NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Five A5 sheets stapled together. This issue leads off with an article on the origin of the ideas that lead to the writing of novels, and is followed by a number of reviews. The rest is poetry of a sort, of rather strange shape, form and content at times. The most accessible of the lot is a page of poems from John Grey; they have an observational easiness of expression and often deal with love/relationships and taking a walk or stroll, sometimes at the same time, as in TWILIGHT STROLL:

	Just being here
	and moving briskly,
	I speak your name
	in love,
	I stir the dead alive.

	Wild plum thicket
	sways in the breeze
	I make
	and the Rapunzel moon
 	lets down a little
	of its hair of light.

	I think You did it
	Told me to seek another half
	Taught me incomplete
	Taught me the screech of skin
	Skin hunger, eaten
	Burnt alive without lover's touch
	You manufactured loneliness like this

More of a hand run-off pamphlet than a poetry magazine, ZYX is a vehicle for the editor Arnold Skemer to launch an editorial diatribe against most contemporary poetry nine-pins, particularly small press magazines and their editors.

Fine, if ZYX offers interesting and cogent alternatives to the aunt sallies under attack, but alas that isn't the case. There are one or two pieces of work that might survive in the world of poetry at large. Guy R Beining finds interesting lines like:

	Why hold the candle when you can take the lamp and flee.

	A dark lump of indifference floats past the senses

	An otaku gladiator of images
	An omelet with the subtext of Disney
	A gag back in the bag at pleasure island.

	I am a thin focus of soft fear in silken love.

Poetry ... with jagged lettering and crazy statements that look like(they) came from a mental hospital.

with tendencies towards eccentricity, egocentricity, verbal authoritativeness, belligerence and dreaminess

Arnold Skemer kicks off the 39th edition of ZYX with an opening essay on book reviewing; an occupation he calls

the bastard child of literary practice

If an author is educated and cultivated I'll forgive him his faults

pompous ass

The remaining pages are packed with cut and paste poems from several plucky American poets who permit their address and e-mail details to be published. One who caught my early attention was California's Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal. I see why Skemer published his poem NAMES. It's down to that good advice thing again.

	They come and they go, all these names,
	And some are remembered through the ages.
	. . .
	But in poetry, write the good poem;
	Your name and fame alone won't cut it.

	Is it the words in my mind,
	The jay's squawks, or the silences between?
	There's always noise: outside, inside.
	I've settled in a forest and heard 
	A leaf drop, a mushroom explode.
	It's all the same music: from a bomb
	To a symphony. It is feeling not sound:
	Fish chumming, one vibration,
	A tonic, a hum.

	Whose toil is it? Mine or God's?
	It's the truth I don't know.
	Maybe death will make it clear.

	Sparrows outside my window     monster at his desk

	Brilliant poet sits in a café     such bad breath
	Three pennies in a urinal         full-moon tonight
	Time to write a poem              go lift some weights
	Jealous of horse-cock             you call him old sponge-brain

	At the gas pump     clouds drag shadows over your car
	Not even done with the poem     already sending it off
	Feed goats     chickens     the spring pig     pause to?
	Moon     moonlight     ceiling fan fans
	I don't like that man     the one who claims to be J. Cone

	I'll walk in new snow     I'll tap my boots before I enter

After reading SITTING, GETTING UP, SITTING AGAIN I could certainly be easily tempted into reading more of Cone; perhaps his imaginatively titled poem THINKING OF CHEKOV ON A SNOWY DAY IN IOWA CITY published in 6 X 6 #9, a publication reviewed favourably by Arnold Skemer in his article LITMAG SURVEILLANCE.

Yes, there's plenty that's first-rate in ZYX #39 including UNCLE AL, a delicate poem about an old man on his deathbed from the sensitive pen of John Grey of Providence, Rhode Island.

Other featured poets: Spiel, Nathan Whiting, George Kuntzman, Dan Waber and Randall Brock.

ZYX is a selection of poetry, reviews and a rather large editorial all caught together front and back of five A4ish size pages.

The opening editorial, by Arnold Skemer raises the question about the plethora of creative writing courses in the US, that seem to be self-perpetuating and 'growing' the whole industry of creative writing. Whilst some of Skemer's vitriol might seem overdone, the overall premise is one that is tending to get a lot of airtime on blogs and the like, and raises the question about the value of overpopulating the world with creative writing.

The reviews feature four books, one of which in particular caught my eye: WATER VAPOUR by Geoff Huth, with an enviable review quote:

May I say that it is a type of ur-poetry, a continuing investigation of the basic impulse of language? Yes, I may and in situations like this, you are merely witness to logoessence and are mute in the absence of reliable conventions of critical reactions. I trust that the reader understands my meaning.

Further on in, PARODIES LOST by George Kuntzman caught this reader's eye for the subject and the shaping of the poem around an ice hockey pitch/match, complete with goals, combines clever wordplay with visuals.

On the back page ASK ECHO by Spiel is a reworking of a traditional metamorphic muse:

	Ask Echo
	what your words are worth
	aside the squall