Micro-Reviews: BERNADETTE MAYER, MIN K KANG, MARY KASIMOR, BILLY MAVREAS, SONNET L'ABBE, DAMIAN LOPES, PET SMITH, KATIE L PRICE, A RAWLINGS and GIL MCELROY

JIM MCCRARY provides micro-reviews of

Works & Days by Bernadette Mayer

(New Directions Books, New York, 2016)

Diary of a K-Drama Villain by Min K Kang

(Coconut Books, 2015)

Touch the Donkey featuring Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, Sonnet L’abbe, damian lopes, Pet Smit, Katie L Price, a rawlings and Gil McElroy

(Touch the Donkey Press, 2016)

Works & Days by Bernadette Mayer

The pleasures of finding a book.  The rush of something you desire.  You recognize.  You crush.  It is that simple.  Mayer has been a poet I’ve read for a long time….stapled and mimeo mags on St. Marks and McSorleys over a pint.  She is, here, as always, relating in a way at once staggering and comfortable.  Even if I cant do the Jumble…my dyslexic brain forbids…although now that I think about it….no not that.  Here it is again that she writes with wit and knowledge and ease.  She does tell us what she does and it is not that we think.  And if we recognize those days in late spring or summer….then more we discover.  She is a poet who has matured in her way.  If you don’t you should.  If you haven’t you could.  It is that simple. 

*

Diary of a K-Drama Villain by Min K Kang

This is a really, really funny book.  To me that matters.  A lot.  I learned from funny.  From Spicer and Kyger and Bromige and Dorn and Compton etc etc.  It is also not funny.  It is also something to do with K-Pop and I could lie and tell you I know K-Pop.  Not so.  I have no idea.  I google and see that.  But no….not here.  Let me quote:  “how many ways to utter song/iterate reiterate/sever/how many ways to utter dog…”.   That is it for me.  That is what I look for and gosh, isn’t that all we can do.  I really like this book.  I hope someone reads this and finds this book, this poet, these or other poems from Min K Kang.  I really do.

*

Touch the Donkey. By Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, Sonnet L’abbe, damian lopes, Pet Smit, Katie L Price, a rawlings and Gil McElroy

Published "somewhere in Canada." Should you by some chance come across a print edition of this magazine………do what you have to do.  It is worth risk and exchange dollars and loss of identity.  Full up of poetry worth discovery.  And just having this title in your collection is worth much credit in the life hereafter.  Donkey.

*****

Here is jim mccrary’s cat Iris, apparently giving the reviewer the stink-eye for not getting up to feed her at 6:03 a.m.