Category Archives: Currently reading

Reading from October and November… Kenneth Patchen’s Hallellujah Anyway Based on people’s raving of how fundamental to poetry Patchen is, I found a book. It wasn’t anything like I expected since the quote were put in tidy stacks of textual ideas whereas he drew and handwrote around and within his drawings, mostly legibly. What is […]

Time Was Soft There: A Memoir A Paris Soujourn at Shakespeare & Co by Jeremy Mercer (Picador, 2005) This was a lovely read. It has vivid details about the history of bookstores and the nature of the characters who come to live there, among the 40,000 writers who have crashed at the store. There’s something […]

Here, mostly poetry, some local history, philosophy and a novel. Underway to finish are various histories and biographies. distinctions: (rob mclennan, above/ground, 2014) The fragmentary pieces play towards and away from narrative. For example while not without subject or central density, it teases parts of external and internal and multiple readings. Yet as “not presently”, […]

Complete Sonnets of Archibald Lampman, edited by Margaret Coulby Whitridge (Borealis, 1976) 1892 was exceptionally productive with Lampman writing 17 sonnets. From 1883-1899 he wrote over 450 poems; about a quarter of them were published. He received $25 per sonnet published in the dollars of that day while his full time government job paid $1000 […]