Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

(Tulsa, OK: Jenkin Lloyd Jones Press, 2021). ISBN: 978-0-9755389-0-6 As I write this review, Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a much talked-about city. It’s the official capital of Route 66 as the Mother Road begins its Centennial celebrations. Beyond Tulsa King , with Sylvester Stallone, and Killers of the Flower Moon (the David Grann book and Martin Scorsese film), The Lowdown , a “love letter to Tulsa” starring Ethan Hawke (announced for a second season recently) has everyone talking. I first fell in love with Tulsa (and realized its sociopolitical complexities) in the summer of 2019, when I was hired to portray Ernesto “Che” Guevara for a 3-week Chautauqua tour that started there. Protests were loud and increased as I moved west across Oklahoma, portraying this controversial physician and revolutionary. I returned 3 years later as Beat poet and activist Allen Ginsberg. The protests came from somewhat separate sectors, but were essentially the same. How fitting to have a police officer stan...

   (M. Schmidt Productions, 2022). ISBN: 978-0-578-32451-7 There is an encouraging trend I am seeing as of late where children’s book authors are using the Heroes and Dragons fantasy subgenre to introduce young people to social justice and health and safety issues. From Stranger Danger to desirable emotional and personality traits using D&D-type formats, the magic and wonder of this subgenre are helping to create a more peaceful world. Given the popularity of movies and television shows that exploit this subgenre primarily to promote violence and sex, this is an encouraging counterbalance. In the case of Davy’s Dragon Castle , the hero of the story is a dragon who—going against popular and longstanding conventions—doesn’t attack a castle, but lives in one, along with his wife Lily and their children. Sitting in an idyllic, North Pole–like setting, the castle is the centerpiece of the town. It is so important to the daily life of the citizens that the town is called ...

(Kāne’ohe, HI: Tinfish Press, 2019, ISBN: 978-0-9987438-9-9) It is always a special day when a new work by this innovative and energetic writer arrives in my mailbox. Over the past 10 years, I’ve reviewed about 20 percent of Tabios’ over fifty published works, at times being inspired to be as innovative as the poet and the particular work in how I did so. Part of her ability to be so prolific is the way she reworks, recycles, and reimagines her own writings and the writings of others—in this case, as the Author’s Note indicates: “Each poem begins with 1 or 1–2 lines from ‘Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror’ by John Ashbery.” In many of my previous Tabios reviews I talk at length about her various means of working with existing pieces to create something new, so I won’t belabor it here. Instead, I’ll say that ALL work a writer or other artist produces is linked to and derivative of something— many things —that have come before. Tabios simply has the self-awareness to be up front ab...

 (Finland: Gradient Books, 2014; Barcode: 5-800102-117065) Two years ago I reviewed a precursor to this book, by Eileen R. Tabios and j/j hastain, titled the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA (New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2012; ISBN: 978-0-9846353-2-0). The book impressed upon the reader the function to carry forth the work begun in its pages, which I endeavored to do in the review.             147 Million Orphans takes as its basis, not the word problems of the previous title, but a list of words that Tabios’ son was required to learn in the course of a school year. Ever innovative and groundbreaking, Tabios, and her impressive list of guest poets (William Allegrezza, Tom Beckett, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Michael Caylo-Baradi, Patrick James Dunagan, Thomas Fink, jj hastain, Aileen Ibardaloza, Ava Koohbor, Michael Leong, Sheila Murphy and Jean Vengua), used the words to create hay(na)ku [from the back cover: “a hay(n...