Three Books from Xtant Books

by Xtant Books . Xtant Books. 1512 Mountainside Court, Charlottesville, VA., 22903-9707.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

1. Elamentations by Ken Harris. This is a sprawling, fat book, which utilizes the poetics of a new concrete, a readable visual poetry that walks the hard, thin line between the molding ancient, pretty and petty, redundant concrete of lore and yesterday and the vibrancy of expressionistic visual poetry that leads the parade into the future. This text, with lots of color, folded texts, pure word text etc., uses each page as a portal to the imagination. The reading is done by personal improvisational encounters with the engaged imagination. Visual poetry must revamp its poetics to become viable. The techniques that Ken Harris here displays begins and advances into this most need rewriting of vis-poetry. All power and sustained poetic energy to Harris the Intrepid.

2. Ditch Cloth by John M. Bennett. John M. Bennett has got to be the only artist who lives in a constant, ever-present, presence of creativity, creative energy, with hand on the third rail of the imagination. Me think there is no seam between the page and the place of art. Bennett’s work is that torrent of the sublime that repoetries the desert of supermarkets, cars, the dentist office and pours and pouts into beauty parlors.

3. Hunkers by John Crouse. This book, a slight book with one poem, is a conversation/play, series of poem, serial poem and scenes - one per page. Playing with form and breaking the moribund notions of poetry, Crouse takes the public language of conversation and reinvents interaction. He proposes that speaking (no speech) but speaking with, talking is art.