Friday, June 16, 2017

MEETINGS WITH IMPROBABLE DANGLERS: Al Ackerman Hacks John M. Bennett
An Essay by Jim Leftwich






In his introduction to Meetings With Improbable Danglers: The Poets Meet John M. Bennett, Al Ackerman offers the following as a definition of a Hack: "...the unequivocal definition that says a Hack is 'a radical transformation of a John M. Bennett poem' can hardly be overemphasized. It has to be a Bennett poem, you see, and nothing else, because only a Bennett poem possesses the requisite singularity of vocabulary and syntax which, no matter how radical the transformation, or how far the original gets messed with, continues to shine forth like a good deed in a naughty world of surplus hands and crustly knackers bobbing in your shorts..."

An Extraction Poem from Ackerman's Hack entitled You Shall In All Likelihood Be Arrested (Walt Whitman meets JMB of 11-8-97), by Jim Leftwich

Sausage it lips, dripping the gland to speak
Within the cleavage toot
Wiping manly Uncle.

Soup hairs practice History
And pokeweed beefstik
Posing has creamers shirt.

Snapping lots of Lincolns, Captain.

In a letter to Bennett, Ackerman describes his method for some of the hacks included in Meetings With Improbable Danglers, as follows: "cutting triangular windows and using these as overlays as I moved back and forth between you and the old guys to randomly isolate fragments which were then 'folded' in together."

An Extraction Poem from Ackerman's Hack entitled Robert Frost Meets JMB (2.5 & 3.5), by Jim Leftwich

The land's a pepper and her people are leaking thumbs.

In Virginia, the glass-sounding mud chloroform chickens
Withhold our mumblings between candy bars
Such as toes thinking voice unstoried.

What closet letter whale runny fishtank belt
Left trodden my thawing barber
Whose fuzz forthwith upon a farmer's taste

Steps inside a coughdrop dribbling toothpaste sluice?

Ackerman continues his description:
"the Classic Hack (i.e., any Hack created by sheerly mechanical or random means)"
"the Synthetic hack (any Hack created by sheerly other than mechanical or random means)"
"the Heroic Hack (any Hack that gets seriously out of hand...)"
"the 'Miss Bear" Hack [my favorite] (named for its resemblance to the rollicking 'Miss Bear' episode to be found in The Final Days, the Woodward-Bernstein book about Richard Nixon)"

A Story ("This will explain")

Nixon himself one day heard a young girl shouting Smokey the Bear in the Washington zoo. Repeating the question while standing in her words, straddling an aide for translation, the aide mumbled Washington National Zoo Hand Laughter Confusion Lish, and said Nixon is merely handwritten, like his friends in 1973. He is living kept, not underturned, the bear, the girl, triumphant, and extended his verbal English to Miss Bear.

An Extraction Poem from Ackerman's Hack entitled W. S. Merwin Meets JMB (Infused), by Jim Leftwich

Cud-square pills the known.
Readers incomprehensibility
Plays grinding head
Over navels all over in lettuce.
Born issue with twelve tanks word.
Elephantitis off instead.
Partying dendritic?
I hear whose games restraint
Beside the gander.

Poem Extracted from Page 2 of a Google Search for Al Ackerman Meetings With Improbable Danglers:

time of 'l'al'but banner
editor of Ackerman
after Thursday
across millions
improbable and Jun
improbable spend
meeting images
meeting coagulations
precedes healthy
standardbearers
chromospheres American
Avantgarde visiting
Ackerman aleo ego
at the Middletown dangler
annual pleural nurse fou
to dangler fu primary
children several
d'bloxhltm mmm-m woven

Page 3 is even more helpful (how can such beauty be, o who can know it, keep well lubricated, you are not alone, etc):

improbabilize dangler
danglement akylation
acker

impractical fromologist
directions gather
ackerman

keystone heart wandering
maoiier boiirbons predesttnatiob
tiiough numert wamjilfice

quarterly improbable danglers
in Cincinnati

To quote Ackerman from his Lewis Carroll Introduced by Camile Paglia Meets JMB, "We know that Carroll / a workaholic, obsessive-compulsive incremental & chronic  / orgaz-designer used puzzles, math problems & / quirky muscles seeking heat out leveled sign chunks."
Reading page one, beginning with the last word at the bottom of page 17 and shimmying upward towards the title, I find the following poem:

When room spuds Alice violence
Tooth animism burbling excess
Clear lunch turds hose loitering instructions
Many of which were secretly ritual caucus-dogs

Page 18 (2) coffee straddling fork normal thought, rainy peace, method musticated salad slink biographical:

Dogs flop on the taping bizarrely.
Pool apron remains garden loner.
Reborn gut each reasoning
In a school room teeth & breasts
Entertaining slumpy author's climate.
Surrounding past Oedipus
Or swallowed the swarming intimate.

After breakfast abyss, then lunch done boxing Martians, direction mouth leapt later flotation, healing grunt by hammer stool prawn. Reading my email, I find the following: Jim, You did it! Bill O'Reilly was just fired from his job at Fox News for sexually harassing women. Jim, we've seen Republican leaders in Congress do this before -- threaten to shut down the government in order to gut the EPA, strip federal lands of vital protections, and stuff the pockets of corporate polluters. Hamster glue in a career-floating clamp. Metaphor spaghetti destroyed the kind outstanding prophets. Kerouac throat squadron professional not even one Nixon Alligator united and losing imagination. Strange prancer hand-second dancing. Intone in autobiography flock wrestled circle and hair ropes. Lunch of combination in being one combination to be one primary writer. My tongue besides explicit with glassy Quetzalcoatl held kythy was Hogg-pouch rhetoric burning his wide-eyed hair. If Russia attacks the bait, so kitchen squirrely dogs, a new chair. My lips left Socrates attendant of slime spotted hamstrings blintz, its hamster thumb headless and blent.

Some places other than my house where inquiring minds can find Meetings With Improbable Danglers:

Meetings with improbable danglers: the poets meet John M. Bennett

Author: Blaster Al Ackerman; Luna Bisonte Prods (Publisher),
Publisher: Columbus, OH: Luna Bisonte Prods, 1998.
Edition/Format: Print book: Poetry: English
Database: WorldCat
Rating: (not yet rated) 0 with reviews - Be the first.
Subjects
Bennett, John M. -- Parodies, imitations, etc.
Bennett, John M.

Displaying libraries 1-5 out of 5
Library
Held formats
Distance

1.
Ohio State University Libraries
Columbus, OH 43210 United States
Book
250 miles

2.
New York Public Library System
New York, NY 10018 United States
Book
399 miles

3.
SUNY at Buffalo
University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260 United States
Book
399 miles

4.

Brown University
Brown University Library
Providence, RI 02912 United States
Book
551 miles

5.
UC Berkeley Libraries
Berkeley, CA 94720 United States
Book
2200 miles

Details
Genre/Form: Parodies, imitations, etc
Named Person: John M Bennett; John M Bennett
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Blaster Al Ackerman; Luna Bisonte Prods (Publisher),
Find more information about: ISBN:0935350993 9780935350999
OCLC Number: 40069413
Notes: Poems.
Description: 28 pages: illustrations; 22 cm
Responsibility: Al Ackerman.

Also included in The Autonomous Library
Catalogue of Micropress and Zine publications in the personal archive of Olchar E. Lindsann

Al Ackerman, Meetings With Improbable Danglers: The Poets Meet John M. Bennett. 1998. Luna Bisonte Prods: Columbus, Ohio. Half Sheet, 32 pp. (Two copies, one marked)

jim leftwich
04.20.2017


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