A few reviews of Unprotected Texts

I recently got my copy of Tom Beckett's (long awaited) selected poems, Unprotected Texts, but various unfun tasks have kept me from sitting down with it yet (though I did peek again at the zombie poems because I just couldn't wait). There are many poems here that I saw first on Tom's blogs, and many I have never seen before, and it is truly lovely to have them between covers, all in one place. Unprotected Text is Tom Beckett is less ephemeral form; the Body is substantial, subject, object, text/speech, a peg to hang pronouns, art, methodology & home. Every body is a zombie eating brains, but with a beating heart.

Jack Kimball & Geof Huth have both beat me to the gig and written reviews.

Jack says: "There isn't a two-page spread in Unprotected Texts that doesn't satisfy my frenzy to stomp on iconography for future benefit." & "Messing with icons. Calling texts sex. These are the highest jinx. Unprotected Texts brushes off 28 years of poetry and looks forward to be incidental."

Read the rest here.

Geof says: "The [zombie] chapbook as a whole is a Naked Ape for the new millennium." & "These poems push sound towards the bursting point. They are glasses of water filled over the top, the water held down by the tension at the surface. Sense scatters but sounds cohere, and the poems often rest just at the same point as underoverripe fruit. One more step and the poems would turn to mush. But as they are, they are perfectly bletted, alluring, fragrant, soft, and sweet: 'person, prison, prism.'" & "Unprotected Texts is a book both intellectual and genital."

Read the rest here.

& then all you zombies should go clicky here, or send a check here to obtain Tom's delicious brain.

Tags: Mertiage Press

News of 2 news from Lame House Press

Firstly, get you some of dis Alli Warren poetry, namely Cousins, which will spin you right round. I am a fan of Alli's poetry here & here (a whole 'lectronic bookish object made of light & dots) & here, below, from her chapbook Hounds of the year 2005, which I am lucky to prick myself on whenever I want because when it came out I didn't mess around. (Yes, that is a prediction about the future.)

To Those That Would Deny Poetry

Into canons we
are stuffed into duffel
bags, toolbelts
      Physicists proclaim
logic--that's a business suit but what
does it mean? What
Benefit of Clergy
--brackets of a car
are brakes of wind
much like the bee's mother
and myth

      After thoroughgoing
      investigation it has been
determined A lot of you
elks are shoe leather
      Or, Go You Graphs of Trade
as if you spoke "good
English," "I understand"
your tired scripts your
full-daggered throats
      arming units
for what's called perpetual
      war Call us
what you will
what is willed is
half-deceiving yet
trope of the eyes
      fire under foot

She will poison you (in a good way), but with words not a little vial which is actually a cameraphone. Perhaps pointing to her previous work is misleading, you think. No, even if this book has entirely diff stuff disimilar in feeling execution I am leading you to the right place, which is wherever Alli's poems perch. Anyway I ordered mine. Here is where you click to become happier than you currently are.

Additionally, you should be tempted by this sample from the also brand new Harmstorm by Karl Parker, of whom I do not know otherwise at all, & so place in the exciting & always shivering-quivering category of JUST DISCOVERED. What a batch. (Go, Gina.)

Tags: Lame House Press