THE MAN WHO TURNED INTO HIMSELF David Ambrose Picador ($13) THE DREAM OF THE STONE Christina Askounis Atheneum ($17.99); Simon Pulse ($8.99) by Kelly Everding Books don’t have an expiration date. They may go out of print and become hard to find, forcing readers to comb their local used bookstore or search the internet for […]
G. E. Patterson Ahsahta Press ($17.50) by E. K. Mortenson In a recent issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, Reginald Shepherd writes: “The ideal reader is on the one hand willing and alert enough to actively participate in the poem’s production of meaning and on the other hand demanding enough to insist that the poem provide the […]
Ron Silliman University of California Press ($21.95) by David Huntsperger In the 1970s and ’80s, Ron Silliman made his name as a San Francisco Language poet. Like most of the Language poets, his early books were first published in modest quantities by small, avant-garde presses. Now, with the publication of The Age of Huts (compleat), some […]
Ed Pavlić University of Georgia Press ($19.95) by Michael A. Antonucci To conclude his 1966 essay “The Changing Same (R&B and the New Black Music),” LeRoi Jones writes, “If you play James Brown. . . in a bank, the total environment is changed.” Jones claims Brown’s music produces “an energy” and “summoning of images” that […]
Nikola Vaptsarov edited by Georgi Gospodinov translated by Kalina Filipova, Bilyana Kourtasheva, and Evgenia Pancheva Smokestack Books (7.95 British Sterling) by George Kalamaras “I consider Vaptsarov my brother in poetry and struggle.”—Yannis Ritsos Anticipating the arrival of the latest translation of a poet little known to American readers, I recalled a series of sometimes-coincidental events, […]
Davis McCombs Tupelo Press ($16.95) by Kyle Churney Who wouldn’t be the slightest bit apprehensive to read a poetry collection with a coal-black cover featuring a waft of mysterious smoke floating upwards? And the title of Davis McCombs’ second book, Dismal Rock, seems as morose as the jacket art. I am happy, however, to report that […]
Matthea Harvey Graywolf Press ($14) by Wendy Vardaman Given the imaginative titles of Matthea Harvey’s two previous collections of poetry, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form and Sad Little Breathing Machine, her new book’s title, Modern Life, seems to signal a dry urgency. Both earlier titles delight through their use of antithesis, overt and covert; […]
INSEPARABLE Poems 1995-2005 Lewis Warsh Granary Books ($17.95) THE RIOT ACT Geoffrey Young Bootstrap Press ($15) GLAD STONE CHILDREN Edmund Berrigan Farfalla Press ($16) by Mark Terrill Despite their differences in age, lineage, and poetic temperament, these three poets, and especially these three new collections of their poetry, have much in common, and provide an […]
Ian Monk Make Now Press ($16.50) by Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle Ian Monk was elected to the Oulipo in 1998, the year that Atlas Press originally published his Writings for the Oulipo in London. Founded in Paris in 1960, the Oulipo hovered first between Surrealism and Bourbaki mathematics as their ‘Pataphysical corrective. Wearied by Surrealist schisms and expulsions, Oulipo […]
Chapbook design, community, and collaboration by Noah Eli Gordon I had the opportunity to hear Robert Creeley only once, at Wesleyan University, where he gave one of his last readings. After driving over an hour to attend, arriving five minutes late, being refused admittance, and puttering around until the first wave of students exited the […]