Plain Old Boogie Long Division

Mark Weber is a bird, albeit a big one, a man who took part in staged fist fights when he was a teenager and expresses anguish over vacuuming up a bug in his latest collection of poems. Big Web is an Okie who wound up in Cucamonga, California, a guy that can get off on some aural, mathematical construct by Coltrane, Bird or Monk and then cue up one of George Jones’ crying-in-your-beer-honky-tonk masterpieces as if no gap existed between the two. (All That Jazz, KUNM, Thursdays,2:00PM EST.)
This collection, of poems and prose pieces, is a lot like that. Just look at his photo: the one in the papaw, with hair hanging down like Don Van Vliet, and picture him holding down a teaching position. But the photo of Mark in his old pickup says something else. He’s laughing, and his face is the face of a healthy, humorous, warm, hospitable man ... a man that’s overcome a heroin addicttion, alcoholism and spanked those monkeys till they laughed out loud. Plain Old Boogie Long Division is one crazy grab bag of stories, tempo experiments ( ala Creely by way of a Muddy Waters biography), and narrative poems that express a love of the commonplace common to Joyce, Hemingway, WCW, Gary Snyder and Merle Haggard. If you own a copy of Leaves of Grass, Kaddish, On the Road, Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits, or anything by Li Po or Robert Johnson, then do yourself a favor and order this sunlit book of living poetry.

144 pp. $12 ppd. from :
Mark Weber
725 Van Buren Place SE,
Albuquerque, NM 87108