Besides the amazing poetry on this site!  Along the vein of what is your favorite poem... what are you reading?  I am in the middle of a biography of Ralph Ellison--highly meticulous biography and rewarding....

I've recently gotten into the very bad habit of reading several books at once - something I have long abhorred in others. So, currently reading Pleasures of the damned - Bukowski (ha!); Letters to a young poet - Rilke (thanks Larry); The Darling - Russell Banks (painful and powerful); How to make your Japanese flow (doesn't do what it claims to!); and a stack of 10th grade writing portfolios!

Thanks for asking.

B.

No poetry at the moment. Just finished Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and The Circus in Winter, Cathy Day (which inspired my Dear Sam poem.)

All wonderful books and yes, I was reading them all at once. I keep them in different rooms of the house.

I'm into Jill's companion and Baudelaire and Perry (an old soak). I read and reread — at the same time — something of an odd Oxford speciality, draw life from the long departed

As for a dash of humour, I dip into King James. But more so, because this particular bible gives me great pleasure to measure the wayside progress that befalls so many palatial clerics of today — Basil Hume and I went back a long way and mixed with some strange angels

— so forth

Bury Me Standing is always there, another holy text. As is Jessie's Journey and my own stuff. Swift's Rhetorical Art (reminds me of where my feet are), plus the downpour splendour of near unpronounceable trope by Yevtushenko et al. Good old George Orwell, I read his letters often

— so it goes 


   

Ah reading many books at once. A habit of mine as well. Not such a bad habit really. I mean it's like conversations with friends sort of?  Drawing life from the departed? Funny. In fact, there are many dead people I really wish I could have met. 
Here is a big confession. I just finished the first eighth of Ulysses, again, for the third time. I like it. I just can't get through it. Help!
Having said that there is nothing like the feeling of not being able to put a book down. I cannot explain the combination of books that has occured for me for.
Here are a few: Moby Dick, Sound and the Fury, Black Water by Joyce Carol Oats, Shipping News by Annie Proulx, everything by PG Wodehouse, The Color Purple,
I think I will stop now.

My goodness.....i have just completed the Jun-Air 'Compressor' Manual
so that i can get my wife's air driven carving tool ready
for her to have some fun with.


Here is a piece "Cosmic Cradle" she is putting the finishing touches to
it will be featured in a show at Gallery Apel in Istanbul September 2008.
http://www.galleryapel.com/ 

artist  Nermin Kura       
http://www.galleryapel.com/go.php?page=sanatci&artistid=78

artist email:   nerminkura @ silentlotus.net



It is 'coil built' low fired clay
with a Terra Sigillata slip finish and mixed media.

Lovely, Silent.

I've just finished The Hours by Michael Cunningham as part of a reading assignment to show me how seamlessy an author can move their readers between time periods and character/storylines without missing a beat. 

I hardly have time to read anything besides the two texts for my poetry classes.  Next week I will begin Shakespeare where we will dive into four comedies and four tragedies.  My husband ordered a book "The Life of Robert Browning" off Ebay for me (what a sweetheart) and I expect it in the mail shortly.  I've also been reading Plath's "Ariel".

what are you reading?

I mostly read murder, fiction or fact.  I squeeze a few oddball selections off the discount rack of this and that .. it's how I discovered Carol Oates, although I'm not exactly sure, as I feel it might be Joyce Carol Oates but surely  a favorite.  I packed that book over a year ago in the move from Seattle to Kansas where weight layed much to discern but could not bear to part - it was indeed one of my most favorites concerning departure separate from the norm. hmmm... I shall have to disinter.  Bury Me Standing, ahem, perhaps, I have that - somewhere - the jist sounds oh so familiar . . although it's been years . . (layed should be laid, perhaps, perhaps . )

My current reading list:

A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Meditations-Writings/dp/0060884088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215015975&sr=8-1
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Standing-Up-Comics-Life/dp/1416553649/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016092&sr=1-1
PHP and MySQL 5 for Dummies
http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/0470096004/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016136&sr=8-1
Poetic Medicine by John Fox
http://www.amazon.com/Poetic-Medicine-Healing-Art-Poem-Making/dp/0874778824/ref=pd_bbs_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016196&sr=8-5
Stop Walking on Eggshells
http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Walking-Eggshells-Borderline-Personality/dp/157224108X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016253&sr=1-1
Click (about internet search engines and human behavior; forgot author's name)

in case you wanted some nonfiction to read- moskowitz

Bag of Bones - Stephen King

(my daughter's newfound love of the ghostly and ghastly has resparked mine - lol

she just finished a book called --  The Restless Dead:  Ghostly Tales From Around the Globe)

"Here is a piece "Cosmic Cradle" she is putting the finishing touches to
it will be featured in a show at Gallery Apel in Istanbul September 2008."

Silent, This piece "Cosmic Cradle" by your wife is really beautiful. And coil built!

[expected in the mail today] Water for Elephants, and a book titled Knitting Socks [with 25 patterns! -- Watch out kids, here come your Christmas presents!].

Lynn there must be a poem in there some where.
I am going to look at your submissions around xMas time here at the circle.

Yarn & Knitting Needle Smiles
silent lotus

W.S. Merwin's Finding the Islands.

---

Road

In early snow
going to see a friend
I pass thousands of miles of fences

Well, I was reading the wonderful Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'.
Which is fabulous.
However, since school started...ciriculum, text books, pacing guides, and the always entertaining adolescent novels. See, I'm trying to find something appropriate yet entertaining for sixth graders. I don't want to read a classic, I want to start with something new, fresh and interesting to them, so that at the end of the year, I can approach them with a classic and not hear any moans and groans. So any suggestions?
So far, I have 'Avi' and 'The Giver' and I'm thinking about the 'BFG'....I don't know.

I taught Flowers for Algernon in 8th grade, but I think it's appropriate for 6th grade as well.

I just looked it up, its perfect. I teach sped, so I think that would really work, thanks.

It's a powerful novella.

Hmm, a few things, I guess:

-Rose, a collection of poems by Li-Young Lee. It's too short, ahh! (but many of his poems are so plain and gorgeous... sigh...)
-The Story of My Life, Helen Keller's autobiography; just started it today.
-The Possibility of Altruism, a wonderful book on practical reasons by Thomas Nagel; extremely dense, though.
-Existentialism, from Dostoevsky to Sartre, a carefully edited anthology put together by Walter Kauffman (who is insane).   
-Various journal articles I recklessly printed out when I still had access to a printer...

Recommend stuff to me, by the way, if our tastes happen to line up. Cheeers.


Take care,

-O

I am reading Villette but I only recommend it if you really like to torture yourself. Oh it's not that bad but I was expecting Jane Eyre. And I am still reading Ralph Ellison's biography. Still, because mostly I am reading the fresh voices of my students compare contrast papers! I think that's all but I have picked up Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston again. (3rd time)

"Rose, a collection of poems by Li-Young Lee. It's too short, ahh! (but many of his poems are so plain and gorgeous... sigh...)"

I have that one on my bookshelf, O.....very enjoyable...


have you read "the city in which i love you" also by li-young lee?  Below is one of my favorites from that book:


With Ruins

Choose a quiet
place, a ruins, a house no more
a house,
under whose stone archway I stood
one day to duck the rain.

The roofless floor, vertical
studs, eight wood columns
supporting nothing,
two staircases carenning to nowhere, all
make it seem

a sketch, notes to a house, a three-
dimensional grid negotiating
absences,
an idea
receding into indefinite rain,

or else that idea
emerging, skeletal
against the hammered sky, a
human thing, scoured, seen clean
through from here to an iron heaven.

A place where things
were said and done,
there you can remember
what you need to
remember.  Melancholy is useful.  Bring yours.

There are no neighbors to wonder
who you are,
what you might be doing
walking there,
stopping now and then

to touch a crumbling brick
or stand in a doorway
framed by the day.
No one has to know you
think of another doorway

that framed the rain or news of war
depending on which way you faced.
You think of sea-roads and earth-roads
you traveled once, and always
in the same direction: away.

You think
of a woman, a favorite
dress, your old father's breasts
the last time you saw him, his breath,
brief, the leaf

you've torn from a vine and which you hold now
to your cheek like a train ticket
or a piece of cloth, a little hand or a blade --
it all depends
on the course of your memory.

It's a place
for those who own no place
to correspond to ruins in the soul.
It's mine.
It's all yours.

                      --- Li-Young Lee


xo M


(sorry when I posted this earlier I lost the last half of the above poem.....so I came back and retyped it)

Currently reading Steinbeck's East of Eden.... and I don't know what took me so long... beautiful, stunning, rich!!

just wanted to give an update, they adored it but i did hav to sensor a bit & 8th grade got pissed at me b/c they teach it as well....lol

    okay -so, these past few days - two, to be exact -inbetween normal functuality and things that must be done (work or otherwise)  I've been reading a book called "the terror" by Dan Simmons.  It's a work of fiction but also a work 'historical' -within rights, I suppose . . the northwest passage.   it's a bit of a turn for me, I mostly bought it for the thickness found between covers (I read so very quickly, but make no mistake, I absorb it all) 955 pages set in small type, graphic in nature, horrific, set in the ways of how a man/men/or the human mind might react in certain circumstances - dire - it's all very dire in unhinging the throttle of what one might imagine preserving the life.  I say this, because prior to the start of reading this particular book - I questioned sentimentality, intimate, and every other bit of hogwash that clouds our minds when it comes to writing - this book is none of that - the distance the author sets is as cold as the depths of the arctic ice the characters live upon.  not for the light of heart when setting about the business of reading this, the wade of detail will surely pull you in without seeming intrusive or boring - it's a good book, a very good book.

Unfortunately, I've been immersed in an article by the outspoken Michael Moore about the $700 Billion dollar bailout for my metaphor rhetorical criticism paper due Thursday.  I'm also preparing for midterms this week.  Spring break happens next week and I'm looking forward to down time.

Michelle, The Rose is on our reading list for Dorianne Laux's advanced poetry workshop and it comes highly recommended as an excellent addition to any poetry collection. Also, Michael Dickman (Matthew's twin brother) has just released his first book and it is at the top of my must have list.

Sherry

I've just read the first chapter of Geraldine Brooks Year of Wonders.  My daughter tells me it's great; twenty-two pages in and so far so good.

EB, I read "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" with my daughter around grade 6, we both adored it. Tom

I am crazy about Bill Bryson - read these last year:

Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)
Notes from a Small Island (1995)
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away (1998)

Right now I'm reading Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King

Reread two Heinlein books two weeks ago. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Door into Summer (research reading!)

Just finished Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks - excellent story, bland writing

And read Coraline - Neil Gaiman, before you go see the movie.

Probably too late now EB but why not try a book that has been made into a movie they have probably seen like Bridge to Terabithia, or Chronicles of Narnia, or even Holes?

Finished recently, Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
My Childhood by Maxim Gorky
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
Soon to be reread, On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Three unfinished books closest to my computer are Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, (historical fiction) List of Seven by Mark Frost (supernatural mystery) and Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (based on Norse mythology ~ highly recommended by my daughter). On the next to go shelf, Dresden by Frederick Taylor, Women of the Raj by Margaret MacMillan and Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove (alternate history)
I prefer to read straight through when time allows but that seems difficult lately.

note to silent lotus:
we collect art glass, pottery and china. your wife's work is absolutely stunning.

Stella

Hey Stella I'm currently reading Foucault's Pendulum!
Also The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolano and Ashberry's Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

Love Umberto Eco

Yes, his work on semiotics too. Loved that when I was in college.

Adoring Somerset Maugham at the moment, Cakes and Ale and The Painted Vail so far.

I may have to revisit Maugham. I fell in love with him in high school. Along with George Elliot and Thomas Hardy.

cool, Brian and Lavonne,

I read Name of the Rose years ago but still have Baudolino and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana on my next to next shelf.

in need of new specs

Stella

My daughter adored this book when she read it - now she wants to see the movie.....will she be disappointed I wonder?  She just finished Inkheart too......at least she's reading the books first...

M

I think Coraline the movie lacks the humanity of the book.
My daughter just read "q&a" but says it's not nearly as good as its movie "Slumdog Millionaire"
She also read "Twilight," thought the movie was much better.

The book is so much more than the movie, so much more.

altas shrugged

God, I loved that book - so did my daughter who strongly identifies with Dagny.

o yea? awesome my father gave it to me the other day- as for the twilight series, its like crack, you have to read it even though it's horribly written- i read one of the books- *hangs head in shame*

I had only read Razor's Edge, and now marriage, life, experience, has given me a new appreciation for Maugham. I like how he used the novel as a sketch book, playing with words...It's like he's saying, "Here, let me try this...or this...." I like his Painted Vail better than Ibsen's Doll's House. They are similar themes and outcomes and both melodramatic but Painted Vail, as clumsy as it is, manages to access raw character more intimately. 

On the subject of literature for youth, my daughter often passes along favourites and she is quite taken with Nancy Farmer's books. I've read The House of Scorpions, which was fantastic and still have Sea of Trolls on my nightstand ~ certainly worth the effort.

Susanna Clark's Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Carlo Gébler: A good day for a dog.

just finished less than zero by bret easton ellis for the millionth time. (incidentally, what are your opinions on ellis? i always feel like an angst-ridden teenager when i say he's a favourite author.)

i'm just about to start on a void by georges perec; a novel written without using the letter 'e'. i'm very interested in control-to-the-point-of-obsession, so this should be interesting.

LOL does the cover say: by Gorgs Prc?

ha! no, sadly it doesn't. his name is the only time the letter appears in the entire book. it actually uses words which don't contain the letter 'e' in the first place (i believe it's called a lipogram?). even more mind-bendingly, it's actually translated from french - i have the utmost respect for whoever did that job.

Saw Watchmen movie tonight, very much dark poetry, but not for everyone, I am given to understand.

Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now--surprisingly modern book for the mid 1800's and with some very haunting themes of bad financial behavior by rich boys and unscrupulous financiers--irresponsible, lets say flagrantly immoral, debt leading to the downfall of the British aristocracy--much to the chagrin of an old-fashioned, upstanding tiny minority--old boy... I recommend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who Financed Hitler
The Secret Funding Of Hitler's Rise To Power

by James Pool & Suzanne Pool

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I wanted to learn more about why the car manufacturer Henry Ford
was one of the greatest personal financial supporters of
Hitler and the Nazi party.

Interesting subject considering the present day
economic situation of the american auto industry
and the how the right wing continues to try
and influence the world with fear tactics.

Looking for tips, SL?  :)

milner

Dear Milner

if you can help to expose some more background
about the darkness i am all ears.

it is for certain that one Bush was part of the conspiracy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

and i certainly don't care to have these kind of gangsters around

or the new young ones either.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20ME20051026&articleId=1148

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/sy-hersh-cheney-ran-assassin-ring

silent lotus

Some E.E Cummings, T.S Elliot, and William Blake. I've got some Theodore Roethke i've been dabbling in as well.

And i've started Farenheit 451. Looking forward to that.

Sentimental Education by  Flaubert, Gustave....
It cried out for me
Also, recently read a young adult book, I am the cheese. It was not bad.
Animal Vegetable, Miracle which I find very boring
and
Abraham Maslow's original works--not that dried out chalk like substance they feed you in  Educational Psychology textbooks. Brilliant, great ideas...

Hi Jill:

Poetry: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (as translated by Judith Hemschemeyer) As big as Russia and as darkly lovely.

Novel: Justine by Lawrence Durrell. And so starts the Alexandria Quartet (consisting also of "Balthazor, Mountolive and Clea). I read all four books several years ago but they are so rich that I had to go back for seconds.

Nonfiction - nothing at the moment. Reality is so boring!! Its insistence surrounds us persistently. It should be done away with - at all costs!

Best Always,
John     

Just finished a novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
Just started, My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe
Next up to read: a novel by a Spanish author, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadows of the Wind
Next up as soon as I can locate it: Coraline

So true ha ha

I read this for the first time last year.  What did you think?

I'm now reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. I'm one third through, and find it a highly entertaining read.

lynn did you enjoy? i just picked up 451 at a book sale last week, and have yet to read it for the first time.  as for me currently, i am reading nine stories by j.d salinger.  mark-not familiar with sacred games or vikram chandra. please elaborate on this captivating book and author.

Sacred Games is about the police and the mafia in corrupted Mumbai in India. One of the rare English books out of India which is readable for English speakers...This one is an international bestseller, actually.

I read Fahrenheit 451, but it was years ago. I've read a lot of utopian/dystopian literature, I especially recommend Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

I am quite a fan of Joseph Brodsky who was in that school Akhmatova  started...I thiink-- I agree she appears as big as Russia because she definitely wrote large--I might even say almost clumsily but not in a bad way--just that clumsiness of new territory. Brodsky is someone I wish I could have met...

Lawrence, Yes!  Except for the end which seemed cliche, but may not have been so much so when Bradbury penned F451.  But I was blown away by his descriptive prose and the world he created.  Chilled me; seemed written about our times, or very neary.  

I'm a big fan of the dystopian genre. Loved 1984 and Brave New World was good too. Farenheit 451 was good, but I was a little disappointed for some reason. I guess I was expecting it to be darker.

Liked it though Lynn

Hi Jill:

Don't know if you are familiar with this book - but If you are interested in 20th century Russian poetry. I can reccomend an excellent anthology called: "The Stray Dog Cabaret: a book of Russian Poems - edited by Catherine Ciepiela. For a thin volume of about 150 pages it has some neat stuff. The poems are by Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Velmir Khlebnikov, Maria Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak and Serge Esenir (hopefully I spelled the names correctly).

On January 01, 1912 a cafe named Stray Dog Cabaret opened in St. petersburg. In the lush (lush at least for the aristocracy) days of pre-World War I Russia it was a gathering place for the poets listed above. The book features some of their poems from that epoch. I wish I could read them in the original language - they're good and some are even superb but surely all are much better in Russian. It's a real time travel trip back to a palce forever changred. 

Best Always,
John

 

1984 seemed so distant [in time] when I read it in the sixties.  Sometime during the last year I watched Other People's Lives and was reminded of those times, of that novel, the sense of Big Brother ever at hand, and of how the torture might not be a face placed to a cage with a hungry rat (it's been such a long time, but this image still freaks me out!) -- but hopelessness, and how dehumanizing it can be.

In F451, I found the jangle of media, ever-present media brainwashing the occupants of Bradbury's world, and the techo-monsters (whether tissue or steel) chilling in how they mirror these times we live in now.  Of course, I'm a bit freaky in my view of the media -- since moving to Mexico in late September, I still get along splendidly without a t.v. and, as I can't read the Spanish papers -- the most media I run up against is pretty much here, on PC. 

Which book do you think Lynn, is closer to today?

I did a speech for my speech class on "Are We Living In An Orwellian World?", and the facts to support it were pretty disturbing.

I find today's world a combination of "Brave New World" (drug culture, Soma), "1984" (surveillance, control), and "Farenheit 451" (hedonism, media).   

Stirling, have you ever read The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess? If not, put that on your must-read list  8)

I haven't but I absolutely LOVED "A Clockwork Orange"

"A Clockwork Orange" is absolute genius. The Kubrick movie was excellent, and the book even better; I loved the ending in the novel. Did you know that Burgess' own script for the movie was turned down?

In "The Wanting Seed", Burgess explores the Malthusian dystopia. A good companion read is P.D. James' novel "Children of Men."

That's because his American publisher omitted the last chapter (which luckily, has been added in the newest prints), and Kubrick based his movie off the American version. Love the movie (big Kubrick fan), but the last chapter is great in the book. Damn publishers.

I definitely will give "The Wanting Seed" a read. Sounds like my kind of book.

Never read "Children Of Men" but loved the movie. Another book to add to my "to read" list.

Beautiful & Pointless {a guide to modern poetry} - David Orr.

Still working my way through- fascinating.

S

I just finished reading Lawrence Krauser's "Lemon" last night, which was awesome...the book that is. Last night itself was merely so-so.

I'm about 3/4's of the way through "Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms" written by...written by...I forget who wrote it. I'm fairly sure it wasn't Pushkin or Gogol. But whoever wrote the selected writings of Daniil Kharms is right up there with Daniil Kharms as one of my favorite writers of all time.

I'm about 12/23's of the way through "Lunch Poems" by Frank O'Hara and 4/15's of the way through "Veil" by Rae Armantrout.

Next up on the non-fiction reading list is "The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing an Literary History" by Bob Perelman - language poet, distinguished Penn professor and a man who I once sat in a room with during a lecture by Majorie Perloff at Penn's Kelly Writer's House. That last factotum probably is not very important in describing and/or gauging his legacy. Whether or not he noticed me that evening getting Charles Bernstein to sign his book "Attack of the Difficult Poems" is a factotum perhaps even less important than the aforementioned unimportant factotum. The fact that Charles Bernstein signed his name as "Char" raised to the "L" power raised to the "i" power has absolutely no business in this paragraph whatsoever and either this pointless sentence better vamoose out of this paragraph or I'm leaving.

And I'm just reading the delightful response by Busillo which is, no doubt, of more delight to me than it may be to some others because I am a fan of pointless sentences.  Always have been, always will be.  (Other reading includes By The Open Sea, August Strindberg (I think), and Zinsser's On Writing Well.  [Have probably misspelled all names mentioned in the previous useless informaton.)

 
Arthur & George, Julian Barnes' novel based around the true story of Arthur Conan Doyle's campaign to a have solicitor, George Edalji, declared innocent of maliciously wounding a pony in 1903 during the 'Great Wyrley Outrages'.  Superb character observation right through from their childhoods to the crossing of their paths.  I'm three-quarters of the way through it and very much looking forward to the denouement.