Jack Grapes

This is a really fine work and I was fortunate enough to meet Jack shortly after it came out, and have an enjoyable discussion with him. We subsequently kept up, on occasion, over the years. But as talented a writer as Jack is, I've always thought he might be a better editor. After all, he did edit and publish one of the biggest, most influential literary journals of the past century: ONTHEBUS. If you don't know of it or have never seen it, you really should. Always massive in size, it was matched only by how massive the quality of poets and poetry was inside the covers. One thing Jack did that I tried to emulate in my own career as an editor was publish little known, basically inexperienced writers, alongside the biggest names and writers in the world. I thought that was just one of several reasons ONTHEBUS stood out from many other prominent literary journals. But I also always appreciated how Jack made an effort to champion west coast poets and poetry, alongside some others, because as many know but far too many don't, SoCal has long been a hotbed of some of the most talent, prolific, gifted and popular poets and writers in the world. Everyone knows about the Black Mountain School of Poetry and the New York School of poetry, but many didn't know until Ed Field, an old and dear friend who's a lifelong New Yorker, published a lengthy article on the "Long Beach School of Poetry" in Poets & Writers Magazine, that the area was thriving with talented, successful poets and writers. And Jack was always one to champion those in the area, and for that, he's to be thanked, and this book is one of his ways in which he tried to spread the word of the quality of work going on in LA and SoCal in general. If you don't know the LA/Long Beach scene, you should check this book out. Definitely recommended.… (mehr)