I’m done almost none of the following but in the midst of…
B a f t e r C, vol. 4, No. 1 has a raft of writing by people I always like to see more of, such as Joseph Massey and Gregory Betts and I like the nonsensicalness of Chuck Stebelton’s piece in there.
The Debaucher by Jason Camlot (Insomniac Press, 2008) is easily the book of poetry I’ve most enjoyed reading in the last couple years. Sheer pleasure of words and stories and yet meaty as well. He’s enjoying himself writing.
Panoply: poems on diversity, vol. 1, issue 1, a Jer’s Vision Publication has hit the bookstores. Anita Dolman is editing the annual chapbook. Although I’ve seen Domenico Capilongo’s book from Wolsak and Wynn I Thought Elvis was Italian (2008) I only went so far as the cover. A poem of his in this issue about observing an immigrant navigating the subway impressed me with its gentleness and keen observing eye.
Guerilla 18 is out too. I’m not fond of the huge page, heavy paper stock format, but the story in this issue by Lainie Towell about being taken for a ride by a man who married her for immigration papers is compelling and uplifting.
Antigonish Review 155 has a Donald McGrath poem on long johns I rather like, with a child negotiating its frozen width like a huge dried cod thru the doorframe.
Gillian Wigmore’s Soft Geography (Harbour Publishing, 2007) has finally got to my hands. The scenes of vet calls are striking with the brutality of illness and death that kids deal put against their age and legal status of not mature enough to vote, drive, have sex, marry, or drink.
Titles of Poems I Will Never Write by Diane Tucker is a fun chapbook of just what it sounds like. What you would you write in the space under “The Camera I forgot now remembers nothing”? or “My Brief but Illustrious Career as a Smoker”?
Judge Sewall’s Apology of his biography from the 1600s being a key points in American and world history. His crossing the ocean to speak to James II but while he was in transit there was a change of King and William of Orange was en route to his town to declare the new government. Strange that he should see the same sights as a tourist then as we did, that he would meal journal the trip and go bowling while at the same time at home there are native-settler wars and infant mortality at half of births. So same and so different.
echolocation by mani rao (Chameleon Press, 2003) caught me by the unusual binding and cover (chicago screws, metallic paper, and uncut pages) but the lines held me. They are terribly earnest but dense and tight sound bites that sometimes feels like a ghazal in leaps. “The petitions they might send to Koffi Annan. […] Children who take magnets out of their pockets and rally the universe into a new polarity” (p. 28) “( p. 15) “A bird’s eye: thinning rivers, half-eaten mountains, bending lakes, mild agitations of sea fur.”
Down the Unmarked Roads by Joan Finnigan (General Store Publishing House, 1997) are engaging stories of vivid local history by a good story teller.
Uncracked stack:
- Visible Visions: The Selected Poems of Douglas Barbour (Nuwest Press. 1984).
- Tony Hoagland’s Donkey Gospel (Graywolf press, 1998),
- Bulgarian poet, Lyubomir Levchev’s Ashes of Light: New and Selected Poems (Curbstone Press, 2006),
- a haiku collection, Penny in the Grass by Allan Brown (Ekstasis Editions, 2006),
- Imagine No Heaven (The Shoreline Writers’ Society annual anthologies, 2008)
- Under the Sink (The Shoreline Writers’ Society annual anthologies, 2007),
- Hudson Book of Poetry: 150 Poems Worth Reading (McGraw-Hill, 2001)
- Mother Superior short stories by Saleema Nawaz (Freehand books, 2008)