Input/Output
I tend to cycle back and forth between the desire to listen and the desire to talk. This week I've been predominately input-ish. For me that means a lot of reading, because with the bizarre exception of VH1's The Surreal Life (by which I am freakishly riveted), I don't have much interest in television.
Hart Crane once wrote, "Thou canst read nothing except through appetite..." and this week my appetite has led to/through the following books:
- Durs Grünbein. Ashes for Breakfast. Trans. Michael Hofmann. There are some amazing poems in the middle section of this book. Unfortunately I don't have it to hand, since I was reading it in the bookstore. It's only out in an expensive hardcover edition, but my tax refund is due any day now...
- Carl Dennis, Practical Gods. I would describe this collection as genuinely warm and witty, human and humane. And while I won't claim that's a fantastic blurb, it's certainly less defensive than those found on the book's back cover--for instance, "Carl Dennis is a poet who has valuable things to say..." "The surfaces of Dennis's poems may seem relatively simple, but..." and "Not only Hamlet but David Hume would have appreciated these rhythmically-graceful, moving and philosophically far-reaching investigations..." Huh? The collection is well-worth reading, but not because of any revolutions of thought. Is the poetry world really so entrenched its few notions of what poetry should do that everything needs to be brought into line with the standard expectations? In my opinion poetry can and should do a lot of things, and as long as poets like Dennis and Collins continue to do what they do well, I'll keep reading them.
- Dean Young, Skid. Impressive and funny as hell. My only criticism is that there's not much range. I've read about half of the poems, and the tone and mood seem fairly consistent throughout. Very, very good, but still short of great.
- Milan Kundera, Slowness. Because I enjoyed The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting so much S. came home from the bookstore one day with five of Kundera's other novels for me. (What a guy, huh?) Slowness is the only one I've not yet finished. If pressed to rank them from the best on down I'd say 1) The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 2) Immortality, 3) The Joke, 4) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 5) Ignorance, and 6) Identity. I suspect Slowness may come in seventh, but I'll reserve judgment until I've read it through.
- Jack Gilbert. Refusing Heaven. Stunning, stunning, stunning! We received a review copy from Knopf a few days ago, and if we didn't already have a much more interesting proposal in the works I'd write the review myself. Both thumbs, eight fingers and ten toes up for this one.
- Robert Reich. Reason. Billed as the Left's answer to Ann Coulter's Treason. I think Prof. Reich is trying very hard not to talk over anyone's head here, which makes it a little dull. I put it down after the introduction, but may go back to it if something else doesn't grab my attention first.
- Lesle Lewis. Small Boat. Winner of The Iowa Poetry Prize. I picked this one up because the author happens to live in my (adopted) home state. Lewis is not afraid to take big risks, and sometimes they pay off handsomely. I've only read a handful of poems so far, but I'll be interested to see where the collection goes.
End output.
