So Ben Zen gets quoted
in the Mauitime Weekly's review of the anthology America Zen: A Gathering of Poets edited by Ray McNiece and Larry Smith (Bottom Dog Press, 2004). The reviewer, Eric Paul Schafer, is a little put off by the biographical statements in the anthology (we're supposed to be striving to "overcome ego"); and he's greatly put off by the "Zen Statements" which he thinks "harsh the mellow of some good poems."
I am tickled that Shafer quoted “O, to be the junkman, Ben says,/To have everything no one wants.” Just before that, though, he said: "Ah, the humor, the humor!" Was he referring to Ben, I wonder, or to the poem he had just quoted previously, in which a dove shit on poet Mac Lojowsky's head? Hmmm
Overall, though, we have to be pleased with Shafer's remarks: "I can bang a bell with the best of them," he said, "and I rate this book with 108 ringing strokes to celebrate the New Year."
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