Bobbi Lurie’s Grief Suite, a slim collection of poems that seem to be mostly about death and loss. Love the woodcut cover, which Ms. Lurie made herself. I read most of Grief Suite last week and found it moving if bewildering. I’m not sure how to review a book of poetry. I have no idea.
The Book of Khalid by Ameen Rihani is part of Melville House’s Neversink line; it’ll get a Spring release. I read a bit the other night. Strange and romantic.
Joe Dunthorne’s Wild Abandon is set on a crumbling Welsh commune. Dunthorne’s Submarine was adapted into a film last year by Richard Ayoade. I didn’t see the film. Anyway, I usually thumb through the first few pages of every review copy that shows up and try to shuffle the book into a certain stack; I wound up reading way more of Wild Abandon than I had initially expected. The first 50 pages are good—flawed but good—and it seems like a smart, funny novel that will appeal to readers who like smart, funny novels.
Sorry that my descriptions today were so lame (lamer than usual). I’m tired.
(Thanks to Bblklpt reader JESCIE for the link).
“The Magi” by William Butler Yeats. A Christmas poem that’s not about Christmas, I guess. I love the final image:
Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
I had never heard of James Lipton’s dictionary of terms of venery, An Exaltation of Larks, or The Venereal Game before I found it wedged between some old etymological dictionaries I was browsing in my favorite book store, but when I picked it up I knew I was going to buy it almost immediately. Part dictionary, part etymology, and part linguistic game, An Exaltation explores those strange collective noncount nouns of English that anglophiles (like me) find so charming and weird. The first part of the book deals with some of the more common terms of venery, like “pride of lions,” or “skulk of foxes”:
But Lipton soon gives over to more esoteric terms, and then eventually plays with outright invention. The book’s illustrations recall Max Ernst’s surrealist graphic novel Une Semaine de Bonté; they also remind me of the recapitations of recent Biblioklept interviewee Click Mort. Anyway, a very cool book, likely a cult favorite, and lots and lots of fun.
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The original SNL cast’s take on “Winter Wonderland” is one of my favorite Christmas recordings ever. It’s from the first season of Saturday Night Live; Candice Bergen is hosting, and you can see her singing along with Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, and Laraine Newman. The underrated Garrett Morris delivers the powerful lead vocal, and there’s something magical about the moment when the boys — Chevy, Aykroyd, Belushi — come in for support.
When I was a kid, I was always puzzled by the clip. I saw it several times on Comedy Central reruns; this is back when Comedy Central was a fledgling network that ran SNL about 8hrs a day, along with lots of bad ’80s stand up shows, MST3K, and a show I loved called Short Attention Span Theater hosted by some guy named John Stewart. Anyway, I guess what puzzled me so much was that it seemed so damn sincere, and so good. I suppose Morris’s vocal provides much of the earnest authenticity that so baffled me when set against the goofy, ironic sloppiness of those (very) early SNL skits. I guess I was looking for a joke and couldn’t find one. They didn’t seem to be mocking the song. In retrospect, I can see that there’s something of a loving parody at work in their version of “Winter Wonderland,” a gentle poke at old, hokey Christmas musicals, but the emphasis is on loving — it’s almost bizarre in its tenderness and earnest emotion.
Vincent Cronin
Tony Geiss
MK Binodini
Kenneth Grant
Joe Gores
Maria Elena Walsh
Del Reisman
Christopher Trumbo
Loreen Rice Lucas
Diana Norman
Reynolds Price
John Ross
David Hart
B.H. Friedman
Dick King-Smith
Susana Chavez
Park Wun-suh
Wilfrid Sheed
Jean Dutord
Sun Axelsson
Ruth Cavin
Max Wilk
Hans Joachim Alpers
Donald S. Sanford
Peter J. Gomes
Ion Hobana
Rudi Bass
Anson Rainey
Perry Moore
Sean Boru
Bo Carpelan
Elaine Crowley
Martin Quigley Jr.
Charles E. Silberman
Andree Chedid
Iakovos Kambanelis
Sara Ruddick
Doris Burn
Steven Kroll
May Cutler
Thor Vilhjálmsson
H.R.F. Keating
Joe Bageant
Jean Liedloff
Bill Blackbeard
Alberto Granado
Hazel Rowley
Al Morgan
Raymond Garlick
John Haines
Ernesto Sabato
Abdul Hameed
Rafael Menjívar Ochoa
John Sullivan
Sidney Michaels
Madelyn Pugh
Sol Saks
Arthur Marx
Bill Brill
L.J. Davis
Ulli Beier
Kevin Jarre
Joanna Russ
David Wilkerson
Beverly Barton
Craig Thomas
Ira Cohen
W.J. Gruffydd
Anne Blonstein
Paul Violi
Johanna Fiedler
Dick Wimmer
Oniroku Dan
Hans Keilson
Martin Woodhouse
Newton Thornburg
Patrick Galvin
Wallace Clark
Carlos Trillo
Kate Swift
Arthur Laurents
Frans Sammut
William Kloefkorn
Thierry Martens
E.M. Broner
Tom Hungerford
Kathryn Tucker Windham
Harry Bernstein
Joel Rosenberg
Simon Heere Heeresma
David Rayfiel
Oscar Sambrano Urdaneta
Robert Kroetsch
Josephine Hart
Gloria Sawai
Anne LaBastille
Blaize Clement
Sissel Solbjørg Bjugn
Francis King
Agota Kristof
Henry Carlisle
Iain Blair
Hideo Tanaka
Michael Legat
Ruth Thomas
Colin Harvey
David Holbrook
Simona Monyová
William Sleator
Samuel Menashe
Selwyn Griffith
Sara Douglass
Ida Fink
Sergio Bonelli
Arthur Evans
Hella Haasse
David Croft
David Zelag Goodman
Emanuel Litvinoff
José Miguel Varas
Jo Carson
Cengiz Dağcı
Frank Parkin
Hugh Fox
Herbert Lomas
Florence Parry Heide
Stanley Mitchell
Uno Röndahl
Mildred Savage
Mick Anglo (LINK)
Alvin Schwartz
Sri Lal Sukla
Piri Thomas
Gerald Shapiro
Vittorio Curtoni
Morio Kita
Andrea Zonzotto
Taha Muhammad Ali
Georg Kreisler
Daniel Sada
H.G. Francis
Helen Forrester
Čestmír Vejdělek
Hal Kanter
Les Daniels
Leonid Borodin
Franz Josef Degenhardt
Morris Philipson
Ana Daniel
Ruth Stone
Peter Reading
Ruslan Akhtakhanov
Ivan Martin Jirous
Tomás Segovia
Kabir Chowdhury
Hans Heinz Holz
Ke Yan
Mario Miranda
Jean Baucus
Gilbert Adair
Jerry Robinson
Ambika Charan Choudhury
Matti Yrjänä Joensuu
Louky Bersianik
Christopher Logue
Christa Wolf
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
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