WCU is a great place to buy books. All my favorite authors are there to sign them. One year I had to have Mike Peich box and ship the books I had acquired. This year I limited myself to four books. Hapax, by Alicia. Starr Farm Beach, an unspeakably beautiful and thoughtfully organized chapbook from Peich's Aralia Press by Tim Steele. A Trick of Sunlight, Dick Davis' new offering from Swallow. And Toward the Winter Solstice, also Swallow, Tim's first full length collection in more than a decade. A few comments on each.

Starr Farm Beach might be the best and most lavishly produced work of art from Aralia since Mike produced Bone Key by Dick Wilbur. It is lovingly bound by the same artisan who bound my first chapbook, Bedrock. All of Tim's poems are absolutely top shelf. The chapbook is our entry into book publication, and I commend it to our members as a model of the art.

What to say about Hapax. I have memorized Last Will, Aliki's elegy to her father the dove hunter, and I am reading it to every hunter I know. It is a big, capacious book from a diminutive woman with an utterly distinctive voice. I think it's a significant advance on Archaic Smile, which is a tough act to follow. I'd seen a lot of poems in her little self-published chappie, and in the Aralia work of art, and in journals. My expectations were high but not high enough.

Dick's Trick of Sunlight is a delight. Sage, wit and melancholic, he doesn't repeat himself, and when one embarks on one's seventh decade one is in danger of becoming a parody of one's youthful self. Not a problem for Dick. His poem Persuasions and a poem for young poet CT visiting her Grandma have already wormed their way into my capacious memory. And these two are mere squibs in the Davis corpus. Memorable speech.

I think the book dearest to me is Tim's full length collection. When I first met Wilbur he said "You Tims ought to be in touch." 1994. [Disclosure: all three of these authors have been unfailingly kind to me and my verse.] Tim's program is very different from my own. I try to hit it out of the park in 48 syllables, i.e., the first pitch. With his meticulous powers of observation and mastery of meter, Tim darts RBI's anywhere in the field he chooses. He leads by example, and it is a winning performance.

I hope Spherians will acquire and treasure these books, and I hope you will share with me your own shopping lists.



[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited June 15, 2006).]

Hi Tim. Sorry to have missed you in West Chester.

I also picked up a few books at the college library:


Talking to Lord Newborough: David Anthony---signed
Humor Me: Claudia Gary-Annis---signed
Rhyme's Reason: John Hollander
Sonnets: Edited by William Baer
The Optimist: Joshua Mehigan
The Gods of Winter: Dana Gioia
The Hidden Model: David Yezzi---signed
Echolocations: Diane Thiel---signed
The White Horse: Diane Thiel---signed
An Alabaster Flask: Jennifer Reeser
Winterproof: Jennifer Reeser
Rehearsing Absence: Rhina Espaillat---signed
Where Horizons Go: Rhina Espaillat---signed
Archaic Smile: Alicia Stallings---signed
Hapax: Alicia Stallings---signed
The Body of Poetry: Annie Finch---signed
Calendars: Annie Finch---signed
Gravity's Dream: Kate Light---signed





[This message has been edited by diprinzio (edited June 15, 2006).]

Way to go, Grisha! You should have had Peich box and ship your collection--insured! Warmest congratulations on the wide exposure in Slate.

Tim, I have Alicia and Dick's books on order. But I'm eager to see Alicia's elegy. Could you post it?

Last Will

What he really wanted, she confesses,
Was to be funneled into shells and shot
Across a dove-field. Only, she could not--

The kick of shotguns knocks her over. Well,
I say, he'd understand. It doesn't matter
What becomes of atoms, how they scatter.

The priest reads the committal, something short.
We drop the little velvet pouch of dust
Down a cylindirical hole bored in the clay--

And one by one, the doves descend, ash-gray,
Softly as cinders on the parking lot,
And silence sounds its deafening report.

AE Stallings

Nice poem, but, Tim, are you sure it's about Alicia's father? Third person and all.

Aliki said "Dad, I'm going to get married." "That's fine, dear, as long as it's not opening day of dove." It's her father, all right. We had a long talk. In its simplicity and power, Sam, it puts me in mind of your "Box of Ashes."

Oh my god. That is wonderful. Thanks, Tim.

Rest assured that if I ever get to the West Chester conference I will probably sprain an ankle trying to prop up both the bar and the bookshop counter at the same time.

KEB

Katy,
You'd have to do more than sprain an ankle to be at both the bar and the bookstore. West Chester is a dry (i.e., alcohol-free) campus, except for the opening banquet and a couple of receptions during the conference.

Susan

Oh my GOD. Really??

PS - I can't really imagine this but now it does occur to me that the drinking age in the USA is 21. Is it connected to that?

Don't worry, Katy, Jennifer knows where the party is.

All that socializing is scary enough, but doing it without alcohol? Yikes. And yet none of that is nearly as daunting as the thought of Tim sizing me up and reporting on my girth at Eratosphere afterwards.

Then again, since I'm well off his spectrum, I think that makes me invisible, so I might be safe after all. (And the prank potential is tempting.)


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited June 16, 2006).]

The CAMPUS might be dry, but the con ference certainly is not. My liver is still recovering. My brain never will.

Nor your reputation as a sobersides, Mason.

Okay so I stick with Rose, Jennifer and Dave and I'll be fine... phew!

Okay maybe I start saving up then, now that's settled.

Dave, it's all about water, vitamin C and - well - water and vitamin C I think. I wonder if I've forgotten the rest.

KEB

Rest assured, Rose--there is no end of fermentation at West Chester, in every sense.

Robin

Spherians, Let me remind you that we had an animated discussion on the utility of reviewing notable new books at Amazon and BN and here. Just yesterday I posted a short review at Amazon of the Powow anthology, certainly one of the best collections I've read in a decade. I included a link to the essays on Warren, Espaillat, Crawford, and Nicol I posted at Seablogger, Alan's site. I am hardly God's gift to discursive prose, but those five star ratings are meaningful to the unfamiliar shopper. I urge you read and review these books.

If anybody who's read my latest book could see their way to posting a brief review on Amazon UK I'd be grateful, as it's recently been trashed by an anonymous troll:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...lance&n=266239

David, Amazon UK comments section is temporarily on the blink, but I'll post the following five star review later today:

I take issue with the first review of this book. I screened the title sonnet as one of the dozen best poems of the year at Eratosphere, the international virtual workshop devoted to form. Our judge was the noted Chicana poet, Rhina Espaillat. Here is the poem, and here are Ms Espaillat's thoughtful comments:

Talking to Lord Newborough

I’d perch beside your gravestone years ago,
a boy who thought you old at forty-three.
I knew you loved this quiet place, like me.
We’d gaze towards Maentwrog far below,
kindred spirits, and I’d talk to you.
Sometimes I asked what it was like to die—
were you afraid? You never did reply,
and silence rested lightly on us two.

These days the past is nearer, so I came
to our remembered refuge on the hill,
expecting change yet finding little there:
my village and the Moelwyns look the same,
Saint Michael’s Church commands the valley still—
but you, old friend, are younger than you were.

(Lt. William Charles Wynn, 1873-1916,
4th Baron Newborough, whose grave overlooks
the Vale of Ffestiniog in North Wales)

The scene and situation are set at once, so that communication is clear at the surface level. The mystery occurs at a deeper level, and is subtler, in what the poem suggest about memory and time: "These days the past is nearer." We think of the past as retreating into a farther distance, as do the dead, but this poem reverses that notion, and implies that the dead "remember" with us.
I found myself feeling not only surprised, but persuaded by this tender but unsentimental sense of identification with those who are closer than they were when they "left" us, because now we're approaching them. The end feels wholly true, and the force of the poem is greater than it would have been if the language were not so unobtrusively ordinary.

And then, just to compound the strangeness of the poem, a rereading reminds you that this particular "old friend" was a stranger, after all, "met" beside his gravestone by an imaginative and sensitive boy! Remarkable poem. --R.P.E.

The poem's point of departure is in fact Bob Dylans's "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." I confirmed this hunch with the author during our discussion of the sonnet at the Eratosphere. If this is the stuff of greeting cards, I'd like to buy a lifetime supply of them. --Tim Murphy




[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited June 18, 2006).]

Thanks, Tim; much appreciated.
I think you're taking issue with the second review of the book, as the first (immediately below the troll's, and in R L Smith's own name) is a positive one!
Best,
David

David,
I too have been trying to post a review of your book, but keep getting the message that the service is unavailable at this time. I will keep trying, but meanwhile I have posted it below. People who know your work already will probably feel that they don't need this information, but I was aiming the review at those who don't.

Susan


Fashions exist in poetry, as in most things, and David Anthony is not afraid to be unfashionable--both in using traditional forms such as sonnets, villanelles, and triolets and in revealing emotions such as affection, sympathy, and nostalgia, which can get writers labeled sentimental. But there is a subversive character to his use of forms: he uses the triolet, usually a lightweight form, to tackle serious themes, as in "A Winter Funeral," and can poke fun at the conventions of sonnet-writing in the course of writing a sonnet, as in "Stuffing It In." He has some amusing versifications of well-known jokes (my favorite is "Cushioning the Blow") and takes a wide-ranging interest in the world around him, in poems about his native Wales, England, America, and Japan, showing a fondness for Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Harry Potter, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Always accessible, he can be conversational, but most often is notable for the lilting, lyrical quality of his lines.

Thanks, Susan.

You're on the nail there: I do believe poems should be written with feeling.

The borderline between sentiment and sentimentality's a fine one, I think, and no two people would draw the line in the same place.

By the way, my book's also on Amazon.com (though it doesn't sell half as well there), so if you and Tim wouldn't mind posting your reviews there too I'd be grateful.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097...42522?n=283155


Best wishes,
David

Susan's comments and mine now appear at UK and US Amazon, David. I've also just posted a very brief comment on Tim's book beneath a capacious, generous essay by Bruce McBirney.

Beg pardon, but Doña Rhina no es mexicana:

Chicana=Mexicana
Latina=todas las otras

La Gringa



[This message has been edited by Robin-Kemp (edited June 21, 2006).]

Mil gracias, Robin!

As for Amazon in the UK, I always have trouble getting to it, and posting on it, the one time I did so. Don't let the negative stuff get to you, David: all it does is build sound teeth and healthy bones--and good, tough skin.

Ha! I kid you not -- one evening in town, I was "invited" to show my proof of age by a concerned West Chester bartender unconvinced I was old enough for ale, so Katy, even if Jennifer DOES know where the party is, they may not let you in with her http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/wink.gif

Jenn



[This message has been edited by Jennifer Reeser (edited June 22, 2006).]

Jennifer,

Would that have been the 16-year-old bartender? http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/wink.gif

Anybody what don't like David's book, I kick they ass!

Robin

[This message has been edited by Robin-Kemp (edited June 22, 2006).]

Ale!?

Jennifer, tell me about it! A few years ago they tried to card me in some pizza place outside Logan airport - they were like, well, my manager says I have to card anyone who looks like they might be under 30. I'm like, 30?!? My sister's going AWWWWW! That's so SWEET! They think you're under 30! I'm going, LOOK. I've got three kids, an ex-husband, a mortgage, I've been through this that and the other and now you're telling me I don't look old enough to have a goddamn BEER! My passport's in the car. I've been travelling for 15 hours. Do you REALLY want me to go and get it? My sister's glaring at me. The waitress goes, nooooo, that'll be okay.......

Just keep me with you. We'll be in.

KEB

Jenn, Katy, I know the feeling; it happens to me all the time.
David

Yesterday I was sent by my friend the gourmand to the super-snooty wine store to purchase some Fronch elixir from a region he called Boojilly, specifically some village that, I think he said, has a million vans. This being California, I of course go in a pair of shorts and my trusty Oakland A's ballcap, just like I would to church. Anyway, I walk in after having locked up my bike and I find one of the attendants. He looks like he's guarding a Da Vinci cartoon, and has been eyeing me nastily from the second my flip-flops flapped over the threshold. I manage to make myself understood well enough that he gives me what appears to be the right juice; I was told to look for a picture of a windmill, and lo and behold, this had one. I saw it and began to clap with delight. He didn't even try to make me feel comfortable about that! The snob. Anyway, after we get to the register--as I hand him my credit card--he IDs me. I couldn't believe it.

Do I not look like I should be buying fine wine? The nerve!

--CS


[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited June 22, 2006).]

Jennifer, I'd card you. Clay, I don't know. I had an author photo to prepare me for Reeser, and I was unprepared. Last carded in earnest at the old Denver airport when I was circa thirty. Told the barman, "If this bar weren't so wide, I'd lean over and kiss you."

Now I'm carded everytime I buy smokes. North Dakota has decreed it. Ole geezer is wheeled into store, sneezes, blowing out dentures and blowing off toupee, and gets carded. This is my home state's revenge for the "ageism" which has been justifiably decried on what used to be my board at the Sphere.

Tim, if you'd quit using that henna rinse you wouldn't get carded.

...so I deftly pulled my driver's license from the side pouch of my new, black West Chester satchel, from between multiple copies of those phenomenal poems of mine, "Useful Advice," and "Keeping My Name." The guy examined it, nodded, then handed it back -- "Thanks," he said. "And you have a good one, Ms. Tufariello..."

Gee, thanks, Jennifer! Unfortunately, it’s been a while for me. Must have had the wrong West Chester bartender.

Even after (reluctantly) returning Sam’s books, I ended up with a nice stash--including Menashe, Fenton (the book of song lyrics and two books of prose), Gioia’s Nosferatu, the Powow anthology, Jarman’s The Secret of Poetry, and probably one or two more I can’t remember at the moment. Between the purchased books and the freebies I nabbed in the lobby (not from other people’s bags… no, really…. I mean from the tables with sample journals and so forth), my suitcase swelled far beyond its original overhead bin dimensions. A conference veteran soon learns that one must bring to West Chester a suitcase, if not clothes, that can be let out.