Casting our eyes back across 2004 in the poetry world, we’ve chosen the best poetry books we’ve read during the past year, the ones you’ll want to own & reread.
The Maverick Room, by Thomas Sayers Ellis
(Graywolf Press, 2004) There’s just no describing Ellis –- he jazzes june, the pain thin as a paper cut, evanescent, ever-present, dirty, intellectual. Since his days with Dark Room Collective, Ellis has always been a poet to watch. Now he’s a poet to read, to listen to, to study. The book’s last two poems, “Groovallegiance” and “All Their Stanzas Look Alike,” are harrowing, brilliant, and utterly owned by orality even as the text represents and poetry is served. BOOK OF THE YEAR, right here.
Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Rob Fitterman
(Edge Books, 2004) 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). “Fitterman teaches us that when in Rome, do as the Ramones do,” says Christian Bok. Aiyiyi.
The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius, translated by Vincent Katz
(Princeton University Press, 2004) 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.Chronicles Volume One, by Bob Dylan
(Simon & Schuster, 2004) Mayhaps ya wanna argue the Dylan as Poet routine? Personally, I prefer reading his Chronicles, Volume One, a totally brilliant, bizarre, loving, generous and nasty memoir that centers on the Village folk scene of the 60s and Robert Zimmerman’s entrance therein. For me, this writing cements it: Dylan hits at the point of equilibrium and ambiguity, and folks, if that ain’t poetry I don’t know what is.Steal Away: Selected and New Poems, by C.D. Wright
(Copper Canyon Press, 2003) This collection highlights the diversity of Wright’s writing: Arkansas’ tale twang, formalist avant, and her lyrical “Retablos,” which separate the book’s sections. One Big Self (Twin Palms) is a huge coffee table book of portrait photographs of prisoners in Angola and other Louisiana penitentiaries taken by Deborah Luster, accompanied by fragmented verbal portraits that Wright “took” of the incarcerated. Go to the bookstore and look at this book!From the Beginning, by Alice Notley
(The Owl Press, 2004) If you are an Alice Notley fan, then you will have to have the brand-new. From the Beginning is darkness imbedded in The Book: “…this cartoon of reality, but the evil is real”… “all spaces stand for pain”… “the certitude that you are insane” … “the world’s form is untruth.” This is a devastating, hallucinogenic, bloody book. If you don’t know Alice’s work, go to The Descent of Alette.Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965-2003, by Jean Valentine
(Wesleyan University Press, 2004) Jean Valentine’s Door in the Mountain just won the National Book Award. It is poetry chockfull, it is an unGooglable encyclopedia, and of course a breathing thing. Coltrane, Jung, Mandelstam: these are snapshots of history, personal poems on a universal plate.Turning To Fiction, by Donna Masini
(W.W. Norton & Company, 2004) If you’re looking under the covers for the spirit of New York City, 2004, look no further than Donna Masini’s stunning new collection. Street scenes from the museum to three-card monte, phone sex and poetry books, there’s a real life here, and it is real life. As the anatomy of a love affair, this book maps the geography of the heart, an anguished diary of existence, a sophisticated flight towards joy.Poems I Guess I Wrote, by Ron Padgett
(Kuz Editions, 2001) I’ve been cycling through three new Ron Padgett books: Oklahoma Tough: My Father the King of the Tulsa Bootleggers (University of Oklahoma Press), Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard (Coffee House), and Poems I Guess I Wrote (Kuz Editions, Richard Hell’s press) -- all great reads because Ron, folks, is the writer’s writer. Clarity and purpose shine in every line. When Ron retired from Teachers & Writers a few years ago I couldn’t believe it -– now I see what he was up to.America: A History in Verse 1962-1970, by Ed Sanders
(Black Sparrow Books, 2002) Ed Sanders not only refuses to be burnt out but continues as a model of creativity. Volume Three of America: A History in Verse (and it’s fantastic that the new owners of Black Sparrow keep up their support of Ed) came out last year, chronicling the 60’s, which of course were the years Ed was traveling with the Fugs. His human’s-eye view of history, thoroughly investigated and poetically transmitted, is definitive.YOUR Poetry Picks for 2004
What are the poetry books that have penetrated your heart and mind this year? Tell us about your favorites.
