paperback, 148 pages, published by Rebel Satori Press

Review by George D. Anderson

This is the first full-length collection by Joseph M. Gant, a 33 year-old
resident of Pennsville, New Jersey. Over the last few years, Gant has
extensively published his poetry & reviews in small press magazines
such as Shot Glass Journal, Dance Macabre du Jour, Alternative Reel,
Gutter Eloquence, Houston Literary Review and dozens of others.

These are short, caustic poems which depict a dark world plucked bare
of joy. Like his hero Hamlet, in the poem “Pushed At Both Ends,” the
central speaker in Zero Division is obsessed with decay and death. He
repeatedly dry humps the loss of love and childhood innocence to un-
sheath the underlying tumor that ‘everything’s a sham.’ Many of the
poems are powerfully and defiantly written, but dozens of others adopt
a feverish, teary tone and tend to drown in verbosity or self-pity.

The title of the compilation Zero Division appears to derive from the poem
“Divide By ZerØ.” In contemplating the ‘mathematics of cadavers/ indivis-
ible by sin’ the speaker of the poem turns to the living and concludes:

nodes of Emptiness derive the sum of waking days –
divide by zero
all become
at once
the nothing.

Gant’s nihilistic idea that we are zombie-like zeros, devoid of meaning is
also graphically illustrated in “Wakeful.” He compellingly compares ‘every
instance of waking’ to a birth: ‘not/ beautiful, blessed nor full/ of joy, but
bloody/ hard — a squeezing shit into/ the day as painful.’

Zero Division is a fascinating but schizoid compilation. Stylistically, the
poems waver between two distinct camps of writing. The first appears to
use a pseudo-Romantic style which characteristically makes lofty state-
ments about life and which swirls with archaic expressions and abstract
extended metaphors which tend to wring out a false sense of pathos. At
times, Gant undermines his writing by imbuing his imagery with the use
of pathetic fallacy — employing the darker forces of the universe to explain
why his relationship has fucked up. Not content with merely describing the
grind of the shit that couples face on a daily basis, he sometimes puffs up
his poetry by trying to explain his life in over-reaching mythological terms:
his eternal struggle with Satan, explorations into the secrets of the universe
and his reflections on the nature of reality. “Union,” “The Space That Makes
The Past,” “I Tried to Save The World,” “What You Will With It,” “Extinction
Season,” “What For?,” “Tears And Tatters”, “Beggar’s Clothes,” “What We
Have Beside” are poems written in this grandiose and cryptic way.

The best poems in Zero Division adopt the simple, pared down language of
contemporary underground writers. The subject matter is grounded in real
things and these poems are easier to read. Some of the more memorable
poems in this style include “Bounded In A Nut Shell” about a sperm donor
jerking off into a plastic cup, “Down At the J And Flying” about trawling for
pussy & dope at a truck stop, “Where I Sit And Eat My Mashed Potatoes”
in which the speaker admires how his little dog shits like clockwork in the
kitchen each night, “Cancerous Sonnet For A Tumor” in which the speaker
vows he will ‘collect as many cancers as my body gladly holds’ without
seeking treatment, and the self-explanatory “Just Another Crack Poem.”
The poems are refreshingly simple and express raw but credible emotions.

Overall, this is a daring but fledgling collection. There appears to be no in-
ternal logic to the sequencing of the poems and you need to wade through
a solid chunk of the book before you find the underground gold. That said,
Gant is an intense and highly experimental writer whose work continues
to improve.

More info about Zero Division can be found at the Rebel Satori Press website.

~~~

Jack T. Marlowe, Editor

66 pages, paperback/Kindle, published by Blue Room Publishing

Review by Danielle Blasko

If one doesn’t feel a strong desire to read Craig Sernotti’s Forked Tongue
upon viewing the exquisitely disturbing cover artwork by Laura Ostman–
a tongue that’s been cleanly stabbed with a fork–then perhaps one is not
quite demented enough to enter and appreciate the poetic dreamscape
explored in this particular book of poems. Although some of us with really
disturbed minds might welcome a bit more penetration on the part of the
fork, given some of the perfectly gutter, graphic content of the poems:

I freaked out
& shaved off my dick.

You threw it out with the
grapefruit rinds & junk mail
because it smelled like
someone else

(from “Cheater”).

In decomP: A Literary Magazine, reviewer Spencer Dew argues, “Sernotti’s
is a world of senseless violence and violent lusts, of incest and porn, of drink-
ing piss on a dare or passing out…at times, these pieces seem like so much
braggadocio, drunken mumblings about strippers and shaved scrotums.”

What Dew fails to point out, however, are the subtle hints and outright dis-
closures throughout the book that indicate the speaker of these poems is
leading the reader on a journey through a dreamscape. Besides the two
poems entitled “Dream” and two other poems with “dream” in their titles:
“Dream, 26 November 2008, Early A.M.,” and “Dream, 24 February 2009,”
Sernotti drops many hints that the main happenings in these poems take
place within the mind of the narrator:

Remember
what you were told
in your sleep

(from “Invasion”).

I die in my dreams.
Zombies pulling me apart.

(from “Many”).

This is not to say there isn’t more to these poems than dream exploration.
What seems to be happening simultaneously is a real life separation of the
speaker and his wife:

I woke up
rolled over
kissed the back
of my wife’s head
hoping she hadn’t
somehow
heard my response

(from “Dream, 24 February 2009”).

When I wake up I reach for you,
where you used to sleep.
Your pillow is cold.
There are many ways to die

(from “Many”).

One thing that Dew and I agree on is “there’s something strikingly tragic just
under the surface here.” Perhaps the tragedy lies in the concurrent expression
of the anxiety experienced by the dreamer/speaker and the departure of his
loved one, “as beautiful as/ sleeping animals, / dried flowers, / decapitation”
(from “How”).

Even if one does not sympathize with the abandoned husband (he is, after all,
a “cheater”), perhaps one will feel something in the sincere plea to the reader
that opens the book in the first poem:

I want to say you’re like a car, a wine, an epic,
but the simile falls flat.
Please don’t hate me for this

(from “Ideas”).

A sense of hopelessness, impending doom even, pervades the text, illustrated
by the speaker’s multiple wishes for death:

We hired mercenaries to protect us,
but they disappeared with
our money
and our virgins…

Having nothing of value
we begged for
unimaginative deaths

(from “Invasion”).

5) wait to be hit,
or, option B,
wait to be arrested

(from “Things To Do Today”).

Sernotti captures the essence of despair that echoes through the collection
and poignantly exemplifies some of the coping mechanisms people utilize
in grieving:

We cry into our empty glasses.
We tell jokes about graveyards,
ovens, money, dead babies.
Only the cockroaches
are laughing

(from “Laughing”).

About halfway through the collection, beginning with “My Friend & My Sister,”
the poems begin to fall flat for me, as the speaker introduces an array of
characters (perhaps intended as archetypes) that seem to have no contex-
tual grounding. The closing poem, “Confidence,” is a disappointing ending,
although I get its purpose: to come full circle from the lack of confidence the
narrator displays in the book’s opening poem, “Ideas.”

I read the first half of this book with a feeling of invigoration, wondering how I
had lived my life without ever having read a Sernotti poem. But in the end I felt
let down and alienated. Or maybe I was just brought back down to earth, fol-
lowing my initial elatedness. Regardless, I will look forward to reading more
of Sernotti’s work in the future. And I have no doubt that Forked Tongue will
not be his last collection of poems.

Editor’s note: this book can be ordered from Amazon.com.

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108 pages, 5″ x 8″ trade paperback, published
by Sunnyoutside Press

Review By Wolfgang Carstens

Rarely, you stumble across a book of poetry that blows your mind and you
think “This is greatness,” and you wonder why the world hasn’t heard about
the author and why his books aren’t sitting in the checkout aisle of every
grocery store.

“Here is a book of important truths,” you say, “surely these words are as
important as food, cigarettes and beer.” William Taylor, Jr.’s new poetry
collection THE HUNGER SEASON (Sunnyoutside 2009) is one of these
rare books.

The conflict within THE HUNGER SEASON is a familiar one: the burden
of time and the search for meaning within a meaningless world. The author
is a realist: accepting that everyone will die, that most will die without ever
becoming beautiful again, and that no divine hand will intervene to help us.

Beauty, for William Taylor, Jr., involves that quality that sets you apart from
everyone else. It could be the way that you sing a particular song, the way
that you prepare Chicken Cacciatore, or something as simple as the way
you whistle when you walk. These qualities are ones that you once pos-
sessed but have long forgotten somewhere along the path on this strange
adventure that we call life. When this happens, according to Taylor, “this is
where / all other deaths / begin” (from “Poem”).

Most of the world, according to Taylor, falls within this category of walking
dead. The author, it seems, counts himself among these zombies. In his
poem “A Partial Account of an Ordinary Tuesday Afternoon,” Taylor re-
counts the story of a suicidal man clinging to a ledge four stories above
the street. The poet searches for meaning here, wondering if this was
something “I was somehow meant to witness, / if the events unfolding
could hold some special / meaning for me, if there was some kind of
knowledge / that could be gleaned.” Here the poet is searching,always
searching for something to help make sense of this senseless world. The
poem ends brilliantly with this ongoing search for meaning: “as the Korean
woman in the nail salon / across the street gazes at me / and I back at her.”

Along this constant search for meaning, which is ultimately a selfish one,
Taylor adopts a simple strategy: avoid immediate pain and try not to hurt
others more than you have to. More importantly perhaps, Taylor advises
us to appreciate those “tiny moments of useless beauty” like “the sun / the
rain / pretty girls in the subway / a decent poem / a good sandwich / a joke
well told / honest laughter /music / and wine / our fingers touching / the act
of creation / the cat asleep on the bed” (from “Tiny Moments of Useless
Beauty”).

Taylor’s landscape is the human condition; his palate hunger and longing;
his brush, a pen which he wields with considerable skill. THE HUNGER
SEASON addresses the fundamental questions of our existence. Although
Taylor’s words are often melancholy and troubling, there is a positive energy
burning at the center of this phenomenal collection. These poems have the
power to heal, to mend the cracks in us, to satiate a hunger that most of us
cannot name.

Bureaucrats, she spits
the goddamned bureaucrats will kill us all!

I turn away
and shuffle myself deeper
into the crowd.

Though in theory
I agree with her observation,
I can’t find it in myself
to get too worked up about it all.

I tend to suffer
in silence, as the days are filled
with enough noise
as it is.

And perhaps I am already defeated
because I expect the trains to be late
and overcrowded

and I don’t ask much
of my fellow man
or the days and the nights
upon the earth

and I don’t believe the wars will stop
no matter how many people
walk the streets with cardboard signs.

I want to tell the woman
she might as well be
angry at the sun
but I don’t think she would
understand.

(from “Angry at the Sun”)

William Taylor, Jr. is one of the finest poets writing today. His HUNGER
SEASON is a mandatory purchase for anyone interested in underground
literature. And with books like THE HUNGER SEASON, I can guarantee
you that William Taylor, Jr. won’t remain underground much longer. These
poems are pushing through darkness and concrete where they bloom in
the sunlight like strange, beautiful flowers.

to order: www.sunnyoutside.com
(also available from SPD, Powell’s and Amazon.com)

96 pages, perfect bound paperback, published by
American Mettle Books/Grievous Jones Press

Review by Jack T. Marlowe

It’s not easy to describe the essence of John Dorsey’s poetry.
You could call it a rough-edged, new Americana. Or you could
say that it’s a dark and fragmented nostalgia, held together with
an unassuming but undeniable bit of optimism.

Dorsey, admittedly, has been influenced by the Beats. Unlike
the myriad wannabes, however, his work never seems forced
or pretentious. And his writing is powerful, without beating the
reader over the head.

In his latest book, the poet approaches a wide range of subjects.
And his very scenic route takes the reader all over the map, from
Sandusky, Ohio to Hollywood, Florida; from rural Pennsylvania
to Fort Collins, Colorado; and from Las Vegas to Lawton, Okla-
homa: a patchwork panorama of an American experience.

Sodomy, however, is no travelogue. In “ct pool hall sidewalk poem,”
Dorsey says: where we are has / very little to do with geography.

In “doctor bukowski’s monster,” he speaks not only about where
we are, but why:

we came here to watch the words burn
golden like shelley’s sperm

like cassius clay’s draft card
like the embers of johnny cash’s
last folsom cigarette.

Of course, Shelley was a British poet, but scores of his literary
decendents have been Americans–the majority vastly different
in style from Shelley, but very much inheritors of the ‘poet’ title.
Dorsey pays tribute to quite a few of them in this book. In his
“poem for a toothless lion” (written for Gregory Corso), John
writes:

i camped out there
looking for words
with a flashlight and
an open heart
remembering what you always said

dream like you have a gun to your head.

And in “you brought the fireworks,” he says of Ted Berrigan’s
words:

they would burn my fingers
like the tip of
an unfiltered Chesterfield.

On the other hand, Dorsey reminds us that poets aren’t perfect:

i think people tend
to forget that poets
can be assholes

and again:

people tend to think
that if it rained
pennies from heaven
that i wouldn’t steal
them from jerry’s kids
and go straight to
a coinstar machine in
the middle of the
night and trade them
for more angry passionate
words but i would

(from “reborn on the 4th of july”).

But imperfect people in an imperfect world can still find
something good in it:

if you look for
the worst in angels
then miracles are all
around you

and this:

like the devil i too
dream of ponies eating
sunflowers in the fields
of hell

(from “in heaven even death smells like sex”).

John Dorsey’s poems are sunflowers. So, pony up and
enjoy the buffet!

To order: www.grievousjonespress.com

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