Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

In this age of comic book and tent-pole action film mania (I am listening to the soundtrack of Thor: Ragnarok as I type), it is a given that talented authors who write cinematically with plenty of action and larger than life characters should enjoy increased readership. R.S. Penney and his writing meet these criteria. Desa Kincaid: Bounty Hunter is a fun, action-packed horse-ride from beginning to end. Another area where I am seeing increased traction as a writer and reviewer is in genre-bending and mashups. Desa Kincaid is a Sci-Fi Western (sort of a Cowboys vs. Aliens meets Stephen King’s The Dark Tower ) that succeeds because it employs both its genre Tropes with confidence and effect while smashing to bits just as many. Sci-Fi and the traditional Western, when you deconstruct them, are excellent bedmates. They each traffic in religious and philosophical questions and metaphors and both are driven by Landscape. Vast, unexplored spaces. They pit humans not only against...

(Argotist Ebooks, 2019, https://www.argotistonline.co.uk ) Irish poet Michael McNamara’s latest collection packs into 35 pages a wealth of imagery in its visionary calls across the viscous, enigmatic ether of Space-Time. This ebook’s striking cover features dozens of bearded, wild-haired faces—similar, yet unique—held in a heartlike, streaming-ribbons shape, although one at the bottom breaks (or falls?) away in screaming fury. The author? Aspects, of, perhaps, of some other entity entirely, as you will see. Like dialing in a radio from a far off station, the poems in This Transmission change voices, tones, periods, and perspectives in a cascade of crisp images and dire observations. The title poem puts the mysterious, myriad faces on the cover into context: “the Chinese, the Spanish Mexicans, the Native Americans, Siberians and Inuit” and extends the focus beyond the minority male, asking, “Was that Yoko, Cleopatra or The Magdalene?”: powerful, misunderstood, and misreprese...

“Inspirational Innovation”: A Review of Eileen R. Tabios’ The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku (East Rockaway: Marsh Hawk Press, 2019, ISBN: 978-0-9969911-6-2) The great white whale for all true Creatives is the alchemical creation of something New. Wholly new. Something Never Before Done. But, in reality, how many emotional crews and spiritual lower legs have we sacrificed in the pursuit of such seeming folly? I was recently engaged in a discussion with creative colleagues when the idea that “there is nothing new” left to create came up. For one of us, it was a statement originally made to him some 30 years ago by a professor in the college where he had enrolled. So—is it true? Outside of deconstructionism and post-postmodernism, aside from homage and pastiche (all four of which are prevalent in my own work), is there anything truly new? This retrospective collection says yes. Embracing variations on the haiku and tercet forms while honoring Philippine culture and elements...