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New Books - 10/08
John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1956 - 1987 ($40 Library of America)
A treat! -- over a thousand pages of John Ashbery's delight and invention in
a volume comprised of Mr. Ashbery's first ten books, as they were published,
including Joe Brainard's original art, which accompanied "The Vermont
Notebook," and along with sixty-five uncollected poems from the time period.
Opening the book at random the following was offered up from "The Double
Dream of Spring" -- "It is this blank carcass of whims and tentative
afterthoughts / Which is being delivered into your hand like a letter some
forty-odd years after the day it was posted."
Warhorses by Yusef Komunyakaa ($24 FSG) This is an atmospheric collection of poems on conflict and love. "Sometimes I hold you like
Achilles' / shield, your mouth on mine." The book ends with a sequence, "The
Autobiography of my Alter Ego," the masterfully told story of a conscript's
experience in the Viet Nam war and his life after, up through the days of
the second Iraq war. Warhorses is a profound meditation on guilt,
forgiveness, survival, and their limits: "Sir, here's the skin / growing
over a wound, / & this is flesh interrogating a stone."
Red Rover by Susan Stewart ($22 University of Chicago) Ms.
Stewart's poetry is stellar, sharing a constellation with Wallace Steven's
precision and Anne Carson's engagement with the world. Her eye and voice
combine in remarkable ways. For example, this from "The Owl" -- "I thought
somehow a piece of cloth was tossed / into the night, a piece of cloth that
flew // up, then across, beyond the window. / A tablecloth or handkerchief,
a knot // somehow unfolding, folded pushing through / the thickness of the
dark."
And take a look at our October/November 2008 calendar for write-ups of Aaron Shurin's King of Shadows, D. Nurkse's The Border Kingdom, Lorna Dee Cervantes's Drive, Karen Volkman's Nomina, Linda Bierds's Flight, Dan Kaplan's Bill's Formal Complaint, and B.T. Shaw's This Dirty Little Heart.
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