From the magazine “dedicated to the long poem” we get two. The first, by rob mclennan is a rambling sort of disenchantment – a proud proclamation of everything the poet is not. And when I say everything, I mean absolutely everything. “Children playing football on mcleod street”; “tamara revisiting gossip & old family history”; “david working quietly in richards store”; “ten million dollars”; “a poem or some other form of torture.” It’s all here. It feels, in the end, like a guy emptying himself onto the page. The content of the poem, what actually gets talked about, grows more and more irrelevant as it becomes apparent that anything and everything might go into this poem. And as it becomes apparent that the content of the poem isn’t at issue here, the reader is forced to contemplate the poet, and when I contemplate the poet in this poem, all I get left feeling is empty. Ditto for the second poem in this issue of Stanza.
lit zine / publisher: above/ground press / main creator: rob mclennan (editor) / free;$10/5 issues / RR#1, Maxville, ON, K0C 1T0