Editor Kevin Kelly's front-page editorial for the third issue of Silent But Deadly began, "Thanks to everyone involved in this issue. Special thanks go to Robert Peters who has worked up a review of Silent But Deadly for possible use in his "Black & Blue Guide" section in Small Magazine Review. John B. Denson remains my #1 correspondent for sending me stuff continually in between issues. He's die hard into poetry. Of course I can't say he sends me the most mail. C. Mulrooney sends me something two/three times a week, but it's just junk." And so forth. Kevin later complained that none of the poets responded to points made by their reviewers, something he thought would never be the case if the SBUTD workshop were live rather than on paper.

He plugged my book, Of Manywhere-at-Once, but no one bought it as a result. (I should add that a few already had copies.) Here's what I had to say about the poems up for review this time around:

"I'm afraid I'm in a pontifical mood this time around. My main pronouncement is that only one of the specimens up for analysis rates as an interesting poem--John M. Bennett's. Nothing horribly bad about the others, it's only that . . . well, 'Dark Emperor' (by Lou Hertz) is just too conventional in style, technique, imagery, thought (Death as drug- dealer) to be more than a C-poem; and the one expression in it I like, 'dark of Day,' contradicts an earlier line about the protagonist's slipping 'into the night.' And the "imaginary winds" are gush. See for yourself":

               He's a man of meager words
               and vague expressions.
               He wears a hooded sweatshirt,
               no matter what the weather--
               No one sees him slip into the night

               He carries small brown bags--
               Their contents--who can say?
               Plastic packers filled with power--
               Vials filled with deadly crystals--
               A variety of pills to ease the pain?

               He receives an urgent call,
               and instantly he's on the street--
               satisfying someone's desperate need.
               Hood in place, he bows against imaginary winds,
               to make another sale in dark of day.

The second poem I treated was Alan Catlin's "What a Town." I called it "an entertaining slice-of-lowlife anecdote nicely told in character." "But," I ontinued, "it's pure near-prose except for its lineation." So was Ed Conti's "The United Shapes of America"--except for one little touch of visual poetry.

                    What a Town

               "I was at this conference down
               in the city and I had to check
               my gun before I went in.
               They've got enough metal detectors
               around everywhere it sounds like you hit the
               jackpot down at Coney if you forget to check it
               and you never hear the end of it if you do.
               They've got this old guy on the desk,
               you know one of those 84 year old
               guys with the half glasses who's
               probably only 26 after a couple
               of spins on the fast lane.
               Anyway, he's never seen one before,
               so I say, yeah, it's a gun, everyone
               in New York has one now but where
               I'm going they won't let you in
               if you have it on you, so just put
               it some place safe. Sure, it'll be
               right here on the shelf next to
               this brown bag. no receipt, no forms
               to fill out, hno check chit, nothing.
               Any other city in theworld and you
               have to fill out in triplicate, your life
               story and give blood before you leave.
               Only in New York. So I go to this
               conference which is all about modern
               terrorist weapon and how the only
               people who don't have plastic weapons
               to avoid detection are the cops and
               all the while I'm thinking what if
               this guy Really is a druggie and he
               needs a score bad and I'm really getting
               nervous because no matter how creative
               you are no one is going to buy a missing
               service revolver being used in drug
               related robberies as a plausible error
               of judgment. Afterwards, I don't hang around
               to bull with the guys and take the first gypsy
               back to the joint and isn't there a new
               guy on the desk with earphones and a bad
               rap music problem. Luckily, he's only
               a little stoned and he mostly understands
               the concept of checked valuables but
               can't find no paper bag on no shelf, man.
               It was probably the day guys lunch of
               stash or something and now everyting is
               gone and my career is over. Finally, I'm deciding
               how I should die when he says hey man,
               this piece yours, here you go.
               I could have been Son of Sam for all he cared.
               Only in New York, what a town."

                 The United Shapes of America

                I like the way the states all fit together.
                Take Maryland and West Virginia--how
                they encircle each other. All the while
                ignoring Southwest Pennsylvania which seems
                to be trying to corner the local real estate
                market. And Rhode Island--finding room
                where none existed between Massachusetts
                and Connecticut. Observe how New York
                drives a wedge between Pennsylvania and
                New England, earning the gratitude of both.

                And you gotta like the way Wyoming, Idaho
                and Montana snuggle up together to keep
                Yellowstone Park from running wild.

                Clever New Jersey, inventing itself,
                Puts in some landfill (not all toxic)
                around the Turnpike, effectively filling
                up the dead space between New York
                and Pennsylvania.

                                  What can you say
                about Florida, hanging there limply?
                Besides that it could use some ex-
                citement.

                              Utah Colorado
.                           Arizona New Mexico

                Meeting at right angles. Nothing left
                to the imagination. All interchangeable.

                Look at Michigan. Looks like a mitten.
                But don't get smitten. Look again.
                There's more to it than meets the eye.
                Looks like it grabbed a piece of Wisconsin.

                And who ordered this stack of states?
                Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana.
                Pull the plug and they'll all go sliding
                into the Gulf of Mexico.
                What else. Missouri. Missouri loves company.
                Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas,
                Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.
                All neighbors.

                There they are. Some of the nifty fifty.
                Making a statement.

Bennett's poem does much more than the others--but is very hard to earn much meaning out of:

     "What the blood drained him lamed in the slant of's
     eye off's cheek, like a sailing seed like a car
     slid down's slick ditch (snow in heavy spirals)" Ah
     I dimly calculated, stared the padded glass (blankets of
     thought) a spaded path I descend a dripping room my
     books afloat "he's doggy-paddled, wouldn't say he
     screamed" but barking thinly groped the sodden desk
     (in a bowl of gas receipts "snuffled he, grimly
     thanking" me my "seeing eye"      (asleep on the seat)
     "Where's complications drifted, like threads of
     liquid meat"

Among the reasons Bennett's poems work as well as they do is that Bennett never takes his form for granted. Note, for instance, the appearance of "WATER" at the bottom of his poem. I recently critiqued another poem of his that uses this invention, calling it an "after-title." There it seemed Bennett's way of calling into question the nature of boundaries, of starts and stops--as well as a way of emphasizing every poem's--every life-event's--slide from earlier into further consequences. Here, though--because, I guess, of "SPREADING," I see the "after-title" as the title's delayed conclusion. In other words, the poem starts before its title has finished to make it a kind of poem-within-its-title--and thus all the more charged with immediacy. Even if the device is finally only avant-garde flim-flam, though, it is valuable for keeping aesthcipients on their toes.

The same is true for two other devices that Bennett uses a lot: quotation marks and apostrophes. I contend, however, that they do more than merely add a whirl or two to Bennett's poems. The apostrophes often double a word's possible meanings much like a pun or metaphor. For instance, in this poem, "Where's complications," can mean "where his complications" or "the complications of where," both of which can apply, to a manywhering effect. The contractions also liquidize the writing, making it all the more a too-rapid-for-rationality dream-flow.

The quotation marks are trickier. Some make perfect sense. The ones around "seeing eye," for example, tell us that the eye isn't really able to see. Other quoted material might represent what the narrator of the poem hears others say. The use of quotation marks with "he's doggy-paddled, wouldn't say he/ screamed" and "snuffled he, grimly/ thanking," being part of sentences without quotation marks, are harder to figure out. My latest theory is that Bennett's narrator, being in a world unlike ours, is using proverbial expressions and quoted material from a parallel culture. Not only is his view of reality warped, but he has an entire worldful of similarly warped homily collections, books and Bibles to quote from to "clarify" his story. His warped reality quotes from -its warped representations of reality.

This is comic, of course--and there's a lot of comedy in Bennett's work, as there is in life. But it also gives the poem a strange doubling, of going in and out of two worlds, neither of which is a known one. The use of parentheses, especially the last unclosed one with a second parenthesis within it, adds still more worlds to what is going on.

Clearly, Bennett is a surrealistic poet. This means that dreams are the basis of his poems, not outer reality; and moods, systems of imagery, verbal architecture, and so forth are what his poems most provide. So the parentheses and quotation marks and like devices add orchestration and counter-point--layers of dreams rather than a mere chain of dreams. The fore-burden (as I call what a poem overtly signifies) of "SPREADING . . . WATER" is a man's feeling as though he were in his flooded study, and/or in his flooded brain. With him there is another man who's had some kind of terrible accident. I don't know what thsi man is doing here and wonder if this poem is part of a sequence that would explain him. Anyway, because of the "padded glass" we might be in a madhouse-cell . . . underground? (because of the "spaded path").

I have to admit that this poem of Bennett's pretty much stymies me. Nor find I any intrusions of suddenly redeeming lyricisms so frequent in Bennett's poems. To perhaps help others, here's an attempt at a close reading: What the blood drained (from) the second man "loomed" (in a lame way) in the slant of the man's eye off his cheek. Whatever it is that the blood somehow "drained" him of is like a sailing seed or a car that has slid down (his?) slick ditch because of spirals of heavy snow (and I think of those corkscrew scribbles over comic strip characters' heads that indicate confusion).

The narrator stares at the man through a fog, dimly perceiving ("calculating") a "spaded path" that he follows into the flooded room where, among "books afloat," the man has dog-paddled, not admitting he screamed, to the wet desk, barking thinly, his face "in a bowl of gas receipts" making him snuffle his thanks to the narrator--for finding him, I suppose. The narrator's "seeing eye" is asleep on the seat where the man's "complications drifted, like threads of liquid meat," so maybe we're in a stomach instead of a brain (which might make the gas intestinal). Concerns of the flesh are important, that's one sure thing. I have no clue why the tenses aren't consistent, except that they allow for multiple time frames.

A description of water on the brain? I dunno. But in the final analysis something to live in rather than just observe in passing.