Surfacing
by Dave Pishnery and Alan Horvath. Kirpan Press, PO. Box 2943, Vancouver, WA. 98668-2941
Book Review by Michael Basinski
I mean you come upon this book and the first thing that amazes is how beautiful the damned thing is. Black cover stock and printed in gold and I mean beautiful paper and a disk tucked in the back so you can look at the Bridges of Cleveland. Them the poems that rest in this mind of art (the book) and each page again a wonder and bite bit of shard of poetry that lances and lays in the fingers of the mind as you turn the pages and each poem an instrument from which music enters the mind like a raindrop of lightning or finding a ham sandwich after working on the roof. The poems of these two poets are juxtaposed throughout. They have shuffled their poems so the poets’ poems are not clustered together in a particular section. Nice arrangement. I am impressed. Good idea. Therefore the read, because the poets are different, keeps the reader on the toes of the poem. It is a good dance. A worthy book for the home poem library. Get it quick cause the book is a limited run and you will want it.
Horvath’s poem The Secret is a high point in my reading. Here he captures the exact notion of urban space needed to survive. It is not civilization that we live in but a frustrating refined world technology in which we survive in a why-is-this-happening-to-me of savage America. And how creating a space in all of this is a small match in the otherwise when it rains it pours world. Horvath - it happens to me too. Thanks for the light.
And poet Pishnery’s Vampire Lover fuckuses on the seductive, intoxicating, destructiveness of love and lust and sex.
Yep. And yep these two poets and their poems slice a bit of real pie. Good to know there are real poets in the world working on the craft after a long day of elephants jumping on your eyeballs.
Made with ♥ in Baltimore.
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