January 2009
Jack Spicer on Mars
When Jack Spicer was alive, his books could only be had in small editions, in and around the Bay area. Thanks to a new collection, My Vocabulary Did This to Me, that work has finally arrived. Jared White takes us deep into Spicer’s magical, reckless world.
| 3 poems by Max Jacob translated by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney. |
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Finely Woven Webs Poetry meets anatomy when Lianne Habinek reads Donne, who, in “The Flea” and other poems, aimed to discover the seat of the soul |
And a Tree
John Taggart’s most recent book, There Are Birds, might net him a wider audience, thanks to a personal touch in those trademark cadences. Adam Golaski guides us into Taggart’s songlike sonorities.
The Damage Collector
C.D. Wright collects her poems from scraps of overheard conversation, wandering memories, newspaper headlines. In his review of Rising, Falling, Hovering, John Cotter surveys the damage suspended in that scaffolding.
2 poems by Catullus
translated by Keith Newton
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One Encounter: On Finding a Copy of Ovid’s Fasti at the Local Goodwill Among the Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, Steve Donoghue unearths a rare secondhand treasure in Ovid’s difficult, underrated Fasti. And he celebrates. |
Like Life
The lyric I and the lyric eye are in play and in question in Stephanie Young’s second book, Picture Palace. Elisa Gabbert illuminates its pitfalls and its charms.
| Foutez-moi le paix! It may be debatable whether the most maudit of all the poètes deserves the tribute, but Gaston Frontenac finds the nasty, beautiful Rimbaud well served by Edmund White’s new Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel |
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2 poems by Peretz Markish
translated by Amelia Glaser
Water Lily Mud
Lorine Niedecker knew the literary life in New York, fell for Louis Zukofsky, published in Objectivist magazines, then returned to Wisconsin, where her poems continued growing spare, surreal, and deep. Heather Green reviews what the new collection Radical Varnacular adds to our understanding of her world.
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Katrina Cries Sharon Fulton reviews Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, a “resonant and devastating” examination of the Katrina disaster and the Bush administration’s failure to contain its fallout. |
| One More, Please? It’s been years—too long!—since Martha Argerich has preformed solo. Greg Waldmann eagerly pours thorugh her new DVD and the history of her brilliant career for clues to her reclusiveness and for glimmers of hope. |
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Ugly on Purpose
Saxophone legend John Coltrane took jazz further from its traditional sound than any artist of his day. Philip Larkin kept traditional rhyme and meter alive in English verse. Richard Palmer’s new study, Such Deliberate Disguises, attempts to make the case for one influencing the other. John G. Rodwan Jr. puts the emphasis on “attempts.”
| It’s a Mystery: “I Confess That I Covet Your Skull” Irma Heldman is back on the beat, first with a rollicking, bawdy yarn depicting an infamous, turn-of-the century caper masterminded by Professor Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’ archenemy. Then she matches wits with a cheeky mini-tome refuting the great detective’s solution to his most illustrious case. |
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“Suffer, Monkey, Suffer!”
Chris Adrian’s preoccupation with “unorthodox angels” persists in his third book, A Better Angel. John Matthew Fox ranks Adrian’s demons in this artful story collection.
Like Diamonds on Display
Karen Vanuska finds plenty to praise in Louise Erdrich’s The Red Convertible: New and Selected Stories—as well as some loose bolts and steam under the hood.
| Potato Style Would the inventor of “sprung rhythm” have lived a more carefree existence in a world that allowed him to live and love the way he wanted? What poetry would he write in such a world? Steve Donoghue takes a brisk dip into Paul Mariani’s Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life. |
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The cover illustration of Jack Spicer–as well as the interior illustrations of Lorine Niedecker–is by Rachel Burgess, of Brookline, Massachusetts. She has a B.A. in Literature from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Her work can be viewed at www.rachelsillustrations.com. Her favorite poet is W.B. Yeats.
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