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New Books - 03/09
Continuum by Nina Cassian ($23.95 Norton) Charm, sardonic wit, and a wide emotional range, the exiled Romanian Nina Cassian has everything working for her in this powerful collection. Now in her mid-eighties, the effortless force and confidence of her mature work is a pleasure to behold. A U.S. resident since 1985, she chose from sixty years of her writing, some of which was written in English, some she translated from her original Romanian. She has a facility for truly distinctive rhyme and imagery -- “My father now fills the world / with his being. I presume / he grew immensely in approaching / the supreme hour, DOOM… // His baldness is the moon itself / as he steps from shore to shore.” This is an elder master’s book. The collection’s final poem, “My Last Book,” starts “How do I know / that this is my last book? / My genes are adamant. / My energy is longing for exhaustion.” A short poem, it ends with her acknowledgement she still sometimes takes up “a pen / to inject a poem / like a shot, an intravenous, / in the missing arms of Venus.”
American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry edited by Cole Swenson and David St. John ($25.95 Norton) This generous collection focuses on “the new poem -- the hybrid -- a synthesis of traditional and experimental styles.” Indeed there is some cross-pollination going on in portions of American poetry, with poets fusing a variety of contemporary and traditional poetic devices in order to create their art. Some of those represented in this book stand more on the traditional side of the crumbling fence (Albert Goldbarth, Susan Stewart) while others approach from the experimental side (Susan Howe, Stephen Ratcliffe). Seventy-four poets are given a half-dozen or so pages of work, a brief biography, and a gloss describing their art. The breadth here is exciting, as is the flowering of the hybrid poem.
End of the West by Michael Dickman ($15 Copper Canyon) There is room to breathe in Michael Dickman’s poetry, and one wants that room. Often the subjects are grim, frequently dealing with a difficult youth -- “all down the street the new fathers / beat the kingness / out / of the / kings // when they came in for dinner” -- but his survivor’s sense of distance from tough subjects and his lovely, measured imagery give his poems a spare, painterly quality. “The whales fold themselves back and back inside the long hallway of salt // You have to stare back at the salt / the sliding mirrors / all day // just to see something / maybe // for the last time.” If the Dickman name sounds familiar it may be because Michael’s twin brother, Matthew, read at Open Books last month from his first book, All-American Poem. What are the odds?
It’s a Small (Press) World
Despite the chaos of the large-house publishing industry (or perhaps partially because of it), numerous small -- even micro -- presses continue to bring out vibrant, thought-provoking, pleasing books and chapbooks. From Reb Livingston’s lively No Tell Books comes the latest by the ever intriguing Rebecca Loudon, Cadaver Dogs ($15). Rose Metal Press, founded by Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney in 2006, is a publisher of hybrid genres, most recently Carol Guess’s prose-poem collection, Tinderbox Lawn ($16). Portland, Oregon’s Octopus Books, edited by Zachary Schomburg and Mathias Svalina, has just released Tuned Droves by Eric Baus ($12). Ander Monson continues to produce an impressive selection of chapbooks through New Michigan Press, including Jennifer Moss’s Beast, to Be Your Friend ($8). Gary and Linda Thompson revived Cedar House Books in 2004, bringing out several new collections, among them On the Right Wind ($14) by Ripley Hugo, Richard Hugo’s widow. Publisher Christian Peet’s Tarpaulin Sky Press, which bloomed from the online journal of the same name in 2006, produced G.C. Waldrep’s One Way No Exit ($10), a chapbook with a nearly indestructible binding – steel bolts. And of course the wizards at Ugly Duckling Presse keep on publishing volumes in all shapes and sizes, including their regular anthology 6x6; edition #17 ($5), which just arrived, is titled “I was ashamed of the poems, and still I'm ashamed.”
To see such fine work coming from so many small presses is thrilling -- and heartening.
And take a look at our March 2009 calendar for descriptions of Zach Savich's Full Castrophe Living, Endi Bogue Hartigan's One Sun Storm, and Susan Parr's Pacific Shooter.
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