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?