April 4, 2006

Both Both (March 2006). 24 pages.

Quickly becoming one of my favorite poetry zines. March's edition pairs Laura Moriarty and Armand F. Capanna II. Moriarty's contribution is a single, long-play poem chock full of allusions, direct quotes, and lines that swing to cause blunt force trauma:

We can't tell our friends
What we think of them
...
We are enemies but I have decided to forget all that. You are more introspective and lyrical or maybe it's me.

How Moriarty just drops references in the poem to force an indirect appropriation creates an interesting and immediately effect: "[Robert Duncan, "Ode for Dick Brown"]."

Capanna's second page is reminiscent of 1970s microcards (yes, I work in a library). I think more work needs to be represented in this vein. Why print 12 pages of material on 12 pages when you could fit 36 or 48 pages onto the same pages? The visual elements (including text layout) drive the reading into familiar and strange territory, like science diagrams gone haywire. At first glance, everything seems clean and orderly, but the longer you work through the material, the more chaotic (read open) the page becomes.

Edited by John Sakkis.