I'm putting this anthology of goose verse out for some kind of record for all time, the goose kids, most grew up and went thru bad school around Flushing, the end of the line 7 train, the sticks, Borough of Queens. In that way they exemplify the spirit of New York City cos their not the NYU hip kids or artistic intelligentsia that inhabits a lot of lower Manhattan, so they know the Village and the Lower East Side with quick street intuition and experience, but as week-end kids moreorless. The quick of it is that they inhabit St. Marks Place, 42nd St., and Gray's Papaya west Village, but their residence is outer boro-- Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx are the boroughs where most of the working class of New York live, so goose is true New York, fa get about New York as the adopted home of John Lennon, upperwestside wack BIG APPLE nerve. New York is a city with lots of tenements, tight-knit ethnic communities, trains that you can ride forever, industrial stupor. If you moved there like me from the South or any other place far away you would choose Manhattan--that's because it's geographically compact, full of clubs and artistic foment, but it's not cheap! The goose poets (I'm including Danny Licul tho his muse is visual not literate) are all the progeny of recent immigrants-- their ethnic background, which is Cuban, Italian, Slovakian, Irish, and Croatian, gives them the perspective of the outsider's quick, critical glance at the American make-up, but also a workingclass work ethic and belief in the American dream of making it in modest terms. Also as immigrants, they use the English language with blunt directness, getting down all the important details of living and nuances of intellect like Walt Whitman with more exactness and care than you at first realize. The thing that the Goose Poets make you realize is that syntax and grammar are for shit-- they don't tell the whole story-- like a breath or a slur or a gasp, better to put words together the way they sound and the way they're said, throw in extra capitals for emphasis and run the words together to express hurry and slurred speech. The GOOSE kids write with sheer literate energy and verbal surprise, turning the language upside down and clunking it around to create new forms of thought association. Right now it seems all chaotic like your mind has no point of reference and your intellect isn't making any strides in reading it, but your subconscience is already making tons of hidden connections. Like Burroughs, in twenty years their prosody will be accepted as a new language when it's context is clarified and understood in the cultural psyche. Maybe that's too much to claim maybe it's just good fun-- athletic improvisation. Most of this poetry was written in the original form on the typewriter, rather than being tranferred from a notebook. I wanted to get across to the reader the fun of playing with a typewriter, messing around with comma placement and spacing, anallathat, so I've used the Courier style which looks like anoldfashioned typewriter. Like FKR says, the typewriter supplies it's own rhythm and meter, a monotony that lulls you in a way to let your mind roam free. Some of this was put down like a two minute start/stop punk song, six hours in the studio, and a lot of fun. Some of it was put down with a lot of consideration and layering of words, careful, exquisite effort. I could write about all the Goose kids individually, but I think you can see their differences yourself. They all speak different syntactical languages, and different ethnic languages as well (Bujans uses Espanol and FKR sometimes throws in some Slovakian into his mess of verbiage). The thing that binds them all together is that they share technique and inspire each other like kids will do when they hang out together constantly. Yo, Goose! I thought I saw you lurking around the Broadway lights, in the alleyway, Dream Factory recording studio like you were Joe Strummer in the Clash or something. I heard your rude noise cos I was there too. And rhythm and verse is what makes it stick, makes me come up fast. Goose! Goose! a new gang, against gangland, belligerent and sticky like reefer smoke, prepared to stake out your ground in a Queens that is adverse to poetry, defend the muse! Gang kids New York, everybody splintering into ethnic enclaves and grudge-- only Goose kids band together for the word, that it can be made true. Goose is romance, punk is really dead. Goose is spontaneously poetic outburst, phonetic air raid warning. Be good, goose. -Jordan Green