Exact Change Yearbook #01, 1995

Audacious, quirky and handsomely produced, this is the first yearbook of a new collection of contemporary and historical avant-garde poetry and prose; included is a CD (not made available to PW) on which John Ashbery, Jack Spicer and others read. Exact Change also reproduces work from Gertrude Stein, John Cage and Giorgio de Chirico, who comments obliquely on his paintings; reprints of work by Surrealists and early modernists are the mainstay of the Boston-based house. This vigorously heterogeneous anthology looks overseas, as well, to Germany, Russia, China and the Caribbean. Featured poet and translator Michael Palmer criticizes ``the lyric poetry of the `little me' that is churned out in America,'' the parochial work that both Palmer and The Exact Change Yearbook set themselves against. Like-minded readers will no doubt find this yearbook essential. Photos. (Feb.)