Comments on: Some Favorite Books of 2008

By: Travis

Travis — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:58:00 +0000

You can also buy books direct from Gallery Press. They’re very good with getting orders on time.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:37:10 +0000

Good point, Ruth! Wake Forest University Press will publish Ni Dhomhnail’s book in the US – but till then, yes, it’s available from Amazon UK, which is where I bought my own copy.
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By: Ruth Albert

Ruth Albert — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:58:04 +0000

Frustrating to want to buy The Fifty Minute Mermaid
Nuala Ni Dhomhnail (translated by Paul Muldoon)
Gallery Press
Tried to find it through Email search-no luck.
I love her poetry and it’s so hard to find here.
Will I have to go to England Amazon for a copy?
I think it would be good to suggest where we find these books
in the USA.
Thanks,
Ruth Albert
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By: Rich Villar

Rich Villar — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:10:40 +0000

Michael,
That was Ashbery?
And all this time I thought it was Curly from CITY SLICKERS.
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By: John Latta

John Latta — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:07:05 +0000

Five of my prefer’d for 2008:
Kent Johnson’s Homage to the Last Avant-Garde (Shearsman, 2008)
Kevin Davies’s The Golden Age of Paraphernalia (Edge, 2008)
Peter Culley’s The Age of Briggs & Stratton (New Star Books, 2008)
C. D. Wright’s Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon, 2008)
Carl Martin’s Rogue Hemlocks (Fence Books, 2008)
The titles go to the reviews.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:52:24 +0000

That should read Ballad of Jamie Allan. & what up with screwy italics, Harriet?
I forgot to mention Tomaž Šalamun’s Woods and Chalices. & A. C. Graham’s marvelous Poems of the Late T’ang is finally back in print, thanks to NYRB Classics.
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By: NEG

NEG — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:04:20 +0000

There are a few “new arrivals” shelves in my house. Then there’s the “new arrivals” stack. The pile. The corner.
The “to sell on Amazon” bin.
And those few that actually make their way to the desk, cutting through the three (five? ten?) year lag time most poetry books seem to carry.
I dug these:
Truong Tran: Four Letter Words
Donna Stonecipher: The Cosmopolitan
Kevin Davies: The Golden Age Of Paraphernalia
Stephanie Young: Picture Palace
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By: Dale Smith

Dale Smith — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:54:35 +0000

Yes, Homage to the Last Avant-Garde is terrific–one of my favorite books this year. It’s committed AND funny, wise and exposed. I wrote about in my column at Bookslut.com earlier this year: http://www.bookslut.com/marsupial_inquirer/2008_09_013517.php.
Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand’s Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space (Long Beach: Palm Press, 2008) is also one of my favorite books. It looks at various public-minded approaches to poetry, showing how it can be used to discuss social and political issues in public spaces.
And Micah Ballard’s new one, Parish Krewes (Lowell: Bootstrap Productions, 2009) just arrived with marvelous cover art by David Meltzer.
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By: liz booker

liz booker — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:04:46 +0000

Kent Johnson is okay, though I think Mark Yakich and Gabe Gudding are worlds funnier and better in the tragicomic realm. The only realm worth it these days. Also, the best of the year should include: Gudding’s Rhode Island Notebook, Yakich’s The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine, Roger Sedarat’s Dear Regime, and other folks I never see in Poetry. Liz
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By: michael robbins

michael robbins — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:36:55 +0000

One must bear in mind one thing.
It isn’t necessary to know what that thing is.
–John Ashbery
Some things that got me through 2008:
Tom Pickard, The Ballad of Jamie Allen: I only discovered Pickard’s poems this year, thanks to Ange Mlinko’s write-up on this site. They make me want to write well.
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It off in Rapid City
Unrest, Imperial f.f.r.r.: You can’t imagine what a mess I was in college.
Ange Mlinko’s poems in this month’s issue of Poetry made me turn around to pick up the hat that would have been knocked off by them if I’d been wearing one. Then I leaned against things for a while. Then I walked into an orchard. Not really, I don’t know where any orchards are.
Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities:
Flying Lotus, Los Angeles
Marianne Boruch, Grace, Fallen from: Intelligence writhes here, & what I would call grace.
The Gaslight Anthem, The ’59 Sound: The best rock & roll I’ve heard since the Hold Steady’s first record.
Rae Armantrout, Versed:
Was it a flaming mouse
that burned Mares’ house down
or was it just the wind?
On Tuesday Mares and his nephew
stood by the original version.
Is this plausible?
Fire Chief Chavez said Tuesday
that he thought so.
Mary Jo Bang, Elegy: “Ashes mirror ashes”: a perfect line, whose form replicates its sense, from a book that surprised & saddened the hell out of me.
Kent Johnson, Homage to the Last Avant-Garde: Even if my copy weren’t inscribed with a secret dedication, this outrageous, cool-headed subversion of everything anyone has ever held dear would be precious to me. Forget how funny he can be: has anyone else noticed what a fantastic writer Kent is? (Ange, you’ve read “When I First Read Ange Mlinko,” no?) One recognizes what a little shit Stephen Dedalus is but can’t help admiring his formulations; likewise, one knows what styles are being appropriated & parodied here but is amazed nevertheless to find them as urgent & often as delicately crafted as their originals:
This is not a poem about the mind, but a poem
about the sky, which thinks its thunderclouds out loud
and its crows and its rain, and then, when becalmed
and asleep, when a moon drifts through, dreams horses,
or hearses, or two figures facing, back-lit and aureoled,
the two figures there standing, in a dhow with a sail
that is already shredding.
These are the sorts of things that make me dream in pink.
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By: bill

bill — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:45:15 +0000

“…having lived in both places, I can attest to the mood of secretiveness that pervades both towns, the long shadows around their gilt-edged libraries and the angels in their cemeteries.”
Then you were a tourist, or worse–a student–in both places.
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