NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

A simply produced magazine of 32 pages, whose modest appearance belies the high quality of the poetry inside. There are poems from the famous and not so famous, and most of them are well crafted and interesting. Many of the poems have an unexpected twist at the end and take a wryly humorous look at the way we live and relate (or fail to relate) to others. Take this from ON THE LINE by Carl Lindner:

	You have reached
	the number
	you have dialed.
	If you want
	to mate outside your species
	press one.
	If you want
	to make a down payment
	on an elected official,
	press two.
	If you want
	an autographed picture of Jesus
	press three...

	on three WWII battleships, each of which sank

	sips his morning coffee with a shotgun aimed at magpies...

	about the long quietness
	before and after each poem.
	I write ETERNAL SILENCE
	in chalk on the blackboard
	and turn to face the class.
	A boy with the number 12 on his shirt
	has his hand up. He wants to know
	if next Monday is a holiday.

	Then in the dark I picture your heart,
	halved like a sirloin, sealed in cellophane
	on yellow styrofoam trays. She holds one,
	I lift the other. Blood leaks pink on our hands...
	In the coldness of the bedroom we divide you.

In this issue of the interesting magazine Free Lunch — which actually donates subscriptions

free to all serious poets living in the U.S.A.

		all those prose writers that dribble
	their failed stories down a page to resemble me.

	committed prose-poems

	you have pleased me once or twice.

In Philip Dacey's near-sonnet TINSEL, there is a similar personification: the sonnet appears as a rather Garbo-like Hollywood star in

	dark glasses, long coat

I agree with much of this: totally inaccessible poetry is no good, and there has been been too much confessional verse around for too long. Prose-poetry tends to get dull, and traditional forms work only up to a point. And Yeats, at his best, is surely one of the immortals.

Still, I'm never really comfortable with the notion that the poet — especially the Famous Poet — is somehow, almost by definition, always male. Or that the Muse must be female. The traditional nine Muses certainly were, and perhaps it's natural that many men like to imagine inspiration in such terms. Even Robert Graves usually did (and Graves more than most, it might be argued), although he shared many years of his life with a prominent woman poet, Laura Riding. But who is supposed to inspire female poets? A male Muse? Or the god Apollo himself?

The rest of this issue isn't bad either. Some of the concerns appear to me typically, even narrowly American — an emphasis on family life, family members; two baseball poems. Yet it's all skilfully done. Weldon Kees is the "forgotten or undervalued" U.S. poet this time, and he clearly deserves the spotlight.

Dave Etter and Molly Hunter Giles both write about overweight women, but while he seems to find them rather attractive, she is aware of the fact that

	They carry too much
	for their hearts,

And there are some charming or effective comparisons and similes here, like Robert Cooperman's

		she's cuter
	than a koala bear.

	. . . muscles like hard-boiled eggs,

	. . . sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.

	black holes that could vacuum us 
	up like a pair of socks.

A5, glossy cover, stapled, with 32 pages. Free lunch, published by Free Lunch Arts Alliance, is issued three times a year and subscriptions are free to "all serious poets living in the USA". This cannot be bad! It also runs competitions from time to time.

There is an editorial by Ron Offen in which he discusses linguistic/experimental poetry. He has the good sense, judgement and strength to review his own opinions as he proceeds and concludes that:

Based on my editorial experience, much of the work submitted to me is wordy prose chopped up into short lines that masquerades as poetry. Moreover, there is a certain enjoyment to be had in not knowing exactly where a poem is headed. Surprise is always of great value in any of the arts. As the ballet impresario, Diaghilev, said to Cocteau when the French poet asked what was expected of him, "Étonne moi!".

	Corn still summons the scythe,
	our hopes still court disaster,
	the new sword, feather-light,
	falling, makes no sound.

	to make a path for her to come & go & in the day
	she is motionless in her chair of asphodel & weeds &

	tossed or pushed for a baseball killing time before an exhibition
	game with Tiffenhaur and Blake just for the hell of it a sack
	of balls fifty feet from the fence the three of us throwing