Summer Reading

For the Time-Being. The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals
Bootstrap Press, Lowell, Mass, 2007
Tyler Doherty and Tom Morgan, eds.

This anthology noses out what might be a new genre nestled somewhere in between writer notebooks and New York School poems. This bunch of writers that includes Joanne Kyger, Hoa Nguyen, Stephen Ratcliffe, William Corbett, Michael Rothenberg, Mark Pawlak, and Shin Yu Pai are writers who editors Tyler Doherty and Tom Morgan say “embrace and celebrate the open-endedness and indeterminacy of the world.” “Not”, the editors explain, “that these pieces aren't carefully crafted—they clearly are—it's just that the act of writing isn't seen as preparatory to something else. In a very real sense, there is nothing else. This is it." This anthology is a much needed examination of what gives poetry energy. Find out for yourself whether you think the “poetic journal” is its own form or not, or use this anthology as a window into the poet’s mind as it chugs and clacks and ticks.

Cathy Park Hong. Dance Dance Revolution. W. W. Norton, 2007.

Purportedly a modern day Virgil, guiding Dante. But through Korea, and “Merica----at least. Really pidgin, widget and an earful too. A playground of patois, a wonderland of words, this book is so inventive, so baroque, so formally smart, so not to be missed.

“Fluency is also, a matter of opinion. There is no tuning fork to one’s twang.”

Kenneth Koch. Selected Poems. Library of America, 2007.

“Bananas, piers, limericks/I am postures.”

The latest from the American Poets Project by the Library of America, this selected Koch is a great introduction to his work. There is also a lengthy and perceptive introduction by poet Ron Padgett, whose photo, unaccountably appears on the back flap of the dust jacket.

Linh Dinh. Jam Alerts. Chax Press, 2007.

Poems as boxes which slinkies jump out of. At the least touch, humor, then criticism, then a “cheekful of cashews.” Wry and knowing observations on commodity, on license, on everyday life in the Empire. Ron Silliman says: “We probably haven’t had a writer this singular since the death of William Burroughs.

Renee Gladman. The Activist. Krupskaya, 2003.

If Leslie Scalapino were a paranoid schizophrenic. Yet that beautiful. Plus plus drama. No, Really: parts read like a play.

"The Group finds a table. Freddie studies the sky then each of their faces:

It's beautiful today. Are we Sure?"

This book is urban but not urbane. Give it a try. It puts you right in the middle of the muck.

Shang Qin. Feelings Above Sea Level. Zephyr Press, 2007.

Prose poems translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury, this is an unusual little book with Chinese originals facing the translations. The translations are plucky and give the sense of a wise and slightly wacky Taiwanese poet (1930-).

Roethke, Theodore. Straw for the Fire: from the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke. 2^nd edition. Copper Canyon, 2007.

A reprint really, of selections from the nearly 300 notebooks of the poet. Includes aphorisms, notes, drafts of poems and other elements which go into the making of poems. A fascinating look into the creative process. See especially "The Poet's Business, 1943-47" on pages 166-175.