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 – G.C. Waldrep

I read dozens of poetry books, dozens of journals every year. The list that follows isn’t necessarily a list of recent books I “liked best,” but it is a list of the books I dreamed about, after.

Alice Notley | In the Pines | Penguin | 2007

Gennady Aygi, trans. Peter France | Field-Russia | New Directions | 2007

Gabriel Gudding | Rhode Island Notebook | Dalkey | 2007

Bin Ramke | Tendril | Omnidawn | 2007

Zachary Schomburg | The Man Suit | Black Ocean | 2007

Rosmarie Waldrop | Curves to the Apple | New Directions | 2006

Michael Burkard | Envelope of Night | Nightboat | 2008

George Oppen | Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers | California | 2007

Catherine Corman, ed. | Joseph Cornell’s Dreams | Exact Change | 2007

Daniil Kharms, trans. Matvei Yankelevich | Today I Wrote Nothing | Overlook | 2007

Joseph Lease | Broken World | Coffee House | 2007

Some others: Anne Boyer, The Romance of Happy Workers; Fanny Howe, The Lyrics; Johannes Goransson, A New Quarantine Will Take My Place; Cecily Parks, Field Folly Snow; Rusty Morrison, The Truth Keeps Calm Biding Its Story; Kristi Maxwell, Realm 64; Fredrik Nyberg, A Different Practice; Craig Morgan Teicher, Brenda Is in the Room; David Mutschlecner, Sign; Priscilla Sneff, O Woolly City; Tony Tost, Complex Sleep; Donald Revell, Thief of Strings; Noah Eli Gordon, A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow; C.S. Carrier, “Lyric”; Julie Doxsee, “Fog Quartets”; Jack Boettcher, “The Surveyic Hero”; etc.