OK, so I got two books of year this year, so? So why stop there? THE BOOK OF THE YEAR is Rob Fitterman’s KO, Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Totally appropriated, Fitterman has managed to collect the Ripley’s Believe It or Not of Now which, quite simply, defines the mollified quotidian peanut-butter-brain US life. His “Guide A-Z” gives salient facts of 17 cities as if they were the same as they become. His “Rubber Ducks for Sale” range from $3.95 (Sunny Duck, beak color may vary) to $6.95 (Carmen Miranda Duck). In “The Goths (Fall Sale)” you can find “GAF-052 $14.99” “Hard to scan this one so you can see how it works! It’s a double wrap, the ends go in front so you have 2 red talons hanging on your throat:).” “Fitterman teaches us that when in Rome, do as the Ramones do,” says Christian Bok. To which I add: Aiyiyi.
The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius translated by Vincent Katz (Princeton) -- here’s what Vincent did this year, and it’s a beaut. Dual-language, straightforward musical translations (you try it), sometimes crazy mad sometimes clinical, this is a book to treasure. As is Katz’s landmark, Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art, the essential text on the fabled breeding ground of The New. And then there’s the publishing: Katz launched a new press, Libellum, which published Michael Lally’s absolutely astonishing indictment, March 18, 2003, the day US (we?) first bombed Baghdad (this time). Lally’s epic streams consciousness, poetry, war. It’s the best poem I’ve seen about this ugly stupid wrong war.
The Prize Budget for Boys present The Spectacular Vernacular Revue (Roof Books), from Pac-Mondrian to a hilarious send-up of internet lang-po, this book by the Toronto arts collective is unique, sparks, and right over the edge with the buffalo -– truly revolutionary….
Action Poetry: Literary Tribes for the Internet Age, edited by Levi Asher, Jamelah Earle, Caryn Thurman (Literary Kicks) forward by David Amram. Just as Amram himself presents a populist Beat concept that makes the world a playpen for art, so Asher and his LitKicks crew have found a new way to make an anthology open, free, and eternally interesting. All these works were submitted over the Web with no concern about who’s who except for their email moniker. I didn’t know a single poet, and I enjoyed every poem. Here’s words in your face!….
