CruelestMonth.com

PW Starred Review - Notes from the Air

"Ashbery's original, seminal Selected Poems crowned the first half of a career that has largely defined American poetry since the middle of the 20th century.  Once could think of that first Selected, published in 1985, as the summation of Ashbery's philosophical period, in which the poet self-consciously interrogated the grip--or lack of one--language exerts on the world at large, most notably in poems like 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.'  This new volume--beginning with poems from April Galleons (1987) and ending with Where Shall I Wander (2005)--presents the first panoramic view of Ashbery's second phase, in which he explores, celebrates, sends up and revels in the American vernacular.  Encompassing the surreal ('You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns'), the tender ('Everything was spotless in the little house of our desire'), the self-deprecating ('There was I: a stinking adult') and the quietly, utterly haunting ('Those who came closest did not come close'), Ashbery seems to hit every possible note in his scattershot manner.  Of particular interest are extended selections from the book-length works Flow Chart (1991) and Girls on the Run (1999).  This is an essential book.  Along with the original Selected (Penguin), we can now see the full impact of the most representative poets of the last 50 years.  (Nov.)"

Notes from the Air: Selected Poems by John Ashbery goes on sale November 6th.

PW Starred Review - The Pleasures of the Damned

"Bukowski's chatty free verse (and fiction) about disappointment, drunkenness, racetracks, flophouses, lust, sexual failure, poverty and late-life success amassed an enormous following by the time of his death at age 73 in 1994.  Billed as the last book with new Bukowski poems in it, this hefty collection also culls from his prior books, and it is all of a piece: the warnings about lost potency, the ironic takes on ailments of mind and body, the comradeship with everyone down at the heels, down on his luck, or down to his last shot of booze.  Bukowski's best poems have an exaggerated, B-movie black-and-white aura about them.  One new poem warns 'that/ nothing is wasted:/ either that/ or/ it all is.'  In another, 'hell is only what we create,/ smoking these cigarettes,/ waiting here,/ wondering here.'  Near the front of the volume comes a page-and-a-half-long verse manifesto, 'a poem is a city,' that might describe what Bukowski could do: 'a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers,' it begins, 'filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen...banality and booze,' and yet 'a poem is the world.' (Nov.)"

The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 goes on sale October 30th.

PW Starred Review - Novel Pictorial Noise

Here's the PW review of Novel Pictorial Noise by Noah Eli Gordon:

The prolific Gordon here takes his cues from Ashbery--who picked this collection for the National Poetry Series--but also from poets ranging from Rilke to Peter Gizzi.  In alternating pages of prose and spare verse lines, he plays freely in the realm between theory and lyric: "Sculpture seeks articulation of the air around it. Thus, a heron thrusting overhead mutes modernism."  Each of the 50 one-paragraph prose poems starts with a proposition and then attempts to both follow through on its initial lunge and also force the reader off the most obvious of trails of thought, usually by tossing in a few surprises: an Ajax bottle, Alice Neel, a "dab of wisteria" and a strip of duct tape make appearances in two lines of one poem.  Gordon closes each poem with an artfully clumsy rhyming couplet--"One packs in what one can, as the real point of art is the subtle reiteration of the is, ain't it?  The way I see it, we're all partially tainted"--alternately lending irony and vulnerability.  While this is a difficult book steeped in canonical and postmodern poetic traditions--meaning it won't appeal to everyone--it's packed with thrills and discoveries that might engender some discussion. (Sept.)

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Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

It's hard not to get ahead of yourself when after the initial rush of signing a book (though, I have little to do w/this one--only peripheral marketing duties--but still) you have to wait a year for its public availability. Here's me getting ahead of myself.  Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow, a debut in verse, is on sale in the UK.  HarperCollins will publish the US hardcover edition in January.  Some UK copies have filtered into our office, and I've been sneaking reading time all day.  It's like Fight Club with werewolves...in verse.  The New Statesman has a great review and you can read others here and here.  There's an official website too.

*Continuing: that's the UK cover above.  Here's ours.  You may notice that it's bigger.  Not sure how that happened.  Anyway, thoughts?

Oh, and have you seen the Olive Reader lately?  Tweaks are pending, but it's close to final.

"Notes on Prison Camp"

Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak crossed my radar about two months ago.  I ran a brief post that elicited a rather strong reaction.  And no one's falling in love yet. Here's an excerpt from Dan Chiasson's review from this coming Sunday's NYBR:

All of which is to say, reading "Poems From Guantanamo" is a bizarre experience.  "The Detainees Speak" is this book's subtitle: but putting aside the real question of whether lyric poets ever "speak" through their art, in the sense of revealing a historical person's actual life story,...in what sense could these poems, heavily vetted by official censors, translated by "linguists with secret-level security clearance" but no literary training, released by the Pentagon according to its own strict, but unarticulated, rationale -- "speak"?

*A few booksellers have planned events during "Banned Books Week" (September 29 - October 6) for this title. Read the story at Bookselling This Week.

PW on Robert Hass

Here's the early word from PW on Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 by Robert Hass:

The first book in 10 years from former U.S. poet laureate Hass may be his best in 30: these new poems show a rare internal variety, even as they reflect his constant concerns.  One is human impact "on the planet at the century's end": a nine-part verse-essay addressed to the ancient Roman poet Lucretius sums up evolution, deplores global warming and says that "the earth needs a dream of restoration in which/ She dances and the birds just keep arriving."  Another concern is biography and memory, not so much Hass's own life as the lives of family and friends.  A poem about his sad father and alcoholic mother avoids self-pity by telling a finely paced story.  Hass also commemorates the late Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, with whom he collaborated on translations; condemns war in harsh, stripped-down prose poems; explores achievement in visual art from Gerhard Richter to Vermeer; and turns in perfected, understated phrases on Japanese Buddhist models.  Through it all runs a rare skill with long sentences, a light touch, a wish to make claims not just on our ears but on our hearts, and a willingness to wait--few poets wait longer, it seems--for just the right word. (Oct.)

That's one of the most satisfying PW reviews I've ever read.  Here's a poem from the collection:

"Ezra Pound's Proposition"

Beauty is sexual, and sexuality
Is the fertility of the earth and the fertility
Of the earth is economics.  Though he is no recommendation
For poets on the subject of finance,
I thought of him in the thick heat
Of the Bangkok night.  Not more than fourteen, she saunters up to you
Outside the Shangri-la Hotel
And says, in plausible English,
"How about a party, big guy?"

Here is more or less how it works:
The World Bank arranges the credit and the dam
Floods three hundred villages, and the villagers find their way
To the city where their daughters melt into the teeming streets,
And the dam's great turbines, beautifully tooled
In Lund or Dresden or Detroit, financed
By Lazeres Freres in Paris or the Morgan Bank in New York,
Enabled by judicious gifts from Bechtel of San Francisco
Or Halliburton of Houston to the local political elite,
Spun by the force of rushing water,
Have become hives of shimmering silver
And, down river, they throw that bluish throb of light
Across her cheekbones and her lovely skin.

--from Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005

Links in lieu

Brad Roberts of the Crash Test Dummies and David Berman of the Silver Jews are the first songwriters to be featured on Quickmuse.com.  Found Magazine provided the image prompt.

I review something here.  So does Abby.  And Bud settles in with David Mason.

Power of Art

Sally's Hair by John Koethe reviewed at Bookloons.

The Collected Poems 1956-1998 by Zbigniew Herbert reviewed in Rain Taxi Summer 2007 print issue: "Where defense of one's country is a crime, there is no homeland but exile."

As is A Worldly Country by John Ashbery: "A Worldly Country isn't only for those already initiated in Ashbery's particular brand of genius, it's also an ideal starting point for the uninitiated or even the frightened.  The poems here are rarely longer than a page, and each poem contains at least one Ashberyian moment that even the most critical readers of Ashbery may appreciate--moments of dry rumination, eloquent and ironically passionless."

Reading the World and Words Without Borders are offering ten works in translation to four lucky entrants.  Visit here to enter.

On Monday evening, the first two segments of Simon Schama's Power of Art air on PBS.  From Shelf Awareness: "the series focuses on eight artists and a work that defined the career of each.  The series runs every Monday through July 30."  The series runs as a companion to the book (or vice versa) that went on sale this past November.

London Book Fair

Most people with the authority to give me work are out of the office this week.  I miss them so much it hurts.

For now, I'm doing my best as a sort of headquarters' liaison, faxing a little bit here, forwarding e-mails a little bit there, writing letters, and, generally, keeping near the phone.  All at the ready.

Anyway, the cause for all this (however little "this" is) is the London Book Fair, "one of the world's leading forums for the business of publishing," which takes place Monday to Wednesday.  Meetings between editors, agents, and authors last for the whole the week.  This year's market focus is Spain; I hope there'll be some translations headed our way.  The NY Times Book Review showing some grit dedicated this Sunday's issue entirely to literature in translation.  James Wood's cover review of The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño is pure class.  And Jascha Hoffman evidently has done some serious legwork to compile a data sheet on Comparative Literature.  The stats reflect what you might already expect, that a minimal percentage of books published in the U.S. are books in translation.  Still, more is explored than that.  Book trends in the Middle East, classics still waiting for a full English translation, the terrible ubiquity of The Da Vinci Code, and some other oddities are all grounded in numbers.  What those numbers actually suggest, well, that might be harder to tell.

Quoted in the "Up Front" section of the review, Joel Agee offers a qualitative perspective on translation's function and worth:

I was a writer before I became a translator, and it was the writer in me who taught the translator the exacting discipline of fidelity to the original text," Agee said by e-mail.  "But the translator in turn taught the writer something he didn't know yet: To write is to translate -- not from another language, but from a formless, darkly stirring source where what needs to be said is felt to be potentially or even actually already present.  That is how the impossible work begins.  Gradually, and sometimes in bursts, the translation into language takes shape, and when it is done, it seems like a miracle.

*Oh, and speaking of book fairs, the New York Antiquarian Book Fair happens this week.

"The Poet of Exile"

As you may have seen in yesterday's NYT's Book Review, William Logan made his first reappearance in the gray lady since dismissing Hart Crane as a hyperlyrical floozy.  In this latest review, Logan mentions Crane in the fourth sentence, rehashing the sentiment that the poets we love would not be who they are without the places they've been.  "Would Byron have been Byron without Italy and Greece?  What would Eliot and Pound have become without the hostility of London?  Can we imagine Hart Crane without the Caribbean or Elizabeth Bishop without the Rio?"  Okay, obviously not.  But it feels like the early mention of Crane is meant more to rile the reader than to set the piece.  Of course, this was the intention.  From the editor's note:

William Logan, who wrote this week's cover review, is known in the poetry world as a critic who doesn't mince words.  His recent and largely negative assessment in these pages of a volume of Hart Crane's poetry and letters, for example, brought in dozens of angry letters.  Logan's response to those who don't like his plain-spoken reviews?

"I've never thought poetry critics ought to be publicity agents by another name," he explained in an e-mail message.  "Poetry is often treated as a poor stepchild of literature that needs to have its head patted."

Amusing as that may be, his "plain-spoken reviews" tend toward one-liners (which are usually pretty good) rather than the authoritative criticism you might find in the New York Review of Books.  On the cover of this latest issue, Logan reviews the Selected Poems by Derek Walcott and as far as I can tell it's a pretty even-handed treatment with a fair sprinkling of his typical jauntiness.

Walcott never met a metaphor he didn't like -- or, indeed, that a reader wouldn't love.  But a tale can't eat only rubies.

Walcott's most frequently announced emotion is joy, a joy that rarely seems joyous -- his eye lacks nothing but a touch of sympathy (he could turn cancer into a bauble from Tiffany's)...He started as a painter, his failure likely the making of him as a poet; but the words sometimes seem mere daubs, skillfully pushed around the canvas while the pictures remain dead at the center.

But mind you, that's only "sometimes."  We'll see if there are any letters.