Shattered Wig Review, - No. 20. 2001

by Rupert Wondolowski, editor.. Shattered Wig Press 425 E. 31st Street, Baltimore, MD. 21218. normals.com/wig.html

Book Review by Michael Basinski

I began to read this issue of Shattered Wig Review and could not place it back on the pile. I was enjoying myself with a poetry magazine! Not just a poetry magazine but a magazine with prose and comics and a cartoon strip by A. Goldfarb called, Ogner Stump’s 1000 Sorrows. I wondered how I missed the first 19 issues! Obviously, I was lame, stupid, drunk. I hope dear reader that you are not dumb, blind, insensitive or an aardvark, albeit I am sure that aardvark poets read Shattered Wig Review, while they are dreaming about Chinese food or pizza. You must engage the Shattered Wig Review, which are a tremendously refreshing poetry and prose and comics and all around insanely beautiful magazine. This issue is 68 pages of wild humor, biting ridiculous, ironic intelligently and artistically moronic art and excellent poems and innovative poetry and prose and art and collage and snips of reality right out of the newspaper (the true lit of idiots) and all of it points out how truly crazy everything about the human race is in fact. Within this issue are poems by Batworth, Jeff Little, Blaster Al Ackerman, John M. Bennett just to mention a few. And poems by Glans T. Sherman and Dan Raphael. Rupert Wondolowski, editor, is my new hero - what he got is guts and what insight into this frail world in which we live as demented animals. He is a treat and a lord of the beautifully bizarre. Get this one if you wish other poetry that is not dull, dim, mundane or vapid. I love this section of poetry from Les Wade’s poem Dire Effluvia:

("Anything goes in
anything goes out
fruit, bananas
old pajamas,
mutton, beef, and trout")

Or how about this snip by Blaster Al Ackerman,

Let's get together real soon this week
and discuss how we can enjoy more
Milo Pee Drink