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We are told that this is a magazine of fantastic poetry. It involves a small selection of eclectic poems, with one or two pieces about Queens and Camelot and such, others about the planet Venus, piranhas, interstellar war, a science-fiction world of the forty-third century, and one about exchangeable body parts. There is interesting work by Mario Milosevic in SYMPHONY FOR CANTILEVER in which he imagines some extra-terrestrials visiting Earth after its destruction, with maybe just a few buildings and bridges sticking their heads out amidst the ash and dust:

       Seeing the bridges and thinking
       here is something we understand.
       Kicking the struts
       and suspension cables.
       Making melodies out of our spans.
 
       Feeling grateful
       we had the foresight
       to anticipate their visit
       by leaving music makers
       for their amusement.

                              like leaves
       or rain you skid into my too-long
       neglected gutter to become one
       with the compost there.

                        Or someday soon, in secular
       earth or a church's carved shadow, a sapling
       will lift up through the pale vaulting
       and hinge of his ribs, twigs replace
       his fingers, new leaves will unpleat
       where his eyes sank into soil. Spring
       exploded through his flesh.

Dreams and Nightmares is a magazine of science fiction poetry and it contains eleven poems and several black and white illustrations.

Each poem is a privileged moment when words are revealed in a new context, in an unusual light, an unusual drama: the void and emptiness of Roger Dutcher's BOLTS OF MEMORY, the other universe of Mike Allen's THE BEST OF ALL PROBABLE WORLDS. But whatever the object, animals pawing, alien caretakers, the princess and the giant, the theme of the poems is always the same, the poetic act. The making of the poem, that is, the conversion of human experience or thought into words, is equally present in this collection, with the ultimate discovery of metaphors, which translate and support the experience and gives the fantastical a grounding in reality. Science fiction novel writers are undoubtedly the masters for the poets in this process in which the works themselves and the thoughts concerning the work are fused. The chants drifting up from my shoe in Saint James Wood's poem SAVAGE STORM DOG BALLET is a strange surrealist dream of song and howl:

	I hear chants drifting up from my shoe
	I’m fearful that savages have established themselves
	at my very feet a distant civilization
	barbaric worshipping wild gods
	with unknown motives

	They rise out of the hot soil,
	Pale and thin fading
	Flowers from the first light
	Of the hazy L.A. sun.

The language, which the poets discover and create, to explore their dreams and fantasies, creates a bond between their consciousnesses and the consciousness of the world about them. The uncertainty of human action is made into the firm and fixed language of metaphor, and there the poets welcome and strengthen all the hesitancies, all the uncertainties, all the torments of human experience. When the poem is achieved, that which is most personal in a poet enters into a strange impersonal world. Bruce Boston in THINGS YOU CAN'T AVOID AS AN IMMORTAL, sums up this position:

	Looking in the mirror
	and thinking your eyes
	reveal their age.

A5 stapled booklet with 20 pages (including cover). It is a magazine of fantastic poetry, continuously published since January 1986.

It is good to let imagination juices flow wildly sometimes with respect to the short story and the poem. It draws the focus away from the tired themes of general boy-meets-girl etc so this must be a good thing. This particular issue contains poetry and little verse-stories. In THE WINDOWS BREATHE, Mike Allen invites us into a strange building:

	Unseen, the eaves of this house ever howl, screaming
	when the wind blows and when it slumbers;
	and darkness forever ascends the stairs, rising
	from the depths to snuff the lamps of any
	who dare descend; ignore the sound you hear

In some poems, there are monsters and in others are ghosts and aliens. There is also one piece called MAGIC BATS, by Gary Every, in which there are two climbers. Jerry, is attractive to bats and he believes himself to be special because of this:

	"I knew I was special"
	Jerry explained,
	"When I realized that every time
	I hike during the full moon;
	the bats fly close enough to bless me."
	FLUTTER!

An enjoyable booklet, containing some interesting food for the imagination.

There can be few things less respectable than fantasy poetry. Hooray for that too, since respectability is vastly overrated and fantasy vastly underrated. DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES has been continuously championing such poetry since 1986, an astonishing achievement that in itself deserves some sort of medal.

Although some of the latest offerings are less than fantastic, this title hasn't survived eighteen years by solely publishing the witterings of teenage goths or unicorn enthusiasts. There are some dark jewels glittering here — and the scales are tipped more towards the Nightmare end of the equation, although there is a certain amount of humour to lighten proceedings. Particular successes — Hillary Lyon's BETHANY, a concise ten-liner that evokes more shuddersome frisson than entire bookshops full of mainstream horror bestsellers. Ann K. Schwader's DIVING XIBALBA (YUCATAN STATE) conjures up ancient Mayan evils with seductively polished language. And Wendy Rathbone's rather lovely HOW MOST ODYSSEYS END contains a line that has surely escaped from a great lost Dylan song:

	My love...
	All the doves and roses
	Are gone
	All the lovely vagabonds
	Trudged to the grave