Hmmmm...this book shoulda been called DEFENSE AGAINST ME because really, when it comes to L-7 squares you can't get any more in-depth than your's truly! And despite what you holier-than-thou world saving types may think it ain't like I'm gonna do anything to rectify any situations, especially given my general stubbornness and deep down loathing for most of the people who make up this underground chic you've been wallowin' in for years like pigs in their own number two. Maybe I'll become even more cube to the point where you're gonna need 3-D glasses just to even look at me, but I shant care one whit. You people are worth it.
All kidding aside (kinda/sorta), this is gonna be a hard 'un to review considering just how much I've been privy to much Byron Coley fax and fantasies both of a good and bad nature o'er the past few. But trudge on I must and I gotta say that this collection of Coleyprose is something that is (keeping all extraneous interference outta it) quite enveloping.
I'm typing this on a rather warm Wednesday afternoon (day off) while Coltrane is blasting on the bedroom boom box. The combination of weather, music and Coley do make for a fine melange with the music ("Brasilia" if you care) fitting in with the much-needed warmth and the words manifested in print bouncing off everything like those animated atoms you used to see on afternoon Public Tee-Vee. Maybe the fact that I feel happy/tired due to cutting the grass this AM does figure in, but I sure feel better now than I have in quite some time.
Coley's poesy, like his music-related articles and whatnot, read like printed punk rock. And I mean punk as it was before it became pUnK unto punque. Good and solid done up in a way that made you wear out those Flamin' Groovies albums into eternity. Pieces dealing with such diverse subjects as Fahey, Reed, Beefheart, Jack La Lanne and Helen Wheels (!) read with the same raging beat-in-your-head drive that you still get from similar Meltzer offerings, and whether the subject matter be the loss of friends past or a retort to the Ken Burns JAZZ mini-series (Coley and partner in ARTHUR Thurston Moore actually offered to help with the avant portion but were summarily ignored) it reads the same way you hear when WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT was on the turntable and Robitussen was in in your veins (or at least used to be).
Bad moves...the anti-George Bush II poems, not for political purposes mind you but because picking on George is akin to bullying the teeny weeny kid from the first grade who wears a leg brace. It's so easy and like, where's the sport? It's akin to all of those anti-Bush/govt. diatribes both good and dismal from the oughts which suddenly disappeared when Prez. Obama was ruling the roost only to return due to the current climate change in Washington DC. Predictable pattern here, and the last thing I'd expect from Coley is predictability, at least on this socially minded level. But given how I've misjudged people before like, I can be wrong again now, can I? (I should letcha know that there is a pome which discusses the ACTUAL TIME Coley and Kim Gordon sat next to Donald Trump at a fashion show, a subject that'll be extrapolated upon in a future collection I'll betcha!)
Otherwise a pretty hefty slab of Coley that longtime fans should adore, first half in English and the second in French in case you're bi...lingual that is! And true, nothing as good as "Me Chinese/Me play joke/Me put pee-pee in your Coke" presents itself but how often does a poem like that come about?
You're more of a rectangle than a square, Chris.
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