NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This is a 57-page book containing poetry and prose from a variety of writers. Published by Bookgirl Press, BONGOS OF THE LORD works as a non-profit publication, recieving no funding whatsoever.

The book includes a varied selection of poems. One of my favourite examples is REALLY by Cid Corman.

	REALLY

	you have to
	die before

	you ever
	understand

The book also contains prose by Scott Watson. The piece which impressed me the most was SCHOOL DAZE. This is a reflective piece of writing from his collection called NO MEMBRAINS, NO MEMWARS. It speaks of the protagonists reasons for becoming a teacher and reflects on the education system. The piece is serious and humorous in turns, mentioning points which i think most will be able to relate to.

Bongos of the Lord is a brilliant book with a great selection of writing.

Rather a bare magazine, with a small number of poems by various writers (including Giovanni Malito) and a long prose piece by Scott Watson in a fairly typical hard-bitten and meandering style. As an example, here is an effective prose poem by Gael Turnbull:

	HE EXPLAINED "With age, there's a lot of wear and
	tear on the self-winding mechanism and that's why
	it needs to be agitated more often to keep it going"
 
	and as I walk home from the jewellers, I give myself
	a shake and look at my old watch and wonder how 
	much more effort it will take to keep us going and 
	for how long.

Inside these 42 pages (panoramic oblong) are basically two concrete poems by Gael Turnbull; poetry by Scott Watson (editor) Ken Sutton and Noel King; some English versions of Japanese poetry by Scott Watson; and prose by Scott Watson. The last item is 26pp, occupying over half the issue.

The general impression is badly balanced content, but this must be weighed against the liberation of expression which is virtually free to obtain and items must be considered individually in this case.

Gael must now be an old stager but as a literary bongocero his biconcentric WHEREVER seems well fitted for bongo imagery.

Ken Sutton's

	when I'm a flag
	I can fly
	but not far

	we are separated from
	everything we desire
	by the thickness of a thought

Of Scott Watson's shorties (16 poems), many fell flat for me, without bite, but the 11th re-echoes some of his prose in feeling a presence in nature which no amount of man-made conurbation can supply. One might say that mankind's environmental energy is self-defeating:

	went down
	an asphalt street
	to a park of
	dirt and gravel
	where were
	rusted swings
	broken bottles
	paper pieces where
	the curb's
	concrete I sat on
	was crumbling
	where a few trees
	were, with sun,
	with wind, some-
	one

	rape blossom filling a field is,
	to me, god.
	a magnolia divinity me under
	a tree its flowering white.
  
	here, in mugworts' domain, young and growing thick,
	mugworts is the voice almighty
	or all of a sudden it's creeping wood sorrel
	I'm a follower of.
 
	peach blossom deity,
	Manchurian strawberry flowering —
	all that comes quietly to fullness
	I am one of the faithful.

Lastly are Scott's prose pieces which are biographically slanted — A TEA BOWL OF TEACHING concerns teaching English in Japan and is the major piece. Long drawn out and rambling, it is nevertheless a first-hand account within which various philosophical or practical comments can be absorbed with benefit. It would be interesting to have a parallel article from a typical Japanese student about Western teachers to offset any one-sided comment. Perhaps it would throw light on the manifold difficulties which surface on Scott's agenda, trying humanisation within a rather rigid system. While Scott gets somewhat emotional and bolshy in his descriptions, it is evident that very little seems to work for him. There appears to be a built-in temperament, family or politically conditioned and the mechanism, added to the language problem, produces defeatism for the teacher. Some better contact seems to be made when the teacher enters into Japanese chit-chat.

But the difficulties of free cultural thought versus almost the rules of thought and behaviour can be appreciated, recognizing that one can go overboard in the hedonism, capitalist-encouraged sex events, and popular culture of the West. Something in between perhaps. Not those thoughts with reverence for a tea jar because it bears 76 coats of lacquer and not those producing the free-wheeling oddities in Tate Modern.

A curious little publication from Japan containing a long prose piece from Scott Watson and poetry from 7 writers, including again Scott Watson. There are also 6 black & white art works by Ed Baker, which I have to admit I found peculiar rather than anything else.

The poetry is mostly minimalist, which I find appealing. Joseph Massey's 8 POEMS include this beautiful mini-haiku:

	Sparrow's song
	tangled in
	church bells

			suck 
	the nectar of a
	flower waiting for snowmen.

There is a lot of variety in this small publication, though something of an over-reliance on one writer.