First item in the alphabetical order I've decided to follow, is Axle, a monthly newsletter for an Australian group devoted to "concrete, visual, action, photo and sound poetries," because it contains a nice (altered) excerpt from a Runway Spoon Press Book. That's my outfit, in case you don't know, and I can't resist any opportunity to plug my authors. The book excerpted from is Commentaries (II) (available for $5 from me at bobgrumman@nut-n- but.net), the author David Miller. The part excerpted is a set of variations on a line, "waking: a figure of stars seen through a glass wall," that Miller shows fully awake in a larger text otherwise asleep in different degrees of obscuring line-outs.

Next up is Fuck!, whose editor, Lee Thorn, deserves all kinds of kudos for keeping a monthly (!) going for over three years now. The two issues nearest at hand, like all the issues of Thorn's zine that I've seen, are down 'n' dirty: three sheets of typing paper stapled in the upper left corner and covered mostly with contra-genteel poetry and drawings. Neatly-typed. Among the specimens of poetry in the March issue is Ryan G. Van Cleave's, "Y Chromosome," which is refreshingly pro-male (but laughingly so.) Its third stanza is: "More than a swerve from mere genital utility/ it's a dynamic curiosity, the driving desire to know./ We don't mean to be insatiable,/ but we are," followed by, "." The poem ends, "We've already got one X chromosome./ Who'd be nuts enough/ to trade all this in for another?" Others, including Antler, have some good stuff in the March issue, too, and for my crowd there are four infraverbal gems in it from Mike Basinski, one of which includes the passage, "LARGE/ Nevel's oranges/ textswitch detect defect," and if you don't hum up at the sight of "textswitch" with its blur of witchery/ text-switchery/ sandwichery/ wit-stitchery," then I suspect infraverbality will never be your thing. The January issue boasts two inimitable visual poems by Joel Lipman (whose work I too rarely see in print), one with the crude slogan "First poetry, later de/ Mockracy," which is--as just quoted--a kinda silly joke but type-set/mis-set/myth-set/et-set by Lipman yields all kinds of shimmers about firstness, poetry, communication--and later deMockracy/ freedom, et-set. Among the more standard good stuff in that issue is Thorn's "people are/ SO/ FUCKING/ RUDE// and then, if you don't like it,/ YOU'RE the asshole."

The latest issue of O!!Zone is as packed with excellent reproductions of mostly first-rate straight illumages, visual poems (mostly in the form of collages) and illustrated straight poems as ever. The mix of nationalities is particularly appealing, Russia being especially well-represented.

Then there's Charles Doria's 100, a collection of short poems which includes, "1/1/00": "when everything old/ becomes all things new/ we'll laugh down/ meadows lightly green" but is mostly leftist anger with the USA, as in, "Beirut": "260 USA dead/ Reagan/ why weren't you there/ instead" or with what I'd call American Christianity ("evertime I see a christer/ moving the mouth/ this marvelous urge/ to piss it shut"). It's hard, however, to get too peeved with him, if you don't agree with him, after his untitled: "the hair on my head is/ just like the hair on my ass/ can you tell if/ I'm talking or farting."

The latest issue of Popular Reality is as wacked-out as ever, with all kinds of funny stuff crammed into its tabloid-sized pages like the description by Editor Crowbar of her date with John M. Bennett, similarly funny texts and drawings by Al Ackerman, and a reproduction of an authentic old-timey ad for the Smith and Wesson Bicycle Revolver, "the only SAFE Arm For Bicyclists . . . cannot be fired by accident, even in the event of a header." Also in the issue are discussions of flouridation, electromagnetic radiation and like conspiracies as well as a tragi-comic attack by Jim Goad on Jim Hogshire's destructive attempts to help Goad in his trial for beating up a nutto woman who had attacked him. It has a nice Musicmaster illumage, too, and I much like the unattributed drawing on the front cover that outlines a man (leaving out his face and like details) who is sitting at a dining table with his fork into something circular on a plate; "It almost tasted like the real thing," it is captianed. Another dumb-sounding throw-away that really resonates for me.

Last on my list of items to cover in this report is a book for elementary school teachers (grades 3-6), The Secret Life of Words, that uses a charming collection of user-friendly poems to get schoolchildren into the fun of poetry. I mention it mainly, I will admit, because one of MY mathematical poems is in it, but it has some neato stuff by bpNichol, too, such as "Sixteen Lilypads," which consists of a large square that has been divided into sixteen small squares, each containing some permutation of "frog," such as "fr?g," "?rog," and, finally, "????." Its inclusion of many other infraverbal and/or visual poems like Nichol's, and all sorts of other kinds of poetry give it a wider range than any adult anthology I know of--and make it certain to excite the more verbally imaginative children (and teachers) lucky enough to be exposed to it.