This post is just to spread the word about a terrific fiction writer from Australia named Jen Craig. My enthusiam is based on her 2nd and 3rd novels to appear in print:

Any fan of Thomas Bernhard's novels will immediately take to what Craig is up to and I only hope she keeps at it and keeps getting published. Her first novel, Since the Accident, was published in 2013 and is, of course, on my "to read" list.

Two poems

Trilobites of Christ

Marmalade tribunals regulate
Vehicular rumination until dawn
Giving static horse-play
Roman eccentricities
That will never dissipate.

Gruff, hunchback,
Display weasels
Hand off Olympic torches
To eternity.

Does negative growth
Enhance funicular
Homicide theaters?

The give back will secretly hover...



End Tidal CO2

Recriminating flesh tablets
Of riverside angst
Or cross-referenced spindles
Deep in the cycle carryover
Not noticing a return coronation ablation
For display purposes only.

Latest Configuration of My Audio System

PS Audio DirectStream Memory Player>>PS Audio DirectStream DAC >>Dynaudio 9S subwoofer>>Merrill Audio Thor Mono Blocks >>Dynaudio Confidence C1 II's (w/ Brickwall Series Mode Power Conditioner)

Top Poetry Picks

These are the poetry books that have impressed me the most so far this year. None are 2012 publications.

Rod Smith's "Deed"




Gil Ott's "The Whole Note"



Michael Gottlieb's "The Likes of Us"



Craig Watson's "Sleepwalking With Orpheus"



Frank Sherlock's "Over Here"



William Fuller's "Three Replies"

White-haired Melody, a novel by Furui Yoshikichi

I am being deeply affected by this quietly but profoundly meditative narrative. Full of subtle musings and observations on themes of aging, madness and death, the book is also full of the distinctively Japanese appreciation for the myriad joys and beauties to be found in the commonplace and quotidian. It's a terrific example of how a novel about nothing can be about virtually everything.

"elegan trogon" from How's the Cows by Jess Mynes

pitch a fit snow recedes
lops red carpet hickey heart
intersects forget-me-not distant body
mining emergent designs
animate trepan stare-off
written on her Chucks
superheroes loom closer
to why sea anemones wink slyly
spiky thrushes tip wishes
mapping your bending spine
when it ceases to be valuable
finish to release a grip grown suspect



How's the Cows can be purchased here

A Little Poem

Factors

While tricycles of fat destroy lip parades
On the lecture circuit,
Gnomic genocidal peace laboratories
Crash the party.

Entangled tribes of infected speleologists
Convene another ecstatic remedy
Of growth and hegemony.
They allow no movement.
Our leaders have flown the coop.

J. H. Prynne's Red D Gypsum from the collection Furtherance

Here's a pretty representative excerpt from the amazing Red D Gypsum----


Top-work the frame to chalk white yet against less
clear tremolo flotation, sudden demerged racing
downsize nutrient plume to risk appetite so born
at here D plate mirror swap pleas can never shine;
depleted words all light and gladed in picket fault
back flattened silently. Crimpen interfold your
spectrum yellow, taunted now slippery bright, red
gully regained through the wood rewound in felt.

Peter Seaton's The Son Master

An exerpt from the long prose poem The Son Master
by Peter Seaton----


To which, to take charge, this feature could be any idea of the need for a substitute for an advantage
over the sound fracture plate extended rather than dug out, and I could use white line looks to a wall of dark
red stone. The shape of one too is so hard that to take charge we had all survived. The elastic remains in the
eyes to clear it over. This is a preposition, a possible sight of everyone's appearance without the business people
touching. Great logs of the moon used also for legs, light complicated by catastrophe instructions, to move
somewhere with a bang and a knock out of us, we know enough. Knocked flat near the conventional center,
rest and have dinner and wait all morning so it must have been the rain that fell. The machine cares, but those
two can be the same, the moon experience of space of sky throwing out dance and dance invasion.

Two Poems by Clark Coolidge (from the collection Own Face)

The Icing Up It Turns To
for M.P.'s without music


When, meaning where, will the wire go down,
meaning would, beneath the portion of tree,
substitute cracking, effected by the lower
portion, mood, of the sprung cloud, signifying
an uncompleted lace or lack of power.
A lash of wisdom for the bending.






But It Says Nothing


But it says nothing. And one is as quiet
as if to say nothing moves me. Then
there is the chair. And one speaks of
the chair sitting at the table.
Scraping against surfaces, opening the mouth.
The object is a piece of thing before. One
shifts in a chair and opens the talk.
And the time it says nothing one moves.
The table is too long as the wall. Not
a thing but it stays and one opens
as a mouth will begin. Speaking of
the table, nothing but to avoid that
of the wall. One could return over and over
to the chair, the wall one is sitting at.
Least ways it says nothing. And the
thing is, it stays still before
speaking of. The object of nothing, even
speech.

Two Poems by Bill Berkson (from Portrait and Dream: New and Selected Poems)

On Ice

Doors of jostled vicinity
An eager angle extending in the sky a grey chasm
Tip of island street morning wash
A waking minute pointed to end quote
Squeeze left in diamond-beaded industry
Wedgeful elaborations desist
Shut behind us without saying
White lights from the powder-keg days



If I Pray To Anyone It Is To You

If I pray to anyone it is to you.
You make a U-turn and are immediately apprehended
By the power vested in me and taken away from you
Because you are minus identity at this moment
Where you linger
In a bad frame of mind
Like some weather on earth
Perpetually stained, and it looks like home.

So borrow a shiny pen
From the highway patrol
And see the boats, instant pairs
That idle steadily
On the fortuitous tides.
A grey caulk-expanse for hammers,
As a lady takes a doughnut from a car trunk.

You never know what lands to the eye,
Seeing air stir water visibly.
But water comes to hide it.
Just a mole's margin of sand in any case.
And the nib flows.

Appreciating Philip Guston

I came to Guston's work years ago through my admiration for Morton Feldman's music and reading of their childhood friendship which Feldman broke off in the '60s when Guston abandoned abstract expressionism for the "cartoony" figural work seen in these paintings. Feldman's doctrinaire attitude seems ugly and narrow minded in the face of so much beauty (not to mention irony) in Guston's late works. They look especially good seen close up in person because of their textured surfaces.

Great Poetry by Natalie Lyalin and Julia Story

I've recently been very impressed by these two writers. The books are Natalie Lyalin's Pink and Hot Pink Habitat and Julia Story's Post Moxie.

Being mostly at a loss for explaining what it is that excites me about these and others of my favorite poetry books (I'm still very new at this), I'll be brief.

Both of these women are exploring similar formal and stylistic territory so excuse me if I lump them together somewhat. Both books consist of cycles of what are basically prose poems though the emphasis is clearly on the poetry here. Both also focus quite narrowly on the personal life experiences of a female narrator, presumably the author, and do so in highly evolved personal vocabularies. There are wonderfully odd conceptual juxtapositions and subtly evocative wordplay in both. Story's Post Moxie is the more delicate and introspective of the two while Lyalin's Pink and Hot Pink Habitat is the more brash and playful. Both are stunning in the sophistication of the writing skills on display and both were revelatory to me personally as examples of what I'm finding I most enjoy in contemporary poetry.

Two More Poems

Hesitant Trees

Those trees…can you believe those trees?
How much does it cost?
What’s the kill ratio?
They grow but not if I tell them not to.
I tell them I’m leaving for Spain
Then stop for a gallon of milk (1%)
And forget all about Spain.
The trees don’t care but are hesitant now
To grow.



The Visitation

We’d known each other and kept our secrets.
After a time, they engulfed, digested and
Excreted us into the little pond down the road.
After a time, two well dressed gentlemen visited us
From the pond and we knew them but it was too late.

So Much to Look Forward To!

These are the not yet released (or re-released) books I'm most eagerly anticipating:

Reading Log

Aug 02, 2010 04:23am


Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson turned out to be a highly entertaining comedy in the dry, erudite British manner about a sociopathic mass murderer. The juxtaposition of such a depraved protagonist and the wit and humor with which he and his story are presented was different from anything I'd encountered in fiction before. Johnson pulls the trick off winningly and once again I thank Stuart Ross for directing my attention to another first rate book.


Aug 8, 2010 04:24am


Reading Stuart Ross's Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New and Selected was so much fun I deliberately limited my intake to just a little bit every day to make it last. With a sampling of his output from 1978-2003 this is a real compendium of the wide variety of methods and subject matter Ross had chosen over the course of his career to that point and I, for one, find those choices, mixing absurdity with depth of feeling and accessible language, to be exactly and satisfyingly right. These poems stimulate with their highly creative wordplay, whimsical flights of fancy and wit while at the same time not shying away from grappling with personal issues of sorrow and regret.

A terrific book then by a writer whose forthcoming publications (a novel has been announced for 2011!) I'll always eagerly seek out.

Reading Log

July 25, 2010 04:27AM


I found James Tate's collection of prose poems Return to the City of Donkeys to be perfect for dipping into desultorily as during lulls at work or whenever a few spare minutes should arise over the course of the day. Nothing earthshakingly original or profound here, just quietly well crafted light entertainments in the mild to moderately absurdist manner spiced here and there with wit and whimsy. Nice stuff.


_______________________________________

July 28, 2010 01:12AM


With the new English translation of Bernhard's 1967 collection, Prose, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed with the unevenness of these early stories. The best ones are the first three and my favorite of all is the opening story, "Two Tutors", which has all the hallmarks of his mature style: the obsessed narrator on the edge of insanity, the comically exaggerated language, the inexplicably weird series of events, etc. "The Cap" and "Is It a Comedy? Is It a Tragedy?" also deliver much of the searing wit I look for in Bernhard. These qualities are either absent or lack the coherence to be very effective in the remaining four stories including the long (40pg.) "The Carpenter" which ends the book. So, worth reading, but primarily for those first three.

Naked Croquet by Doug Melnyk

Canadian author Doug Melnyk's Naked Croquet is another very fine example of narrative fragmentation which fascinatingly coheres into something like the form of a novel. There definitely seems to be a distinct group of writers from north of the border practicing this technique including Lance Blomgren, Geoffrey Brown and most notably, Ken Sparling. Dating back to 1987 as it does, Naked Croquet precedes the published work of these other writers and might possibly(?) have served as their inspiration. Melnyk's book is one of the best examples of the form I've encountered so far with its continually surprising weirdnesses and its subtle profundities. I'm amazed that it seems to still be in print from Turnstone Press. Thanks to Stuart Ross for recommending this one.

Reading Log

July 15, 2010 03:57am


The prose pieces collected in Alison Bundy's Duncecap are a bit difficult to generalize about because of the various genres and styles employed. Some are brief character sketches or vignettes reminiscent of the feuilletons of Robert Walser (a point made to me by Evelyn Hampton) while others are flash or microfictions which frequently display the elusiveness of prose poems. Some, on the other hand, are full length short stories which tend toward the style of the traditional fable. The most interesting and effective pieces for me were the "Walserian" vignettes and the flash fiction pieces which are some of the best examples of their kind with engaging wit and sly conceptual disjunctions. The longer works, while entertaining and absorbing, struck me as less distinctively original creations. All in all, a very stimulating read.

____________________________________


Joanna Ruocco's Man's Companions initially (the first 5 or 6 stories) had me very excited by the subtly intelligent humor and the perfectly judged lapidary quality of these mostly flash sized fiction works. There are quite a few in the first third of the book that are truly outstanding (e.g., "Canary", "Mice" and "Lemmings"). Unevenness begins to affect the later pieces though one fascinatingly quirky and original longer story ("White Buffalo") also comes along toward the end. I'm quite curious about Ruocco's novella The Mothering Coven after seeing what she's capable of in this book.