Continuing with the short story project and also taking on a daily poetry fix. By way of saying, another low number is predicted.
- Tatlin! Guy Davenport. I hold Davenport in high esteem, and as I'm working through the 2,000 pages of letters, I thought this would be a good time to revisit. In context of his letters (and essays, which I've also been dipping into), these 'assemblages' come alive with his interests--Heraklitos, bicycles, the archaic, an orderly life, Greek love (and an otherwise obscure interest in air travel comes to the fore).
- New Yorker of 8/29/2022. An archival issue full of treats like K. Tynan's long profile of Louise Brooks.
- The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times. A group biography of four women philosophers (or 3 + 1 influential fraud) all displaced by politics and war. The greatest flaw is taking Ayn Rand seriously.
- Marvel Two-In-One: Project Pegasus. While breaking one rule of the classic super-hero team up (which are typically one-and-done), this relishes in the others (early fight based on misunderstanding, an approximately 6:1 ratio of A-list to B-list stars, brief origin stories of those lesser-knowns, etc.)
- Void Rivals by Robert Kirkman. Engages in numerous sf tropes, including the star-crossed lovers, we're just the same, etc. It incorporates the Transformers and, if promo material is to be believed, will find its way to G.I. Joe.
- Sex Criminals v. 1: One Weird Trick. The narrator Betty Page look alike, probably Matt Fraction stand-in for "This Fucking Guy," the last gasp of information scarcity, the taste of first romance and it's fading, the medicated generation, and so on.
- Semiosis by Sue Burke. It was okay, with some clunky passages. Probably should have been rewritten, but the basic idea--first contact with a plant intelligence (rainbow bamboo, to be precise) told across generations in what is essentially a series of short stories--is promising. Unfortunately, the overall arc is 'species destroys one ecosystem and travels across the galaxy to teach a tree about life."
- Pure by Carol Frost. A lot of these poems in a flexible 11-line structure. Her line is generally pretty long so it breaks many times across these pages. I like this passage that uses a short line to focus intensity. A fisher(wo)man decides to "give up, walk to the lighted house, and join the others at a table/ to talk of life, love, logic and the senes, memory, promise, betrayal, character/ and fate--the driving notion /that around the river bend a magnificent fish waits, prickling the black water." This sequence of lines starts with16 words, continues with 13, snaps to a sharp 5, and concludes with 13.
- The Nation for March 2024. Kate Wagner writes a book review that incorporates a bit of personal experience of her life in cities. A potential model for an assignment.
- The Magic Labyrinth Book 4 of Riverworld, written as the finale and it will be for me. A lot of explaining and rebuttals of anticipated objections. A real let down.
- NYer of 3/25/24: "The art of Gustave Klimt makes me feel as though I am face to face with God, if God is a charming, faintly trashy type who leers more than he enlightens and seems oddly desperate for my approval." Jackson Arn
- Traffic by Gil Ott. Short, imagistic poem at top of the page, prose excerpt at the bottom. Varying white space in the middle, lines of communication with facing page (except for first and last of the 80... poems?)
- Thasos and Ohio. Poems and Translations by Guy Davenport. While a lyrical writer, the poem is not his forte. But still, "The Cookham dead began to rise/When God with April in his eyes/Ended in O its midst the night." And it ends "Dominions, thrones, and powers shout/Hosanna! Adorenus O/The silver C sharp trumpets blow."
- Hole in the Wall: New & Selected Poems by Tom Pickard. Sharp, chiseled language infused with working class history and sense of history in place. Favorites" "Cowboy Is King," "Birthplace Bronchitis," "Spring Tide" (for Basil Bunting), "First Poem This Century," "Stinkhorn," "Labyrinth," many others.
- The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher. Written in a light and sarcastic tone that calls to mind smarmy discussion fora of the early oughts. Clearly written by seat of pants--the repetition of points that don't matter (the abandoned mental hospital) and continued rep of those that ultimately do (corpse-otter carving). Quick read, and bad.
