forty-two: november/december 2005

12.19.2005
 Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman Second book in the tetrology – these poems discuss the epic, war stories, what it means to make a story. Like Cascadia, this book contains poems whose shapes rise out of bodies, poems whose persons are places. Sound comes off page at you.
-Jen
 12.18.2005
 The Grass Harp, A Tree of Night, and Other Stories by Truman Capote As if all the stories that come after “The Grass Harp” are revisitations of the same narrative, the same world, from a darker head, a view that does not open out into anything. People, alone, at the mercy of their desires, supernatural.
-Jen
 12.17.2005
 Standing by Words: Essays by Wendell Berry A group of essays that makes true and implicit the connection between we what we write and what we mean, what we write and what it means. Berry makes poetry vital again – to the lives of farms, marriages, towns, humans, countries, poems.
-Jen
 12.16.2005
 Cascadia by Brenda Hillman First book in a tetrology about the elements (earth, wind, fire, water), the shapes of the poems are physical shapes, the sounds of the poems are deeply textured. There is a place where all of this really happens, every place, your place.
-Jen
 12.15.2005
 The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien A long overdue read for me – what impresses me most is the ironic ability of a meditative, mature, lyrical novel – a novel that plays with both truth and story – to appeal to boys who don’t read books. No preaching to the choir.
-Jen
 12.14.2005
 Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks Starts in a small Northeastern town and ends up, surprisingly, in Jamaica. The largeness and unpredictability of some of the events in this story seem to take away from the more interesting focus, the voice and how it navigates a familiar world.
-Jen
 12.13.2005
 Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative Edited by Mary Burger, Robert Gluck, Camille Roy, and Gail Scott By writers & for writers: a collection of essays and talks by Kathy Acker, Lydia Davis, Carla Harryman, Eileen Myles, Leslie Scalapino, Christian Bok and more: meditations on narrative and storytelling that make the reader simultaneously question and desire story as portal.
-Jen
 11.30.2005
 Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie I read this book lying on my bed in Jersey and I read it in one or two days and it was good; and one thing I liked about it was the dream about the mother taking a bath on a star.
-Tao Lin

 11.29.2005
 The Wings of the Dove by Henry James Takes a while, especially if read just before bed. London is unhealthy, Venice is lovely for invalids. Everyone has so many feelings, a constant shifting, some duplicity, moral flailing. Restraint in page-long paragraphs. Pick almost any, and you'll find a prose poem.
-Bronwen Tate










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