Mary Gordon, Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity, a memoir: Eight beautiful essays map out the places that have shaped Gordon’s life and writing, from her grandmother’s house to a Cape Cod writer’s retreat to her Manhattan apartment. (Scribner)
You know, there is this amazing thing that happens when you begin to create a common history with someone. Each detail is fascinating. You could just go to a mall and hang near the fountain in the atrium, and you’ll find yourself going over that time as if it were the Zapruder film. -Mark Leyner…
You say there’s no time like the present. But what is the present here? I’ve watched TV for ages and seen movies since I was three. TV’s daily life and movies are a communal fantasy. Today is in color, yesterday’s in black and white, and there’s no agreement about tomorrow. I hear music everywhere, and…
Bill Knott, Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969- 1999: Knott’s tenth volume gathers three decades of virtuoso poems, showcasing his iconoclastic wit, his unique view of the world, and his fiercely original language, proving Marvin Bell was right when he said that Knott can “twist the neck of syntax until…
translated by Jonathan Galassi Desire for your bright hands in the half-shadow of the flame: they smelled of oak and roses; and death. Ancient winter. The birds out foraging seed were suddenly snow; like our words. A little sun, an angel’s halo, then mist: and the trees, and us made of air in the morning.
The room was alive. I knew it better than my body. The whole house sighed and shuddered, breathing inaudibly through its doors and windows. In and out, in and out I went, and one existence melted like snow into another. The sun was fierce and crazy. I cooled in green pools or under the shade…
James Alan McPherson, A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile, essays: With topics ranging from racism in the South to Disneyland, McPherson provocatively probes the geography of a morally bankrupt society, as he yearns for “spiritual civility.” Often magical and transcendent, all of these essays are heartfelt and resonant. (Simon & Schuster)
translated by Jonathan Galassi Ravager of lethargies and sorrows, night; safeguard against silences, the age of offhand sadnesses re-buds. And I see boys in me still slender-hipped, on the shells’ slope turn anxious at my changed voice.
Thief of the corn, patch of night against a perfect sky, I see you there watching me with your strange eyes. What message do you bring me? When the leaves fall you’ll be all we have left. Perched above the cemetery walk, you add your two cents’ worth when he reads the part…
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