Vallum. Volume 2. Number 1.

by Editors Joshua Auerbach and Eleni Zisimatos Auerbach. P.O. Box 48003 Montreal Quebec H2V 4S8 Canada. vallummag.com

Book Review by Michael Basinski

I lost this review too in the pressed the wrong button hasty moment. But I wanted to write that this is a full service magazine ’ it got poems ’ it got reviews ’ it got essay. Got it all sassy! Enough and when I came to find myself reading it page by page (a thing I don’t do with magazines much anymore) I found I liked it. This is not your small press poetry magazine but poetry is big enough for several places of poetry. What a drag if everyplace were New York! But this is Montreal and I was way pleased to be reading Nicole Brossard ’ who is one of the north’s best. … I mean the world’s best for sure. But let me get on with reading and I came across this poem called CUNT by Joanne Merriam and I had to stop and read it once, twice and three times (wouldn’t you) and let me write here Merriam’s last line: ‘See how moonlight’s sharp music breaks all your windows.’ I have glass all over my office. I have glass everywhere in the parlor, on the couch. And there are birds. And fish. And there is glass all over everything. That’s what reading Vallum is and the sound.