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Maurice Greenia, Jr. Collections
Poetic Express Volume 06

In 1991, I had a big solo show at Detroit's Willis Gallery called More than Meets the Eye.  It was up in late January and early February.  This year, all issues were done on Bristol paper except for Number 11.  I think that the quality of my work improved a lot this year, on all fronts.  This is toward the end of the period where I lived in my parent's attic.  I was still working in Detroit's New Center at Crowleys,  making art and doing puppet shows.

Issue Number 1 is dedicated to my Willis Gallery exhibit.  It includes a sketch for a painting I did called Mother Earth deeply worried about her crazy mixed up children.

The SURREAL THEATRE features walking, talking, smiling guns, knives and bombs (this is similar in theme to the poem A PARTIAL PEACE in Volume Five, Number 8).  My "startist" concept gets some play here. Several manifestos and tracts were issued.

Strips in Numbers 2 and 3 deal with cartoon characters reading comic books made out of photographs, collaged in. In Number 10, I start a series where "a series of mysterious holes appear overnight."  Some of the poetry in this issue deals with homelessness.  This starts a series where the "denizens" live and play in holes in the ground.  Numbers 12 through 14 have single panel "panoramas" of inhabited holes.

Number 4's about the orthor (written while sitting on a, tree stump) is semi-autobiographical.  Number 9's Bucket of Shoes is based on my real life penchant for turning shoes into art.

Number 6 (done in New York), includes a comic strip of Central Park and a poem dedicated to the Utopian roller skaters to be found there.

Numbers 7 and 8, comprise a two page Dedications Issue, the fifth.  Incantations is for Crazy Horse, the famous Native American.  facade is for Utopian writer Edward Bellamy.  frost bells is for Winsor McCay, a pioneer in cartooning, animation and the exploration of dreams and nightmares.  Broken Verb is for Jean Arp, a Dadaist and Surrealist sculptor.  trail is for Charles Fourier, the great French Utopian writer and explorer of possibilities.  silver shadows is a poem for Clarence John Laughlin, an amazing Surrealist photographer from New Orleans.  city devouring dreams is for the late Gerome Kamrowski, a Surrealist painter, who ended up living in Ann Arbor. Kamrowski's mosaic is in one of the "People Mover" stations in Detroit.

Number 9, is in memory of Willie Maurant, a Crowley's Department Store co-worker.

In Number 13, the poem your world was inspired by Tyree Guyton, Sam Mackey and the Heidelberg Project, which transforms Detroit's abandoned houses and vacant lots into art.

Number 14, the fifth Emotional Digest Issue, features poems on anguish, mockery and delirium.

Personal Favorites: Number 2's passing strangers is good in my serial absurdist mode.  Number 5's Breaking The Spell is a tangled sort of Surrealist love poem. Number 13's veiled threat is a sort of spoof on political speeches and the silliness of the stodgy.  There are a lot of my poems that don't make it into THE POETIC EXPRESS, but I try to use most of the best.

SURREAL THEATRE favorites include Numbers 10, 12, 13 and 14.

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