Prejsnar lives at 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, no.11, Atlanta GA 30306; his e.mail address is mprejsn@law.emory.edu.

Prejsnar has had work published in LIFT, Green Fuse, Syntactics #2 and Misc. Proj.--which he also edits. His book-length Burning Flags, is due out this year (1997) or next from Method Press.

His list of personally important contemporary poets includes Clark Coolidge, Susan Howe, Ron Silliman, David Shapiro, Lyn Hejinian, Nathaniel Mackey, Barrett Watten and "others too numerous to mention." He also has great admiration for Larry Eigner, Ted Berrigan, Whitman, Vallejo, Celan, Dickinson, Drummond, de Andrade and Cruz e Sousa (2 brasilians), Mallarme, H.D., Laura Riding, Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Gertrude Stein "and others too numerous etc. etc." For criticism he values Charles Bernstein, "C. Bernstein, especially for his A Poetics." Otherwise his interest in criticism is "scattered," he says, and directed more toward what he thinks of as "theory" than "criticism."

About his tastes in poetry, he says, "My own techniques are more "disjunctive" than much of what I like in other people and accept as an editor this bothers a lot of people, especially if they share my (commie) politix... On the other hand, I don't think political/social tensions, such as inform much of my work, are obligatory for contemporary poets. Basically, if poetry hits the nerve-ends through an undeniable, torqued, extreme and grabbing melos, I'm fer it. That is the most important task it has, as a building-block of our cultures, polities and lives."

In his criticism Presjnar's aim is to respond to what poets are is doing--poets he shares a number of major characteristics with--"and thus point out their work to readers who haven't yet encountered it. Those characteristics being a melange of the political, tempermental and formal. (As in the 2 poets whose books I've reviewed recently: Joseph Torra and Stephen Ratcliffe.)"

He found the Comprepoetica survey question about his impression of contemporary poetry "Too broad to answer very satisfactorily! Because of the impact of the New American Poetries and recently the Language circle, genuine poetry seems to have reached and stirred more people, and set off more conflagrations of unconventional writing and publishing, in the last 15 years, than would have seemed believeable for a very very long time... All in all the general impression is positive."

He thinks the following publications worthy of entries in the Comprepoetica dictionary: Talisman, Situation, Juxta, gestalten, Syntactics, Orpheus Grid, lower limit speech, Witz, Key, Satch(el), Rhizome, tight, Angle, Disturbed Guillotine, no roses review, Texture, Tinfish, "my own Misc. Proj., and lots more that I can't think of by name: there is a plethora of worthwhile ones in recent years."

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