CONTRIBUTOR REVIEW: ZOOM BY ISTVAN BANYAI

Zoom
by Istvan Banyai
Puffin Books, 1995

A wordless meditation on perspective, Istvan Banyai's 31 page picture-poetry
provokes this what-if: you and I are the farm hands on the plastic toy set
of a magazine cover shoot held in the hand of a boy sitting by the pool-side
of a advertisement of a cruise line on the side of the bus in a giant city
being viewed through the television screen in the middle of a desert on the
postage stamp of a letter sent to Mr. Taumata Tafia, Tribal Chief of the
Solomon Islands?

Whimsical fancy or existential angst? It's worth the look, either way.

--Reviewed by Rice Eater who lives for the moment in New Haven, CT. Rice Eater is finishing a PhD from Yale in Political Science and will be teaching at The New School in New York City next year. Rice Eater has two lovely little girls and a wonderful spouse. Rice Eater occasionally, but not often, eats noodles.

Free Loving Dogs*

They Could be Yours to a Good Home: Free Loving Dogs

Names: Marmaduke and Chloe
Licensed Alsatian Wolfhounds

Both beautiful dogs come with stamped papers and engraved collars that bear their names and the slogan Make Love, Not War.

Both Marmaduke and Chloe can howl along to Pete Seeger's If I Had a Hammer.

Both dogs can stand on their hind legs and gyrate in time to Blowing in the Wind. Chloe prefers Dylan's rendition, while Marmaduke is a Peter, Paul and Mary fan.

Marmaduke is accustomed to ground beef while Chloe appreciates a little marijuana mixed into her Puppy Chow, “to take off the edge.” She is just a tad high-strung.

Free Loving Dogs Marmaduke and Chloe come with their own puppy beds as well as their own PEACE insignias. Marmaduke drives a VW Van. Chloe has made the curtains for the VW Van. Both dogs are talented and well behaved, though they do tend to wander into neighbor’s yards to visit other dogs if not chained.



*The title of this blog appeared as an e-mail from our town's FREECYCLE service. Martin begged me to write a blog in response. Less tempting for us was the "Free Loving Hamsters" that someone was trying to fob off. How many rodents does one family need, after all?