Sunset Saturday evening in the Prayer Tower at the moment. And yes Wilbur... the Miller Tall Boys are cold and falling fast, the sky golden blue and Sonny Rollins is nailing it old school straight ahead style. The colleges I teach at are on the exit in the next week. My workload gets cut by 2/3. Of course the Jail doesn't go on "Summer" Break. Guess you can send my credentials to the house of detention. (right Jim ?) Readings are trickeling in for the Summer. More details about a gig in Philly in June. Looking forward to that one. I'm sure other stuff will surface. Bound too. I have this nasty habit of showing up. BTW new Po of the month is hot of the id. Heard a news report on NPR driving into the Can (work....jail) this morning. Had to get it down on the page. Ended up putting it together this afternoon in the jail basement light off the shine on a con's face as I handed him the GED he had just earned. Should have seen it. Do you know what it's like to poke a little glimmer of hope/light into a very dark place ? Course you don't. But I do. BTW thanks to Vivianna and the Stark for the continued support. Pick fellow Poet of the Month ? Gotta be Orion 0.62. Can't get his voice out of my head. Dude is a must hear. One more thing, starting to gather new material for another CD of Sonic landscapes. You make interesting music/noise or hear something cool lately ? Get in touch via the contact section. Now. Go check out that new Po, there pilgrim.....

The following is a review of G. Emil Reutter's latest collection of Short Stories/Po entitled Broken Shells and Hope. Contact info on how to obtain your copy follows after.....check this one out....

During the 1960s Kodak came out with a very basic camera with a simple promise. Anyone could use it to take clear, sharp pictures with the click of a finger. Just point and shoot. The camera was very popular in the days long before the digital technological explosion of contemporary times. I had one myself as a kid. I recently returned to my hometown to discover a number of lost and forgotten snapshots that my father had unearthed from the family archives and turned over to me. I was amazed how the small square images, some in black and white, some color captured a second of time in a world long gone from forty years ago. I would wager that many of us of a certain generation have a shoe box somewhere or a family album of these small visual artifacts
from the history of our lives.

G. Emil Reutter’s latest collection of prose/poetry and short stories entitled, Broken Shells & Hope have reminded me of that device for capturing a moment and preserving the image/feeling in such a clarity that the perceiver is astounded that such time and events of their past lives are preserved so starkly.

At times there seems to be more broken shells than hope in this collection, razor sharp and unsentimentally unforgiving G’s prose instamatic captures and displays the brutal and violent aspects of ordinary existence. These sad and tragic occurrences are rendered without moralization or filter. Reutter’s background in law enforcement clearly provides much material here to draw upon. But his criminals, villains and scoundrels are flawed even in the execution of their crimes and misdemeanors. And more importantly, they are fathers, mothers, wives and husbands, sons and daughters. There are the aging hit men and hustlers that the times and world have passed by to everyday individuals to whom the simple reality of existence has broken and damaged to the losers and barflies who now seek revenge and payback, even to those who were simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. But even this assessment is only a small portion of this extremely well written and in-depth examination of human nature in the postmodern world.

At the very center of Rutter’s gift for story telling is the strength of his prose. His writing style is clean, sparse and precise. There is little excess here on these pages. No filler, flowery ego driven embellishments. With a cold pen (at times) G resembles a court stenographer in relating his tales with a Hemmingway reminiscent structure. He constructs his prose snap shots with a steel infrastructure and allows the reader to furnish the interior with their own emotional experiences. Thankfully he restrains himself the temptation to shock and repel the readers’ sensibilities with the carnage that is set in motion in the darker short stories. His bleaker yarns are not to be confused with the “Bleeding-Slice-of-Life School” fiction. Better suited to attempt describe the collateral carnage here at times is scare tissue. Healed over yes, in some cases, but the touch memory of the trauma persists in the everyday mirror of the morning (and years) after. G prefers the unspoken, the implied, and perhaps the most disturbing convention a writer can invoke. That is, the readers own imagination in reflecting on what Emil leaves out in graphic detail insists the reader must come to a personal understanding of the reality he creates. Emil has a special touch for the plot twist, the unexpected climax and in some cases, much like in real life ? Simply the story ends, without either the benefit of explanation, epilog, comfort, benediction or even salvation. The misadventures and ill-fortunes that G’s characters befall either by designed machinations or just random bad luck lotteries can be understood and accepted as the risk we all take in living here on earth, if that is, they happen to someone else. The events and subsequent consequences that transpire in these pages are always logical, maybe familiar, but believe me, much like in like in everyday existence, some things you just never see coming. What better and satisfying gift can a writer can bestow upon the reader ?

There are glimmers of hope offered here. Some surreal elements of Camus like irony and even humor at times as well. But even the humor never strays from the edges of the shadows. Some of the very short vignettes are masterpieces of the understated art of creating concise, yet detailed word-pictures. Like the snapshot of the old basic instamatic, the moment, the idea, the fable appears in a flash of a light bulb, the instantaneous wink of the snap in the camera’s shutter.

The contents of Broken Shells and Hope are very much like a half-forgotten collection of old instamatic photos discovered by accident in the attic in a dusty old box. But they are still sharp and clear evidence of the past. These are stories that you will remember, think about, relate to and perhaps tell others about. The documented truth of difficult lessons and memories collected during the course of a lifetime that are part of the hard currency of our existence in an increasing confusing and complex society. You can hold these prose visuals in your hand, your mind, your heart here in the terrible now, much like these pages of Reutter’s dioramas and look away thinking, “It’s true, I’ve been there”

My good pal/fellow Poet G. Emil Reutter has a new on-line Lit. Mag and has kindly included a Po of mine..The piece is called List of the End ofJanuary from Rubber Eden (cassette Sleeping Giant 1989). You can visit @ http://www.foxchasereview.org/ The man himself G has new work to consider entitled "Broken Shells and Hope" a collection of short fiction and poetry now available at http://stonegarden.net/ Visit http://www.gemilreutter-author.com/ for info. Another Sonic Soundscape can be found @ http://poetry_live.podomatic.com/ Many thanks to Sandra for posting Stopleak from DreamThink..(CD Sleeping Giant 2006) Every Single Saturday you really need to consider stopping in at 3:00 for some of the best, open, wild expression on the NYC PO Scene. Always something going dow @ the Times Square Arts Center The Off Broadway Playhouse 300 W. 43rd St., 5th Fl. (8th Ave.) Subway: 1/9/A/E/D/B/F/R to 42nd Street/Times Square. Many thanks to host/MC Vivianna for the consideration. Copies of CyberStein can be obtained St. Mark Books 31 3rd Ave New York, NY 10003 (212) 260-7853 & @ Boarders Orchard Park 3480 Amelia Drive (off of Milestrip Rd....south Buffalo) Ask for Pogo. He’ll hook you up.

Some additional places where you can pick up some of my work is The Whiskey Wind on Main Street in Greenport Long Island. Can't miss it. The only real bar left in town. Drop in and say hi to Jim & Chris, have a cold one and take a load off..(or put one on)...in addition, Books are in Stock at Pete Steven's Book Scout down near the waterfront in town. Any conversation w/ Peter is an adventure and beware of "shifting" stacks of books...(you'll see what I mean).....Some places to check out for recent attention in Gridville to ESVQ... Mad Poets Blog site that can be found at http:www.madpoetssociety/blog/ Many thanks to the Mad Po.In addition there is an aduio Piece recently featured @ http://poetry_live.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2007-07-06T08_37_10-07_00 Parallax Error (w/ featured grahic art by David Jones) from 2004 CD Matador from Another Planet. Many thanks to Sandra for inclusion there. BTW check out that site for lots of interesting Audio Po. Also

....Some books of Po to consider; Big Mike's "Sibling Rivalry" details can be found at www.prettypollutionpress.com and Patricia Carragons' "Journey to the Center of My Mind" published by www.roguescholars.com


Copies of the CD collection of Spoken Word/Audio Soundscapes entitled In Dreamthink & Matador from Another Planet are available here. Also any books I have published. I also have a very limited number of audio work on cassette from a series released in the 90s.You can contact me directly via the contact link below. If it makes you feel any better (or legitimate) you can order it also via the internet on any of the mainstream corporation's ministry of entertaiment links. But you will pay more and I'll see less dough, so I guess everybody wins, except you and I. (sic) In the meantime You could check out a couple of cuts from In Dreamthink in the CD section. Both Welcome to Gridville & Stopleak ! are live links. The following are essential links....please visit... www.bluseedstudios.org www.berggrenfolk.com www.gemilreutter-author.com

www.madpoets.com

Re: the availability of books; CuberStein & Greetings from Gridville can be found @ the following places: St. Mark Book Shop 31 3rd Ave (in the East Village) NYC..(They have the CD Matador from Another Planet and just added In Dreamthink recently). Rust Belt Books 202 Allen st. Buffalo, and the Lark Street Bookstore, 215 Lark St. Albany. You can also order them from www.xlibris.com or just about any bookstore w/ a computer kiosk..(Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, etc.) If you want to skip the "middle man" you can e-mail me through this website in the "contact author section" I can make you a good/better deal on the price. I have a Paypal account and will ship within 48 hours....(that goes for the earlier efforts: Another Rubber Eden & Attitude House and the CD as well)...More info later on rare tapes and CD compilation entitled Vanishing Breed which is a ten year best of collection of pervious recorded works released w/ Dan Berggren and Sleeping Giant Records. So order something....you cheap SOB.