Marijuana Soft Drink

by Buck Downs. published in 2000 71 pages. $11.00. Edge Books, P.O. Box 25642, Washington, DC 20007.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Buck Downs so musical a name, I always thought, now he has this book too: Marijuana Soft Drink. What thoughts might I have then this Sunday night, thinking of this title, here in Buffalo it is June and wet. Drink down everyday. Dance of letters and slitting words in half, opoeming a fruit that pulls you along. It is music like Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues and like that the poems are one pagers that rambling around tight rift and waves of words weaved that you have too have too drink of off the shore, that call you back, oh come back you missed something and you know it… to read again and again each again something new in the form foam on the beach. Loomed I had to read the entire thing twice because of the seduction, Siren calling poems so fruit fine to be seduced, seaducted transported by: “man is memory’s/ plaything supremely/ colliding & shit// a dim bucket of vector/ making dangerous soup/ from dangerous soup mix” Go Buck!