forty-two: september/october 2005
10.4.2005
Goat: A Memoir by Brad Land
After the smile and the breath attack at night and leave Land for dead, he
sees things differently, or not at all. Hazed and confused during Clemson
pledge season, Land struggles with the violence of male friendship and
aggression. A haunting read.
-Matthew
10.3.2005
In the Blue Pharmacy by Marianne Boruch
My students say she’s “all over the place,” but what I notice is her attention. In “Decoys” Boruch looks into the fake albatross until they start moving. In “Williams and the Atom Bomb” the equation falls apart alongside, because of, her eye.
-Jen
10.2.2005
Orchard by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Lush is a word that everyone uses in this regard but it’s hard to avoid. What this eye never avoids, is in fact taken by: hairy breasts of mammals, fleshy babies of stone, raw sheep, raw flowers, the mystery of finding them.
-Jen
10.1.2005
Decreation by Anne Carson
No surprise that it’s good but surprising, this good-- a bigger humor. An opera cast that includes "Hephaistos: lame god of the forge and husband of Aphrodite" and "Volcano Chorus: 7 female robots built by Hephaistos to help him at the forge."
-Jen
9.4.2005 sunday
The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
Daniel Pecan Cambridge, ex-HP gnome, OCD (Aspergerian?), lives on grandma¹s
checks, can't cross curbs, counts bulb wattage and loves distant pharmacist.
The innocent quirk written by The Jerk is a lovable innocent wrestling with
a twisted existence in an unflinching modern world.
-Matthew
9.3.2005 saturday
The Body Aches by Ernesto Priego
Ernesto Priego's poems magnify minutiae. When each poem closes in on
dust, colour, emotions, flesh -- its aches and pains, every word must
tremble on the rim of falling. I observe how 'miss' is loaded: abstain, avoid, fail to hit its
mark, yearn....
-Ivy
9.2.2005 friday
The Maimed by Hermann Ungar
Bank employee Polzer fears molestation, humiliation, defeat. All his fears are borne out. The narrator reports Polzer's thoughts, making Polzer a surrogate narrator, and an utterly reliable one. When Polzer thinks "something is preparing itself" or "everything has been broken," he's right.
-Diana
9.1.2005 thursday
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Ivan thinks dying is an abstraction: It's about his unruly kidney— not
about life & death! Then wonders whether he's being pulled away from
fancy curtains & an enviable career— or back toward something that
life has gradually pulled him away from?
-Stevie
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