John Bennett | The Book of Shards | Hcolom Press
“You’ve fought a harder, cleaner fight than anybody that I know.” — Charles Bukowski Continue reading
“You’ve fought a harder, cleaner fight than anybody that I know.” — Charles Bukowski Continue reading
Tire Grabbers is the story of the coming of Moloch, a horrific force that mutates out of the Era of the Great Schism and – feeding on spiritual marrow – threatens Mankind’s extinction. And it is the story of the children who challenge Moloch, with their innocence and with an army of mind creatures that they eject into the outer world and call… John Bennett Continue reading
Tire Grabbers is the story of the coming of Moloch, a horrific force that mutates out of the Era of the Great Schism and – feeding on spiritual marrow – threatens Mankind’s extinction. And it is the story of the children who challenge Moloch, with their innocence and with an army of mind creatures that they eject into the outer world and call…– John Bennett Continue reading
“The thing that continually fascinates me about your writing is the trueness of it: not just a ‘write what you know’ kind of trueness, but a permanently immediate truth, something you could put in a time capsule and it would still be just fine in a thousand years.” — Liz Druitt Continue reading
This CD contains a selection of spoken shards, jazzed up by the musical imaginations of Seed Verb and Nervous, two cats from the rap group Log Hog. Happy listening. —John Bennett Continue reading
Linda King showed up in the Vagabond Press mailbox, unsolicited, back in 1972, in Redwood City, California. I’d never heard of her before, but the poems she sent had fire and were free of pretension. I wrote asking if she might have enough material for a chapbook, and she sent the manuscript for Sweet & Dirty. It was only then that I realized she was connected to Bukowski. Vagabond published the book, to the delight of some and the disgust of others. Most of what we published tended to draw these extreme reactions. It was a short press run and was gone in a flash. True to its name, Vagabond was always on the move — Munich, D.C., New Orleans, San Francisco, etc., and in 1974, in Ellensburg, Washington, we brought out a second edition of Sweet & Dirty. It too was gone in a flash. It’s now 2013 with lots of water under the bridge. I hadn’t thought about Sweet & Dirty in a long time, and then Herr Klaus of Outlaw Poetry, a powerhouse literary web site operating out of France, contacted me with the request to bring out a third edition. I agreed, Linda agreed, and here it is. The poems in Sweet & Dirty still have their fire, and also, I realize now, their innocence. What goes around comes around. — John Bennett – Ellensburg, WA, August 10, 2013 Continue reading
Short jabs are like scouring pads a plumber’s snake & stiff-bristled brooms. — John Bennett Continue reading
I FIRST MET PETER HALFAR IN THE FALL of 1965 in Munich, Germany, where I began publishing Vagabond, a literary magazine. Maria Spaans, from the Netherlands, was art editor for the first two issues, and Peter followed in her footsteps. Five issues of Vagabond were published in Munich before I shifted the enterprise to New Orleans, and in that time Peter, Maria and I became close friends. Peter’s favorite word is unheimlich. It colors his art and his outlook, and in the sense he means it, unheimlich translates as a quirky, sometimes playful, sometimes foreboding surrealism. The unheimlich permeated the pages of the early issues of Vagabond. Peter, Maria and I went our separate ways after I left Munich, but we never fully lost contact, and when I returned to Europe for a visit in 1986, I saw them both. Maria was married and living in Paris, and Peter was still living in Munich. But he had become something of a world traveler since I last saw him, and it showed in his art, which was flourishing. And something new had been added. Shyly, on the last day of my visit, Peter pressed a thick folder into my hands. “Stories,” he said. “I have been writing stories. Unheimliche stories!” — John Bennett Continue reading
The first major collection of poems by John Bennett in over 30 years. 156 pages. Continue reading
BLACK MESSIAH Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life. We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. That is the deepest meaning of the word human, that we are a link, a bridge, a promise. It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have a tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity of that which awakens our fears. We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice — and all creation is our range. — Henry Miller – Sexus (1945) Continue reading