Burning Dog

John M. Bennett

I came to the Cult of John M. Bennett relatively late in the game, having first discovered his work in the early nineties in a small, long-gone store in Lakewood, Ohio, in a small chapbook entitled Was Ah. That book is one of my prized possessions. I have, with little success, been trying to hunt down some of Bennett's earlier chapbooks ever since. Imagine my delight when I discovered that not only does the Ohio U. library have an extensive collection, but they allow them out through Interlibrary Loan. Burning Dog was the first of them to find its way into my hands.

Was Ah was published in the nineties, and Burning Dog, ten years previous, is an entirely different animal. Whereas the more recent chapbook has dispensed with all surface meaning whatsoever, the short, punchy poems here still convey an image, however out of one's frame of reference that image may be:

"I felt a
flame come through my head my
guts get tight I stood up on a
bridge a woman singing far below I
staggered back I
tried to breathe I felt her hand touch my chest
my panting start to speed
then I sat down on the street
saw three black mailbags waiting on the curb
her suitcase smoking full of meat"
(--"Burning Dog")

What does it mean? If you're asking, you're asking the wrong question.

If Ivan Arguelles is the savior of modern surrealism, Bennett is the savior of modern dada. Students of the history of modern poetry should definitely acquaint themselves with John M. Bennett's work, and this is an extremely interesting place to begin.