MS, Michael Magee, Spuyten Duyvil, 2003

Playfulness, jokiness and serious engagement. Focus and then letting go of focus. To get the contradictions of life and presentation up front, rather than evade or hide or refuse to have a good time.

Most people are like trees, they are caught between competing sets of counterproductive /destructive forces. Between gypsy moths and being make into paper. Magee understands this.

"this is a fact check
from the girl at the hat check with the hatchet"

People places and things in these poems are constantly becoming each other. As in the ecosystems we are part of. The writer and reader and language and materials and experiences linked. As in ecology, the linkages have to be dealt with one way or another.

Goofy thematic fugue-like development. Ronald Johnson in science of perception mode if he had gone through the poetics of Jackass.

"the rest of the brain is barley"

Partly on nerve, partly on riff energy, partly on schtick, partly genuine interest in who might be listening. With his guard partially down. No transparent formal procedures or formalistic distancing to shield the poetry from the threat of the reader. A critical acumen operating from within. Letting the forces run openly through the poem, not screening out the contradictory stuff, not sidestepping the social phase cancellations.

The tension between the layers half the point. Dealing w/ it. Riffing, goofing, figuring, addressing, reapplying, and re-developing, The vectors of thought and playfulness. The light improprieties. Puns, rearrangements, cliches turned inside out. Figures of speech turn around.

Satirical suburban landscape as one of several enviornmental objects of address. Development as in the Duncan Doughnuts sense vs poetic development.

"the way to a man's heart is through his sternum"

References to Ayler, SunRa

Jazz voicing in dada mode- like Hans Bennink...

Riff-based Paratactic sequencing with active morphing.

Sweet/smart. Strong when deflating things.

MS is slop ala Mingus.

How much sampling?

"The 'I'm Tiger Woods, Motherfucker!' of indecision"

Dear P- Blog like epistolary prose dropped into the middle. Implying that the poet is doing a similar investigation of Globalization -- Capitalism -- Race from a different angle.

Readers hungry for more should check out My Ange Dickinson.