Wherein the EDITOR describes with Impunity & Authority what makes this issue & other current issues impossible to ignore.

MARJORIE PERLOFF, America's foremost defender of Poesy against the assault of Tedium, trains her gaze on the stolen election!"

ZAITCHIK: Republican "Days of Rage" in Miami-Dade propelled by golf-clubs!

W's (or: Dubbya's) super-secret oval office diary snatched by Corpse! As reported by JON O. SMITH.

KATHLEEN WELCH describes Bush health-care plan and Pentagon budget increases for Corpsophiles!

RANDALL G. ARNOLD in Mexico. "Today a waiting period; tomorrow, illegal votes."

DR. MENLO'S shattering fable of the Millenium starring the Mayor of Windows!

HARIETTE SUROVELL in a trademark display of compassionate acid sketching! These people are real!

Inside the mind of a five-year-old with ANN VERONICA SIMON!

MILTON BEYER ("Uncle Milt") returns to our pages with memories of a fabulous past peopled by the eccentric rich and plain memorable! Starring, among others, Fred Koch from Detroit, the owner of a five-billion dollar fortune, and Elaine, a leggy former Miss San Francisco!

Call to shave off Bush issued by Silicon Salley CEO!

 

NIXON ISN'T DEAD!

TIM DARDIS distills Nixon and bottles him!

PROFESSOR CARL FREEDMAN lets Nixon out of the battle only to deconstruct him to the tiniest springs! He finds the bitter brew beneath the froth!

Nixon reappears in FRANK MATAGRANO'S poem decades after his resignation, proving that Nixon isn't now and never was dead.

IRA COHEN'S Ave Atque Vale FOR BURROUGHS, GINSBERG, HUNCKE & LEARY, TOO.

Five ANTLER poems with delicious boy comecries.

TERENCE WINCH is the only poet from which we accept the second-person pronoun without a wince.

The journal of Christopher Columbus by TONY BARNSTONE.

Original poems by MIKE TOPP who is unfazed by celebrity (see blowjob in current issue). He just keeps on topping the obvious with embarassing revisions!

The sentimental history of Eureka, California, from the person P.O.V. of RACHEL BECKER! It's not a pretty picture!

The Corpse is pleased to introduce R.S. HARDING, a poet of dark Southern intensities.

LUIS URREA drives a poetry-sectioning vehicle over I-10, I-25, I-40, I-70.

We will continue to publish RONNIE BURK'S surrealist attacks on this, the best of all possible worlds, until the police raid our office (after that, we will do so offshore where it's kind of damp and not so good).

We don't know if Anonymous is related to Sara, but the two have in common a hard-nosed deliciousness that Carla has stripped of Sara Frou-Frou.

GREGORY DYKE is a love poet.

BILL EVANS seeks impatiently through the detritus of official pornography for a reason to put down his pistol.

NAT HARDY is a Canadian poet who marries Jacobean high diction to the exigencies of the Lousiana Bayou.

NANCY KANGAS is a prose poet who takes her dreams seriously!

JOY KAPLAN'S e-mail epic of erotic and social life!

SAM TSITRIN, foul-mouthed and funny!

A preternatural calm, edged on all sides by violence, accompanies BILL LAVENDER'S tool box of poetry that goes with him wherever he does.

JAY D. MANCINI has a lot of colorful past to deal with, ok?

Let's not beat around the bush: JANET MASON writes the best lesbian sex poems in America. Wanna make something out of it?

A. DI MICHELE (who is really Andy D.) is a crafty topos-carver. His work is highly valued by topos-users and prized for its ritualistic flavors.

SHEILA MURPHY restores mystery to a certain linguistically overused topos. We suspect that a secret channel exists between Andy D' and Sheila M's works but we know little else.

SU RIALTO has a thing for Jonny! We like that!

JEFF SMITHPETERS is an ironic romantic! He might be Jonny!

R.B. REEVES Whitmanically mourns Poppa!

LARRY SAWYER directs his demonic energy mainly toward overthrowing the existing order!

DALE SMITH displays here historical imagination and a je ne sais quoi urgency that Corpse readers will recognize without any prompting.

JEFF STUMPO treads territories tracked by other Corpse poets but there is pleny of game here!

ROBERT TRAMMELL makes it possible for Texas to still show its face! There are birds in his computer!

SKIP FOX from the intersection of language and cosmos! Reporting live!

ROBERT GIBBONS awed within the cosmic crucible! And conscious that dead poets are watching him.

WILLIAM SLAUGHTER, traveler, from Kafka's prague with queries on love!

Transducement
of Rare Beings

GELLU NAUM, the great Romanian surrealist - translated by GABRIEL T. PRAJITURA.

REESOM HAILE is that rarest of beings, an Eritrean poet made vivid in translation by CHARLES CANTALUPO! Read him here both in English and in the original latinized tigrinya!

BRAGI OLAFFSON is also a rare being, an Icelandic poet englishized by Bernard Scudder! See Olaffson in an Amsterdam bar refusing to rejoice at the soccer victory of the Netherlands over Romania! No Icelandic text, sorry.

ALI YUCE, a Turkish poet, loves his country and women! The rarest of feelings (in combination, anyway) are brough (gingerly) into English by SINAN TOPRAK and GERRY LAFEMINA.

KAJETAN KOVIC is a rarissimo being from the former Yugoslavia whose poetry is herein made available by several translators. Missing the original Serbo-Croatian, alas!

AURA SIBISAN translates Corpse poets BARRY SPACKS, DANA RANGA, DENISE DUHAMEL, AMALIO MADUENO, and RICHARD MCNALLY into the dulcet tones of the Romanian language. Ms. Sibisan's translations are presented here in the translators' language without any originals! (To make up for the constant vice-versa!)

Edited by ANDREI CODRESCU

The eagerly awaited second volume of Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998: Fictions, Travels & Translations is here! Get yours before they're all gone! Click here...

ROBERT PERCHAN in SOUTH KOREA: "I tell you she had one," insisted the ruddy girls' softball coach."

EDDIE WOODS with STRANGE FRUIT: "the durian, the most exquisite fruit known to man."

WILLIAM LEVY in PARIS, FRANCE: "She wanted me to feel the softness of her breasts, with their hard tips, because of the fine tracing line of desire she knew she would feel directly from her nipples to her loins."

GEOFFREY CRUICKSHANK-HAGENBUCKLE from SHAKESPEARE & CO, in PARIS, FRANCE: "Henry Miller fucked here! And the beds have not been changed!"

TED BREWER in TEUTONIA: "The more the German punk and I speak, the more annoyed the Serb seems to become."

PAT NOLAN returns to MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA: "The restaurant where I contemplated suicide replaced in the exact spot by a bridal shop, a place where I had my first taste of chili beans, where I licked the bowl, lifted every crumb off the counter with a finger tip, the feel of empty pockets and a broken heart."

DR. SAM VAKNIN in SKOPJE, MACEDONIA: "The Macedonians drive like the Italians, gesture like the Jews, dream like the Russians, are obstinate like the Serbs, desirous like the French and hospitable like the Bedouins."

BART PLANTENGA in NEW YORK with the unbearables: "They mainly engaged in a strange hybrid of beer-enhanced kvetching..."

EDDIE WOODS in AMSTERDAM with ins & outs: "Amsterdam had long been recognized as a free-press haven."

SHELLEY BERC takes Alejandro to Transylvania. Watch for more Postcards from Shelley here.

 

In ROBIN BECKER'S latter-day Huck Finn, beauty-queen Tiffany and her humdrum twin, Dawn, raft down the Mississippi.

BARRY GIFFORD'S gory tale of dinner with Rocco and Vi.

New York cabby gets VD from fare in DAN FANTE story!

Jesus comes back in two WILLIE SMITH stories & does not even mind Willie getting a blowjob from Exquisite Corpse.

Venice to Munich in an autobahn-fast tale by YURI ANDRUKYOVICH, translated by MICHAEL M. NAYDAN.

An epistoloary tale of prophylactic mores by MARCY JARVIS.

A masturbatory tragedy by JOE MAYNARD.

A meander featuring Bukowski's ghost by MARY MCCLUSKEY.

Horror in the forest! Told by NICK ROMBES.

GREG WHARTON makes case against gravity.

FOR GREGORY CORSO by Robert Creeley Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2001 at 4:00 p.m. PT I'll miss you, who did better than I did at keeping the faith of poets, staying true. It's as if you couldn't do otherwise, had always an appetite waiting to lead. You kept to the high road of canny vision, let the rest of us find our own provision. Ruthless, friends felt, you might take everything. Nothing was safe from you. You did what you wanted. Yet, safe in your words, your poems, their humor could hold me. The wit, the articulate gathering rhythms, all made a common sense of the archaic wonders. You pulled from nowhere the kingly chair. You sat alone there.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI, the poet-laureate of San Francisco, militates for the return of the lyric voice and calls for a "populist" laureate! (Hmm!)

An interview with BARRY HANNAH, Southern fiction's capo di famiglia, conducted by the Corpse's own REX ROSE.

BRIAN KIMBERLING on the politics of spellcheck! (David W., pay attention!)

GARY SLOAN weighs in on the controversy surrounding the physical existence of Jesus Christ. His investigation will surprise you. On the other hand, we know that the Exquisite Corpse is Jesus (and vice-versa). C'mon, Pat and Ralph!

BART PLANTENGA goes beyond dregs to the genius of alcohol and unfolds a huge drunken petal at us! Ugh! Ouch!

DAVID FRANKS at the intersection of greatness, antidepressants, and painting! Reporting live!

It is our very great pleasure here at the Corpse to open a new line of critical inquiry by the above title. In this section, aspiring as well as established critics ingratiate themselves to the Corpse by praising beloved and frequent contributors to the magazine. We believe that these exercises will encourage serious as well as frivolous concern about the very great authors we upload here. We also use anonymous contributions and do not care if some bruising occurs in the process (not all BJs are gentle!).

KIRBY OLSON lovingly captures the unfathomable Willie Smith within a not un-barbed memoir! (Remember: K. Olson is the author of the infamous 'A Night With Allen Ginsberg.')

JULIAN SEMILIAN nearly took the title of this section literally as he tumbles delightfully before the splendid poet and translator JEN HOFER.

JULIAN SEMILIAN is himself the subject of an enthusiastic (if a bit crude!) humjob from LEIGH SOMERVILLE.

The somewhat promiscuous KIRBY OLSON then returns with a critical performace on MIKE TOPP! He is indefatigable, that Kirby!

Go to the CORPSE CAFE RIGHT NOW and watch KIRBY OLSON HOLD COURT while under attack by NEW ORLEANS SURREALISTS!

Voila! Bow down to the omniscient CYBER SACK -- wherein our contributors or made legend and stuff is perused.

SEAN CARMAN reviews PHILIP GLASS' NEW OPERA "IN THE PENAL COLONY": "The story is... infused with Kafka's direct presentation of a fairly incomprehsible and horrific state of affairs.

CHRISTIAN PROZAK reviews JOAN KEROUAC'S NOBODY'S WIFE: "An image-shattering book of one of America's greatest icons"; NEELI CHERKOVSKI'S ELEGY FOR BOB KAUFMAN: "His grief is organized"; BILLY CHILDISH'S NOTEBOOKS OF A NAKED YOUTH: "Sensitivity verging on heartbreaking absurdity"; DAN FANTE'S MOOCH: "A novel about a guy who pulls his head out of his ass"; AND JIM HARRISON'S THE BEAST GOD FORGOT TO INVENT: "The book Jim Harrison forgot to write."

JULIAN SEMILIAN and SANDA AGALDI REVIEW MARK SALERNO'S FOR REVERY: "Posing and refined, yet fresh and moving in their theatricality, these reveries are aerial, fragile, with matter out of the way."

MIKE TOPP reviews MICHAEL ROTHENBERG'S PUNK ROCKWELL: "For a man whose job is meant to depend on secrecy and discretion, Punk Rockwell leads a surprisingly flashy and high-profile life."

ROBIN BECKER reviews DALTON CONLEY'S HONKY: "what it's like to grow up white in a community dominated in visible and overt ways by color."

CHRISTOPHER HANLON reviews PBS'S "ANTIQUES ROADSHOW": "where serious humiliation is artfully disguised as educational television."

NAT HARDY reviews LUST IN AMERICA AND OTHER ODD VIEWS, BY RANDALL GARRISON: "vacillates between comic and tragic prurience."

RALPH HASELMANN reviews HAIKU GUY, BY DAVID G. LANOUE: "The author breaks down the fourth wall in an amusing way."

KEVIN P.Q. PHELAN reviews TIDELAND, BY MITCH CULLIN: "like wisps of smoke rising in the stark, serene quiet that follows a crash."

OLYMPIA VERNON reviews ERIC BASSO'S GHOST LIGHT: "Nobody taught me that in Mississippi---how to bend my bones erectly, know my bones like I knew my Eve."

We begin serializing DAN FANTE'S MOOCH!

MARK SPITZER'S CHUM continues. In this installment melon-love goes sour as the spoiled stranger ups the ire!

JULIAN SEMILIAN'S SKEUROMORPH leaves its shell and reveals a post-modern theft that left the Corpse office reeling!

KEITH ABBOTT'S FRANKLIN HANDSHAKE shakes its stuff in this installment.

TERESA BERGEN'S MADAME TINGLEY'S ORGAN continues tingling organically.

ANDREW WILSON'S CLEVERNESS is a constant.

MAURICIO MONTIEL FIGUEIRAS' MUCHADUMBRE in JEN HOFER'S splendid rendering (see Semilian blowjob).

Our READERS rave on, but we can take it.

See the first-ever translation of JEAN GENET'S play SPLENDID'S, by MARK SPITZER.

KATHLENE WELCH will blow the chads right off your ballot in a screwball political drama.