These Books Among Us

The Norton Anthology of Modern & Contemporary Poetry, Vol 1: Modern Poetry by Jahan Ramazani (1136 pages) My Rating: 3 Stars Date Read: 18 November 2016 Synopsis: Thirty years later, this innovative, cover-to-cover revision renders with fresh eyes and meticulous care the remarkable range of styles, subjects, and voices in English-language poetry. The newly titled Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry now available in two paperback volumes includes 1,596 poems by 195 poets (half of the poems are new), from Walt Whitman and Thomas Hardy in the late nineteenth century to Anne Carson and Sherman Alexie in the twenty-first. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry continues to be the most comprehensive collection of twentieth-century poetry in English. It richly represents the major figures, while also giving full voice to ethnic American poetries, experimental traditions, postcolonial poetry, and the long poem, eclipsing all other anthologies in sco...

Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch (86 pages) My rating: 4 Stars Date Read: 11 November 2016 Synopsis: Never has there been a book of poems quite like Gabriel, in which a short life, a bewildering death, and the unanswerable sorrow of a father come together in such a sustained elegy. This unabashed sequence speaks directly from Hirsch’s heart to our own, without sentimentality. From its opening lines—“The funeral director opened the coffin / And there he was alone / From the waist up”—Hirsch’s account is poignantly direct and open to the strange vicissitudes and tricks of grief. In propulsive three-line stanzas, he tells the story of how a once unstoppable child, who suffered from various developmental disorders, turned into an irreverent young adult, funny, rebellious, impulsive. Hirsch mixes his tale of Gabriel with the stories of other poets through the centuries who have also lost children, and expresses his feelings through theirs. His landmark poem enters the broad stream...

That This by Susan Howe (112 pages) My rating: 2.5 Stars Date Read: 11 November 2016 Synopsis: “What treasures of knowledge we cluster around.” That This is a collection in three pieces. “Disappearance Approach,” an essay about the sudden death of the author’s husband (“land of darkness or darkness itself you shadow mouth”), begins the book with paintings by Poussin, an autopsy, Sarah Edwards and her sister-in-law Hannah, phantoms, elusive remnants, and snakes. “Frolic Architecture,” the second section — inspired by visits to the vast 18th-century Jonathan Edwards archives at the Beinecke and accompanied by six black-and-white photograms by James Welling — presents hauntingly lovely, oblique text-collages that Howe (with scissors and “invisible” Scotch Tape and a Canon copier) has twisted, flattened, and snipped into “inscapes of force.” The final section, “That This,” delivers beautiful short squares of verse that might look at home in a hymnal, although their orderly appear...

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein (134 pages) My Rating: 4 Stars Date Read: 6 November 2016 Synopsis: The MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition its seal designating it an MLA Approved Edition. 2014 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking modernist classic, Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first and only version to incorporate Stein's own handwritten corrections—found in a first-edition copy at the University of Colorado—as well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Editor Seth Perlow has assembled a text with over one hundred emendations, resulting in the first version of Tender Buttons that truly reflects its author's intentions. These changes are detailed in Perlow's "Note on the Text," which describes the editorial process and lists the specific variants for the benefit...

Nox by Anne Carson (184 pages) My Rating: 3 Stars Date Read: 4 November 2016 Synopsis: Nox is an epitaph in the form of a book, a facsimile of a handmade book Anne Carson wrote and created after the death of her brother. The poem describes coming to terms with his loss through the lens of her translation of Poem 101 by Catullus “for his brother who died in the Troad.” Nox is a work of poetry, but arrives as a fascinating and unique physical object. Carson pasted old letters, family photos, collages and sketches on pages. The poems, typed on a computer, were added to this illustrated “book” creating a visual and reading experience so amazing as to open up our concept of poetry. My Review: I had to read this book of poetry for my Modern Elegy English course at my school and I found it very interesting. This was the first elegy we had read by a female author, even though we are well over half way through our quarter. I found the poems themselves very convoluted, but they we...

Burned by Ellen Hopkins (544 pages) My Rating: 4 Stars Date Finished: 21 September 2016 Synopsis: Raised in a religious -- yet abusive -- family, Pattyn Von Stratten starts asking questions -- about God, a woman's role, sex, love. She experiences the first stirrings of passion, but when her father catches her in a compromising position, events spiral out of control. Pattyn is sent to live with an aunt in the wilds of Nevada to find salvation and redemption. What she finds instead is love and acceptance -- until she realizes that her old demons will not let her go. My Review: I honestly didn't know how I would feel about this book. I haven't been having the best week or so, so I didn't necessarily want to read something too heavy. While this book did have a lot of heavy themes, it wasn't too dark for me, which I was glad about. The rest of this review will have some spoilers, so read at your own peril. I didn't really know much about this book a...

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery Date Read: 13 August 2016 My Rating: 4 Stars Synopsis: John Ashberry won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been. My Review: "Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night. The summer demands and takes away too much, But night, the reserved, reticent, gives more than it takes." - As One Put Drunk into the Packet Boat There are so many emotions in this collection: loneliness, grief, sadness, hope, longing, fear--they are all so strong but not overpowering. I love whenever he talks about stillness and silence. Those moments are so peaceful and full of possibility. It almost makes you ache to be in one of those moments...

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 by Adrienne Rich (79 pages) My Rating: 4 Stars Date Read: 27 February 2016 Synopsis: "The Dream of a Common Language explores the contours of a woman's heart and mind in language for everybody--language whose plainness, laughter, questions and nobility everyone can respond to. . . . No one is writing better or more needed verse than this."--Boston Evening Globe My Review: I loved the depth of these poems. They took so many dark aspects of life and made them beautiful. This was a great collection of poetry.