I’ve pretty much forgotten all about poetry since leaving college and its various literature courses, but these few books have reminded me just how lovely a small collection of musings can be. I won’t even begin to dissect or analyze any of them, because I’m certainly not qualified, but I will say I enjoyed looking through each of them. Also, be sure to check out Wave Books’ erasure site (in relation to A Little White Shadow, see below), where you can create your own erasures. It’s sort of fun.
shown left to right:
New Exercises by Franck Andre Jamme, Translated by Charles Borkhuis, $14.00,
Buy it here.*
Like tiny poetic word searches, these small poems reveal themselves as tightly-packed aphorisms, asserting themselves physically in the world with a wisdom that is somehow simultaneously novel and ancient.
Poemland by Chelsey Minnis, $14.00-$30.00, Buy it here.
A fearless and uproarious litany of contentions and revelations on poetry and the poetic mind, Poemland alternates brilliantly between the deadpan, the spectacular and the outrageous.
A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle, $12.00-$30.00, Buy it here.
Selectively painting over much of a forgotten nineteenth-century book, Ruefle’s ninth publication brings new meaning to an old story. What remains visible is delicate poetry: artfully rendered, haunted by its former self, yet completely new.
*See also the limited edition box set of twelve silk-screened broadsides from New Exercises here (I’m tempted to frame them).
[posted by katie]
