forty-two: january 2005

1.26.2005 wednesday
 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling Gargantuan and shaggy, as irritating as it is addictive, the past two years have not been kind to this one. What remains innovative, however, is the way in which Rowling retains total control of the pace at which you read; still breathtaking.
-Timothy
 1.25.2005 tuesday
 New Goose by Lorine Niedecker This isn’t my favorite Niedecker collection, but it’s an interesting approach to political poetry, both humorous and cutting. And as much about voice, the acquisition and recognition of voice – a “village” speaking as it does. Through rhyme.
-Jen
 1.23.2005 sunday
 Small Weathers by Merrill Gilfillan An almanac or journal that tightens sharp enough to include: Everything: /Fishhook, orchis, /hayrick, screwball, airedale, gantry, /peatbog, afghan, cradleknoll, /river, pantry, pencil, ocean, /goosefoot, hambone, creeper, /ruby, ringworm, sleep and tree. Lovely for what it simultaneously writs large and cuts short.
-Jen
 1.22.2005 saturday
 Blood on the Dining-Room Floor: A Murder Mystery by Gertrude Stein Not a typical murder mystery, but I think my favorite television detective would approve. Written as if your good friend Gertrude sat down over tea to summarize the episode you missed, but then of course you both digress. Lizzie do you understand.
-Jen
 1.21.2005 friday
 Dahlia's Iris (Secret Autobiography + Fiction) by Leslie Scalapino The philosophical reach of this nonfiction novel, and the rigor of its details' enactment of that stance, escape summary, being endlessly qualified. All its words brilliantly interdepend, yet posit (reader's) mind as pinpoint, alone between interior/exterior existences. Things, people, dismantlingly described.
-Erika
 1.20.2005 thursday
 The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch Murdoch suggests that the real world is never quite normal. Angels or the delusion of them; brothers harking back to the Old Testament; that thing you once saw out of the corner of your eye. Does everyone need someone else for guidance?
-Stevie
 1.19.2005 wednesday
 Docherty by William McIlvanney Begins as a standard portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young'un and then, shockingly, the would-be artist leaves school to become a (contented) miner. Portraying poor Scottish communities with more diginity than was traditionally accorded them, 'Docherty' succeeds because it never lets its characters be more than honest.
-Timothy
 1.18.2005 tuesday
 The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age by Stanislaw Lem Is it a book of jokes masquerading as an introduction to moral problems that don’t yet exist, or is it a guide to ethical living presented in the form of picaresque SciFi? (Watch out for the electropoet, Jen! It has egocentripetal narcisstors!)
-Brian
 1.17.2005 monday
 The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester The original title of the Oxford English Dictionary was almost as long as this review. In The Meaning of Everything Winchester deals more directly with the OED’s making – this book focuses on two of its most famous lexicographers. Both contain good words.
-Jen
 1.16.2005 sunday
 Ranma ½ Vol. 1 by Rumiko Takahashi Classic Takahashi – a convoluted sitcom of adolescent gender dysphoria. Our hero(ine) is a teenage martial artist who unpredictably lurches from one gender to another. (Oh, and his dad’s a panda much of the time.) Much wackiness ensues with his tomboyish reluctant fiancé.
-Brian
 1.15.2005 saturday
 Run Through Rock: Selected short poems of Besmilr Brigham, edited and selected by C.D. Wright The concentration of these animals and landscapes is a life lived. Or, from the introduction, a cabinet of manuscripts with titles written in red nail-polish, on the family farm. Snakes insides their beds, a fossil-rock holding the door open or closed, fire-rings.
-Jen
 1.14.2005 friday
 Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior If it weren't such a large tome, it would make great bathroom reading. That is, it's hilarious, but oddly helpful too. What do you do when someone calls you up and eats a raw carrot while they're talking to you? Herein: solution.
-Erika
 1.13.2005 thursday
 The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien The Elven Bible. Gigantic scope, merciless density. Creation myth, not adventure novel. Legends full of details only males would pass down: chieftain speeches, battle tactics. Unfolds gorgeously, deeply tragic woe gathers momentum. Before the Rings, Silmarils were doomed by their own loveliness.
-Callie
 1.12.2005 wednesday
 After Theory by Terry Eagleton Eagleton delights in his self-imposed role as the common man's academic. This 2003 volume, in some ways a reversal of his most significant theoretical work from the 1980's, is trenchant, belligerent, wrong-headed and very, very funny. Sometimes poor argumentation, but great entertainment.
-Timothy
 1.11.2005 tuesday
 Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner A boy’s own adventure story, told in one long sentence. It’s also a desperate attempt to salvage the honor of the author’s people: Just leave us alone, and we will free Sambo, when the time is right. 1948 was too damn late.
-Brian
 1.10.2005 monday
 Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty In her gorgeous and idiosyncratic detail, Welty describes a Fairchild wedding, asks whether it’s possible to shed a surname, or to gain one. A dark streak seems to run through the background of this novel; it is, upon further inspection, the foreground.
-Stevie
 1.9.2005 sunday
 Trimmings by Harryette Mullen A long longing list of ladies’ things, a perpetually punning sound that rolls over and over. Where does the lady end and the skirt begin? Exactly and then some. All the white space around these poems does not keep them from rolling.
-Jen
 1.8.2005 saturday
 Paean To Place by Lorine Niedecker Printed in her own handwriting in a multicolored dimestore autograph book and addressed and given to a friend, and also the story of a life on the river, and also helping me to love rhyme. It holds together and I recommend it.
-Jen
 1.7.2005 friday
 Words by Robert Creeley Squarish stanzas reproduce--more than enact--the substance of distance, the architecture of feeling, the process of perception through time, through careful constructions of self-conscious grammar containing flairs of otherwise flagrant emotion. Always, a sense of isolation within one's outgoing actions.
-Erika
 1.6.2005 thursday
 The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity by Amir D. Aczel Infinity isn’t chaotic; it’s organized but unattainable. Here’s a brief history of the search for its nature, in which the supposed protagonist (mathematician Georg Cantor), plays a minor role. Patchy and underdeveloped in parts, and the math can be difficult. Nevertheless: illuminating.
-Stevie
 1.5.2005 wednesday
 The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley Most short-story writers give you a moment; Paley gives you an entire life. These miniatures contain more hope and despair (and just plain more characters) than those of anyone else I can imagine. Surprisingly explicit content, remarkable turns of phrase. Fierce humanism.
-Timothy
 1.4.2005 tuesday
 alphabet by Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied Utilizing the fibonacci sequence, reintroduces an interest in how we know forms. Wars, dies, memory. Feels so absolutely correct in English that it must be another world in Danish and this an adaptation. In which gun shots actually manage to exist, surprise.
-Jen
 1.3.2005 monday
 The Practice of Poetry: Writing Excerises from Poets Who Teach edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell Instructional books: either they upset me or I start concocting unreasonably grand schemes (“I am surely capable of making wine”). But I picked this one up after many recommendations, and it’s quite good – full of exercises that jumpstart both business and pleasure.
-Jen
 1.2.2005 sunday
 Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess Zombie cannibals take over Ontario; a virus infects reality. The book is complex; it sheds one itchy skin after another. It starts out combining Ovid with Ed Gein and just keeps going. He's a weird and interesting stylist, too, this Tony Burgess.
-Diana
 1.1.2005 saturday
 The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr Written in 1974 by a person Tennessee Williams identifies as "a real southern lady,” it has predictable charms and failings. Carr’s discomfort with homosexuality (especially in men) rears its tactful head sometimes, but if it was true enough for Tennessee, true enough.
-Jen




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