CruelestMonth.com

Via the "EJ"

G'day.  I can't blog (or do I mean write/think?) well before 10am.  My day just doesn't have momentum at that point.  But here I am.  Trying.  EJ, of the soon to be cast Open Letters, a press based out University of Rochester, always finds the time to pass on a few good links.  By now I think he realizes that the majority of these make it onto the blog (though, I continually reject links to his latest StarDoll).  "Poets Graves" is where you can find out where famous poets are buried.  There's a picture for every tombstone.  Here's Hank's.  If you're not feeling nostalgic there is UbuWeb, "a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethopoetics, and outsider arts."  Among many other things, they release a series of full-length e-books.  They're of high-quality in every sense.  Definitely worth a visit.  Thank you, EJ.

The Heat

Usually there's at least a breeze, some coolness left in the trees when I walk to the subway.  Not this morning: the trash-flavored city summer is upon us. 

Pictures from ALA are slowly wending their way into my inbox.  I only documented the first day, and since I was setting up the whole time, my pictures really don't stand on their own.  Before my train left, I sauntered about Washington D.C. for a few hours.  I forgot how beautiful the capital is.  Really, it's right up there with anything else I have seen.

Now to the blogging, Nick DiMartino, a playwright, noveliest, and veteran bookseller, writes a tremendous blog called Novel World: The Best New Novels On This Planet.  While he does evaluate the best of what's new, his penchant for the classics is plain to see.  Among others, he has written an essay boldly titled "The Greatest Novel Ever Written."  And would you believe that I'm reading the very book he names supreme?  Oh, you don't care.  Well, it's a nice feeling all the same.  I wonder if there are any dissenting views.

Here's another interesting website, Razorpages.  Described as a "community for independent and small press authors where authors can connect with authors and readers can connect with authors."  This interweb of likeminded people is facillitated by blogs, podcasts, video podcasts, and more.

And Silliman is reviewed in the Philly Inquirer (link via Poetry Hut, thank you!)

American Library Associal Annual Conference

The 2007 ALA Annual Conference is being held in Washington, DC June 21-27.  I'll be there with a camera and some tote bags.  I can't tell you how excited I am.

If you're in need of some real excitement, your daily rock of crystallized epinephrine, then visit the special exhibit at Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library: "Caterers General to the Literary World: The House of Harper." 

"[T]his exhibition will highlight the Harper & Brothers Archive at Columbia. The archive contains a wealth of material relating to all aspects of the history of the firm, including correspondence with authors such as the Brontë sisters, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Queen Victoria."

The exhibition closes June 30th.  If you're unable to make it in time, the library's website is interesting in its own right.

Prison Poets

From the front page of today's Wall Street Journal: "Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher."  22 poems by 17 prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will be published this August in Poets from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak (University of Iowa Press, $13.95).  The detainees' lawyer, Mark Falkoff, who earned a Ph.D. in English before going to law school, compiled the poems.  Two poems from the collection are included in the article.  (Via Shelf Awareness.)

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.

Time and Materials

Robert Hass's first book in ten years, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005, will go on sale this October.  The galley back copy has this to say:

"Robert Hass's new poems are grounded in the beauty and energy of the physical world and the bafflement of the present moment in American culture.  This work is breathtakingly immediate, stylistically varied, redemptive, and wise. Every new book by Robert Hass is a major event in poetry, and this beautiful collection is no exception."

Here's one of the shorter poems near the beginning of the collection:

"Winged and Acid Dark"

A sentence with "dappled shadow" in it.
Something not sayable
spurting from the morning silence,
secret as a thrush.

The other man, the officer, who brought onions
and wine and sacks of flour,
the major with the swollen knee,
wanted intelligent conversation afterward.
Having no choice, she provided that, too.

Potsdamerplatz, May 1945.

When the first one was through he pried her mouth open.
Bashō told Rensetsu to avoid sensational materials.
If the horror of the world were the truth of the world,
he said, there would be no one to say it
and no one to say it to.
I think he recommended describing the slightly frenzied
swarming of insects near a waterfall.

Pried her mouth open and spit in it.
We pass these things on,
probably, because we are what we can imagine.

Something not sayable in the morning silence.
The mind hungering after likenesses.  "Tender sky," etc.,
curves the swallows trace in air.

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.

Electrical Shutdown

Everything to do with phones and computers will be shutdown in our building at 6pm, which is very exciting.  Also, the fire alarms have been tested four or five times today, circulating some new electricity through the halls and over the cubes.  Today is also the 40th anniversary of the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez as noted by the Elegant Variation via the Chronicle Review.  I just hope I'm still in marketing when the 100th anniversary comes around.  (Yep, I just vomited a little.)

There goes the fire alarm again.  "Please disregard all alarms."  Famous last PA announcement.

With all the attention paid to South American writers lately -- Borges, Bolaño,Márquez, Manguel -- I dug into the Ecco back list to salvage Another Republic: 17 European & South American Writers, edited by Charles Simic and Mark Strand (1976).  Here's a poem:

"Souvenir of the Ancient World"

Clara strolled in the garden with the children.
The sky was green over the grass,
the water was golden under the bridges,
other elements were blue and rose and orange,
a policemen smiled, bicycles passed,
a girl stepped onto the lawn to catch a bird,
the whole world--Germany, China--all was quiet around Clara.

The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden.
Mouth, nose, eyes were open.  There was no danger.
What Clara feared were the flu, the heat, the insects.
Clara feared missing the eleven o'clock trolley,
waiting for letters slow to arrive,
not always being able to wear a new dress.  But she strolled in the garden,
          in the morning!
They had gardens, they had mornings in those days!

-- Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Translation

Nice coverage of Reading the World over at Critical Mass.

Shroom

Not that any of use were expecting this, but Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom by Andy Letcher was named an Editor's Pick in this past Sunday's New York Times Book Review: "Letcher's revisionist history is a delightful journalistic addition to the 'trip lit' genre."  A sparse quote but there nonetheless.  This study of funky fungi is no half-baked ramble over the author's transcendental drug rushes and, according to the Seattle Times, "mystical, frightening or mind-mushing drug experiences are not necessary for relishing Andy Lethcer's engrossing story of hallucinogenic mushrooms and the cultural history that has build up around them."  Nor did your parents have to find a long-forgotten baggy of ambiguous spongy things and accuse you of trafficking "peyote" through their home.  It's for everyone!  In celebration, I'll be adding this to the featured books column and will send a copy to the first three readers to e-mail me at [email protected].  Please have "Booming" as your subject line and include your address.

Jilly, Caroline, and Clay get the books.  And Jilly recommends a "shroom sonnet."