This is mostly poetry with some rough art-work, collage and photography. It is hard to distinguish the ads from the rest of this magazine — perhaps there is no distinction; the work in New Muse certainly supports this theory. For instance, consider the striking picture/collage thing on page 11 by Ruggero Maggi. It very nicely explores the dimension between image and word. Naturally, to try and describe it would be to do it a disservice. Maggi works out of Italy, and, actually, a fair number of Contempt’s contributors seem to be international; that flavour is enjoyable and fitting for a project that calls itself an “attempt to be an international forum for mail art and interesting literary work.” What exactly is mail art? Maybe Blades will write in and tell us. David Adams Richards’ Stag Films, Teen Movies clocked in as the only prose work. Unfortunately, it seemed trite in its overt self-confidence. It stuck out as something that didn’t really fit in with the magazine. On the flip side, James Spyker’s Health and Welfare Canada’s Checklist for Success is hilarious (“by the time you are thirty you should have — a regular dentist, baked bread from scratch, an outfit always ready suitable for a funeral” etc.). Roger Wilkie’s poem improvisations on blood gives us a chance to exchange our melancholy sense of inactivity for a healthy stab into the gut of degradation.
lit-zine / main creator: Joe Blades (editor) / $3, $13 for four, $7 for 2 / MAP Productions, Box 596, Stn A, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A6 email: [email protected]