By the summer of 1998, Bean Newton’s life was, by all accounts, in freefall: his relationship with Donna McKnifey was ending in a series of ever more bizarre pagan rituals, his job as a night-shift floor-tech at a major big box retailer had grown unfulfilling, and his ability to communicate in anything other than cryptic portmanteaux had become limited. Whether this latter affliction was by choice, as some suspected, psychological, or due to some odd aphasia isn’t clear, but it can be seen in his work from that era, here exemplified in a poem he titled “Rought,” which was found stuck between the covers of a paperback copy of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media.
–EW Wilder
Grab what
flat surface is handy—match
your equilibrium with world’sturn: micro-
naught enticements. This nought
advice, trice kneed in opposition to nurture, oakshed
cursetrash one man’s
pleasure
(pressure)
Fogform & mossmeal
springflan and Dangervision
Mull the run.
Mull, the run.
–Bean Newton
EastWesterly Review 