Attention Span 2009 – James Wagner

Art Davidson | Minus 148 Degrees: First Winter Ascent of Mt. McKinley | Mountaineers | 1999

It turns out to be cold on Denali in the middle of the winter.

Laura Sims | Stranger | Fence | 2009

Mysterious, emotional, fragmentary arrangements. Not airy, incomplete friezes but freighted waves.

Rainier Werner Fassbinder | Berlin Alexanderplatz | Bavaria Film | 1980

Slowly watching all of his films. This one makes 30. The Fassbinder Foundation’s website is here.

Various authors and translators | Dichten = No. 10: 16 New (to American readers) German Poets | Burning Deck | 2008

Fantastic.

Sharon Mesmer | Annoying Diabetic Bitch | Combo Books | 2007

Accumulative energy, often created by anaphora, strong sense of line/line-breaks, formal rhetorical argument embedded in meant-to-shock content, with tinless ear.

Dee Molenaar | The Challenge of Rainier: A Record of the Explorations and Ascents, Triumphs and Tragedies | Mountaineers | 1979

The classic text of everything having to do with climbing the mountain. (I’m planning on climbing Rainier in 2010.)

Mike Gauthier | Mount Rainier: A Climbing Guide | Mountaineers | 1999

Among other things, exceptional notational photographs of 39 of the routes.

Michael Burkard | Envelope of Night: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1966-1990 | Nightboat Books | 2008

Where Ashbery, Vallejo, Kafka and Creeley meet.

Jerzy Pilch, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston | The Mighty Angel | Open Letter | 2009

Just beginning this.

Bree Loewen | Pickets and Dead Men: Seasons on Rainier | Mountaineers | 2009

Rare story of a female climbing ranger on Mt. Rainier, covering the harsh elemental life of hard climbing, rescuing live and dead bodies, and your typical serving of human insensitivity. Self-deprecating, dogged, engaging.

Eleni Sikelianos | Body Clock | Coffee House | 2008

The real deal keeps dealing.

More James Wagner here.

Attention Span 2009 – Elizabeth Robinson

Laura Sims | Stranger | Fence Books | 2009

This reflection on the early death of the author’s mother could have been bathetic, but instead it is quirky, perceptive and, while affectively convincing, strange.

Keith Waldrop | Transcendental Studies | University of California | 2009

A terrific, substantive collection.

Thomas A. Clark | of Woods and Water | Moschatel Press | 2008

Inheritor of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s mantle, Clark writes deceptively simple lyrics whose modulations creep up on the reader.

Eileen Myles | The Importance of Being Iceland | Semiotexte | 2009

This book of essays is really funny, but also astute, pointed, full of characteristic Myles dynamism.

Barbara Guest | Forces of Imagination | Kelsey St. Press | 2003

I just keep reading and rereading this one, and every time find Guest’s poetics sharp, often humorous, haunted, compelling.

Truong Tran | Four Letter Words | Apogee Press | 2008

These poems are formally lively, while the content here zings.

Orlando White | Bone Light | Red Hen Press | 2009

White is a young writer and this is his first book. Its intense focus interrogates language letter by letter.

Tyrone Williams | On Spec | Omnidawn | 2007

Completely engrossing.

James Laughlin | The Way it Wasn’t | New Directions | 2006

Notes toward a memoir that Laughlin never wrote, this book is vastly entertaining (JL refers to Bill Clinton as “Smiley”) and full of good literary gossip. It is also heartbreaking to get hints at how hard it is to keep a literary press alive, especially as Laughlin struggles to retain authors who are lured away by larger presses (e.g., John Hawkes, Anne Carson).

Myung Mi Kim | Penury | Omnidawn | 2009

Painful content, exquisitely sculpted writing.

More Elizabeth Robinson here.