toot dat ole horn...

hey look what i found...an old review KK wrote about an old chapbook of mine (2002) posted on the University of Buffalo Poetics List...

"Can I recommend yet another book of new poetry? John Sakkis is a student
at the MFA Writing Program at SF State, and they must be teaching them
something right over there. Sakkis (whose name I think is pronounced with
an accent on the last syllable, like Weldon Kees) has written a book called
"He, Don Juan, a Translation," which didn’t sound too promising at first
light but which I have reread several times over the last few weeks, liking
it more each time. "He Don Juan" is a translation in a peculiar sense, it
re-makes the highly colored anthropology of Carlos Castaneda into a serial
poem in the Spicer tradition. At first it seems coincidence that Castaneda
and Spicer were working out of Berkeley at the same time, but as Sakkis
sees it isn't a coincidence exactly, more a form of magic. The poems are
dated with dates that remind me of the dates of composition of several of
Spicer's major works, from The Holy Grail through Language, and each is
"spoken" by the naif little pleasure-loving chump who, hypnotized by the
sorcerer Don Juan, becomes more and more like him in every way, until their
languages become interpenetrable and their existences rise into question
like so much marijuana smoke. There are some attractive drawings by
another local, SF artist Matthew Arnone. It's a book about apprenticing
oneself to a master and the risks that entails, risks emotional, physical,
financial romantic, pronomial. "We were in the morning. I felt I was
speaking 'I don't know,' then was saying 'I don't want it now,' he, don
Juan didn't speak. This is when I knew he was going to evade it, that
question, so I was waiting for him to mention it." There's a lot going on
in this work and I need the help of a whole team of field researchers to
help me decipher it. Ha ha, whatever it is that John Sakkis is on, I want
some of it. People who are interested in this book can send 5 dollars to
the publisher, Beets & Gasoline Press, 947 Geary Street #5, San Francisco,
CA, 94109. Tell them KEVIN KILLIAN sent you."

...currently listening to Non Prophets aka Joey Beats & Sage Francis Hope...