Black Bear Review: : A Literary Magazine for the Concerned Poet & Artist
by Ave Jeanne Editor/Publisher. Fall/Winter 2000, Issue 31. 1916 Lincoln Street, Croydon, PA 19021-8026.
Book Review by Michael Basinski
To begin, the title of this long time living magazine is one of my favorites: Black Bear Review . There is a Black Bear restaurant in Lake Placid, New York. No relation. One gets comfortable in Black Bear. Carefully edited, selected one feels - meaning, it seems, the editorial staff took the time to read manuscripts and select poems by merit and not by author or theme. Gosh, then this makes this magazine a magazine of the trenches, a workhorse for those poets on the way. This issue, issue 31(wow!) is yellow - could be one of the yellow bricks on the yellow brick road towards the POET OZ of canonization! Only the editors know how much work it takes to do such a thing. Ahhh, Ave and company are the Gods. Now in the midst of the white wine and soft cheese world of poetry where your dad and mom own a building in Paris, apartment in Hong Kong and homes in New York City and Florida, where poets have trusts, new cars and houses, their underpants dry cleaned, spread liver on crackers, have someone else buy their heroin, pose for each other and write posing poems about posing things totally disconnected and unconcerned about right wrong, justice, reality, life in the US of A, the world and anything beyond their arrogant, poodle, chauffeured vain poetry world - ahh there is our our OUR Black Bear. Thank you Black Bear. Don’t let this one become an endangered species.
Made with ♥ in Baltimore.
These book reviews are Copyright © Michael Basinski, released under the MIT License. | Terms of Use