BOOK REVIEW
Poetry

"Limousine, Midnight Blue: Fifty Frames of the Zapruder Film"
By Jamey Hecht, Ph.D.


I am not a big reader of poetry, and given the urgent concern that you all have with the concrete facts of what's going on out there in Collapseville, you might well not be either. But you must read Jamey Hecht's new book of poetry, "Limousine, Midnight Blue: Fifty Frames from the Zapruder Film". Reading it was agonizing for me because of all the traumatic darkness and painful memories it brought to the surface. But despite that very real agony, it also paid off many times over because of the haunting beauty, power, depth, and insight of the poems. Jamey goes to the heart of the meaning of the assassination. But unlike anything I've read before, he does this in language that is hypnotic, memorable, and very, very strange.

I was twelve when JFK was murdered. I know so much more than I ever wanted to about the assassinations; personally, as a result of three-plus decades of deep diving into the world of covert operations. As mankind moves into a completely different historical epoch, the assassination of JFK could be called the beginning of the end of afive-hundred year era. The urgency of the new post-industrial paradigm makes one reticent to invest in the old. But this poetry makes you feel the winds of Dealey Plaza on the back of your neck. This book doesn't bludgeon one's mind. It skewers it selectively, deeply and sharply. For all we know, the 35th President, his Attorney General, Paul Wellstone, and Dante himself are reading "Limousine, Midnight Blue" in the Great Elsewhere right now. You should, too. You can order it from Amazon where it just went on sale. Meanwhile you can watch video trailers for the book, read sample poems from it, and check out the blurbs from Peter Dale Scott and Billy Collins, at
http://www.jameyhecht.com/.

I'll close with a cut-and-paste of the description on the back cover:

"This sequence of fifty 14-line poems uses the Zapruder Film of President Kennedy's murder as a prism through which to view America and the world. Refracted rays touch on crime and punishment; guilt and responsibility; charisma and love; the dying victim's experience during the stretched-out seconds of his violation and death; and the dark world of war profiteering, narco-traffic, and deceit where the facts of power determine history. Epic tradition (e.g., Homer, Dante, Milton) shares these pages with science, religion, and popular culture, now funny and now horrifying. " Limousine, Midnight Blue" is a haunted book about a haunted film of an event whose hungry ghosts still walk the American unconscious, rattling their chains loud erevery year."

Jamey Hecht is a good friend who edited my own book, Crossing the Rubicon. At FTW he was my Assistant Managing Editor, and then Senior Staff Writer, for a total of about three years. I know his mind. If I did not before, I sure would after this. He has the rare ability to compel a reader to feel his feelings and see his insight the way he does.

Bravo, brother.


Mike Ruppert

Feb. 7, 2009
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Jenna Orkin adds:


I'm blown away - scratch that, given the context - bowled over by the representative sonnets on the website. Jamey can do that to a person. This is a guy who learned Classical Greek in a cram course, then turned around and published a translation of Sophocles. In addition to acting and performing music. And did I mention his exhibition of paintings (which, for some reason, are not on his website?)

Of these poems the premier Kennedy investigator, poet and English professor Peter Dale Scott says: "This insightful and learned book could become a landmark, like the event it describes."