Review: Battle Scars - John Bennett

Kamini Press
Ringvagen 8, 4th Floor
SE-117 26 Stockholm
Sweden
ISBN 978-91-977437-5-4

Henry Denander presents another fine, handsome, classy little book of poetry on his Kamini Press imprint, this time by a guy who's been writing and publishing for more than forty years on the good side - that is, the side I presume all readers of BEATNIK inhabit, the side of the outlaws and the misfits, the firebrands, the men and women who are sometimes too inventive and personal and too free of habitual restriction to be appreciated in their own time, but might, if we ever bloom into a courageous race, be discovered again and have laurels tossed on their graves (though most would settle, like Jack's ghost probably does, for empty beer bottles and fag packets). Bennett has been associated with a whole lot of poets you'll probably like a whole lot, since you're here and not at the page of the Poetry Book Society, but I won't mention them because I don't want to try to elevate the man on the strength of his connections. There's too much of that in mainstream poetry and in the small press - Charles Bukowski called it "clasping assholes" - and our poet doesn't need it anyway. Let's just say that in Battle Scars we get 30 poems, none of them more than 8 or 9 lines long, on subjects ranging from "techno-corporate dictatorship" to the ageing process, all crisply expressed and humorously cynical. You think you have not read very much at the end of each one but you find the words echoing in your mind, the ideas sinking themselves into your consciousness and making you think again about something you thought you had an absolute grip on. So you go back and read again. It's nothing to change the world, perhaps, but none of your ideas or my poetry are either; and Bennett would be profoundly suspicious of anybody who wanted to, I suspect. I liked it very much. If you're interested after hearing me waffle on like this, why don't you visit the Kamini Press website at http://www.kaminipress.com for more information.