The Whispering of Ice Cubes: New and Selected Pieces

by Rupert Wondolowski. Shattered Wig Press, 425 E. 31st St., Baltimore, MD 21218 www.normals.com

Book Review by Michael Basinski

Somehow this computer didn’t auto-save and I lost all of these reviews when I pushed the wrong button. Like looking up from the subway of the imagination and just hopping off at the wrong stop and it is Niagara Falls. All this wonderful verb salad solid stream of worderous reviews lost in the blink of an eye as I screamed NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooo. But then again here is an eye ’ a fly’s eye on the cover of Rupert Wondolowski’s book. I think yes! I think I wrote that he does see things a bit other than the normal (The name of his bookstore is Normals ((part-owner))((How normal is that?)) and he does! Does not see normal. What is a good thing like hotdogs! Wondolowski’s vision is of a poetry ripe and rip with humor and the twists and turns of Niagara Falls lip staple-gun gum language juxtapositions! Sorta surreal ’ for sure ’ but also reviling the flexibility and excellent ability of words and worbs as a medium to create a reality, somewhere. And how the real can be alliterated meaning altered with words. Words are what Rupert W. manipull-alters and all ears. It is in it this adventure! He is a grand collagest of the real pasting this and that (even in his own bookstore (he part owner of Normals in Baltimore ’ go there) where he works at) ’ the real wonderful wondering about poking and caressing books. So the real disappears and re-appears variously and stories are there by related, as in told. It is a more than a real experience involved here. One holds the word world in suspension after reading the R.W.’s presentation of it! And I guess, well, yes, we are aliens and estranged form our language and the real and we have wings and club each other with kielbasa. Seems natural to me. Why not a poetics of worbs that turns the world on its ear! Or Eye! Or Wig (He is the editor of The Shattered Wig Review.) And with the skill of a cutter and paster (or pastor of the word or Rupert Wordwondolowski makes a world word with humor and insight into the lonesomeness of tasty word art ’ you open the book and out poops and pops the monster of language ’ you see its tyranny and how ridiculous the medium of words are. How can they create any reality at all? Shaping and shapeshifter ’ it is Rupert Wondolowski in-charge of the words. I wrote in the lost review that he is a magician. He is. Watch him pull a rabbit out of his seven.