Tag Archives: fall 2008

YOUR COUNTRY IS GREAT: Afghanistan-Guyana

Ara Shirinyan Futurepoem ($15) by Katie Fowley Ara Shirinyan’s Your Country is Great: Afghanistan—Guyana is an exercise in how to say nothing about a place—a testament to the self-defeating potential of descriptive language. Take, for example, these lines about Germany: “The atmosphere in Germany is great / and it’s just like Africa here—” or these lines about […]

THE FLOATING BRIDGE

David Shumate University of Pittsburgh Press ($14) by Kristina Marie Darling In his recent collection of prose poems, The Floating Bridge, David Shumate explores such diverse subjects as translation, amateur Zen masters, and Franz Kafka’s first date. While his book treats a variety of ideas, the works within it continually return to the idea of “another […]

THE GHETTO AND OTHER POEMS

Lola Ridge Factory School ($14) by Michael Aiken In 1907, at age 34, the poet Lola Ridge emigrated from Australia to the U.S. Finding employment in various industrial sweatshop environments, she quickly became involved in both socialist/anarchist/feminist activism and the modernist literary movement, contributing to and editing a number of “little” magazines. The Ghetto and Other […]

THE COLLECTED POEMS | SELECTED POEMS

THE COLLECTED POEMS C.P. Cavafy translated by Evangelos Sachperoglou Oxford University Press ($12.95) SELECTED POEMS Federico García Lorca translated by Martin Sorrell Oxford University Press ($11.95) by John Cunningham The Oxford World’s Classics series has been issuing some of the finest in world literature for over 100 years; these two books are no exception. Both […]

ROCK ON: An Office Power Ballad

Dan Kennedy Algonquin ($14.95) by Ellen Frazel Imagine landing your dream job, only to realize that this job completely destroys and invalidates the dreams you once had. This job takes everything you thought to be true, everything you held with deep respect in the world, and dashes it against the hard, shiny rocks of corporate […]

IN SEARCH OF THE BLUES

Marybeth Hamilton Basic Books ($24.95) by Tim W. Brown Since the colonial era, white Americans have shown interest in the music produced by African-Americans. For example, in Notes on the State of Virginia Thomas Jefferson praised his slaves’ talent for playing the “banjar.” During Reconstruction, Northerners and Southerners alike struggled to describe this music, which sounded foreign […]

GEORGE OPPEN: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers

edited by Stephen Cope University of California Press ($19.95) by Joseph Bradshaw Over a decade in the making, Stephen Cope’s edition of George Oppen: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers is an in-depth presentation of Oppen processing the poetics behind his highly acclaimed poetry. Book-ended by a section called Prose (which includes the essay “The Mind’s Own Place”) […]

HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY: A Guided Anthology

edited Zong-qi Cai Columbia University Press ($32.50) by Lucas Klein Implicit in the question How to Read Chinese Poetry is whether reading Chinese poetry is any different from reading non-Chinese poetry. If not, then what is the justification for a “guided anthology” such as this? And, for that matter, what is Chinese poetry? According to editor Zong-qi […]

THE LETTERS OF JOHN COWPER POWYS AND EMMA GOLDMAN

edited by David Goodway Cecil Woolf by Jeff Bursey Emma Goldman (1869-1940), born in Lithuania but most often a resident of the United States, became both infamous and an inspiration for her anarchist activities and writings. Her most enduring work may be found in the causes she championed (described in, among other places, Living My Life, […]

THE LAZARUS PROJECT

Aleksandar Hemon Riverhead Books ($24.95) by Salvatore Ruggiero “Why does the Jewish day begin at sunset?” This is the quiet refrain posed by Lazarus Averbuch, the evasive subject of Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel The Lazarus Project. The novel interlaces the narrative of Vladimir Brik, a displaced Bosnian refugee in Chicago who receives a grant to write […]