SALVAGE by Michael Basinski

When Basinski hit spell check for Basinski it said, “no reference information.” He wondered if he could just get away with that? But no, he was defeated.

SO, he tried and it was endless in his head labyrinth and he tried and tried: When asked about SALVAGE Basinski pondered and battled with his selves. He didn’t know. He was afraid. His impulses were everywhere. The veil of art, which would unveil nothing! The silly, try too hard, musings of an aging being! Alien communication, confrontation, and arrogance and some rampant need and want. He was very confused. Well, that was his life so what would he expect. He heard, “I find the form in that line of REfuse on the beach sometimes REferred to as a beach necklace, which is to say seaweed and stones, would and plastic, and bits buttons and bows of what not and bric-a-brac.” But what he wanted to write was, “A ghost hit save: “Jo Jo was a man who thought he was a loner…” He spent the day recovering. His ghost though “you won’t find it so hot / if you ain’t got that do re mi.” Re? REscue, REclaim, REstore (the REcord store) REinstate. Instead he combed the beach for various objects that caught his ears and eyes and he gatheREd them up and he said, I can raise the dead.

Close to Buffalo, New York, Michael Basinski lives a little past the airport.

Michael Basinski is Curator Emeritus of the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo. There he spent 34 years in the service of the realm of the poem. He is a poet, visual poet, sound poet, and performance poet in one flesh. Basinski’s recent books of poetry are Opems (2018), Lot Sa Nots O (2017), Unexplained Noises (2017), Poems of a Polish-American Boy Poems (2016), and from Redfox Press, Combinings (2016), which he made with his lovely wife the artist Ginny O’Brien. His works have appeared in many magazines including Dandelion, BoxKite, Antennae, Open Letter, Deluxe Rubber Chicken, First Offense, Terrible Work, Kenning, Lungfull, Tinfish, Score, Unarmed, Rampike, House Organ, Ferrum Wheel, End Note, Ur Vox, Damn the Caesars, Pilot, 1913, Filling Station, fhole, Public Illumination, Eccolinguistics, Yellow Field, Western Humanities Review, Big Bridge, Mimeo Mimeo, Nerve Lantern, Vanitas, Talisman, Steel Bellows, Staging Ground, Lumox, Volt, Angry Old Man, and Poetry.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 178 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-351-5

$16

Salvage by Michael Basinski… by BlazeVOX [books]