Arthur Graham writes and edits for a living. Cofounder and former head editor of Rooster Republic Press. Current Editor in Chief of Horror Sleaze Trash.
This is an issue chock full of new names to me, and I enjoyed reading all of the different poems in their unique tones and styles. Some of my favorites included those by by Aimee Bender, Wolfgang Carstens, James Diaz and John Yohe. I did miss Arthur Graham's usual introduction, however. Wha' happen?
An interesting release from HST a lot of new names, they are being brave and branching out looking for new voices...which for me was great, I never would have found out about Jason Melvin's work. The cover is pretty impressive too, looking at it you wouldn't expect to find a poem about planting yams...or maybe ya would you little perv!
In the non farming poems there is one stand out poem, by JJ Campbell, "a lucrative business" starts off well, nice interesting words and it flows well and then you get the ending...most excellent! I really didn't expect that to be topped but then along comes Jason Melvin with the first piece of his writing I have read, "Books", wow, absolutely loved this one, as a massive fan of books this one was right up my alley and totally worth getting a copy of this collection to read.
This issue is Fire!!! I mean, it's up to you if you wanna put the word 'dumpster' in front of that. We sure missed Arthur's quarterly wisdom this time cause he somewhere in Hawaii handing out lei's. Take that as you will. Damian Rucci's 'Something to Write About', Kristin Garth's 'Bubblegum' and Willie Smith's 'When Death Calls' had me at hello. But they were all so very entertaining. Yesss, this one I'll come back to. Not sober though. Cheers to this shit-show Summer :/