Greatest Hits 1989-2002

by Linda Lerner. Pudding House Publications, 60 North Main Street, Johnstown, Ohio 43031

Book Review by Michael Basinski

There are now more than 159 Greatest Hits published by Pudding House Publications. Talk about dedication to the poem! Write to The Pudding House and send them coins, ink, elephants, anything to propel this most impressive and important project forward into the complete poeming of the universe. Do you recall what d. a. levy said (about Cleveland)…? I’ve got a city to cover with lines. Pudding House is covering the globe with lines of poetry! And the City… THE CITY… New York and lines of the rhythm of that CITY pounding poems of jack hammers and cat feet of lions lines by Linda Lerner ’ her Greatest Hits here! Thanks she sends out to Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas but I hear Jack Micheline line song here all abouts like a busy subway station, Grand Central, subway arriving form the dark tunnel of imagination and impact first syllable of each line propels the poetry there and then in an instant gone again. Like in a city. No you can’t sit down on sofa and read this work. You must ’ I did - I did get up and read them aloud, they demand it ’ to be singing wet and loud! There the impact clear and ruthless and beautiful fills the empty space day or night. And surrounding all of the sounds that silence that is the white noise of poem deafening. And she survives her apartment on 9/11 a few blocks away she writes to empathic period the end of these Greatest Hits:… we all know it is only a dream:/ we all know we will never wake from it.