Appalachian Mule Manifesto. by Marko X

by Mark Hartenbach. Published by the author

Book Review by

Appalachian Mule Manifesto by Marko X
The Insignificance of Being Marko by Mark Hartenbach.

Let me begin my comments or my notions of these small publications by saying that Mark once wrote me that it was cheaper to make these things than to mail them. This is more the case than ever. Let us remember a little bit that the postal employees are union members and in this world of USA that makes them the akin to living and poisonous vomit. So - send Mark Hartenbach some dollars - do it out of the kindness of your poetry because you a leftist or a union member, or a democrat or care about parakeets, pencils whip cream or black-top. Mark will supply you with manifestos or manifestoes? Many toes like at the end of your feet if you have not cut them off to avoid the upcoming draft. And while you are at it send a few more dollars and get also his new: SERMONS, MEDITATIONS LAMENTATIONS & ECSTATCIIES OF SAINT ISHMAEL and THE ASCENSION OF SAINT ISHMAEL. So, now in hand five titles. In all of small press there is no more saintly roving spiritually searching mind artist as Mark Hartenbach, which he shows again like unwrapping a sandwich that casual in these huge sprawling prose poem works here spread out before me. Prayer books I think. - Don’t get me wrong - like of the people - not the church. There is a lot of notion of oh this writer and that writer is the heart of small press and the guts and the shoulder and dick and snatch and the asshole. It is all talk jabber gibber jacket and gagitt. There is only wailing soul in all this publishing and he is up and running hard with these new books. Hartenbach is living soul - shivering pondering and roaring. Damn and I came across the word Duende in one of the works! The great earth spirit that moved Fred Lorca! The savage Duende energy that surges into artist at peak creativity. Damn, Hartenbach must have a cord into that source and he is plugged in cracking eggs! By the dozen. By the truck load! Chicken beware. I am a chicken. Sermon on East Liverpool Mount. Hartenbach searches the soul like a brillo at work on some baked on zucchini! I stand in awe. And as he writes: “without insurrection, we have no resurrection.”

Made with ♥ in Baltimore.

These book reviews are Copyright © Michael Basinski, released under the MIT License. | Terms of Use