NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

An accessible magazine of poems mainly from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, American and Canada. There's something for everyone from concrete poetry to more traditional forms, and it is neatly illustrated throughout with line art.

In this issue there is the recurring theme of exploring the nature of writing. Todd Moore's Oedipal poem about his father writing short stories I CAN STILL SEE focuses intimately the everyday, while Ann Menebroker's A MERE GLIMPSE (FOR AUDREY) is far more explicatory:

	the poem begins
	not with an idea
	but with a simple
	physical action.

	Henri Matisse said that
	when he painted, he tried
	to keep the painting as beautiful
	as it was when he brushed
	the first stroke on the canvas.

	Which makes me wonder:
	why aren't poems shorter?

The slam is actually a vehicle to reintegrate the poet with the audience.

detracts from the quality of the creative act [by] validating the artist,

I particularly enjoyed the incongruous pairing of two poems about different Barbies: Lyn Lifshin's BARBIE LOOKS BACK AT THE PHOTOGRAPHY referring to the famous doll and Laurel Speer's BARBIE DOLL referring to Klaus Barbie. Many of the poems are witty and plain enjoyable; too much contemporary poetry takes itself just seriously. If you want to get quality breadth for your buck, BOGG is the magazine to buy. There is something in the mix to hook everyone's attention.

Despite its thickness BOGG is stapled and has the overall look of a chapbook. Each page is used fully but is never over-crowded. Thus, there are just over 100 contributors, most from the USA. but I counted 12 from the UK, one from Ireland, five from Canada, three from New Zealand, and five from Australia. BOGG's mandate is to publish work with "an Anglo-American slant". I have no idea what that means other than the fact that BOGG publishes writers from the USA. and various Commonwealth countries (Ireland being an obvious exception here). There are contributing editors for the UK, Canada, and Australia and New Zealand to ensure this, as well as the acquisition of work from quite a large number of recognisable small press names.

The contents are predominantly poetry, with a few original graphics, one short article about a poetry reading, and four short book reviews. Much of the poetry tends to be first-person narrative/confessional, and in spite of the different layouts (and other gimmicks) employed by some of the writers, the poems are largely straight prose. There is even a classic example of broken-up-prose-as-poem in a posthumous piece from Charles Bukowski himself, one paragraph spread out over three pages. Not much of the work along these lines deviates from the mundane, or the mediocre, and the three or four poems (quips really) about the Clinton-Lewinsky charade really got on my nerves.

In BOGG 70, the exceptions come with some of the more adventurous work like that on the page called HAIKU VARIATIONS (a new feature for this issue), and the few prose, visual and alternative poems scattered throughout.

Although BOGG is an American publication it maintains an international dimension by collecting submissions via editors in the UK, Canada and Australia/New Zealand. Its poetry is interspersed with black and white drawings and there is a round up of reviews and a page of feedback by readers. By recording each poet's country the reader can judge whether there are different preoccupations and styles in different countries.

But most of all BOGG is not afraid to be innovative and the poetry reflects this. Poems such as WILMINGTON SUNRISE or FOR EVERY RIVERMOUTH where form on the page is as important or more important than content cannot be reproduced here. But they demonstrate BOGG's commitment to up-to-the-minute work and groundbreaking style.

There is also prose poetry such as Clark's BLUE with its autobiographical slant

As I grew older, I could make the world blue by listening to music.

This reviewer's favourite is Ruth Moon Kempher's poem REPOTTING A POINSETTIA, SHE DISCOVERS A GREENHOUSE NOTE, IN DEAD IVY as much for the title as the content. The title is in fact the first line and the poem continues

	and says to me, Never again, Lovie. This is vow.
	No more boxes, and newspaper, all the Haviland china
	in J & B boxes, all those stacks of unreadable books...

With a title like Bogg you might expect more than a wallow in the traditional stream and you will not be disappointed. This is more a "sinking into" as opposed to the "completely immersed" as in my old stomping ground with Bob Cobbing.

Bogg was founded in 1968 and moved to America in 1980. Because of this, the readership and the contributors are from a number of different countries. Consequently, a dip in such a book is always fruitful. For instance, from a cursory glance I come across — Gerald England —

	hearing a dog bark
	I rush to let her in
	then     remember

Another good example, this time by Peter Pache, is:

	orange moon
	through drifting morning
	smell of smoke

	*

	that is not the best

		to say

			of relations last

	light shuts

	Her body becomes
	rain cool as
	autumn through which
	grackles and ravens
	fly     their dark wings
	beating in her
	blood   she trades her
	youthful silks for
	rags of velvet,
	satin, for bedraggled
	feathers   the
	patchwork plumage of
	winter starlings
	who ride the wind
	into open sky.