Mineshaft No. 6. May 2001

by Edited by Everett Rand. Mineshaft, 16 Johnson Pasture Dr., Guilford, Vermont 05301. mineshaftmagazine.com

Book Review by Michael Basinski

It is good to know there are humans out in the great sea of flotsam. Oh course, this issue of Mineshaft in hand, and I see that R. Crumb did the cover. There is more Crumb inside. He has good company: Mike Kriesel, A. D. Winans, - hey weren’t these guys in the Green Bean book? Yeah but Jorin Osroska, Rob Meadow and Irving Stettner weren’t. And do you have a problem with that? You think I care? You think I care what I think? Or anyone? I think this is a good magazine. I talk a lot to msyelf, and I never answer politely. There are photographs and drawings as well as poems and fiction in this issue. All of this is top of the line, top shelf. This is orange frosting on sponge cake. And beer married to smoked fish. It’s morning and there is a beer in the fridge and it is night and THEY leave you alone and there is lots of beer and THE THING is on television again. I am selling records in Peru and people there love music. I am treated good. The people give me sneakers. “You write good poems,” they say. They say, “Want some hamburgers?” No one is mad at me. Life is good and so is this magazine. Let’s say you start with Tramp the Road by Catherine Aldington. “No, Catherine, I do not know the way towards death. I do not know and I am looking straight into the cellar.” I ponder again, after your poem, I ponder. Should I look for the lost socks of my life? Poetry makes you do such wonderful things. Well, if you don’t want to write to Mineshaft you can get issues at: Troubadour Books, City Lights, Powell’s, Harvard Book Store, Grolier’s, Tattered Cover, Water Row, Bull’s Head, Collected Works, The Regulator Bookshop, Gotham and Downtown Books and News.