Sein und Werden 3.2 by David McLean (Webzine Review)

Sein und Werden 3.2
Review by David McLean

Sein und Werden is a youngish zine which appears in two distinct versions. Online it is at the above link, and in print it is a packed little magazine that can be ordered form ISMs Press. Ordering details at Kiss The Witch.

Sein is dedicated to fusing some of the isms, expressionism, existentialism, and surrealism. Now we all know Lacan's savage indictment of surrealism, or, if we don't, I can summarize it as “the voiceless cannot be voiced and surrealism is therefore totally gay,” but if we ignore the defective theory that floats around under surrealism sometimes, and if we forget that existentialism has been crucified repeatedly by its alleged adherents, probably to punish young Jean for not going to confession, then Sein really does fuse the best elements in the literary traditions that bob around under those names. There is always a theme, this particular issue is dedicated to death, Memento Mori is the title and it is full of toothsome morsels, delicately rotting gobbets of flesh to nourish the ghoul in all of us.

Highlights of the print issue this time around are some nice morbid doll pictures by John Brewer. Not evil dolls, but dolls inarticulate in their disarticulation. Fragmented postmodern dolls ponging faintly of the dust we all become. There's poem by me, not very good, and there are quite a few other ghoulish glyphs in the poesy line, a highlight being Juliet Cook's Chelsea Antoinette, a strange and beautiful work, and a vilanelle by Brad Hatfield called The Tulip Festival, restrained and elegant. There are no bad poems, all are worth the obols you carefully prised from the mouths of corpses, still covered with the dry dusty saliva of cobwebs that is all we shall have left when everybody forgets our deaths.

And there is prose. Prose is a sort of long and perverse poem all in one line. It works better than you might expect. There are pieces by Pablo Vision, where he seems to be denying his own devout love of the fisher of men, with whom he once had a brief fling, in his pink days. All of these pieces are worth reading, the suspenseful and creepy The Island, by Nick Jackson, and the ineffably cool Bashing the Living to Stop the Visions by Nicholas Anthony Alvarado.J Boyer's The Love Song of J Alfred Hitler showing the one-balled dictator being a sick puppy.

The full print line up is Nicholas Anthony Alvarado, Grace Andreacchi, Russell Bittner, Jay Boyer, John Brewer, Patrick Carrington, Alexis Child, Juliet Cook, J DeCeglie, Matt Dennison, Phil Doran, Laura Forgie, John Greiner, Brad Hatfield, Nicholas Alexander Hayes, Nick Jackson, Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, Tristan MacDonald Nieto, David McLean, Sherry Musick, J E Stanley, Pablo Vision, and Bill West.

Online there's also a pile of noisome delectations, savory as a little bunch of chopped corpse fingers sautéed in widow's tears, both hypocritical and genuine. There's a review of my book, Cadaver's dance, by Rachel Kendall, who evidently likes the book more than I do myself, unless she's fibbing, although as far as I know women never fib.

I quote in full The Mouth of The River Rat by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, it's one of my favorites by Luis, really amazing poetry

I watched the mouth of the river rat
move. It spoke words that made me tremble.
I flicked a lit cigarette at it to
make it stop. The river rat said in
time it would shut its mouth, but not before
the evening turned to dawn. The river rat

walked in my direction. In its mouth it

was puffing on the cigarette I flicked
at it. At dawn its words stopped making sense.

And I have to include a link to Pablo Vision's artwork Postcard of the Hanging even though it is next to a poem by me http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/3_2/page21.html. The poem is a collage of true things, I hope the picture isn't. I love session, by JE Stanley, imagine being judged after death as fundamentally a waste of space, not wort hell or heaven. Good job all religion is bollocks, really.

The full online line-up is Laura Forgie, Jonathan Woods, Ross Brodie, Phil Doran, Juliet Cook, V Ulea, Bryson Newhart, John Brewer, Kris Pittman, Yarrow Paisley, Michelle Bratten, Rachel Kendall, JE Stanley, Colette Jonopulos, Sherry Musick, Christopher Allan Death, David McLean, Pablo Vision, Alison J Littlewood, Philip Clark, Dan Smith, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, B Drew Collier, JL Dale, Grace Andreacchi, Greg Gerke, Solo Hawkins, Brenton Rossow, Adele C Gerrarty, Carrie Crow, Hana Sustova.

Read and support Sein und Werden, it's one of the best zines out there, it cures impotence but not male pattern baldness.

Access the webzine at: Sein Und Werden.

Author bio:

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there in a cottage on a hill with a woman, five selfish cats, and a stupid puppy. Details of his three available full length books, various chapbooks, and over 700 poems in or forthcoming at more than 300 places online or in print over the last couple of years, are at his blog at htpp://mourningabortion.blogspot.com. He has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, whatever that is. He would very much like you to buy his books so he can drink more. A new chapbook "of dead snakes" is due at Rain over Bouville in Feb 2009, and one from Poptritus Press in the summer.