Zen Monster Vol. 1 No. 2

The new issue of Zen Monster is out and available wherever cool literary zines are sold (although see below.) This issue seems more prosy but nor more prosaic than the last. Highlights: Gary Snyder’s “Formalism and Elitism in Zen,” an interview the poet Alice Notley, and Dairyu Michael Wenger’s entrancing ink-on-rice paper paintings (which can also be seen at his blog Inklings) that punctuate the 300+ pages. This issue is probably twice as thick as the first, which we mentioned here a while back. Did any readers of that post submit anything to ZM? Pages 94 and 95 have a great and strange drawing accompanying a wonderfully weird piece of writing (which among others was performed, I believe, at a party on May 15th at the Bowery Poetry Club) by Andrea Clark Libin called “Blake’s Daughter in Leningradsky Station.” I single that piece out for no particular reason, but if you come across Zen Monster (according to the copyright page only 500 copies were printed, which means it will be rare—used copy for sale on Amazon here) turn to pp. 94-95 and read it. The issue is crammed full of beautiful art, poetry and prose, so if you spot one of the elusive Monsters, snatch it up. From their site:

ZEN MONSTER’S credo reads, “poetry, fiction, art & subversive political commentary” by buddhist, non-buddhist and trans-buddhist poets — “no inherent limits.” The buddhist connexion is mainly like the Ginsberg-Kerouac-Waldman-Whalen-Snyder variety, easy connectivity, multi-disciplinary, non-hierarchical, all-welcoming.