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6×6 – Spring 2006

Number 11

Spring 2006

Triannual

C.M. McLean

The title is utilitarian, the cover resembles vinyl, the pages are held together by a large snug red rubber band and the price is sexy ($3). And the poets run six deep and publish six poems each. If that isn’t good enough for you, then the top-right corner is cut diagonally. Plus, there’s the John Ashbery effect. This isn’t wrong though. For instance, opening act Christina Clark says in the first lines of her fourth poem, “Vous avez les shoes of august / fine-willed and waning.” And Sue Carnahan writes, “The midwife parks in the pond while the breech baby / is turned birthed slapped.” That it whirls the chorals and courses plodding along in the overhead is just part of my sympathies. But, listen to these lines from the sad-eyed recovery poems of Rick Snyder, collectively titled “The Memory of Whiteness.”

The title is utilitarian, the cover resembles vinyl, the pages are held together by a large snug red rubber band and the price is sexy ($3). And the poets run six deep and publish six poems each. If that isn’t good enough for you, then the top-right corner is cut diagonally. Plus, there’s the John Ashbery effect. This isn’t wrong though. For instance, opening act Christina Clark says in the first lines of her fourth poem, “Vous avez les shoes of august / fine-willed and waning.” And Sue Carnahan writes, “The midwife parks in the pond while the breech baby / is turned birthed slapped.” That it whirls the chorals and courses plodding along in the overhead is just part of my sympathies. But, listen to these lines from the sad-eyed recovery poems of Rick Snyder, collectively titled “The Memory of Whiteness.”

The apartment vibrates slightly
my head is snowing
I’m sober
but my memories are drunk
it doesn’t matter much
what I am
people still say hello
they can’t all
be wrong

Ah, the alcoholic in repose, the warm appliance-filled home and “Jesus kick[ing] over / a moneychanger’s table.” Snyder is the highlight and headliner in 6×6. And so is the personal feel of this zine-like, hand-crafted journal in brown vinyl and red rubber. Clearly, 6×6 is shapely.

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