Philip Borenstein

Nixes Mate Review Philip Borenstein

Nixes Mate is a navigational hazard in Boston Harbor where, during the Colonial period, pirates and mutineers were gibbeted. Thirty years later out of the ashes of the 1980s Allston zine scene Philip Borenstein, Michael McInnis and Annie Pluto started new journal of hand-crafted artisanal literature. As they edited this anthology, a theme emerged that surprised them ... Death & Rebirth, those twin-barreled human indulgences. It was if an estranged microburst, a love sick hurricane came through shuttling tree branches, pedestrians, small animals, unhinged children along with various signs, portents, carriages, bicycles and small cars, enmeshed in a chiaroscuro of words and light, sifted thorugh the ecliptic sluice of the Charles River.