NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

This is a very informal production, consisting of fifteen double-sided A4 sheets, stapled in the upper left-hand corner. Such a format can often contain some real gems, particularly when there is a breadth of contributors and a range of genres and styles. And some little apparatus to assist the reader's knowledge in this case would be helpful—say, a list of contributors, and some clearer organization of the materials (editorials, reviews, poems) that seem to be mixed without explicit logic.

That said, there is information here that is clearly valuable, such as details of recent volumes, and some background on the authors whose work appears. But what strikes me as undermining the perspective of the entire issue is the strangely rancorous tone of the prose commentaries. The editor, Barry Tebb, acknowledges his admiration for Ezra Pound, and some of the criticism offered seems broadly reminiscent of Pound's more irascible later works, while the laudatory stance adopted towards authors within the Sixties Press's own archive is similar in kind to the cliquishness Pound showed for his friends and associates. It is as if an imaginary adversary is being challenged when no clear provocation is in evidence. For example, a shrill fury can be heard in Tebb's review of a particular issue of Writing in Education:

It is all about residencies, enhanced disclosures, virtual reality schools and facilitation. . pages of non-poets who teach MA's [sic] in Creative Writing. Who are they? How dare they? What do any of them know about anything? . Art is the immortal shrine of the eternal vision. It is Mallarmé and Valéry, . It is the isolation of Henry James. . We need a third Surrealist Manifesto. . Jeremy Reed will know what I mean, as will Brenda Williams and a few more.

	How well your memory retains
	the one small mistake I have made!

	...

	Since the tears in my eyes have dried,
	dust flies about in my courtyard.

	...

	Better you change yourself, Basir,
	for the world won't change its values.

	Her feet are tinted coral-rose,
	Her hands are jewels in repose.
	May her new life flow with blessing

	We who you complacently smile on
	with the fine cracks of your enlightenment —

	...

	Tabula rasas bear their weight
	in clicked silence only;