June Reading

1.  A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. Best parts, naturally, are about sitting around writing in the cafe. Sad to think about him churning those lost years through his style machine near the end. 
2. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. Lots of short chapters lead to a quick read. I don't remember all that much about it though.
3. Daredevil: Born Again by Miller & Mazzuchelli. Actually liked it more than I remembered. The Nuke storyline is an all-time great Captain America story tucked in toward the end of a Daredevil story. 
4. Starman: Sins of the Father by Robinson & Harris. Feels like the set up to a long series, which is what it is. "I'm not Starman." 
5. All Star Batman by Spencer & Romita Jr. Batman driving a semi truck was ok. Not much else was though.
6. Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman. A pretty compelling stew of race relations, murder, and newpaper lore in 60s Baltimore.
7. Black God's Drum by P. Djelli Clark. A visit to New Orleans in Clark's revanchist magical universe. I am not using that word correctly, by the way. 
8. Wonder Woman vol 1 by Greg Rucka. The Batman story is a morality play focusing on the ethical codes of the two most ethically-freighted characters in the DCU. It's almost a Greek tragedy. 
9. Night of the Gun by David Carr. Liked it while reading it, but ultimately did not live up to expectations.
10. A Childhood by Harry Crews. Crews is a writing connected to the land and its people, and the stories they tell. The most memorable scene to me ways the last one, where he realizes that after a few years in the service he returns a heretic. 
11. Secondhand Time by Sventlana Alexeivich. We used to live for a principle, now there's salami in the stores and we're supposed to sell bottled water to one another.
12. The Way of the World by V.S. Naipal. Reads like a memoir, but apparently a novel. One figure, at least, is invented or maybe just given a pseudonym. 
13. Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop ed. Jonathan Lethem. Lots of good (Richard Poirer's incisive analysis of Sgt Pepper's, Lenny Kaye on what he calls acapella, Lester Bangs asking random people what they think about Elvis who just died), not much great (maybe Bangs, don't know for sure). 
14. Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick. Like Naipal, an apparent memoir fictionalized enough to be a published as a novel. I felt I owed to Hardwick after reading her letters interpolated in Lowell's Dolphin Street, but might try essays instead. 
15. Under Lock and Skeleton Key by Gigi Pandian Grasping at coziness; not good.
16. A Fortnight in September by R. C. Sheriff. Like a warm bath. Best of the month.
17. Starman vol 2 by Robinson and Harris. Didn't intend the symmetry, but makes me think of how real time, as in waiting a month in between chapters, affected the perception of character development. 

Stats: 5(!) memoirs counting the fictive ones; 1 oral history; 4 novels not including the psuedo-memoirs but not including 1 alt-history fantasy novella; 4 comics; 1 collection of music essays. Best book: Sheriff's Fortnight. 

Reading Roundup: May 22

 Brief reactions to what I read last month:

Plainwater: Essays and Poems by Anne Carson. The one that I remember most is the travelogue with the "Emperor of China." I also remember being impressed by but not really understanding some of the poems. 

How to Be Drawn by Terance Hayes. So, as you can see, I was settling accounts from National Poetry Month. Again, a generally positive but terribly undetailed recollection. Earliest and least impressive Hayes I've read.

"Dead Djinn in Cairo" by P. Djeli Clark. Listened to the audio--at 90 minutes I think that it is most likely classified as a short story, but I listed it so I'll keep it here. 

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. A long novel with more than a few pleasures in it. Conjures Dickens at times, but not my favorite Tartt. 

Reckless: A Ghost In You by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Feature on the punk rock projectionist. I haven't been floored by this series, but I keep reading it. The ingredients are to my liking, but they aren't quite coming together yet. 

A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. You feel bad criticizing a memoir about loosing a spouse (especially since her daughter will die soon too) but this is cliched and Didion continues to be not so much unaware as dismissive of her privilege. 

The Last Interview by David Shields. Did he really "write" this book, which consists only of questions asked him by interviewers? Some of those questions are ultra obnoxious.  

Moonraker by Ian Fleming. The third Bond novel, and one I had missed. Great to listen to while driving--just complicated enough to hold your attention (i.e., not very). Bond does not get the girl.

Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark. Wrote about at some length elsewhere.

The Bottom of the Harbor by Joseph Mitchell. A set of profiles about water people in and near New York. The best of the month.

Summary: Eleven books (or 10). Two poetry (one combined with essays). Two essays (one combined with poetry). Three novels, one long. One comic (can that be right?). One memoir. One sui generis (Shields). One "novelette" I maybe shouldn't have counted. 

STL #126.5: ATOP III (Postmortem)

 So, about a year ago I said I'd follow up with a post reflecting on what I learned from the third official "test of poetry")  (ATOP III).  I meant to do it in a week or so, but obviously that didn't happen. A lot has happened since then though--we moved and bought a house, for one. I don't really remember what I was going to say, though I mentioned something about making a list. In writing up these notes, a two list structure fell out.

First up, I noticed a few things in rereading my notes:

1. An extended argument about poetry and society thread throughout. Basically, the world that values poetry so much that writing poem makes you famous or changes minds is nigh unimaginable to me. This might be linked to the very idea of memory. 
2. I liked to talk about the "sonics" of a poem a lot. I used to say "sound patterns" but I guess that felt worn out. But I'm not as into 'sound reflecting sense' as I used to be (or maybe I've grown too obtuse for that).
3. "When in doubt, count it out." I see that if I don't know what to say, I describe the structure. And sometimes find something to say. 
4. There's this idea of "deep structure" which means something like elemental plot as reflected in the poem's unfolding. 
5. Looking for new forms, new constructions, new insights.
6. Imagery, sound, meaning. 
7. A "spell" (in the magical sense) is a "patterned totality" (in the Hugh Kenner sense).
8. A poem is an occasion for noticing (or "simple noticing.")

I keep trying to carry forward a list from the previous tests. So I've copied the last list (in bold), and added some notes to represent more recent developments. 

1. Complicated surfaces. Noted in "A spell is a patterned totality" and "When in doubt, count it out."
2. Luminous detail. "A poem is an occasion for noticing" might apply here. 
3. Competing systems. Part of an argument about poetry. Poetries beget arguments?
4. Slight shifts. Noticing. Counting.
5. Sonic design. Still there.
6. Reserved mystery. I kind of think this doesn't mean much at all. 

STL #127: The Year in Reading 2021

Once again, I try to cram subjective experience into the arbitrary constraints of a top 10 list. In this case, not even my sneaky pairings let me get down to 10, so this one goes to 11. There's a break between 3 and 4, but otherwise they could go in any order.  

1. Ted Chiang: The Story of Your Life and Others. I also read his Exhalation, which was very good. This volume, though, is extraordinary. Every story is a "hit," which in this particular case I mean that I can imagine a future in which any given story transformed the history of science fiction for ever. I wrote a monologue for my book club about how my past favorite sf novels have fallen by the wayside (after rereading). I've never really thought about it, but this is probably my favorite sf short story collection ever. 
   
2. Ben Lerner: Leaving Atocha Station. The scene where our protagonist lurks after a stranger in the museum, alternately jealous and indignant over his open outpouring of emotion in front of beauty. That's the reaction to art he seeks but cannot attain. I relate.  
3. George Saunders:  A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Nothing could be better than this: a master craftsman rejoicing in the craft of Russian masters. He breaks down each story in a mechanical but exceeding sensitive manner. A Bizarro version of this might be Best Remembered Poems edited by Martin Gardner, who is a puzzle master sharing trivia about the most widely recalled (not best) poems in English. 
   
   
4. Ron Silliman: Ketjak. I read this with a pencil in hand, tracking the Fibonacci sequence from section to section. I found the part where he fucked up.  
5. Emil Ferris: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Mine too. 
6. Paul Beatty: The Sell Out. This wasn't written for me, and reading it sometimes made me feel like I was overhearing something I shouldn't. Ace satire. 
7. William Trevor: A Bit on the Side, Death in Summer, and Love & Summer.  I think of Trevor as the last midcentury author (of the last century), who happened to survive and keep writing into the next century. 
8. Megan Abbot: The Turn Out. Abbot has become one of the handful of current authors I read everything by, as it comes it. Each novel takes on some dark corner of the feminine universe. This is one of the darkest corners, and one of her best.
9. David Shields: How Literature Saved My Life. I also read Reality Hunger, I Think You're Totally Wrong, and Nobody Hates Trump More than Trump. In this one he explains what exactly it is he's after, and provides a cool reading list.
10. Dorothy Baker: Cassandra at the Wedding. The California of Didion, just before Didion. 
11. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I would pair this with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas for a particularly lengthy double feature. Both are fantastic (in both senses) and formally audacious. I give Clarke the edge because her formalism, manifesting in mock scholarly footnotes, is more of a joy to read. 

Honorable Mention: Shadows of the Short Days, Flamethrowers, My Struggle, Exit West

The theme of my 2021 reading was books published this century. I was frustrated and let down by a lot of what I read, but in the end all of the books above fit that profile except for two: Silliman and Baker. Even those might come with asterisks: Ketjak is a 70s artifact but was republished as part of the completed Age of Huts and I never would have found the lost classic Cassandra without the good offices of NYRB Books. But if you look more closely, Saunders and Gardner add recent commentary to much older works, Chiang's Story collects works mostly from the 90s, and several of the others were published in the early aughts and therefore begun in the previous century. 

Reading Roundup: April 2022

 Note: I ended the last STL with a promise to followup in a week. That was almost a year ago, but I'll give it a try. My goal is to write something every day in May, so I figure why not dredge up memories of things I read a year ago.

Speaking of memorious dredgery, here's what I read in the month just ended:

77 Dream Songs by John Berryman. I loved this both for the skeptical approach to the self and occasional stunning bit of pure poetry. I'm struggling to express what I mean by his approach, but he struggles in his masks, including the very awkward blackface which nonetheless can produce a beautiful line like [the] "Honey dusk do sprawl" or  wearing another, transparent, mask "The weather fleured" (hilariously progressing from "The weather was fine" and "The weather was very fine.") or "O Adlai mine" (disclosing his vote) or the comic and awkward "What wonders is/ she sitting on, over there?" 

Invinicible: Head of the Class by Robert Kirkman, volume 4. I think of this as being meringue-like comic book perfection, but while it is perfection, a lot of heavy shit goes on. 

Reckless: Destroy All Monsters by Brubraker and Phillips. Scribbles in the margins of noir. 

His Toy, His Dream, His Rest by John Berryman. Being a continuation of Dream Songs. Some flashes of the earlier brilliance, but would be stronger if the number of poems was cut by half. At least. At some point in the not too distant future someone will be the last to read Berryman, given his blackface and tendency to mention suicide toward the end of every poem. That'll be a shame.

The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beach by Stephen Dobyns. I like one of his novels. These are his poems, which are competent. The best line is the title. 

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.  It may be the quintessential science fiction novel for two reasons 1) the science reflects and is reflected by the plot and theme (and characterization and structure). 2)It imagines a coherent future (a few of them, actually) while reflecting the present (several of those two, actually). I first read this as a a teenagers, when I did not know much about anti war movement, zero population growth, Future Shock, sexual revolution, about hippies and back to the land, about the best and the brightest, about gay liberation or really even the ERA. Heck, I did not even know what cultural relativism was.

The Dolphin by Robert Lowell.  Berryman was no gem, but at least he was aware of it. It seemst to me that these are garbage poems by a garbage human. Inspired me to put Elizabeth Hardwick's essays on reserve.

Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman and Sam Kieth. Oh, the Robert Smithiness of it all! Did not age well, though the appeal of the Death story makes sense. 

Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest. All of the structural intricacy of softcore porn with none of the surface pleasures.

Astro City: Metrobook by Busiek and Anderson. A repackaging of the first three collections all of which I've read before. The expanded format allows restores the original publication order--previously, the Confessor story was pulled out from the middle of the second series to be published on its own, while all the short stories were grouped together. This is at least my third reading of this material and I still love Astro City. The short stories are among the best in the genre. 

Breezeway by John Ashbery. Did I mention it was National Poetry Month? I'd like to say you never need an excuse to read Ashbery, but apparently I do. This is late Ashbery, published as he turned 88, but late Ashbery is a very good Ashbery indeed.

Lighthead by Terrance Hayes. Hayes is a terrifically inventive formalist best known for his book of "American sonnets." Here he invents the "golden shovel" which uses the words of another poem ("We Real Cool" in the first case) as the end words for each line of a new poem. He also adapts a PowerPoint style from Japanese business, called pecha kucha, which calls for 20 seconds of speech for each of 20 slides.

I Remember by Joe Brainard. I think this is a reread, but none of it came back to me. (I was reading several American Long Poems a week when I was working on my dissertation.) No reflection on the book which I entirely enjoyed, though in fact I've already forgotten most of what I read, again. 

A Poet's Work by Sam Hamill. Essays from the eighties that I read in the early 90s. He writes very clearly about what he values so greatly in poetry. "I could say that poetry saved my life, but who would believe me?" 

Measured by Stone by Sam Hamill. Poems from later in his life. He's still clear headed, this time about the fact that his poetry won't last past his lifetime. But I read it last week, so...

Totals: 15 books. 5 comics. 1 book of essays. 8 books of poetry. 6 rereads(!). 1 memoir.