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Mieke's Ladder
Gabriel Ricard reviews the book by A. R. Lamb and interviews the author, January 2009
"For all the weirdness of Mieke's Ladder, there remains an effort to keep the characters human. They are real people and not just performers in an abstract work of art. Lamb's own affection for these walking wounded lends further weight to the time he spends show psychological processes, rather than before and after pictures. It's within this we find some of the book's most stunning imagery and revelations."
When Spencer Met Hannibal: Recreational Cannibalism in the New American Century
by Jonathan Penton, December 2008
"It is the styleless, the stuttering, and the slovenly that Tom Bradley, expatriate, has championed with Lemur . And since it goes without saying that the ultimate American ambition is to become a newsworthy serial killer, it is only natural that he should choose this milieu for his heroic call to the average."
CPR for Dummies
Gabriel Ricard reviews the book by Mickey Z. and interviews the author, October 2008
"A book or film or song must be entertaining enough to get people to pay attention, while still leaving enough room to throw down some strong social/political opinions and get people to pay attention. If anything, it's just had to get a little smarter, a little more ambitious in trying to make its point."
Sensoria
Kane X. Faucher reviews the book by Matina Stamatakis, September 2008
"There is, in nearly every one of the images, a fidelity to the use of text to provide these textures, streaming and coalescing everything from Chinese pictographic marks to gangland tagging. It is not just the marks that provide for the viewer vivid texture, but the surfaces upon which these marks are made."
Disaster Statism: A Review of Naomi Klein's Book The Shock Doctrine
by Hogeye Bill, July 2008
"Klein makes a big deal out of Milton Friedman's assertion that reforms are best made during crises. This is puzzling, since virtually every reformer/revolutionary, from Tom Paine to Margaret Sanger to Karl Marx, has said the same thing—that you need to strike while the iron is hot. Klein tries to construe the crisis can be opportunity idea as unique to Friedman and evidence of evil intent. It is neither."
Tatterdemalion
Gabriel Ricard reviews the book by Ray Succre and interviews the author, June 2008
"Walking, talking metaphors have invaded the narrator's fragile world and taken up the task of controlling not only his surroundings but also the direction his life is taking. One takes up residency in his oven, turning the apartment into a brutally hot steam room and forcing the narrator to join him inside the oven to dictate poetry that will be sent to the major literary magazines for consideration. Another comes to appear to him in his refrigerator..."
Worker of the World: Reflections on Utah Phillips
by Gabriel Ricard, June 2008
"I came into the music and stories of Utah Phillips the way a lot of people my age did. It was around 2005, and I was very much into Ani Difranco. I don't listen to her a whole lot anymore, but at the time, her music was very important to what I was trying to accomplish as a writer. Her albums in constant rotation he was a very necessary and useful influence for where I wound up going next."
Lessons from the River Kwai
by Iftekhar Sayeed, May 2008
"Yet great art rarely concerns itself with reality, but with the ego's self-transcendence in reaching out to other egos. The Iliad is not so much about Ilium, as Achilles. The ego was Homer's theme. Art, one may say, is a Cartesian rejection of the world's reality trying to reach the world. Or, to be relevant in our vocabulary, art bridges the distance between selves."
Science in Contemporary Fiction: Variations on a Theme by Richard Powers
by James Chaffee, May 2008
"I understand that few readers will make these objections. That is what worries me, that Powers reinforces for these readers the mythological one-dimensional viewpoint of how physics works or mathematics works, along with the one-dimensional nerds who create this work. And nothing could be farther from the truth."
The Outsiders of New Orleans: Loujon Press
Gabriel Ricard reviews the DVD by Wayne Ewing and interviews the director, January 2008
"Thankfully though, there are people like documentary filmmaker Wayne Ewing. Even before Katrina, Ewing and others like him have remained committed to making sure the average out-of-towner learns and never forgets that New Orleans is as artistically important as New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and all the others."
A Victim of Imperialism
Iftekhar Sayeed discusses Heart of Darkness, January 2008
'"Those who read me," wrote Conrad about himself, "know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the hills. It rests, notably among others, on the idea of Fidelity." And, like the Polonaise, we find a Chopinesque dedication to the fact that 'Poland is not so much a state as a state of mind'...'
The Portable Obituary
Gabriel Ricard reviews the book by Michael Largo and interviews the author, October 2007
"The thing that surprised me the most about Anna Nicole Smith's death earlier this year was not the fact that she died, but rather, the furious mass of conversation that occurred in the wake of her passing. People who wouldn't have been anywhere near a television that was playing her famously awful reality show were suddenly engaged in the serious discussion of the where, when, why, and how of her death."
Two tracks from Pandemonium by Barry Wallenstein
with a review by Kirpal Gordon, June 2007
"No question, the band is fun, nutty, capable, but the first thing a listener is confronted with in Pandemonium, Barry Wallenstein's latest CD from Cadence Records, is the voice of the poet. No stranger to wrapping his well-crafted lyrics around what a little moonlight and a jazz ensemble can do, Wallenstein is a most distinctive word slinger. Play one line of verse from any of the nineteen poems on the CD and you know it's he."
The Epic of Gilgamesh
by Iftekhar Sayeed, June 2007
"Homer, by rendering anarchy romantic, rendered death beautiful; Gilgamesh, by assuming government, achieved the reverse. Both affirm life. The Greek affirms life through the Other, as togetherness, the Mesopotamian through the Third, the state, as separateness."
The Bearing Well of All Calamities
Mary Jo Malo reviews PASSIO by Geraldine Green, May 2007
"Every person, plant, bird, tree, creature, and the multitude of other natural gems Green encounters are connected by subjectively experienced correspondences. She carries them inside her web of reality and explains them so carefully to the reader. Each phrase is an earthly metaphor with a rich history, and Geraldine Green has the fantastic ability to end each poem with a single line that leaves you suspended in a nearly timeless contemplation."
Doom 3: Immersion Beyond the Cinematic
by Jim Andrews, January 2007
"The new narrative matter in Doom 3 includes cinematic scenes where characters speak and the interactivity is suspended briefly. In these scenes, we hear and see a handful of characters much as in a film. Also, we occassionally pick up some unfortunate corpse's PDA. We can read their email and listen to audio logs. Their email sometimes has numeric codes in it that lets us pick up medicine, weapons (you consume more medicine and fire more weapons in this game than you are likely to in a lifetime)..."
(GV6) The Odyssey: Poets, Passion, & Poetry
Gabriel Ricard reviews the DVD, January 2007
"One of the things I'm always hearing about is how poetry is no longer viable or useful in the creative world. Unless, obviously, you can turn it into a pop song and make enough money to buy some land in Tokyo. But other than that, the general opinion for poetry and where it's headed is not an optimistic one. Fifty years ago, if your luck held out, you actually had a shot at making some decent money on poetry and poetry alone."
Perchance to Dream
Mary Jo Malo reviews Eating & Drinking by Sam Silva, September 2006
"The cover of Eating & Drinking by Sam Silva immediately captured my attention. For me it seems a depiction of the elementals: the blue sky as Air; purifying flames as Fire; a weightless stone as Earth floating in a glass of Water, the universal transforming solvent. The alchemist's vessel/ philosopher's stone/ human being is itself the fifth element which contains the other four. Life, its own wisdom, cannot be separated."
"Quotation...Admiration...Outline My Route!"
Personal Notes on the We Jam Econo DVD
by Mike Wood, August 2006
"I, thought of as a quiet geek who was probably listening to Bach while masturbating at night, was suddenly a worse threat; I had NEWS, news that there was something out there heavier, louder, more radical than Ozzie or Led Zep. The few kids I let borrow the Motorhead returned it speechless, about it and, now, about me. Aha; music was a way to speak up for myself, even if I couldn't."
The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu
Louise Landes Levi reviews the book by Debra DeSalvo, August 2006
"Occasionally one picks up a book that vibrates in one's hands. One reads its contents and the vibration continues. The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu by Debra DeSalvo is literally ALIVE with the personalities, histories and music it describes."
All Pain, No Gain: A Secondary Education:
Unnecessary Roughness by Shin Yu Pai
Mary Jo Malo reviews the book, June 2006
"Many believe the nature of art is to disturb and provoke, so in this regard Unnecessary Roughness succeeds. My own quandary is this. Is it absurd and/or meaningful to criticize poetry for bias? We can hardly expect poetry not to express a subjective point of view."
Love Isn't a Collaboration:
When I Met You by Elya Finn
Mary Jo Malo reviews the CD, March 2006
"I hear a bittersweet mélange of words and music, a mixture whose separate ingredients are no longer recognizable because they blend to make a whole new thing. I hear jazzy piano riffs, folk, rock, pop and a little bossa nova. There are plaintive minor keys that remind me of a suffering Russia. Painfully honest lyrics about love are never easy to listen to."
My Ghost in the Bush of Lies
Aryan Kaganof reviews the book, December 2005
'Whilst studying at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, he was forced to go into hiding for planting a word bomb. In prison he recognised chunks and phrases of theory, philosophy, prose, his own dreams. Some he did not recognise. "I suppose that's more rubbish from the rubbish".'
Laduma
Michelle McGrane reviews the book, December 2005
'It's brutal, obscene and acutely insightful. It's Laduma by A K Thembeka - Thembeka meaning "he that can be relied upon to tell the truth" in Zulu. This new South African writer is unafraid of public opinion and takes no prisoners in his radical and innovative first novel, a book that was published in September 2004 and has already been reprinted.'
Tell Tale
Michelle McGrane reviews the book, December 2005
"Fifteen minutes later, I still feel as if I have been struck by lightning. I walk across the room to my CD player and put on The Cure's Staring at the Sea, The Singles and turn up the volume. Then I begin dancing around my flat like a crazy person. There is nothing to do but dance."
The Disappearance and the Slow Awakening
M. Andre Vancrown reviews the book, December 2005
'"Art for art's sake," a phrase first credited to French poet Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), and later, adopted as a Bohemian Creed (in the 19th Century, during the Industrial Revolution), affirms, in short, that art is valuable simply as art, that artistic pursuits serve as their own justification, and that art in and of itself demands no moral vindication whatsoever, as it often requires the freedom to be morally subversive.'
Matches
Jonathan Penton reviews the book, December 2005
"When I received my copy of Matches, the first novel by Alan Kaufman, I admit I viewed it with a high degree of trepidation. Matches, you see, is a novel of the Israeli Defense Forces. And a couple of years back, I decided to become the only one of 294 million U.S. citizens who was not a self-proclaimed expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Eight Poets
Desmond Swords reviews the CD, November 2005
"In track three Victoria Field's well-modulated middle England tones sashay in, painting an erotic mental space with the aid of a fully sexed up metaphor of musical lust. Kicking off in a slinky - almost kinky – register; from an aural platform where the narrator is recalling her previous night's wet dream..."
Chasing Saturday Night: Poems from Rural Wisconsin
Charles P. Ries reviews the book, November 2005
"It is great because, like every seminal work of poetry, it is thematically rich, technically strong, readable, surprising, insightful and entertaining. Michael Kriesel drills for meaning in the middle of no-where-Wisconsin and produces a truly remarkable work of art."
When Your Body Is the Stone:
Mar Adentro vs. The Myth of Sisyphus
Mary Jo Malo reviews the movie, October 2005
"Distracted, he didn’t notice that the riptide at the base of the ocean cliff had pulled the water out and down to a dangerous level. Without thinking he dove, broke his neck, was instantly paralyzed, and floated between life and death. Drowning would have been merciful. Instead, a friend pulled him out of the water."
This Junkyard Heaven
Charles P. Ries reviews the book, August 2005
'I asked Magliocco about the complexity of his work. "What is intuitive and crafted appeals to me so far as writing poetry goes. I don't feel my writing is 'complex,' just not as superficial as much floating around the small press ethers. Perhaps the ideas in my poems are what strike you as complex. I certainly believe in examining intellectual & artistic ideas in poetry, whose meanings aren't readily clear always while writing…"'
The Passion of the Christ as Soft Core Porn
T. S. Ross Reviews the movie, April 2005
"I first came to respect Yeshua when I read The Murder of Christ by the anti-Nazi psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. This book describes Yeshua as what might have later been described as a hippie guru, but took him seriously and described him as what we might now days describe as an Avatar of the Tao."
Beat Thing
Jonathan Penton reviews the book, December 2004
"beat's dead, 'nuff said..." Except, of course, for the inconvenient fact that David Meltzer and many other Beats are still alive.
How Funk Music Changed My Life
a discussion of George Clinton by Luke Buckham, August 2004
"It was tame, and I felt tame, and didn't want to be tame. But I also didn't want to be angry or hurt about it anymore. So when I put on the Funkadelic CD and skipped forward to the title track, feeling the pulse of the bass, wild and playful, heavier and less monotonous than disco or rap but just as danceable, I knew that I had found a place where people played instruments the way those instruments wanted to be played."
Pay It Forward
a movie review by Pablo Sibs, June 2004
"Pay It Forward is one of those movies that, by the time you finish watching its opening segments, you know how it will play out. The enjoyment for the movie watcher, who already instinctively knows the direction of the piece, is whether or not the production will do something to surprise you and make an original twist in its established premise."
Orange Messiahs
an e-book review by T. S. Ross, June 2004
"Orange Messiahs has no extraterrestrials, although it does feature illegal aliens, and the only technological change mentioned is when the family graduates from black and white to color with a remote."