Score 18

Just gobbled up the latest issue of Score, produced by Crag Hill, and highlights include:

A large chunk of the Atlanta Poets Group, whose "all language is poetry" agenda shows up pretty clearly here. This is a rad zany bunch of poets and the work is pretty amazing (funny, gross, inscrutable, tender, at turns).

John M. Bennett's wormy calligraphic "Were War" is one of my favorites, but I always look for his work in Score and like that the constants (that inky meandering lettering) remain constant. Check the later collaborations with Andrew Topel and Scott Helmes, too.

Basinski is also a hero of mine -- hieroglyphics meets Madonna.

I don't know if I've seen G. Huth's monolithic concrete poems (sculptures of really big letters superimposed) before, but they look familiar and are impressive. Not so keen on the "Found & Aleatoric" poems, but like a lot of this kind of work, in large doses things start to happen.

A good sampling of more "texty-poetry" stuff here as well -- including new poems by Sheila Murphy, Nick P., Lewis LaCook, and Peter de Rous.

Score is one of my favorite mags -- why? -- because I'm keen on the pursuit of "words unshackled from oppressive contexts." There are obviously other ways to "unshackle" words, but reading/scanning/eating Score puts me in a great mood for casting off chains.