A few reviews of Unprotected Texts

I recently got my copy of Tom Beckett's (long awaited) selected poems, Unprotected Texts, but various unfun tasks have kept me from sitting down with it yet (though I did peek again at the zombie poems because I just couldn't wait). There are many poems here that I saw first on Tom's blogs, and many I have never seen before, and it is truly lovely to have them between covers, all in one place. Unprotected Text is Tom Beckett is less ephemeral form; the Body is substantial, subject, object, text/speech, a peg to hang pronouns, art, methodology & home. Every body is a zombie eating brains, but with a beating heart.

Jack Kimball & Geof Huth have both beat me to the gig and written reviews.

Jack says: "There isn't a two-page spread in Unprotected Texts that doesn't satisfy my frenzy to stomp on iconography for future benefit." & "Messing with icons. Calling texts sex. These are the highest jinx. Unprotected Texts brushes off 28 years of poetry and looks forward to be incidental."

Read the rest here.

Geof says: "The [zombie] chapbook as a whole is a Naked Ape for the new millennium." & "These poems push sound towards the bursting point. They are glasses of water filled over the top, the water held down by the tension at the surface. Sense scatters but sounds cohere, and the poems often rest just at the same point as underoverripe fruit. One more step and the poems would turn to mush. But as they are, they are perfectly bletted, alluring, fragrant, soft, and sweet: 'person, prison, prism.'" & "Unprotected Texts is a book both intellectual and genital."

Read the rest here.

& then all you zombies should go clicky here, or send a check here to obtain Tom's delicious brain.

Tags: Mertiage Press