Bennett, John. (USA) TLP’s and a Bare Moon - Artists Book made for An Encyclopedia of Everything - The Expanded Version.

Unique pocket book made from TLP’s and two artists books sent via Mail, collated by Cheryl Penn. Pockets are made from envelopes in which these sendings arrived.  John M Bennett is an experimental language artist who also runs a small press, Luna Bisonte Prods, founded in 1974.  He has produced and published literally THOUSANDS of publications, as well as acting as an avid collector of “modern avant-garde, experimental and/or unclassifiable literature in the belief that future generations will one day reap the rewards of his efforts.  It is important to collect these writers because, as has been the case over and over in the history of literature, the best and most innovative writing, the writing that advances the art and that in the future becomes the classic and defining work of a period, is almost always the work of outsiders”. 

(Quoted from…  http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/stockpiling-the-avant-garde-john-m-bennett/ ) - an article by David F. Hoenigman (2009).

I am fortunate to hold - dare I venture to say, the biggest collection of Johns work in Africa???  He is VERY generous with his sendings and this book contains a few examples of ‘TLP’s” - “tacky little pamphlets” (his own terminology) and two artists books Bare Moon and The Lunch the Gravel. Bare Moon is produced by Zwirn “a whitewall of sound publication edited by Jim Clinefelter”. 

It’s a gorgeous small, square format book of poems stamped on found materials such as maps and text books, indicating the world is touched by the bare moon.  I wondered if John’s poetry is Otherstream - and found this comment -

“John M. Bennett, whom I consider the most insanely creative otherstream poet on earth (because innovative in dozens of ways, in dozens of different kinds of poems…

I’ve called him “the Jackson Pollock” of poetry because of so many of his poems’ struggled ascent from the reptilian bottom of human feeling into a sub-demotic splatter that eventually coheres into a kind of finally understood momentary but full state of mind” (Bob Grumman. 2014, available on-line at  http://poeticks.com/bob-grummans-small-press-review-columns/14625-2/ ). ( ‘Otherstream’ was coined by Grumman in the 80’s).

I must mention my latest acquisition which arrived yesterday - Motel Moods published in 1980 - great stuff - MANY thanks John.