FOR SCOTTY AND TANYAr

by Dave Roskos. Art by Angela Mark. Iniquity/Vendetta Books, edited by Dave Roskos, PO Box 54, Manasquan, New Jersey, 08736.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Well, I talked a bit above about Dave Roskos as an editor, and again, a good one he is. He takes good care, careful care, and supports his New Jersey poets. He’s like our beloved Cait Collins, taking care of us lost black sheep poets. We her poets as pets. Alone in a mountain meadow with Cait Collins…. But let me get back to what I mean or something. How’s this: Cait is a poet and so is Roskos. And the book under review is by Roskos. Now the two poems in this mini-book are about junk and junkies. See, this fits in after Burroughs. But there is no romance of junk here in Roskos poetry. Reading the poems they are part gut feelings of sadness for those stuck on junk, hooked and the recovering and falling back into abyss of junk and addiction. And outrage that society, people voters of New Jersey and the politicians will not help junkie or addicts. His particular raging against New Jersey who by law will not transplant a liver into a recovering junkie, which seems typically Christian and Right Wing. Well, Angela Mark’s art on the cover is the best prologue to this little book. The image is a broken, breaking heart in tired hands. The face of the character in the image is also cracking, shattering breaking and falling apart. So heart and life shatter with junk. Addiction most horrible. All, who know of addiction, alcoholism and the like, know this sadness. Let’s stop here. Time to think about what forms of being we be, who don’t give a flying Republican about this. So the poems made me ponder, alter my thoughts. And that is the worth of such poems