finished mary oliver’s “a poetry handbook”
it took me a good minute to get through it. this has nothing to do with its size (its only like 125 pages) or the fact that other more important duties came ahead of my reading time but has everything to do with the very matter-of-fact-lets-get-down-to-the-nuts-and-bolts-of-contemporary-american-english-poetics the book takes. the plus is that oliver does this without getting too high or preachy and, thank the lawd, always acknowledging the true poetry will always have a sense of soul & imagination which can not be taught in any kind of book. the negative is that it focuses entirely on american-english language work and its older sibling, the canon of british lit. i cant fault oliver for staying close to what it is that she knows, and knows well, but i need a lil sumthin more and would have enjoyed an exploration of some other classic authors, such as neruda, lorca, rilke and rimabud, and how that lineage informs some of our current american-(but dealing with more than the issues of the english language) poets, such as espada, walcott, vicuña and harjo. this is, of course, an incomplete list but you get the gist of it. in the end, a good read and something this poet definitely needed to revisit.
next on the hit list: Gorgeous Mourning by Alice Jones
AND! you can change the title to this bad boy to Bookshelf IV and V as i was able to sneak in a reading of Y: The Last Man Vol. 1: Unmanned
this was quite the roller coaster ride as it goes right for the jugular in the first page and keeps a strong grip throughout. i am hella curious about where our hero, yorick (yes, that is his gov’t name!) ends up next which is comic smark lingo for “can the creative team keep the intensity going?”