Chekhov’s Mistess

July 03, 2009

Current and Recent Reading

 

I started writing about Roberto Bolaño’s The Skating Rink for this post and got carried away because it was turning into a book review and I haven’t even finished it. So I chucked that, but I’ll leave you with this: The structure is, at least superficially, Roshomon-like, and the characters are firmly in Bolaño territory: writers and ne’er-do-wells. There’s a crime. You can read what my friend A.M. Correa has to say about it and she links to some other articles as well.

I’m also reading Stephen Burt’s Close Calls With Nonsense, subtitled Reading New Poetry, but put more specifically in the title chapter, “How to Read, and Perhaps Enjoy, Very New Poetry.” While I’m repelled by anything that begins with “How to…” I like Burt’s writing very much because he’s not condescending, and he avoids the great crime of most poetry critics, pretending to know that he knows everything. He’s much more focused on championing new poetry than proving that he’s smart (which, in turn, proves it anyway). I love reading poetry criticism, but so much of it is about the critic and not the poetry, so Burt is a rare find and a candidate for the Chekhov’s Mistress Ardor Award.

The book’s title is fantastic, isn’t it. Close Calls with Nonsense is, according to the jacket, “for people who enjoy John Ashbery or Anne Carson, but aren’t sure why…” That’d be me, particularly since when I talk about Anne Carson I’m reduced to words like “magic” or “witchcraft.” But I’ve only read the first few chapters and I’m anxious to hear what he has to say about some of my other favorites like Paul Muldoon or poets I’ve wanted to get into but haven’t for whatever reason, like August Kleinzahler. If you want a hint about my take-away from the book so far, I’ll tell you what I’d name the review if I were to write it today: “Poems are People Too” or something like that.

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I just read the first story in Brian Evenson’s collection Fugue State which just came out from my friends at Coffee House Press (they are, actually, my friends and I’ve built Websites for some of their authors, just so you know). Anyway, Fugue State seems right up my line, as paranoia is one of my favorite topics in literature.

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I just finished two books that I took away from my recent visit to New Directions (about which I need to write a blog post). I met their editor Jeffrey Yang, among others, and he handed me a copy of Yoko Tawada’s The Naked Eye. I want to write a review, which I’ll post at Words Without Borders so I’ll leave you with my takeaway on that one. It’s a weird book, but if you’re comfortable with weird you’ll love it. Oh, and here’s a hint: it’s in no way required, but you’ll find yourself hitting netflix for some old Catherine Deneuve movies.

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So, somehow or another it came to me that Jeffrey was a poet, so I picked up his first(?) collection, An Aquarium. I want to write about this one too, in fact my great goal with this blog has been for some time to write about poetry, but frankly I’m too intimidated by that idea, although maybe after I’ve finished with Stephen Burt’s book, I’ll see if I learned anything. Anyway, An Aquarium has one of the best blurbs I’ve ever read, by Kamau Brathwaite and the book will take your tongue for a trip if you read it aloud.

The aquatic conceit is interesting because it gives him a kind of undersea vernacular that is fun (with words like “zooxanthellae” and “Holothurian,” which remind me of Marianne Moore’s work), but it also grounds even the most pop-culture of these poems, which at times are almost too aphoristic. Still, I’m very fond of the book and find myself returning to it quite a bit.

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The last thing to mention is Mark Halprin’s Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manfisto. This book is a collection of essays, or really one long essay broken into parts, on how dangerous times are for writers because the concept of copyright is being stripped away by ideas like Creative Commons. Early take-away: He has a lot of great points, but he’s much too condescending and angry to have much of a voice in what’s happening. The book is well written, as you’d expect, but indulgent at times. However, much of the reading I’ve done on the subject has been from the other side of the table, so I think, Chicken Little though may he seem, that books like this are important to make sure that we don’t get carried away in our brave new world.

• posted by Bud Parr
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• related:
• 2666 and “Jupiter and Semele”
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• Burt on Ashbery
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• Conversations on Great Contemporary Literature: Bolano’s 2666 on Dec. 4th
• |
• Ferlinghetti Film
• |
• Found Poems, sort of

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