Saturday, September 20, 2008

Short Review: 888 by J.D.Nelson

Mad Verse Press PO Bok 6114, Boulder, CO 80306, USA
www.MadVerse.Com


I don't know what J.D.Nelson is doing. I don't know what to call his impenetrably eccentric little poems. But I know I like them. I also know that nobody I've heard of is doing anything remotely similar, which in the world of contemporary poetry--where almost everything feels like a retread of something else--that's quite remarkable. Poems in this little (13 page) collection have titles like "Wednesday, Otto?" and "The spiders won't concede" (the flipping between upper and lower case is J.D.'s, not mine), and each one takes you somewhere a little different than the last, or the next. They're so short that quoting three lines would give away most of the poem, if barely any of the meaning (do thay have meaning?), so I won't present a quote. I will urge you to contact J.D. for purchase details, however. If you want to buy poetry by living poets, you should at least try one who's doing something that hasn't been done better by the dead. Bruce.

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