For stimulating criticism of advanced literature, I would strongly recommend Andy DiMichele's Jackson, Mississippi, zine, Semiquasi Review. For close readings, from many points of view and expertise, of poetry that is sometimes burstnorm, I would also recommend a Florida zine I've mentioned more than once before, Silent But Deadly, where poets from all over the country critique, or just plain defame, each other's work.

To my knowledge (but who can keep up with all that's going on in poetry nowadays?), there aren't any other magazines in the South that specialize in burstnorm poetry. There are several, however, that occasionally publish samples of it. Among them is the Houston publication, O!!Zone. It has given coverage to people like John M. Bennett, Crag Hill, Guy Beining and C. L. Champion. Indeed, one of the latter's contributions to O!!Zone (#12), "poema cocci," ranks among the best plurasethetic poems I came across in 1995. It consists of four scattered rectangles. In the middle of one is the word "cloud"; in another is a "c"; and "clod" is in a third. The fourth is empty. Sky, sea, earth . . . and mystery.

Another southern magazine that is favorably disposed toward burstnorm poems is the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, magazine, CWM. So far only one issue of it has appeared. One of its poems, by G. Huth, issues from the same kind of sensibility as C. L. Champion's. It consists of just the word, "watearth," to neatly sum up our planet's non-gaseous elements--and the two kinds of tear that hold them together/apart.

CWM co-editor, David Kopaska-Merkel, also publishes a fine sci-fi story & poem zine out of Tuscaloosa, Dreams and Nightmares, that on occasion has off-beat contributions such as #42's one-word poems ("pwoermds," according to G. Huth). The ones I liked best were two by Huth, "unneceszxzsary" and "thingk," and John Graywood's "Freudulent" (to which he has given the title, "Psychofeit").

The Baltimore-based Shattered Wig Review also mixes otherstream material, particularly schizurealistic poems and madcap "memoirs" by Al Ackerman, into its offerings. Others who merge surrealism with jump-cut techniques to excellent effect in its recentest issue (#11) are John M. Bennett (e.g., "Such a 'light sucking' my arm you sleeping, vacuum/ where my sunder seethes, 'caught 'n cauterized' like a/ ziplock bag of coughing, rains outside."), Jake Berry (e.g., "When the telephone/ sweats nymphomaniac pollen or barmaid nipples/ clot in the breeze;" and Simon Perchik, (e.g., "These shadows I grow in my good arm/ cracked the ceiling, cross --. In the movie/ gunners tracking the screen/ freeze where its light is brightest").

Speaking of Ackerman, my duty to Humor in America compels me to announce that there's an Ackerman video out now. It consists of two 17-minute films by Steve "Sleaze" Steele: "I, The Stallion" and "Kangaroo Island"--with a brief cameo of Ackerman, the Ling Master himself--plus a one-hour live reading by Steele at Stately Crowbar Manor 4 October 1994 of the following Ackerman stories: "The Ecstasy of Macaroni," "The Autobiography of a Flea--or Little Women," "I Remember Spine Weakly," "The True Reality," "The Man in the Green Nightshirt" and "Glunk." If you like tv sitcoms, you won't get much from this; if you have a sense of humor, you will.

Mary Veazey's stylishly-produced Sticks, like CWM, is more knownstream than otherstream but it has included work by Richard Kostelanetz and myself, so deserves mention here. Its less venturesome poems are top-notch, too, and include specimens by such excellent poets as Mark Fleckenstein and X. J. Kennedy.

I've heard good things about the range of the Baton Rouge zine, Exquisite Corpse, but found little cutting-edge material in the only issue I've seen (and been unable to find for a second look). Elsewise, Curmudgeon, out of South Carolina; Cotton Gin, out of North Carolina; and the Georgia zine, Fat Free, are newcomers to watch, Cotton Gin being the most serious of them, in my view, with a fine combination of veterans like Bennett and younger poets. No doubt there are other first-rate burstnorm publications in the area that I've not run into yet. It seems certain to me that the South's zines are making as consequential a contribution to the cause of innovative poetry and related art as any other region's. They're well worth investigating further.