tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11594222889393610942011-12-22T06:06:26.194-06:00Perhaps not as profound as it should be; let's hope not as achingly dramatic either... Just a commonplace reader.mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.comBlogger831100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-89475633887022785842011-12-22T06:06:00.000-06:002011-12-22T06:06:26.204-06:00

I don't get it. I mean... I don't pretend to understand most / a lot / much of contemporary verse, American or otherwise, but... I try. And while understanding might often keep me at arm's length I can usually find considerable appreciation and pleasure -- even if only in moments. Rae Armantrout's Pulitzer Prize (2010) winning collection, Versed, left me more perplexed than anything else. I

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-69133127485836395582011-11-22T08:22:00.001-06:002011-12-22T05:46:24.119-06:00

Well, it all seems to have gotten to be a little much for me -- this whole reading and then writing thing. Even the little slips of nothing that I would, though in later days only sporadically (at best!!), scratch out. So I'm hitting the reset button. The stacks and stacks of read volumes that were waiting to be "reviewed" here? All shuffled off to the basement. Prospects for future reviews?

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-30424162758594207012011-01-08T14:36:00.000-06:002011-01-08T14:36:42.308-06:00

I'm sure I've written before that I get these "moments" when what I want to read is a little Bukowski. To be honest, it's not just any Bukowski, but that full-throated, whoring, drinking, loud-mouthed, unapologetic sonofabitch classical music aficionado that Bukowski fans... love? Much like the women he writes about love him. Right? Right. I suppose. Such was the case recently. And so I

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-75556053877125392492010-08-08T13:04:00.003-05:002011-01-08T13:12:58.391-06:00

Usually I gobble these up within days of arriving. It's something I can read quickly, in those little eruptions of time when I feel unmoved and unstressed by... well, anything else. And there is usually pleasure in it. Little pleasures, but at least a smile. Perhaps it was the long delay between arrival and reading. Perhaps I'm just growing weary: cynicism snuffing out wonder. But I can feel the

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-80439132543343886062010-05-09T14:31:00.000-05:002010-05-09T14:31:01.607-05:00

There's a certain campy punch to much of Bukowski that I really enjoy. I don't think it's necessarily intended, but's how I find myself reading it often; and many times it's why I pick up Bukowski. This was such a time. And The People Look Like Flowers At Last didn't disappoint. There was an oddly reflective, surrealistically-tinged opening that worried me at first, but the collection settles

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-87059037141805624162010-03-13T06:13:00.001-06:002010-03-13T06:18:55.756-06:00

I enjoy Jeffrey Brown's work. And these "issues" of Sulk that he produces are fun little distractions. I picked up issue  two despite the fact that it's about mixed martial arts, something I have no taste for or interest in. For me this is nothing more than a light entertainment, a diversion. Or potentially so. It never quite lives up to it's description: "Jeffrey Brown explores the world of

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-69368420560098754232010-02-11T21:17:00.001-06:002010-02-12T06:26:58.176-06:00

It took me a while to warm to Robert Berold's All My Days. More than a while, in fact. Well, actually, it took something of a gap between readings. All My Days is a slim book, as most collections are. And I like to read these things, if I can, in one single push. It gives me, it seems, a better sense of the poet, of the rhythm, of the style and voice. If the poetry is done well, I'm caught up,

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-75120881332922922512010-01-24T12:24:00.006-06:002010-01-24T19:48:11.608-06:00

What a thoroughly, frighteningly unhappy book.Or is it just me?Perhaps, with The Humbling, I've read too much Philip Roth. Or not enough of his early works. Something.Maybe I'm becoming too much of a moralist -- the death-rattle of the critic -- but it all seemed rather sordid. But even worse, as far as the novel (as a form) is concerned: rushed and unmoored.Which is, of course, a large part of

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-85443650167120183802010-01-18T07:47:00.004-06:002010-02-01T12:51:30.899-06:00

I had the pleasure of meeting Gail Dendy during my trip to South Africa last year. Right at the tail end of the trip, quite literally (and lamentedly, as she was a delight and the conversation over lunch a real pleasure): when we finished eating she put me on a shuttle for the airport.People Crossing is Dendy's second collection, and is probably a stronger than the usual sophomore effort. There

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-79516729863569107152010-01-16T14:10:00.003-06:002010-01-22T14:49:13.967-06:00

I just don't get it I guess...Dino Buzzati's Poem Strip is... well... a paean to school boy fantasies? A mushy graphic amalgam of the detritus of 1960s psychedelic (soon to be arena) rock music? A whole lot of tit and ass?It's all of those things. And apparently it's avant garde and "a dark and alluring investigation into mysteries of love, lust, sex, and death" (if the back of the book is to be

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-2051247154941278062009-11-24T05:31:00.006-06:002009-11-25T09:40:12.260-06:00

The war reading continues... unending... forever?And I'm worn out.But I can also say that Dexter Filkins' The Forever War is an amazing book. A stunner. A sometimes viscerally shaking book; rattling but never confusing. The numerous laudatory reviews are spot on, and the awards are well-earned.There is little I can add other than to encourage you to read this book. I'd demand you do so if I

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-26049387671781755682009-10-16T04:22:00.003-05:002009-10-16T05:10:06.838-05:00

I feel a little... not dirty, but... I dunno. I simply don't seem to be a reader of action/adventure -- odd for a boy who cut his teeth on science fiction and fantasy growing up. I've been trying my hand at it lately, reading those works centered in Africa (that's my excuse, my justification: literary policing).Gold Mine is my second Wilbur Smith book. Sigh...Even after just two -- and this is

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-13812872831575698682009-10-10T01:35:00.003-05:002009-10-11T15:35:10.507-05:00

I was profoundly disappointed in The Dancing Plague, though to be fair that probably has as much to do with my own sky high expectations for it as with the work itself.Well...You see, every once in awhile I get this heady urge to read something of the Middle Ages. Not historical fiction, but history, biography, something to give me a little taste, a little hint of what life might have been like.

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-19445804833521263032009-09-19T11:20:00.003-05:002010-02-12T06:27:24.467-06:00

Down to 2 issues a year, unfortunately (but understandably). Still available for $5/issue from: Phyllis Walsh, Editor Hummingbird Harbour Village 5600 Mockingbird Lane, Apt D103 Greendale, WI 53129Worth it on the whole, if only because it's such an interesting little magazine (and I do mean little) of very short verse. A curiosity, perhaps, but a fun one. A bit earnest this time around (perhaps

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-63630312491581609012009-09-19T07:11:00.004-05:002010-02-01T12:51:40.541-06:00

Beware the Drives is one of the poetry collections I was able to pick up at this year's African Literature Association conference, held in Burlington, Vermont. Exciting for me as it heralds the emergence of what is to me a new publishing house in Cameroon: Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group (distributed in the US & Europe by the marvelous African Books Collective).The book is

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-54957825920523980882009-09-19T06:12:00.003-05:002009-09-19T20:43:05.498-05:00

Armitage seemed like a "hot item" when I picked up this collection, Kid, at one of our local Half Price Books for... a dollar.Yup. A buck. You'd think they'd wring a little more blood from the stone of the next big thing, wouldn't you?!?But there it was, and Armitage -- who isn't so new -- seemed to be popping up into my consciousness with some regularity. Readings in Stevens Point (??) sponsored

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-40007747572423860142009-09-19T05:24:00.003-05:002009-09-22T09:17:17.537-05:00

Subtitled, "The Battle for the Soul of South Africa from Mandela to Zuma", Russell's Bring Me My Machine Gun is an excellent account of, largely, the South Africa political landscape since the demise of state-sanctioned apartheid and the election of Mandela.The subtitle is a bit more portentous than the actual work itself. More than anything Russell is detailing the political machinations of the

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-76968830853525701772009-08-15T07:28:00.007-05:002009-08-17T19:13:11.050-05:00

Perhaps I should have found something a little more... celebratory (perhaps?) coming off my time in Stalingrad. Still, there was a striking -- if fleeting (and slightly perverse) -- nod to the Eastern Front:this time has finished me.I feel like the German troopswhipped by snow and the communistswalking bentwith newspapers stuffed intoworn boots.my plight is just as terrible.maybe more so.victory

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-42680015310651502872009-08-11T07:28:00.002-05:002009-08-11T08:55:43.528-05:00

Jesus...I was drawn to Beevor's history of the World War II siege of Stalingrad by the glowing reviews I'd read of his forthcoming history of the D-Day invasions.Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 is an amazing, jaw-dropping, and horrific history of one of the turning points of the war in Europe. The chronicle of brutality -- of the Nazi push into the Soviet Union, the Soviet push back west

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-16291274179770037462009-08-01T08:24:00.004-05:002009-09-30T07:56:32.461-05:00

This is the second Boston Review book read. In a row. Miguel's Africa's Turn? summarizes fairly standard thinking on the "African" economic situation (mirrored in a recent New York Times article, "Just When Africa's Luck Was Changing"). Thankfully, Miguel and the various contributors -- and the book itself is made up of an extended introduction by Miguel followed by 9 brief essays by contributors

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-13240044660875384182009-05-19T06:46:00.004-05:002009-05-19T10:21:30.772-05:00

Not really one for the mystery/thriller genre -- not from any determined prejudice (hey, my mom's a big mystery reader), but... just never lit me up (similar to never having been taken by horror films is the way I look at it) -- but this one caught my eye and has an African connection, so...A Beautiful Place to Die reads like it's begging to be filmed. Which isn't surprising considering the

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-75300509209417098202009-04-26T06:11:00.005-05:002010-02-01T12:51:49.883-06:00

It pains me to write this, but I was unimpressed by Anyidoho's PraiseSong for TheLand.Perhaps it is the reading from the page that is lacking. But they feel... unoriginal. There's little spark, few memorable lines or images that haven't been presented more forcefully, movingly, elsewhere (and in some instances, by Anyidoho himself).To get an idea of the true power -- the potential -- of

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-68771334485131034692009-04-26T05:47:00.005-05:002009-04-26T13:14:31.015-05:00

Part of my "war reading" and, as with my first foray (on Clausewitz), this was rather slow going. To start (though it might also have been exacerbated by the ridiculous number of typos that seem to have escaped the copy/editing process -- really just shocking to see so many in a book of this stature released by a major press).Unsurprisingly, Clausewitz makes an appearance (or three) here: in the

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-25782847458834683572009-03-28T06:28:00.002-05:002010-02-01T12:51:57.433-06:00

The Tale of the Harmattan is the first collection of Ojaide's that I've read in some time. I picked it up at last year's African Literature Association conference.I have been, at best, ambivalent about Ojaide's poetry, at least from my encounters with his earlier works (as published). But I have always really enjoyed his readings, his performances, and the cover of this one was so appealing that

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-29744179522735496582009-03-21T06:56:00.004-05:002010-02-01T12:52:07.420-06:00

I first encountered Gabeba Baderoon at the 2008 African Literature Association Conference in Macomb, Illinois of all places. She was completely new to me: as a poet, a critic, a commentator. But she captivated at a roundtable I attended and I picked up what was on offer at a reading later that night: The Dream in the Next Body.I wasn't disappointed. She's a skilled poet and, for the record, a

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-82953079918071941072009-03-13T04:10:00.003-05:002009-03-15T09:21:25.809-05:00

The arrival of a new issue of Hummingbird is always welcome. It went from 4 issues a year to 2 issues a year some time ago, so it's less frequent. And it's always been brief (fittingly). A quick read.And, as all such collections are bound to be, hit or miss.The last few issues have really been seasonally focused, so this issue sees a lot of pieces focused on Spring (which is still many months

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-61367840743133243082009-03-13T03:33:00.003-05:002009-03-15T09:20:37.744-05:00

This is a volume in yet another of those "little" series that I enjoy so much: this time, it's Grove/Atlantic with the Books That Changed the World (why Grove/Atlantic doesn't have a page devoted to this series on its website is beyond me). I really enjoyed the first book in this series that I read: Janet Browne's Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography.Um, yeah... well I understand that the

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-59770417919550915172009-02-28T06:56:00.003-06:002009-02-28T07:20:27.847-06:00

I have been getting The Threepenny Review for some time now. It arrives, I take a quick peek, I think I really ought to start it now, I put it on one of the piles of magazines...And there it sits.As this last issue sat. For a bit. But on a pile that was closer. A pile of more current magazines and articles. One that turned over more rapidly than most. And since for the last two or three weeks a

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-63753581568978173592009-02-20T08:08:00.004-06:002009-03-15T09:21:56.528-05:00

What an interesting little book Bouillier's Report on Myself is. And I use "interesting" well aware of the possible double edged nature of this particular descriptor. Caroline Weber, writing in the New York Times, enjoyed it. As did most of the reviews aggregated at The Complete Review (which in its own review enjoyed it far less).Bouillier, and I can't help but note this, chronicles a rather

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-50646849246273863712009-02-15T12:31:00.003-06:002010-02-01T12:52:18.600-06:00

Anthologies of multiple poets are always spotty affairs. Toyin Adewale's 25 Nigerian Poets is no different.Interestingly, it includes two rather unremarkable poems by Helon Habila -- "Birds in the Graveyard" and "After the Obsession" (the latter starts strong but becomes mired in cliche when he explicitly conjures the obsession) -- three years before he "burst" onto the scene with his novel,

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-84517437872296700762009-02-08T07:27:00.004-06:002009-03-15T09:22:19.066-05:00

I was drawn to this little bit of nonsense -- The Not-So-Very-Nice Goings-On at Victoria Lodge -- sitting on the clearance cart at Half Price Books (a moderately interesting mostly illustrated book for $2? of course I'll buy it) because the author (whose name I recognized) is one that my son, Owen, is reading (okay, okay: and that we are reading too, together, as he drifts off to sleep at night).

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-84843200283317045762009-01-25T15:28:00.003-06:002009-02-08T07:07:06.302-06:00

fill in the blank...http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594201749/bigdaddyshomepahttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/books/review/Keller-t.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/playing-the-enemy-by-john-carlin-926490.htmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3559477/Review-Playing-the-Enemy-by-John-Carlin.htmlhttp://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-53468947773724265622009-01-10T08:04:00.003-06:002009-03-15T09:22:51.976-05:00

Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader is a little slip of a book, but a delight at that. And though perhaps not to everyone's taste, I can't imagine any devoted reader not taking a great deal of quiet, easy pleasure from it.As it was, with this one she soon became engrossed, and passing her bedroom that night clutching his hot-water bottle, the duke heard her laugh out loud. He put his head round

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-24837148152136300842009-01-08T05:19:00.003-06:002009-01-08T09:57:18.910-06:00

I seem to have something of a literary fetish for Stalin. Odd coming from someone whose grandfather died in the gulag?Young Stalin, Koba the Dread, Revolution on my Mind... Maybe it's just totalitarianism. Maybe there's something in me. Maybe there's something I imagine might be in Stalin to explain... what? Why we're so cruel? How it is that after millions dead we still act the way we do, in

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-41524951475658338142009-01-01T06:38:00.003-06:002009-01-02T04:05:17.984-06:00

Paul Madonna's All Over Coffee is a marvelous book. It is a collection of strips from a daily and Sunday comic series that Madonna did for the San Francisco Chronicle. The text is minimal, poetic often (without being pretentiously so, though there's a slip here and there), and the drawings are just beautiful.As I was thumbing the book in the bookstore I was immediately reminded of the work of Ben

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-58674686963546059512008-12-30T07:07:00.003-06:002008-12-30T10:19:19.234-06:00

John van de Ruit's Spud feels like something of a throwback. It's the story -- in the form of a diary -- of a 14 year old boy's first year at boarding school in South Africa. It's not particularly brutal, but hardly wistful or overly-romanticized. It's just fun. Familiar -- even to those like myself who never went to boarding school (though perhaps I did just enough summer camps away to connect)

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-1848338033038794912008-12-26T07:51:00.002-06:002008-12-26T19:22:48.379-06:00

Rimbaud was something of a shit. Much more of a shit in his early years than the latter (such as they were -- dying at 37) but something of a shit through and through.At least, such would Edmund White's Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel lead us to believe. And I have no reason to doubt. The double life, of course, refers to Rimbaud's (very) early attention to poetry (or rather, the "poetic"

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-24572928431808536542008-12-24T16:49:00.002-06:002008-12-24T19:53:51.732-06:00

It's been awhile since I've read any Graham Greene. A long while. And the Greene I've read in the last 10 years has been Norman Sherry's massive biography, Gloria Emerson Loving Graham Greene, and... oh, there was a slight little volume of his Kurtzian trip up the Congo.I picked up the bundling of two of his novellas -- The Third Man & The Fallen Idol -- for a dollar and set it aside for the trip

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-3620045171289374472008-12-21T09:19:00.003-06:002009-07-28T20:19:34.774-05:00

Unlike the last Bukowski I read, Come On In! did take hold of me. Not for the usual reasons, though (such as they are).This is the first collection where Bukowski was showing his age. Showing his age and, at times, almost a maudlin side. And an increasingly self-deprecating humor and playfulness. The latter being, to me, and my passing familiarity with his work, the most striking.unconcerned

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-44025633649071690472008-11-27T05:40:00.002-06:002010-01-22T15:25:12.884-06:00

My, my... I'm a bit of a late convert to Philip Roth, only discovering his works (that means actually reading them) in the last few years.He's a hell of a writer.His characters are pretty much bastards. And Marcus Messner, the protagonist of Indignation, is really no different. But who among us -- and I guess by "us" I mean the once modestly gifted late-teenage/early-twenties male -- isn't or

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-52900738859569741782008-09-21T07:32:00.003-05:002008-09-21T07:54:45.181-05:00

Sigh.Or maybe it's more properly, "Ugh!"At last, though, I'm finished reading Jane Mayer's, The Dark Side. And I say that not because it was a bad book -- not at all -- but rather because it is such a good book. So thoroughly and unremittingly effective in what it sets out to do: detail how we, the United States, has become a state that uses torture.That's it.That's bad enough. For me. And

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-38149649778325861122008-09-16T21:23:00.002-05:002009-04-06T05:59:23.687-05:00

Almost without fail, I tear into a Hummingbird when it arrives.Okay, perhaps that's an unfortunate choice of words. A little gruesome that, and perhaps a little too... active? passionate? frenetic? a description of my relationship with the journal. It's much more like I curl up and read through. Usually once but sometimes twice (perhaps at some remove).It's a quiet, sometimes far too earnest, but

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-18448439051829625012008-09-02T04:52:00.003-05:002009-07-28T19:45:25.875-05:00

Bukowski or Chiasson? Chiasson or Bukowski? Dangling in the Tournefortia or Natural History?I went with the safe pick. The known. What felt easy, for the last weekend of summer. Bukowski.Perhaps known too well. I won't say that I was bored by Dangling, but... There was nothing gripping here. Nothing new. Of course, it could be argued that there's little "new" in Bukowski as we step from

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-29830059039605919112008-08-01T07:21:00.002-05:002008-08-01T11:02:35.670-05:00

I'm not sure what to make of Blood Kin. Or rather, I'm not sure what I make of Dovey's novel.No doubt it is, in no small part, because I have a hankering after a strong sense of place. And Blood Kin exists in that netherworld reminiscent of Coetzee's work (to whom she has been compared -- it's rather an obvious parallel to draw, not the least because of her own personal geography; Coetzee also

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-17893284780754228382008-07-25T06:54:00.002-05:002008-07-25T07:14:45.668-05:00

Hobsbawm's On Empire is a rather pedestrian presentation of the tottering, unstable American empire; an "empire" deserving of the quotes, unlike any that has gone before (because it exists in a world unlike any that has gone before). In very simplistic terms, then, it seems to me that the history Hobsbawm presents -- more often than not in glancing comparisons to the past British empire -- is of

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-86167801258439204492008-07-12T08:32:00.004-05:002008-07-16T08:39:56.555-05:00

Back to one of the old stand-bys. Bukowski.I find it impossible to "date" his work -- early? late? somewhere in-between? It all seems in-between: between worlds, times, memories, moments. And that's probably the great draw. In fact, I'm sure of it. Feed the inner-rebel, the angry young man, and yet maintain a bit of the dilettante sensibility: sleep with whores and go home to Mahler; get drunk

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-47207516449545532222008-07-02T08:29:00.002-05:002008-07-02T09:25:54.781-05:00

I've always really enjoyed Trillin's work. While I haven't read any of his food books (for which he is widely... known? published?), I developed a taste for his memoirs and reportage (of which the most recent that I've seen is "The Color of Blood" and "Capital Fellows" -- in issues of The New Yorker from the past months) and thoroughly enjoyed his novel, Tepper Isn't Going Out.I never was one for

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-87311329735127970402008-06-30T19:49:00.003-05:002008-06-30T20:18:50.863-05:00

It's been far too long. And I have felt the lack. Not of reading -- I have managed to keep up with that, though not nearly as much as I would have liked (and I have certainly been feeling out of sorts for it, for the lack of concentrated, focused time, pushing through) -- but rather of finishing. Of staying with one book and reading through.Maybe even being compelled to push through with that

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-29185529383006540532008-05-20T22:17:00.004-05:002008-05-24T07:14:08.516-05:00

I stumbled across The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers last weekend while browsing the "graphic novel" (comics?) shelves in Borders. Part of the draw, I suppose, was the memory of some Satyajit Ray films I saw last fall. And enjoyed.The story of Barn Owl -- such as there is (since there's really not just one story) -- is interesting enough, and a bit of a history lesson, such as it is. I enjoyed it

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-30175056834106364722008-05-19T05:32:00.004-05:002008-06-01T17:25:32.167-05:00

I seem to have found my way to reading stories of old men at the end of their lives, stories written by younger men (some much younger if Wodicka's book jacket photo is any indication) cutting right to the bone.Or maybe it's just what I imagine to be the bone.Cutting nonetheless.Another excellent book, All Shall be Well... Perhaps not as deeply, profoundly affecting as Out Stealing Horses but

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-11010207407140122252008-05-10T07:12:00.003-05:002008-05-10T07:31:00.019-05:00

Good lord, I have seen the future -- and certainly if my reaction is any measure, at least substantial echoes of the present -- and it is in Trond Sander, the narrator of Petterson's Out Stealing Horses.It's still so fresh and, because of the power of it -- the understated power of it (is this a Scandinavian trait? I'm sure there are plenty who might ascribe it thus) -- raw... But that doesn't

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-74772682119174806132008-04-28T05:52:00.003-05:002008-05-02T07:23:19.246-05:00

There is nothing shocking in Fred Kaplan's Daydream Believers. Nothing that will make you slap your head and exclaim "Now I understand!" (though I did want to slap my head any number of times and exclaim "You must be kidding me!!").But it is a lucid, engaging, and to my mind fairly well-balanced review of how we got into the mess we're in.And by "mess we're in" I do not mean -- nor does Kaplan

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-31143860136592556792008-04-05T05:54:00.002-05:002010-01-24T20:17:57.792-06:00

JM Coetzee is one of those "can't miss" authors for me. Or has been. Until now. Even books I haven't really known what to make of going into them, or worried I'd be utterly bored -- such as Elizabeth Costello or The Master of Petersburg or The Lives of Animals -- have, in the end, in the reading, gripped, shaped, shaken, excited, or just left me thinking. Deep.Until Diary of a Bad Year that

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-42552878817890831692008-03-30T18:36:00.003-05:002009-04-06T05:50:24.005-05:00

Ah yes, another Hummingbird arrived earlier today. Fitting considering the time of year. Though not quite; not at these latitudes.Always such a pleasure to flip through it though this time around nothing outstanding. Nothing distinguishing. Other than the little magazine's return from the dead.So still, as ever, pleased with it's arrival and happy to have spent the time with it. Something akin to

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-68769168093186430682008-03-16T22:59:00.009-05:002008-04-09T20:35:11.124-05:00

I had a hankering for a bit of surrealism. Albeit at some remove from the banal but occasionally... surreal is too dramatic a term for those moments in life... "surprising"?... And connected, where I could connect. Unlike the Simic I had read many years ago that just seemed like so much word play (and not very fun at that). So...Start again.I had a hankering for a bit of surrealism and found it

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-26064594191670749382008-03-14T06:18:00.007-05:002009-06-22T10:53:30.077-05:00

Back to South Africa.I've really enjoyed the books of Christopher Hope's that I've read. I haven't read a lot of them -- the most egregious gap being the seminal, A Separate Development -- but I've always been engaged and entertained. And they've compelled me to think. Less about the book (which I am too busy enjoying) than about the world around me, and the world he evokes.My Mother's Lovers is

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-2733282684999746132008-03-02T08:54:00.005-06:002008-03-02T11:26:59.324-06:00

Tony Hoagland has to be one of the smartest, unabashed poets working in the English language today. I haven't loved everything he's written, but then that would just be weird.Hard Rain is a great, short piece of work -- a chapbook of delight.If I were a better poet -- hell, if I were a poet -- I could have written and dedicated "Visitation" to my past love ("I kneel and weep a little there")

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-44419966720207557442008-02-26T08:40:00.006-06:002008-03-16T16:31:15.699-05:00

As much as it pains me to write this, The Art of Attention was a misery.It has been awhile since I really felt like I had to slog through a book, but this was surely one. Perhaps this is mere pretense on my part -- not recognizing how often artists (and everyone) does this, day to day -- but it's almost unseemly how Revell uses his own poetry in the latter half of the book to illustrate his

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-73834695085715662492008-02-20T07:37:00.003-06:002008-02-20T09:16:36.694-06:00

Quick, quick as it's time for me to fly. Or actually drive. But this last little bit I've been engaged reading about Amerigo Vespucci. Judicious, engaging, balanced (if rather critical of Vespucci, Columbus, and the lot of the early European explorers of the "New World"), Amerigo succeeds in sketching the man, from limited sources (very limited sources), and the world he lived, worked, explored (

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-72754653557427312702008-02-14T17:29:00.003-06:002008-02-20T07:37:51.670-06:00

My god, almost two weeks since I finished anything of substance?!? Maybe that's why I'm feeling so funky. That's funky in a bad way, not in the Madame Deluxe way.But the read itself was enjoyable... enough? No, that's damning by faint praise. Not everything worked (as you would expect) but I suppose, for me, that the "failures" -- those passages and pieces that don't quite connect -- are more

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-38609451310892779162008-02-03T13:45:00.000-06:002008-02-04T15:51:21.589-06:00

Novels in Three Lines is a fascinating, evocative, and somewhat disturbing collection of newspaper filler written in 1906 by Félix Fénéon. A sample (at random):"During a pleasure outing in an ill-famed neighborhood of Toulon, Brigadier Hory, of the 3rd Colonial, was stabbed to death." (13)"Twirling a lasso and yahooing, Kieffer, of Montreuil, committed thrice in two years, galloped away. He

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-36315956173561223952008-02-03T11:34:00.001-06:002008-02-03T22:39:27.936-06:00

I'm now traveling about a month behind in Poetry -- the arrival of the February 2008 edition reminding me to dip into the prior month's that was sitting on my end table.The poetry itself was engaging but not exceptional this month, nothing struck me as wonderful or notably awful. Though, for that matter, I'm not sure that there has ever been a poem in Poetry that has compelled me to buy a

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-49940083950791175682008-01-27T19:54:00.000-06:002008-02-03T11:27:27.600-06:00

I keep reminding myself that Nobel Prizes are awarded for past work, not the promise of work to be done.Nadine Gordimer's latest collection, Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, has left me perplexed, disappointed, but I hope not wholly put off her writings.I first read Gordimer late in my graduate career: on my preliminary exams I explicated one of her short stories for... what? Two hours? Three?

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-87482683186053452232008-01-25T06:25:00.000-06:002008-01-26T06:25:39.583-06:00

I am a relatively recent reader of books on current events, any more sustained attention really having come into play over the last three to five years. And that's been driven in no small part by our rather grotesque engagement in Iraq and my desire to try to understand what the hell has happened and where we're heading.But I'm not a (wholly) narrow interest reader, which is why books like

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-31970125401716336222008-01-17T21:36:00.000-06:002008-01-17T23:36:08.543-06:00

Bukowski is still a treat. What does that say about me?I am not an acolyte. I neither aspire to write the poetry of Bukowski nor to live the life of his poems. My one substantive, if passing, brush with Los Angeles was years and years ago when I took two days to walk the length of Sunset Boulevard from Union Station to the Pacific Coast Highway before hopping on a plane to New Zealand.But he is

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-33424974012489498032008-01-11T05:29:00.000-06:002008-01-11T06:16:20.813-06:00

Aya is the first "African" graphic novel I've come across. At least as an actual, physical specimen. It's a collaboration of an Ivoirean writer (Marguerite Abouet) and French illustrator (Clément Oubrerie) and put out by Drawn & Quarterly.It's beautifully put together, the illustrations are straight-forward but evocative (and I do enjoy the way that Oubrerie uses washes of color to set the visual

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-22667531575465980892008-01-07T05:55:00.000-06:002008-01-07T09:20:27.111-06:00

Another long delay between books and... well, inevitably, I feel out of sorts for it. Not plowing through any particularly lengthy tome -- though I am currently working through a few different books and collections in bits and pieces -- but instead I'm settling back into life at home, after another (glorious) reading vacation in Virginia.To keep to the road show theme, I just finished David

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-13178819339911890162007-12-31T08:29:00.000-06:002008-01-01T01:02:19.934-06:00

I got more and more depressed as I read Adam Roberts' The Wonga Coup. The idea that 75 armed men -- regardless of how well-armed -- could overthrow a government (in this case, Equatorial Guinea) would have been laughable if not for the fact that, well... If they had been a little more discreet and maybe had a bit of luck, they could have done it.But perhaps depressing is a bit too

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-21627719233235964052007-12-28T21:30:00.000-06:002007-12-28T23:30:06.315-06:00

Not nearly as witty or labyrinthine as I've come to expect of Bryson (see his A Short History of Nearly Everything if you doubt his abilities or wonder what his style, well-honed, can do) it also doesn't come as much of a surprise, considering the scholastic-industrial complex that has been built -- and maintained -- around the Bard.After all, barring the discovery of the manuscripts (gasp!), a

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-80486363011319762482007-12-27T21:49:00.000-06:002007-12-27T22:59:43.280-06:00

I am not a big fan of short stories. I prefer to dive in and be swept away -- a remnant of some sprawling romanticism? an unshakable Victorian sense of what comprises a grand narrative? -- perhaps for neither of these reasons, but short story collections more often than not gather dust. Or, when I do read them, too often it is as a chore, something to slog through (too many collections of

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-80801082501283758922007-12-26T08:38:00.000-06:002007-12-26T09:21:21.835-06:00

I first encountered Ronald Wallace's poetry at an English Department faculty gathering back in the fall of 2006. It had a bite and a humorous edge -- perhaps because it was more tightly selected and directed, perhaps from the way Wallace reads -- than the bulk of what's in The Uses of Adversity.Which is not to say that the poetry is bad. Not in the least. But it is not what I remembered. Or

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-55940360146071963972007-12-25T15:10:00.001-06:002007-12-25T15:26:58.823-06:00

This is the collection of Maira Kalman's columns by the same name from the New York Times -- running for a year (since ceased) -- gathered up in a single volume.It's an interesting little collection of art and... well, art. And narration (not so much captioning)? Which is... well, poetry? Memoir? Art?Not sure which.Kalman, who also illustrated Strunk & White's Elements of Style, has a video on

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-75583940501424785222007-12-24T06:40:00.001-06:002007-12-24T07:39:49.259-06:00

A long silence, perhaps mistaken for slagging effort or the allowance of creeping ignorance was, instead, the wages of working through the latest tome of Martin Meredith, Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa.True to it's titling, the focus is on the white presence in what is now South Africa -- and the countries of Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-37688910614769275522007-12-18T08:08:00.000-06:002007-12-18T08:42:04.462-06:00

Another month, another Poetry. Highlight of this issue was, again, a prose piece: Clive James's witheringly appreciative dismantling of Ezra Pound's Cantos. And yet... and yet...David Orr's "The Train" sprung something loose in me, not a poem -- certainly not as it is -- but an idea at least. What to do with:Those little flashes of... nothing, of insignificance -- standing on the platform in New

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-47928688369445843302007-12-14T09:33:00.001-06:002010-02-01T12:52:40.863-06:00

I finished Uche Nduka's Eel on Reef yesterday morning and have been wondering what to make of it since. Well, truth be told, I was wondering what the hell to make of it just a few poems in.I know that I'll be writing a more detailed review for the African Poetry Review (USA) shortly. But in the meantime...Oh goodness!I purposely avoided reading Kwame Dawes's introduction hoping to come to Nduka's

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-86800544719100475722007-12-08T08:36:00.000-06:002007-12-08T08:56:32.226-06:00

I am in deep, profound need of a light, funny book to read. Yes, I can chalk up much of that need to the seemingly endless tail chasing I've been doing lately, but Sarrinikolaou's Facing Athens is also due some share of the blame.It is an almost unremittingly bleak read. Perhaps too much to assess it as "dark," it is not exactly melancholic either -- for though Sarrinikolaou closes out the book

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-90467849903790926852007-12-05T22:06:00.000-06:002007-12-22T00:46:21.852-06:00

School of the Arts is the first work by Mark Doty that I've read, though not the first I've picked up. He is one of those contemporary poets who is lurking around my scanty awareness of American poetry as someone to be read and yet... Until now, hadn't been.Not sure exactly why I picked up this volume, at this time. In Borders. Had a coupon to burn. Thought I wanted to treat myself to a poetry

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-81462886129229505012007-12-03T17:40:00.000-06:002007-12-03T17:43:22.101-06:00

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is a fun little book. If I ever acquire any family members of a playfully literary (and/or critical) bent, Bayard's book will surely show up as a gift for some occasion or another.As all the reviews I have read are quick to point out -- within the opening lines -- this is not a "how to" on passing yourself off at cocktail parties populated by academics,

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-32814636007741857472007-11-30T22:54:00.000-06:002007-11-30T23:38:48.336-06:00

I am a huge fan of Chris Abani.But Song for Night left me cold.I am not sure if it was because I could never quite get over the conceit Abani sets up which makes the narrative possible (in the first person by an Igbo speaker whose vocal chords have been slashed); the disconnect between the language of the narrator, My Luck, and his purported age; or the slowly emerging sense as I pushed to the

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-65714354465877155192007-11-28T06:44:00.000-06:002007-11-28T06:55:40.709-06:00

I always look forward to receiving my copy of Poetry. Sometimes they pile up and are read through in a great rush (though the September 2002 issue still sits on my shelf unread). But I more often than not dip in soon after its arrival in the mail.These days I find myself more drawn to the prose than the verse (an ongoing "controversy" among the readers if past Letters columns are to be believed).

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-14132154862959213422007-11-26T15:06:00.000-06:002007-11-26T17:23:32.919-06:00

No, I didn't blow off work to read all day -- though that would have been nice. Young Stalin was finished last night, Notes was started last night and finished before work this morning.Notes for a War Story is a graphic novel -- a genre that I've really taken to in the last few years. Gipi's artwork reminds me of Ben Katchor, whose work I love. But this volume is dark and in tone reminds me more

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-28928834790707127252007-11-26T07:29:00.000-06:002007-11-26T08:04:13.205-06:00

I read a review of Young Stalin somewhere -- maybe the Times, maybe I just saw it in the bookstore -- mentioned that it seemed like a very interesting book, and it turned up in my hands as a gift from Melissa. One of those lovely, thoughtful gestures.There is not, though, anything lovely about Stalin's life chronicled here. While Montefiore has been criticized for romanticizing Stalin -- and

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1159422288939361094.post-8581004399157651452007-11-24T09:40:00.000-06:002007-11-25T10:03:09.605-06:00

I'm a relatively recent convert to the Church of Chinaski. Back when I first came to Madison and would cruise the used and independent bookstores (notably the old Avol's) I would see shelf upon shelf of the Black Sparrow Press editions of Bukowski. Just knew, looking at them, the placement, the prominence, the sheer bulk of it all, that there was something "hip" about him.Is that why I avoided

mark l lillelehthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16172639665290272629noreply@blogger.com0