Notes From the Bookroom

December 18, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

For reviews editors who handle poetry, April is indeed the cruelest month. Perhaps I don’t understand something about the economics of the poetry “business” as it were, but I want to register a protest against the overcrowding of April with new poetry titles. Put simply, it is REALLY hard to find ways of covering all these books, and I’m actually able to run a lot of reviews—maybe 45 between February and April—and I’m having trouble squeezing in everything I think deserves coverage.

Right now on my desk, there are about 30 poetry titles slated to publish this April. I have another 10 books pubbing in March. And these are just the ones I am considering for review. There are MANY others I’ve had to reject, and I know there are more April titles coming from big, small and university presses.&n...Read More

July 19, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I've read all the Potter books so far, I'm almost ashamed to admit.  One summer in college I had this weird job where I basically had to around all day and do nothing.  Instead of doing nothing, I read Harry Potters 1-4 in three weeks.  After that I was hooked and read 4 and 5 when they came out, and also saw all the movies in the theater.  

When a Potter book comes along, I'm helpless against it, as, it seems, and has long seemed, are most people.  I put down whatever fancy literary book I happen to be reading, shelve all my interpersonal relationships, and bury my nose in the fresh paper smell of Hogwarts.

Everybody is making a big deal over the Potter embargo, the leaks, getting the book two days early.  I for one do not want to get my hands on the book a minute before I have to (which will be saturday)--when I get tha...Read More

May 24, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

I'll be brief because I feel like my brain might explode, but I've been reading a lot of comics lately--things by Jeffrey Brown, Peter Kuper, and Anders Nilson--and thinking about how similar arty comics are to poetry. 

It's really the same idea: both forms use icons to suggest larger contexts.  If you want to put a bookshelf in a comic, you don't draw every book, you just draw a couple of rectangles and then make a wavy line to suggest the rest of the books.  In a poem, you don't tell the whole story, describe the whole scene, you just use a few words, the icons of the scene, story, or feeling, to suggest it. 

So, I was very pleased to see this, a series of Web-only features commissioned by the Poetry Foundation in which th...Read More

May 16, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

By trade, as it were, I write poems, critical prose, and PW news stories. But my secret ambition--after being a singing bass player in a rock band--has long been to be a jazz critic. I think that would be so cool--all the free CDs I could eat, free jazz shows, and then coming home to the difficult and satisfying task of finding words to describe another language: music.

So, in order to fan the flame of this fantasy (and because I'm just damn tired of literature), I've been reading a couple of books of jazz criticism and biography, and have a couple more on deck.

First came a forthcoming book: Coltrane: The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff, due out from FSG this September. I won't say much about this one, other than that it's really well written, properly skeptical without sacrificing any adoration, and give a really good close readi...Read More

May 3, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

April is over. It wasn't cruel, but, for people involved who work in the business side of poetry--if such a thing exists--it is perhaps exhausting. Dozens of poetry titles were released last month, from obscure first books, to highly anticipated first books, to second books by up-and-comers, to mid-career books by established poets, to umpteenth books by old people. So lots of books . And also lots of readings. And strange, otherwise unheard of promotional devices. FSG started a wonderful blog, maintained by theiir excellent publicist Ami Greko. And HarperCollins kept it's blog a-going. And poet-bloggers kept their blogs a-going.

Anyway, as somebody who's pretty obsessed with poetry all year 'round, I tend to get a little oversaturated during NPM. Of course, a lot of my work here at PW is done in March or earlier. The poetry sections in the three ...Read More