is your matrix. When you read it again or look again into its pages, you and the world you see will be different. This is not “confessional” poetry, nor cultural critique, nor political posturing, but something quite different: it is an authentic immersion into a self through the medium of written language. And because it is so complete and fearless in that immersion, in its unflinching consciousness and unconsciousness, a self, or all selves, are revealed. This is why you will see your own unique beings and worlds in this book. Leftwich writes passages of both apparently clear diction (again the road,/what it wants is always in/ruin, opening/like a lip), and passages of apparent ambiguity or aleatoric syntax (I & Yes/I/less & less/a guest inside a guess); he uses word play to indicate the shifting nature of “reality” (feELeRs gRiPping/fiLTeRs gripPing); there are passages and moments of beautiful surrealism (I LiKe the uMBrella/Flying in the underworld); in short, his skill with written language is such that there seems to be no barrier, no hesitation, between his intention or experience and his writing of it. It is remarkable that this entire book was written in less than three weeks. His is an authentic and powerful human voice speaking thinking mumbling explaining stumbling being blindingly clear. -John M. Bennett

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CIEN SONETOS by Iván Argüelles

Includes a Foreword by Jack Foley & and Afterword by John M. Bennett

With the words “I am become something more than myself” Iván Argüelles opens the third of these 100 sonnets. This describes his entire body of work, but in these poems we find the poet pursuing that “something more” across dark ground, the shadowland of death. Suffering from the loss of his son and driven by that sorrow through what the mythic terrain renders of absence itself. He confronts this inversion, this loss of self, by eloquently revealing one layer after another of startling imagery that speaks to us on a level no common tongue can tell. The result is an intuitive map of both the poet’s subconscious and the collective memory of the species singing out of the ancient sources. Argüelles always enchants, but in these sonnets he ferries us across the river and allows us to see what must forever remain unseen. He makes darkness shine. - Jake Berry

100pp.

ISBN 9781938521515

$12.00

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THE HOUSE OF GRAND FAREWELLS by Bob Heman

At the end of "The House of Grand Farewells", Bob Heman explains the methodology he used in creating these marvelous prose poems. The random discovery of words that 'caught his imagination' in a particular book allowed Bob to embrace the Bretonian surrealist vision of 'Objective Chance.' Words (or objects) that we happen upon embody our hidden desires and our connection to the Universal Unconscious. That being said, "The House of Grand Farewells" is not about literary history; it is the chance, in each prose poem, to take a delightful trip to a place we have never seen before. - Lawrence R. Smith, editor of "Calibanonline"

$10.00

87 pp.

ISBN 9781938521508

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SESOS EXTREMOS by John M. Bennett

After having read John M. Bennett's poetry almost daily for 20 plus
years, you would think I would have something very definite to say
about it, but if there's one thing I've learned from reading it all these
years, is that things can change in an instant. At first you think
some of the pieces you've been reading are hardcore concrete poetry,
poetry of and maybe to the physicality of words, of expression, the
mechanicality or instrumentality of thought, but then that year, you
happen to meet or watch a performance by John and you've got the book in your hand, and suddenly you realize that a certain percentage of
the poems, or even of any given poem, might suddenly become a very
succinct notation for performance, an agile, well oiled vocal
performance where some strange fog is playing the 'john-horn' or its fog
suit avatar. In short, that the poem was made as such for a specific
purpose (in one sense), but also that it is still concrete poetry, or
it's concrete sound poetry mapped to a visualization, and its
functionalization as such is also visually important because it
realizes a unique cultural production which is both solipsistic and
immensely social and referential. There are the collaborations, the
works inspired by travel and friendships, poems in Spanish and French,
and an engagement with the entireties of several avant-garde
traditions and anti-traditions. There are hacks, riffings, homages,
fever dreams, and obsessions galore! Like an oozing tarantula of
snapping human jawbones carved from Olmec jade, or the Zapotec
lightning amoeba Cocijo, the poetry of Dr. Bennett works its way into
the crannies of your soft green brain, it sticks on your neck like a
stain inspecting the muddy blowhole you call a mind. It's literary
peyote, both sacred and profane, but also scared because it's making
propane in the cave and the only light there is from an illuminated
turtle language (with fire legs in its shirt) and there's some gelatin
left over which is already living in a bowl on your mantle and it has
its own flag, the stone hand, ALTO! who knows how it got there, John
may have picked it up on his shoe in the jungles of Mexico riding with
the revolutionaries until they got lost, or found. In short, John M.
Bennett is a national treasure and an international man of mystery. Is
he a mild-mannered librarian or a fluxist master? Is he camping in a
hole full of beans? Possibly. Whatever it is he's doing, he's doing it
just fine and will probably continue to do it, no matter what we think.

- Lanny Quarles 2018

117 pages

ISBN 9781938521492

$13.00 US

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