Attention Span 2009 – Tim Conley

Lisa Jarnot | Night Scenes | Flood Editions | 2008

A twinkle, twinkle rhapsody.

Eliot Weinberger | Oranges and Peanuts for Sale | New Directions | 2009

What colour did women in the T’ang Dynasty prefer their eyebrows to be? What is the attitude among the Yoruba to twins? Weinberger knows, and Weinberger seems incapable of being boring. Here are collected essays on Vicente Huidobro, the politics of poetry, James Laughlin, “What I Heard About Iraq in 2005,” Beckett’s Mexican job, Susan Sontag, translation, translation, and more translation.

Christopher Priest | Inverted World | NYRB Classics | 2008

A sophisticated game of illusions by way of disillusions (again, by way of illusions), this book strangely acquires greater dimensions as one moves through it. The reader cannot help but look back in admiration.

Eugene Ostashevsky | The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza | Ugly Duckling Presse | 2008

This is the closest I’ve ever seen poetry come to a video game. Avatars, knock your blocks off!

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, trans. R. J. Hollingdale | The Waste Books | NYRB Classics | 2000

Javier Marías, trans. Margaret Jull Costa | Your Face Tomorrow, Volume Two: Dance and Dream | New Directions | 2005

The spy who came in from the recherche du temps perdu. Can’t wait for the translation of the third volume to appear.

Daniel Albright | Beckett and Aesthetics | Cambridge UP | 2003

Jordan Scott | Blert | Coach House Books | 2008

Complains Daffy Duck: “Thith ith the latht time I work with thomeone with a thpeech impediment.” Methinks the duck doth (doth!) protest too much. Jordan Scott hears the stutter –the stutter we all have, each in our own fashion– as poetry. The legion of troublesome phrases become opportunities for new sounds. You will read this book aloud and you will get it all wrong and all will be very well.

More Tim Conley here.