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There remain a few shops, labels, and presses in the United States that embody DIY artistic independence in the best way, combining the intensity and existential tenacity of hardcore punk with the zine culture’s relentless focus on aesthetics, history, honesty and wonder.
...moreIn physics terms, the poetry world is underground “all the way down,” so Influence lurks in each sea cave like a bastard eel, recharging in darkness, awaiting his next dinner with flickering impatience and slaverous hunger.
...moreRane Arroyo’s character shines through in the amazing White as Silver collection, and will be clarified continuously as his vast trove of unpublished work begins to come to light.
...moreKuipers is a “traditional poet” with respect to her unwavering focus on craft; the engine powering her verse is tight word choice that simultaneously conjures up tangible, living objects and powerful emotional resonance.
...moreThe Salt Ecstasies is really just a beautiful book of poetry, filled with blindingly fierce imagery and destructively skillful writing, but it’s most importantly an honest book, its poems written straight from White’s heart and from his gut, teaching the reader a whole lot about the experience of living in this world.
...moreI finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith at Four Barrel on Valencia Street in San Francisco and although I tried my hardest to blink them back, tears kept falling out of the corners of my eyes onto my cheeks and dotting the raw wood table and then I was overwhelmed with sadness enough that […]
...more“Dear Augusta” by Reginald Dwayne Betts speaks for itself as a whole art piece, horrifying and beautiful and eye-widening, and I’m finding it pretty difficult to write about it at all but it is definitely the last poem I’ve loved so here goes nothing. The full poem is online in the January 2010 issue of […]
...moreThe last book I loved was On the Lower Frequencies by San Francisco’s Erick Lyle, editor of the underground-classic Scam zine, freelance journalist, and musician-at-large. The book reads as a kind of political and cultural memoir, mostly comprising essays and stories previously published in Scam or the TFD, a newsletter covering San Francisco politics. On […]
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