A Series of SHARP POINTS

by A Horvath. Kirpin Press, PO Box 2943, Vancouver, WA. 98668-2943. 2003.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

When you walk through the poem, at night, there is a quick shadow movement, sadness, irony, sarcasm, loneness, and astonishment at how ridiculous it all is and pondering I guess yes and why and there is lightness also in the lives we lead. Smirk, smile, laugh. Breakfast, for one, alone a little tired, maybe slightly hungover, in a cheap cafeteria in a small working town. Pale gray clouds and the hot sun sopping them up like the last of your eggs. Weaving a landscape of deep emotions, A. Horvath explores the fun house of each soul and with his own flashlight. And you better follow.

Pegasus Descending (A book of the best bad verse). - Edited by James Camp –X.J. Kennedy and Keith Waldrop.**

238 pages. 2003. ANYART: Contemporary Art Center, 71 Elmgrove Avenue, Providence, RI 02906. Available SPD: orders@spdbooks.org

In these times it is best to laugh! And that’s what I did all the way thought Pegasus Descending. How could our best favorite old time poets, like Poe and Emily D. and Browning sound so bad, clunkity clank and with disbelief but with smile and roaring hear all the fun that poetry can grant. A pure delight of reading, I had to go back twice, which is a measure of the wealth of this collection, and laugh some more and more. Poor T. E. Brown, he’s got 7 bad poems in here! A lot of tongue in cheek and consideration when into this book. It is not random, which is further measure of its delight. And it pays homage to The Stuffed Owl (Do you all know that book out there in reading land ’ check it out). But check this one out first. Humor is all much in absence in our serious world, perhaps too poetically serious. Laugh a bit, smile, laugh a lot and unlike so many other dry anthologies with this ism and that political poetic line to maintain, this one can be read over and over, returned to and it loses nothing and only gains and grows. I wish these editors would tackle the worst of contemporary poetry (but that is very dangerous!) but might be fun. Think about it. This is a door flung open. So, when considering your worst poems, those of your childhood which you hastily first published… who know. Someone’s out there reading away. I think I have to write thank you to these editors. You made the coming of wet fall and chill a bit lighter. This truly has expanded the possible of the poem.