Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > Bombay Gin 1995

A few things struck me about this issue right off the bat. 1st, the batter ran to 3rd base from home base & the left-fielder turned into a mythical creature. 2nd, the cover image(s) are printed in a faint color that's difficult to distinguish from the background color except by getting the light to reflect on it in a certain way. 3rd, this cover was printed using the Kavyayantra letterpress at Naropa. The image(s) are somewhat generic landscape abstraction linoleum cuts but that's ok. 4th, there's no Editor-in-Chief - instead there's a collaboration of 5 editors - probably students? I kindof like that. & the writing seems a bit more experimental at times than in other issues I've read. I definitely like that.

I liked Gloria Frym's apparently faux-epistolary "from LETTERS HOME":

"Dear Father,
If the complaint lodges itself within
If I do not ding the bell for the bellhop
If I kiss a woman on the lips [..:]"

Sean Twomey's "WORK":

"He is eating lunch at a trendy Vietnamese restaurant. He orders curry mock duck, extra spicy, extra vegetables. He drinks too much jasmine tea. The fortune cookie arrives with the check. Inside: ACCEPT THE FIRST JOB YOU ARE OFFERED. He asks for an application. The waiter brings him into the kitchen. The cook asks if he can read and write. He can. He becomes the take-out boy."

Rosemarie Waldrop's "from: PRE & CON, or, POSITIONS & JUNCTIONS":

"Figures how oscillate how
in search of
another how part
of the body"

I'm reminded of an exchange that my friend Amy Catanzano & I had about privileging prepositions & conjunctions & the like equally to or more so than nouns. Animating the connective tissue.

Katie Ahearn's "IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG?":

"I do not have cancer, an irregular pap smear, a migraine, a tooth ache, a gall stone [..:]"

The etymology of Andrew Schelling's "NOTE ON HEMP", the creative silliness of Robert K. Giesen's 'A RATTLESNAKE AT THE REUNION: AMERICAN LANDSCAPES", the disjunction between the title & the contents of M. Regan's "2am DREAMING QUIETLY BETWEEN TRIPS TO THE BATHROOM", the subtle twistiness of D. Robert Lessig's "ABOUT AN ESSAY", the Kenneth Patchen-esque picture poem collaboration between Brad O'Sullivan & Jesse Miller, the evocative geosocio description of Christian Waldbauer's "THE BIODYNAMIC NORTHWEST WINTER SOUP", the very presence of Anne Waldman & Lawrence Ferlinghetti. In short, there's much here to hold the writerly interest.