Ferrum Wheel. - No 2. 2001

by Editors: ric royer, Chris Fritton and char dickerson. Ferrum Wheel. 547 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14209.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Ferrum Wheel is without question thee most innovative and shockingly new poetry magazine to come along in the past decade. That is a big, big statement. It is all true, because Ferrum Wheel challenges every aspect of the poem as it is conservatively known and also as it is known as a vehicle of experiment. The assembling of each issue is work intensive. It is all made by hand. All of it. Each issue is not just signed or numbered but meticulously assembled. It is a sculpture formed by many hands. It is a work or art itself and brings to mind the word combine as Robert Rauchenberg used the term for his constructions that were beyond painting and sculpture. Ferrum Wheel is a combine and a performance of poetry on the page and a new form of Fluxus. It is poetry as the primitive creative gesture of imagination coming full to fruit in this vast dead desert of retro howling langue, NYC and San Francisco moldy ghosts of ghost poetry. Hail The F-WHEEL -2210 and beyond! Hail The F-WHEEL: intrepid and gutsy informing and commenting and challenging what one understands to be poetry. And what one is as an editor also. In Ferrum Wheel the editors are not invisible not salve slaves to the poems of the poet. The editors are designers and artists but POETS! and their format, their unit of composition is the magazine. This magazine is the (a) poetry. I suspect this razor will slice the strap of the handbag of the world of words and run with it. Oh, this old soul steps with glee aside and welcomes this new year, this new century of poets: ric royer, Chris Fritton, char dickerson, Jessica Smith, Tarwin Baker, Eric Gelsinger, and their company.