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Essays, Manifestos, Statements, Speeches, Maxims, Epistles, Diaristic Jottings, Narratives, Natural histories, Poems, Plays, Performances, Ramblings, Revelations, and all such ephemera as may appear necessary to bring society into a slight tremolo of confusion and fright at least.

wordlick

Joe Ross

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In a set form of three stanzas of five lines each per page, Ross has created in his 12th book of a poetry a dynamic interchange with words themselves. Perhaps never since the great Bard of Avon has a poet in English employed such a large number of word combinations as Ross has in wordlick, encouraging the reader literally to pucker his lips and read across each line as if he had unknowingly entered some literary marathon. The good reader obviously will become, at times, winded:

Speechouting legpull gripe on sleepmaven torn
Rosepushing soilworth of Yalta spread

But by race's end, despite all the political and social upheaval he has explored, the reader will find himself -- even after doubling back to explore the truth of each phrase and glimpsing that truth in the mirror of one's own being -- taking flight on "musicwing," the last word of this work.

Like many of his previous books, all of which have received considerable attention by both international poetry communities and critics, Ross takes his readers on a voyage through meaning, and in this work it is a jargon-spouting, ad-lingo, legalistic-nonsense, neopolitical doublespeak that we must face to get to any truth. The amazing thing is that the poet not only finishes the race but restores the world to all its wonder.