This week I thought I’d try out Substack’s thread feature. Which summer reads are still tugging at the hem of your consciousness? To the new books of poets I’ve interviewed for this newsletter, I’d add:
The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications, by Aaron Angello. From Rose Metal Press.
Prose poems from a meditation on one of Shakespeare's sonnets, word by word. An inventive and olipian meditation that shows us the poet's mind at work on the page and over time.
I've had the good fortune to have read two of the books listed above (Seuss and Levin) and to have two more already queued up to read (Limon and Vuong). Adding Niedecker to my list now.
Robert Hass worked with Paul Ebenkamp to put together a book of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (with other selected poems) and includes a really interesting lexicon of the language Whitman uses. This has been my back-pocket book for all summer road trips and camping. A wonderful reference to a classic.
Hugh Kenner’s A Colder Eye, about the modern Irish writers who finagled the reverse conquest of English, also known as the Irish Literary Revival: Yeats (of course) and Lady Gregory, who together founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, where Synge’s famous play debuted, setting off a riot. Later, Sean O’Casey’s plays played the Abbey and Beckett took in many a play there. Joyce, naturally, and everyone’s favorite mocker, Flann O’Brien. Title is from Yeats’ famous line.
No Boundaries-- prose poems edited by Ray Gonzalez. Some are gems, like a sudden inspiration so clear and sharp it hurts my lungs.
The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications, by Aaron Angello. From Rose Metal Press.
Prose poems from a meditation on one of Shakespeare's sonnets, word by word. An inventive and olipian meditation that shows us the poet's mind at work on the page and over time.
I've had the good fortune to have read two of the books listed above (Seuss and Levin) and to have two more already queued up to read (Limon and Vuong). Adding Niedecker to my list now.
Radha, this is delightful.
Vapor, by Sara Eliza Johnson.
Robert Hass worked with Paul Ebenkamp to put together a book of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (with other selected poems) and includes a really interesting lexicon of the language Whitman uses. This has been my back-pocket book for all summer road trips and camping. A wonderful reference to a classic.
Hugh Kenner’s A Colder Eye, about the modern Irish writers who finagled the reverse conquest of English, also known as the Irish Literary Revival: Yeats (of course) and Lady Gregory, who together founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, where Synge’s famous play debuted, setting off a riot. Later, Sean O’Casey’s plays played the Abbey and Beckett took in many a play there. Joyce, naturally, and everyone’s favorite mocker, Flann O’Brien. Title is from Yeats’ famous line.