Category Archives: Books

Most Recent Reading Diary Entries

Posted on April 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

by Guido Mocafico

April 10, 2012 

April 11, 2012 

April 12, 2012

April 13, 2012

  • Sula by Toni Morrison

April 14, 2012

  • Sula by Toni Morrison

April 15, 2012

April 16, 2012

April 17, 2012

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Posted in A Reader's Diary, Books

Reading Diary: Day 7 -16

Posted on April 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

Sorry for the delay. I’m just getting over a nasty stomach virus that owned me for the last week. Also, I’ve decided that trying to record every news article I come across will in fact will be the death of me. Seeing as how I’d prefer to be eternally youthful, just assume that up to date on current events thanks to publications like Mother Jones, Think Progress, New York Times, The Economist, etc.

Day 7: March 31, 2012

  • Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Day 8: April 1, 2012

Day 9: April 2, 2012

Day 10: April 3, 2012 

  • Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Day 11: April 4, 2012

Day 12: April 5, 2012

Day 13: April 6, 2012

Day 14: April 7, 2012

Day 15: April 8, 2012

Day 16: April 9, 2012 


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Posted in A Reader's Diary, Books

Briefly: Kevin Prufer On the Uses of Narrative

Posted on March 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

by Joeri Bosma

Every year at the AWP book fair, I happen across a poetry collection that was published several years before and I’m outraged (outraged! I tell you) that it has taken me so long to encounter this poet’s work. Last year it was Rough Cradle by Betsy Sholl. This year, I’ve consider calling several friends and leaving threatening voice messages regarding the fact that nobody thought to say “Saeed, Kevin Prufer’s work is stunning. You need to read everything he’s written and then get some of his lines tattooed on your forearm in Palatino font.” Seriously, National Anthem is painfully beautiful and isn’t that all I’ve ever wanted from a poetry collection? The mere thought of reading his most recent collection makes me want to moonwalk.

Anyway, expect that I’ll be mentioning Prufer quite often from here on out. Let’s start with a quote from his micro-interview for the Kenyon Review, shall we?

I’m not uninterested in communicating “emotional concepts” – but I like to imagine that poetry is also a very subtle, powerful vehicle for the communication of ideas that might extend beyond what is felt.  I like the notion that we know who we are (as individuals, as members of a larger society, as part of a culture) through our interaction with narrative and our imposition of narrative on our lives—and that poetry might participate in this.

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Posted in Books, The Process

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Confessions of a Bookaholic, or What I Bought at AWP

Posted on March 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

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“To wish to be spectacular / like an unlit match imagining to burn…” – Susan B. A. Somers-Willet

Posted on January 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

by Rook Floro

To wish to be spectacular

 

like an unlit match imagining to burn

or the spent match remembering its burning:

want flying over its pale wooden body

all acetylene brightness and rough sound –

a dense limb fearless

in knowing the flame, knowing its desire

equals its consumption,

use to uselenessness in the motion

of a body made ash with abandon.

 

The matches in the fold-over book all agree

it is the most beautiful thing

- from Quiver by Susan B. A. Somers-Willet

 

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Posted in Books, Poems

Words to Write By: Jonathan G. Silin, 1995

Posted on January 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

by Todd Chilton

I once believed the work of advocacy was the work of picket lines and protests, sit-ins and street theater, public hearings and private lobby efforts. Now I realize that the work of advocacy is also the work of the word — our talking and teaching, our writing and witnessing, our texts and testimonies.

from Particular Voices edited by Robert Giard

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Posted in Books, Fragments

“…and maybe this poem is my real republic…”

Posted on January 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

from Tina Chang’s Of Gods & Strangers

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Posted in Books, Fragments

3 Poems Featured in Ishaan Literary Review

Posted on November 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Martin Klimas

Happy to have my poems in the debut issue of Ishaan Literary Review, alongside work from Jeannine Hall Gailey. When I was studying at Western Kentucky University, Jeannine happened to be visited Tom Hunley’s Poetry class on the day that I had to present some of my poems. Afterwards, she told me that I should start submitting my work to literary journals. “Really?” I said. “Really,” she answered.

Thanks, Jeannine and congrats on the success of your new book.

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Posted in Books, Poems, Published Work

What is Phillip Williams Reading & Why?

Posted on September 8, 2011 | 2 Comments

I am reading some of everything now. Without having the constraints of a particular guided program, I’ve had the freedom to really explore thins that I otherwise would have no time for. One of the books I started a while back and am just now revisiting is “On Black Men” by David Marriott, in particular the essay “‘Murderous Appetites’: Photography and Fantasy” as I re-explore my relationship to the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe in his book The Black Book (1986). Much like the book in its entirety, I want to explore how images of Black men, neither created nor curated by Black men, affect the way we treat each other as Black men regardless of orientation. It’s that gaze and, therein, the application of what Black and Male means by those who are not Black (are, sometimes, also not male) that interests me.

I am also reading more critical essays and craft essays on poetry: Pinsky, Gluck, Shepherd, Logenbach, and Dean Young.

Some poetry I’ve been reading: “Blue Smith” by Camille T. Dungy, “Notes On A Divided Country” by Suji Kwock Kim, “Colosseum” by Katie Ford, “The Orchard” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. These books in particular are helping me to write about devastating events without making those subject to such violence, to such disaster, into stereotypes and identity-less cutouts of real people of went through real suffering.  It is one thing to have empathy, but these books show me how to be aware that rewriting history is not a part of that empathy. It’s a lesson that can be translated into real life, one that, strangely enough, fits into the rewriting of identity that David Marriott seems interested in. I’m reading to fulfill the circle that reading instigates and to interrogate what I find that seems cautionary, if not outright oppressive.

 

Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois native. Recently, he won BLOOM’S inaugural chapbook competition in poetry for his manuscript BRUISED GOSPELS. He is a Cave Canem graduate and was awarded a Bread Loaf work-study scholarship. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, Sou’wester,Painted Bride Quarterly , Boxcar Poetry Review and others. Phillip is currently poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl.


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Posted in Books

Dear Rickey Laurentiis: What are you reading?

Posted on August 19, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Andrew Salgado

What am I reading? Fiction. Because I’ve never read it, as I have poetry, with the intention of figuring out how it works, how it carries on, what lies between the periods, between the paragraphs. I’ve reread Beloved and Jazz, by Morrison, because I think she’s right: some love is to die for. I’ve reread some lighter, though no less enthralling novels, like Tracy Chevalier’s A Girl with a Pearl Earring. I picked up The Waves by Woolf that, despite having read almost all her novels, I haven’t read yet. But I put it down, for about 20 pages in I realized this was going to be a book that’s going to change my entire life and I’m not so sure I’m ready for that. But soon. Of course, I can’t let my poetry go. Wounded in the House of a Friend, by [Sonia] Sanchez, is such a devastating title, devastating words. I’ve met [Terrance] Hayes’ Wind in a Box again as I have [Cornelius] Eady’s You Don’t Miss Your Water. And then there’s the world: aren’t you reading the world?

—

Rickey Laurentiis was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Indiana Review, jubilat and other literary journals. In 2009, two of his poems were named first- and third-runner up in the International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Prize, sponsored by Knockout Literary Magazine, and he has received a Cave Canem Fellowship.

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