Some recent arrivals which I have been enjoying immensely:
The Book of Questions, Neruda
Copper Canyon Press (1991)
I used to read this in the university library and for some reason never actually picked up a copy of the book.
Great poems to memorize in Spanish, since they are so diminutive.
Haiku in English, The First Hundred Years, eds. Kacian, Rowland, Burns
Norton (2013)
Kacian's "An Overview of Haiku in English" is a locus classicus now. I was surprised to recall I had actually published in one of the haiku magazines he mentions in his catalog of notables (a rather Gendai journal). I noticed that Kacian didn't mention Brautigan at all when he limned the American history of haiku. Not that Brautigan was hardcore. But then Billy Collins mentioned R.B. in his introduction to the volume, so his ghost sneaked in. (I read closing essay and introduction in reverse order.) It seems appropriate, glossing Brautigan, considering the latitude given by the editors as to what constitutes an "ELH" (English language haiku). Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" opens the volume, so... The anthology was chock-a-block with fabulous poets new to me. One wishes for several lifetimes to read everyone's books.
I Live, I See, Vsevolod Nekrasov
Ugly Duckling Presse (2013)
The Rooster's Wife, Russell Edson
BOA Editions (2005)
I think it's sort of criminal that Edson was excised from the latest volume of the Norton anthology dedicated to surveying postmodern American poetry. But then I think I get it. Bukowski was also chucked and neither of those poets are going to lose any readers anytime soon. One could argue (much easier with Bukowski than Edson) that neither of those poets really reified the postmodern tendencies in American poetry. Really, one wonders by what stretch of the imagination Bukowski could have been seen to fit into the first anthology. He was intransigently vernacular/demotic and pretty much despised the airs taken on by experimental poets of any stripe. One wonders if he was included merely to help move copies, increase sales. That the man can do, dead or alive. Edson certainly worked with many of the prevalent ideas elevated in postmodernism. However, when it comes to facture, perhaps Edson doesn't appear to be "all that postmodern." He is not superficially postmodern. So I think that's the reason he was jettisoned. It's pretty much a structuralist anthology.
In any case, he's a fabulous writer and many of these poems are stellar. It's a dark collection. It's end of life darkness. The humor is rich but in the way that the darkest paintings of German expressionism are rich in humor. He's such an inimitable stylist in the metaphysical vein that some of the poems are almost hopelessly eccentric. He loves turning the language, turning the ideas, turning the poems against themselves. I think the Ouroboros should be on Edson's family escutcheon. But the strongest poems all seem to cry out to be anthologized, shared widely. I wonder if James Tate was a devotee. Because those two poets seem to speak back and forth (unless I hallucinate that).
I say Edson isn't going to lose any readers anytime soon, but you know that might not be exactly true. He might suffer some for a while for having published slightly off the beaten track. I mean those are good presses, but he seems to have been a bit reclusive and not to have worked hard at creating inertia with his career. He seems to have receded in the public sense near the end, even as his work continued to evolve and deepen, even as he decocted finer and finer essences. Maybe the (slightly tempered) nihilism at the center of his poetry told him that was an okay stance to adopt. I think Edson is eminently translatable. That's not true of all that many poets. I do see interest in his work around the world and so I think if he flags in one language, one culture, he might pick up in another and then come around again to a larger appreciation in his native land.
The Book of Questions, Neruda
Copper Canyon Press (1991)
I used to read this in the university library and for some reason never actually picked up a copy of the book.
Great poems to memorize in Spanish, since they are so diminutive.
Haiku in English, The First Hundred Years, eds. Kacian, Rowland, Burns
Norton (2013)
Kacian's "An Overview of Haiku in English" is a locus classicus now. I was surprised to recall I had actually published in one of the haiku magazines he mentions in his catalog of notables (a rather Gendai journal). I noticed that Kacian didn't mention Brautigan at all when he limned the American history of haiku. Not that Brautigan was hardcore. But then Billy Collins mentioned R.B. in his introduction to the volume, so his ghost sneaked in. (I read closing essay and introduction in reverse order.) It seems appropriate, glossing Brautigan, considering the latitude given by the editors as to what constitutes an "ELH" (English language haiku). Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" opens the volume, so... The anthology was chock-a-block with fabulous poets new to me. One wishes for several lifetimes to read everyone's books.
I Live, I See, Vsevolod Nekrasov
Ugly Duckling Presse (2013)
The Rooster's Wife, Russell Edson
BOA Editions (2005)
I think it's sort of criminal that Edson was excised from the latest volume of the Norton anthology dedicated to surveying postmodern American poetry. But then I think I get it. Bukowski was also chucked and neither of those poets are going to lose any readers anytime soon. One could argue (much easier with Bukowski than Edson) that neither of those poets really reified the postmodern tendencies in American poetry. Really, one wonders by what stretch of the imagination Bukowski could have been seen to fit into the first anthology. He was intransigently vernacular/demotic and pretty much despised the airs taken on by experimental poets of any stripe. One wonders if he was included merely to help move copies, increase sales. That the man can do, dead or alive. Edson certainly worked with many of the prevalent ideas elevated in postmodernism. However, when it comes to facture, perhaps Edson doesn't appear to be "all that postmodern." He is not superficially postmodern. So I think that's the reason he was jettisoned. It's pretty much a structuralist anthology.
In any case, he's a fabulous writer and many of these poems are stellar. It's a dark collection. It's end of life darkness. The humor is rich but in the way that the darkest paintings of German expressionism are rich in humor. He's such an inimitable stylist in the metaphysical vein that some of the poems are almost hopelessly eccentric. He loves turning the language, turning the ideas, turning the poems against themselves. I think the Ouroboros should be on Edson's family escutcheon. But the strongest poems all seem to cry out to be anthologized, shared widely. I wonder if James Tate was a devotee. Because those two poets seem to speak back and forth (unless I hallucinate that).
I say Edson isn't going to lose any readers anytime soon, but you know that might not be exactly true. He might suffer some for a while for having published slightly off the beaten track. I mean those are good presses, but he seems to have been a bit reclusive and not to have worked hard at creating inertia with his career. He seems to have receded in the public sense near the end, even as his work continued to evolve and deepen, even as he decocted finer and finer essences. Maybe the (slightly tempered) nihilism at the center of his poetry told him that was an okay stance to adopt. I think Edson is eminently translatable. That's not true of all that many poets. I do see interest in his work around the world and so I think if he flags in one language, one culture, he might pick up in another and then come around again to a larger appreciation in his native land.
