Bosh Hubris No. 1

by Edited by Robert Holt and Mandy Elkins. Three Legged Dog Press, 12916 Heritage Dr. No. 204, Plymouth, MI 48170.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

I remember sitting in a bar and looking out the window and seeing a spotted black and white three-legged dog getting porked by a four-legged brown dog. The three-legged dog had one of her front legs missing. I guess it doesn’t matter what three legs a dog has if you are on the bottom. But what if a three-legged guy dog was the top dog and that dog had one only leg in the back? Well, then what? Would it matter or if you were in the bar looking out the window would you just open issue number one of Bosh Hubris? Well? Eventually you would open the magazine and in it you finds this great prose by master twister of the word Jack Balls! His prose in this issue is I SHOT HELEN VENDLER, which in and of itself - meaning the title - is enough to place Bosh Hubris up there on the alter. And then there is Don Winter’s Strip Bar: Hamtamck. Having been in many, many bars in Hamtamck, well they were all poetry and so is this bar and poem. And let’s mention the last poem in the issue, Alan Catlin’s The Workingman’s Friend. A clear observation about ugly men in bars, which is something that Catlin should know about cause he works as a bartender. Maybe he is bartending in the bar in which I am reading this mag. I wonder if Catlin knows that outside a three-legged dog is being porked? I don’t know. I just keep reading the prose of Lyn Lifshin, the prose of Wanda Coleman, a poem by Hugh Fox. The list goes on and outside the four-legged dog just wont quit.