word of the day: titivating

context:

The Snork Maiden immediately took out her looking-glass to see if it was broken, but, thank goodness, the glass was whole and all the rubies were still on the back. But as she was titivating herself, [she spotted] something else. …Something that crept slowly nearer …

definition for titivate:

To make small alterations or additions to one's toilet, etc. so as to add to one's attractions; to make smart or spruce; to ‘touch up’ in the way of adornment, put the finishing touches to. [Oxford English Dictionary]

A friend of my mother gave us two or three of the Moomintroll books so I remember them sitting on the bookshelf at home. I don’t know if my brother ever read them, but I know I didn’t. I may have made an attempt or two but if I did, I didn’t get far.

The library has collected volumes of the Moomintroll comic strip and that proved an easy in. Recently I read Moominpapa’s Memoirs and found I enjoyed Jansson’s prose, too. Will I make it through the whole series? They’re awfully twee. Gentle, cozy, sweet, eccentric. A little precious. Likable. Meandering. I got Comet in Moominland off the Claremont Branch shelf a couple weeks ago and read it on lunches and breaks (alongside a book of essays by Salman Rushdie). 

“Titivate” is a surprising word for a children’s book. When was the last time you saw it? Have you ever? The translator made the choice, not Jansson, at least not that particular word, who knows maybe a similarly unusual choice was made in the original Swedish?

source: Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson

1946. (1959 English translation by Elizabeth Portch)

Farrar Straus Giroux, New York

word of the day: bension

context:

The shadows lengthened across the deserted track, and the evening wind sighed down it to sweep a flurry of whispering leaves across the rut, their brown brittleness light as a bension as they drifted across the unheeding white form [of the exhausted old dog].

definition: The word “bension” does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary. Curious! I have heard of a “benison,” however. A benison is a blessing; as the OED has it, “That blessing which God gives; a giving of blessedness.”

I had no luck with Google finding another instance of “bension” outside Sheila Burnford’s novel The Incredible Journey. A site called Quizlet offers “bension” among its “flashcards” for The Incredible Journey (see chapter three) and even provides an audio pronunciation beside the definition (“a blessing or benediction”). I didn’t see a source for Quizlet’s definition. 

It could be that “bension” is a typo, a transposing of the “s” and the “i” of “benison.” If so, is it a typo that’s persisted 55 years and multiple editions? A completely typo-free book is rare. Sometimes typos are found and when a new edition is issued they’ve been corrected. You can read critical editions of classics that discuss such mistakes and often try to figure out whose fault they are, the author’s? the publisher’s?

Perhaps Sheila Burnford was familiar with the word “bension,” as she spelled it, and used it consciously. Words certainly change spellings over time and in different places, so it could be her version of “benison” was not a typo but common to her community.

source: The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford

1961. Delacorte Press, New York 

shark attack!

Maybe you don’t want to sail out to sea because you’re afraid if the ship goes down and you find yourself bobbing about in the water a shark will sniff that bleeding cut on your finger and come scooting over for a toothier taste. Nobody likes the prospect of being eaten alive. We know it happens. We see it on the nature documentaries.

You’ve heard that shark attacks on humans are pretty rare, right? But, you know, maybe that’s because there aren’t many shipwreck victims to make a meal of.

In her book on science and war, Mary Roach investigates the military’s success in creating a shark repellent. Soldiers at sea don’t like the idea of being eaten alive. Thinking about it causes stress. If you can supply a fella with a bottle of Shark Begone you’ll give him some peace of mind. This is war. Peace is relative. But any peace in a war!

Mary Roach says no. No such things as Shark Begone. Products that claim to be shark repellent  don’t have reliable research backing them up. There are even products that insist they repel sharks that actually attract sharks. So you want to be careful what you lather on your bobbing parts.

An article at the Smithsonian about the sharks attracted to the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II builds in the fear:

Soon enough [the floating survivors] would be staving off … sharks. The animals were drawn by the sound of the explosions, the sinking of the ship and the thrashing and blood in the water. … Reports from the Indianapolis survivors indicate that the sharks tended to attack live victims close to the surface … The first night, the sharks focused on the floating dead. But the survivors’ struggles in the water only attracted more and more sharks … Of the Indianapolis’ original 1,196-man crew, only 317 remained. Estimates of the number who died from shark attacks range from a few dozen to almost 150.

Sharks!! They ate 800 sailors! 1,196 minus 317, that’s 800ish. Nobody actually knows how many living sailors managed to escape the sinking ship. How many subsequently died from exposure, dehydration, drowning? 

Mary Roach wasn’t having much luck finding stories about sharks eating sailors. 

A floating sailor [can] dispatch a curious shark by hitting it or churning the water with his legs. ([One researcher] observed that even a kick to a shark’s nose from the rear leg of a swimming rat was enough to cause ‘ … raid departure from the vicinity.’) ‘The sharks were going after dead mean,’ said a survivor quoted in a popular book about the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis, an event that often comes up in discussions of military shark attacks. ‘Honestly, in the entire 110 hours I was in the water,’ recalls Navy Captain Lewis L. Haynes … ‘I did not see a man attacked by a shark.’ [emphasis in the original]

But aren’t rafts often followed by sharks? Pretty scary. Aren’t they just stalking the passengers, waiting to nab anybody who falls off? 

Mary Roach says fish like the shelter of the raft. There’s not much shade to be had out at sea so when some happens by there are those who take advantage. The sharks come to the raft to feed on the fish under the raft, not to hunt the people on it. 

Not even human blood has been shown to entice sharks. What does? What swims under rafts. Fish.  

So. Stop worrying. A shark is not going to get you. Mary Roach told me so.

source: Grunt: the curious science of humans at war by Mary Roach

2016. W.W. Norton & Co, NY

the beaded curtain

When I first encountered a beaded curtain as a kid I found it mildly annoying. A fabric curtain would hide what was going on on the other side of the opening, but a row of beaded strings hanging in a doorway, what does that hide? Obscure slightly, maybe. That was a goal? I didn’t like going through the curtain, afraid a bead string would catch in my hair. Plus, it wouldn’t go away. Every time you went through that door you had to deal with it. 

A beaded curtain could be decorative, I conceded. I kind of liked the way it rattled as you went through. And I kind of didn’t. And I guess that’s where my engagement with beaded curtains ended. I’ve never considered hanging one. 

But then there’s this footnote in Mary Roach’s latest: 

[B]eaded strands that hang in doorways in Middle Eastern homes, allow[] breeezes, but not flies, to pass.

Oh. 

Who knew? Makes me thankful once again that flies were never much of an issue in my neighborhood.

Or, as Mary Roach puts it: 

Who among the thousands of youthful 1970s doofs who hung these in their bedrooms had any clue as to the beads’ provenance as fly control? Not this doof.

source: Grunt: the curious science of humans at war by Mary Roach

2016. W.W. Norton & Co, NY

find the world

… in prose you start with the world

and find the words to match; in poetry you start

with the words and find the world in them.

That’s Charles Bernstein from his poem “Dysraphism”.

source: From the Other Side of the Century: a new American poetry, 1960-1990 edited by Douglas Messerli

Notes Toward an Autobiography by Others

”What’s your favorite color?”

The question came, one morning on the walk to school, from my five-year-old daughter, lately obsessed with “favorites” — declaring hers, knowing mine.

“Blue,” I said, feeling very much the Western male (the West loves blue, and men love it a bit more than women).

A pause. “Why isn’t our car blue, then?”

“Well, I like blue, but I don’t like it as much for cars.”

She processes this. “My favorite color is red.”

That’s the way Tom Vanderbilt begins, You May Also Like, his investigation of favorites, of taste, how we come to like one thing (music, food, color) over another.

I remember being obsessed with favorites as a kid. I’m a little embarrassed by it now. While I certainly have preferences these days, I have tried to cultivate a pleasure in variety, in not having one favorite but in appreciating many things, in finding things to like in places that seem unlikely (or unlikable). 

Yes, I remember insisting that people (my mother, my classmates) come down on a favorite color, as though announcing a favorite defined something essential about that person, something helpful. I think my favorite was red. But I also interrogated this preference. I would look at red in a shirt, red in an advertisement, red in a flower and ask myself if, really, this red was better than blue or purple or yellow anywhere. There were different shades of red, I could see. Maybe there was the shade of red that was the finest, that I could say was my favorite red, no, not just my favorite red but my favorite color, that other shades of red might not hold up to every blue the way my favorite red surely would. 

I remember one time quizzing people on their favorite television network. At the time for me it was CBS. Because they ran a Muppet special, I think. There must have been one or two other things. Maybe they hadn’t preempted a favorite program for a stupid play-off game like other dumb networks. Unlike with the favorite color I mainly got puzzlement over the idea of having a favorite television network. Not just, I like red sometimes, I like blue sometimes, I guess I don’t have a favorite, but what’s a network? If you don’t know which network airs your favorite TV shows how can you declare a favorite network? Not only was educating people on the premises of my question more work than I wanted, the people I had to educate weren’t interested in the lesson. C’mon the CBS eye logo is kinda cool even now, right?

source: You May Also Like: taste in an age of endless choice by Tom Vanderbilt. 2016. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 

Toast and coffee with your fried eggs?

When I came across “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” (when I was a teen, I think) I was fascinated. The educator H. L. Chase had written the text to prove that you could switch out similar sounding words for the familiar ones and the listener would be able to discern the original sense as though interpreting an accent. “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” equals “Little Red Riding Hood.” (The Exploratorium has Chase’s version of the classic fairy tale on its website.) I’ve seen something like this as well when writers attempt to reproduce the sounds of a particular accent. One less radical version you might have seen (or even accidentally used) is the switching out of the contraction for “have” with the soundalike “of” as in “He should of done that already!” (instead of “He should’ve done that already.”)

I have used this homonymesque technique in my writing, poetry particularly, adding slightly hidden meanings or puns. I like to stretch the soundalike across more than one word. Chase does this, too. Here’s Red Riding Hood to the Wolf in grandmother disguise:

"O Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomalous prognosis!”

Let’s see if I can translate: O Grandma, what a big nose! I never saw such an enormous proboscis. I think I got that right. “Anomalous prognosis” doesn’t sound much like “enormous proboscis” to me and I had to struggle a little figuring out what Chase meant us to read. In the category of soundalike covering more than one word: "suture" stands in for "such a", "water" for "what a". You can break words up, too. "Grandma" might be written "gray maw," for instance. (If there’s an authoritative translation of "Ladle Rat" I haven’t seen it.)

It’s tricky. Push this too much and the hidden meaning is so hidden as to be absent. I often have trouble parsing Chase’s “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” and it’s not supposed to be a big challenge. 

In his memoir/essay about being young and fighting the good fight in ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, Dale Peck writes about a bit of goofiness amid the fierce seriousness:

Byron … taught me to yell “ACT UP! Fight back! Fried eggs!” (instead of “ACT UP! Fight back! Fight AIDS!”) to relieve the monotony of two- or three-hour chants at demos: you could shout it right in cops’ faces, in reporters’; they never knew the difference.

Given that I often can’t make out the words in chants if I don’t already know what the chanters are shouting, I’m not surprised Peck heard no one puzzle over the fried eggs part. Close enough, right?

Roxane Gay On Assholes

In a chapter of friendly advice in her book, Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay has a few things to say about assholes, the whole body variety:

Sometimes your friends will date people you cannot stand. You can either be honest about your feelings or you can lie. There are good reasons for both. Sometimes you will be the person dating someone your friends cannot stand. If your man or woman is a scrub, just own it so you and your friends can talk about more interesting things. My go-to explanation is ‘I am dating an asshole because I’m lazy.’ You are welcome to borrow it.

Don’t flirt, have sex, or engage in emotional affairs with your friends’ significant others. This shouldn’t need to be said, but it needs to be said. That significant other is an asshole, and you don’t want to be involved with an asshole who’s used goods. If you want to be with an asshole, get a fresh asshole of your very own. They are abundant.

source: Bad Feminist: essays by Roxane Gray

2014. HarperCollins, NY

pile of reading

The Singular Pilgrim: travels on sacred ground by Rosemary Mahoney

This is a library discard I grabbed before it got boxed up for donation. I’m reading it on my work breaks. And quite enjoying it. Mahoney is good at description and evoking place. I’m currently in the chapter on Varanasi, the holy city in India where human bodies are cremated and the ashes scattered in the sacred Ganges River. Mahoney is impressed by how polluted the river is. The last passage I read has her walking up to a man who is emptying garbage from plastic bags directly into the river. There are signs forbidding this activity but he’s hardly the first person Mahoney has seen flouting such rules. Anyway, Mahoney walks up to him and tells him to stop it. Stop throwing garbage in the river. He pauses, perplexed and a little intimidated by the foreign woman. “Not even the electric wires?” he says. 

The Bridge: the life and rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick

I’ve been eyeing this biography on the shelf at the library where I work. After David Maraniss’s Barack Obama: the story left us hanging as young Mr Obama heads off to law school, I’ve wanted a biography that brings me a little closer to the present. Remnick’s The Bridge was published a year into Obama’s presidency, so maybe this will serve. Like the earlier book this is a fatty, clocking in at 586 pages. So I haven’t been in a hurry to commit. Now that I have checked it out, I guess I’m still not in a hurry to commit. I’m a big 14 pages in. Am I in love with Barack Obama? He seems to me rather cold. But I’m curious about him, where he came from, how he got to the White House. He’s done some good things there, and yet … there seems to be so much more he could have done. He still has a little time. 

Moonshot: the indigenous comics collection edited by Hope Nicholson

This won an award and the theme piqued my interest so I ordered it from the library. Not far enough in to have many thoughts on it. 

From the Other Side of the Century: a new American poetry, 1960 - 1990 edited by Douglas Messerli

Douglas Messerli’s Sun & Moon / Green Integer Press has been home to much avant garde or innovative writing. I read his anthologies of non-U.S. poets and enjoyed them so brought home a nice used copy of From the Other Side of the Century when I had opportunity. At more than 1100 pages I figure I will be reading it for a while. I’m coming up on a fourth the way through and the reading has been pretty good. Yet I connected more frequently with Messerli’s non-U.S. poets anthologies than here. 

Selected Poems by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson

This is one of those books I got well into then put aside for several months. I got hung up in a long take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. After finishing some other books I took on completing the Tempest section and both liked and struggled with the task. I’m now on to Auden’s 1946 “Phi Beta Kappa Poem.” 

A Longing for the Light: selected poems by Vicente Aleixandre, edited by Lewis Hyde

Having just read an anthology of 20th century poets of Spain and having been favorably impressed, I looked on the shelf at the Central branch to see what individual poets’ collections the library owned. I pulled this one. Aleixandre has appeared in my personal anthology so I ought to read more. “If you could only see what suffering / the moon displays without trying.”

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon edited by Ivan Morris

Sei Shonagon was a contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji. Both women lived in Japan and were members of the imperial court about a thousand years ago. Shonagon recounts anecdotes and makes lists of personal likes and dislikes. The reader is immersed in an unfamiliar but not incomprehensible world of art and etiquette and mild intrigue. It’s a book I sometimes forget I’m reading.

Oakland Review #2, edited by Paul Corman-Roberts and J de Salvo

My friend Tim Donnelly has poems in this issue and I picked up a copy at a reading in Oakland last week. I also handed one of the editors an envelope full of my own poems in hopes that, you know …

Poems for the Millennium, volume 4: the University of California book of North African literature edited by Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour

Another fat anthology. I’ve enjoyed earlier volumes of the Poems for the Millennium series and there hasn’t been much North African or Arabic literature in my diet (partly because there isn’t a lot in translation and partly because I haven’t been much fond of it). This volume wasn't easy to find.

Bird Dream: adventures at the extremes of human flight by Matt Higgins

I watched a video on youtube of a man leaping from an airplane in one of those full body wingsuits and coming in for a water landing on a lake. All other wingsuit videos ended with the daredevil deploying a parachute for landing. The video looked pretty authentic. But I wasn’t certain. Then I came across Bird Dream in the library. The book seems to be about the very feat I watched the video of. Other books keep supplanting it in the gotta-read-now category but maybe I’m ready this time? It looks like something I want to read.

Titles Read in 2015

     January

I Hugged This Pony Today by Leo Puppytime, et al

The Stop & Go Show #1 by Leo Puppytime 

Perpetual Nervousness #6 & #6.5 by Maira

The Solstice Submarine a 3D minicomic by Christopher Joel & Donna Almendrala

Parthenon West Review, issu3 7, 2010

This Layer of Plush by Ann Veronica Simon

The Transparent Body by Lisa Berstein

The Graces by Aaron Shurin

Index/Fist, Feb 2014: The Opposite of edited by Caroline Kessler, Janet Frishberg, Lulu Richter

Fairy Tales and After by Roger Sale

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (ebook)

Wet Reckless by Cassandra Dallett

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

What Light Can Do by Robert Hass

The Reenactments by Nick Flynn

Poetry Jan 2014, vol. 203 no. 4 

     February

Mouth by Lisa Chen

Mixed Up! a zine about mixed race queer & feminist experience

It Never Happened Again by Sam Alden 

A Short History of Laos, 2002 edition by Grant Evans 

Poetry Feb 2014, vol. 203 no. 5

Notes on the Mosquito: selected poems by Xi Chuan

Secrets of the Kingdom: the inside story of the Saudi-U.S. connection by Gerald Posner

7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book by Marvin Bell, Tomaz Salamun, et al

Sister by Raina Telgemeier

Lockjaw & the Pet Avengers by Eliopoulos & Guara

Poetry March 2014, vol. 203 no. 6

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

Irene #5, 2014 edited by Andy Warner & Dakota McFadeean

’68 by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

Poetry April 2014, vol. 204 no. 1

     March/April

Two Lines no. 18: Counterfeits edited by Luc Sante & Rosanna Warren

Poetry May 2014, vol. 204 no. 2

The Rock from Mars by Kathy Sawyer

My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt

The Gate by Francois Bizot

Second Avenue Caper by Joyce Brabner & Mark Zingarelli

Destination Cambodia by Walter Mason

Eavesdrop Soup by Matt Cook

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston

Cinder’s Kingdom by Adeline Esquerra & Ryane Acalin

Poems Out of Harland County by Vivian Shipley

Poetry June 2014, vol. 204 no. 3

Against Forgetting: 20th century poetry of witness edited by Carolyn Forche

City of Coughing and Dead Radiators by Martin Espada 

Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars by Catherine Clinton

Greenpoint by Russell Lichter

The Unreasonable Slug by Matt Cook

The Narnian: the life & imagination of C. S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs

The Virtues of Poetry by James Longenbach

Poetry July/Aug 2014, vol. 204 no. 4

Proving Nothing to Anyone by Matt Cook

Driving Mr. Albert: a trip across America with Einstein’s brain by Michael Paterniti

10 Pocket Poems coutesy of Mrs Dalloway’s bookstore, Berkeley

The Selected Poems of Irving Layton by Irving Layton

Astro City: The Tarnished Angel by Kurt Busiek

Poetry Sept 2014, vol. 204 no. 5

Some Angels Wear Black: selected poems by Eli Coppola 

Astro-City: Shining Stars by Kurt Busiek

Destination Saigon by Walter Mason

Americana: the Kinks, the riffs, the road by Ray Davies

Arroyo Literary Review Spring 2012

Astro-City: Through Open Doors by Kurt Busiek

A Place I’ve Never Been by David Leavitt

     May

The Sculptor by Scott McCloud

A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Again by Lynne Knight

Poetry Oct 2014, vol. 205 no. 1

Petty Theft by Pascal Girard

The Legend of Oz: the Wicked West #4 by Hitchison & Borges

All-New, All-Different Avengers free comic book day sampler from Marvel by Mark Waid, Mahmud Asrar

Magnus Robot Fighter & Nexus #1 by Baron & Rude

A Member of the Family: gay men write about their families edited by John Preston

Astro-City: Local Heroes by Busiek & Anderson

The Tales of Olga da Polga by Michael Bond

William and the Lost Spirit by Bonneval & Bonhomme

Poetry Nov 2014, vol. 205 no. 2

Einstein’s Daughter: the search of Lieserl by Michele Zackheim

A Year of the Hunter by Czeslaw Milosz

The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer

Autobiography by Morrissey

Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

The Infinite Wait & other stories by Julia Wertz

Difficult News by Valerie Berry

Poetry Dec 2014, vol. 205 no. 3

     June

It’s Not Over by Michelangelo Signorile

Super 8 by Richard Lopez

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

Mirror Maker by Primo Levi

In the Wake of the Day by John Ash

The Family of Max Desir by Robert Ferro

Tomboy by Liz Prince

Reader Please Supply Meaning by Jim Murdoch

Two Lines 2012: Passageways edited by Camille T. Dungy and Daniel Hahn

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Enizagam 2011, issue 5

Sparks-tastic: 21 nights with Sparks in London by Tosh Berman

American Zen: a gathering of poets edited by Ray McNiece & Larry Smith

Berkeley Poetry Review 2012, #42

Oatmeal Magazine #8

When I Grow Up by W. W. Denslow (ebook)

Project Pendulum by Robert Silverberg

Anorexia by Lisa Bernstein

Terms of Service by Jacob Silverman

The New York Review of Books May 7, 2015, vol. LXII no. 8

Best American Comics 2014 edited by Scott McCloud

     July

The Anatolikon by John Ash

The Spectral Boy by Donald Petersen

On the Move by Oliver Sacks

The Enchanted Apples of Oz by Eric Shanower

The Ice King of Oz by Eric Shanower

The Secret Island of Oz by Eric Shanower

The Forgotten Forest of Oz by Eric Shanower

Portfolios of the Poor by Daryl Collins, et al

Masters of Sex by Thomas Maier

Snaggletooth in Ocean Park by FrancEye

Smash Cut by Brad Gooch

Berkeley Poetry Review 2010, #41

The Blue Witch of Oz by Eric Shanower (as appears in Adventures in Oz)

Pippi Goes on Board by Astrid Lindgren

Seriously Funny edited by Barbara Hamby & David Kirby

Massive: gay erotic manga edited by Ishii, Kidd, Kolbeins

Second Son by Robert Ferro

Nippon by Jonathan Hayes

The Parthian Stations by John Ash

Tablegeddon a mini comics anthology edited by Robert Kirby

Deep: free-diving, renegade science … by James Nestor

BUMF vol. 1 by Joe Sacco

     August

To Keep Time by Joseph Massey

Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari

Berkeley Poetry Review 2009, #40

The Gift to Be Simple: a garland for Ann Lee by Robert Peters

Pratfall a mini comics anthology edited by Robert Kirby

My Avant-Garde Education by Bernard Cooper

Pippi in the South Seas by Astrid Lindgren

To the City by John Ash (as appears in Two Books: The Anatolikon & To the City) 

This One Summer by Jillian & Mariko Tamaki

Gay in America portraits by Scott Pasfield 

The World Between Two Covers by Ann Morgan

Roots and Branches edited by Howard Junker

Eating Fire: my life as a Lesbian Avenger by Kelly Cogswell

The Bedside Guide to the No Tell Motel, Second Floor edited by Reb Livingston & Molly Arden

Why Religion Matters by Huston Smith

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari with Eric Klinenberg

Variety Photoplays by Edward Field

Heat a zine edited by Camille & Tom

Two Lines Spring 2015, no. 22

     September

Gaysia: adventures in the queer east by Benjamin Law

The Flayed God: the mythology of Meso-America by Roberta & Peter Markman

A Byzantine Journey by John Ash

How I Killed Pluto and why it had it coming by Mike Brown

Half Magic by Edward Eager

Snowden by Ted Rall

A Year of Rhymes by Bernard Cooper

Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager

Digest by Gregory Pardlo

An Age of License: a travelogue by Lucy Knisley

Catamaran Literary Reader Fall 2014, vol. 2 iss. 4

Evening Brings Everything Back by Jaan Kaplinski

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Rick Sings by Phil Taggart

Alone Forever by Liz Prince

Please Excuse This Poem edited by Lauer & Melnick

Displacement: a travelogue by Lucy Knisley

     October

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

Brief History of the Slinky by Andy Warner

Hornblower Proper by R. G. Mandrake

I Have No Idea What I’m Doing by Maggie Ramm

Professor Cuties by Dave Baker

Hotel Bikini by Gilbert Armendariz

The Old Well by Chris Pianki

Butt Planet by Sienna Jane Robrock

Escargoteric by Johnny Herber

Cringe: an anthology of embarrassment edited by Peter S. Conrad

After the Fall: poems old & new by Edward Field

Magic by the Lake by Edward Eager

The Walrus 2010, issue 53

We Shoot Typewriters by Paul Cormen-Roberts

Crazy Child Scribbler Oct 2015, issue 85, guest editor: Tobey Kaplan

Frank by Barney Frank

The Time Garden by Edward Eager

     November

Treasury of Mini Comics, vol. 2 edited by Michael Dowers 

Why We Hate by Jack Levin & Gordana Rabrenovic

A New Time for Mexico by Carlos Fuentes

The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield

     December

The Interior Circuit: a Mexico City chronicle by Francisco Goldman

Magic or Not? by Edward Eager

Burning the Midnight Oil edited by Phil Cousineau

Trembling a mini comic by Sarah Adams

Drinking Stories by Amy Burek

A Semblance of Adulthood by Erika Sjule

Coyote Tails by Stephanie Houden

if you’d like to hear it, I can sing it for you: a zine on aging #1 edited by A. L. 

Milk & Carrots #3: the science fiction issue edited by Brian Hernick

I Like Your Headband by Elizabeth Beier

Seven-Day Magic by Edward Eager

Solar System by Marcus Chown

Asswipe #8 by Vanessa X

Little Nemo: return to Slumberland by Shanower & Rodriguez

Irene #6 edited by Andy Warner

Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt

Ruins by Peter Kuper

Best Poems of 2015

John Ash ….. Partial Explanation

Valerie Berry ….. two women at a small-town foreign film festival

Tadeusz Borowski ….. The Sun of Auschwitz

Matt Cook ….. Carp Gallbladders

Matt Cook ….. Someone to Love Me

Faiz Ahmad Faiz ….. A Prison Daybreak

Jaan Kaplinski ….. “A last cloud moves across the sky …”

Jaan Kaplinski ….. “I was rinsing laundry at the pond …”

Jaan Kaplinski ….. “The sky’s overcast. The warm wind …”

Jacques Prevert ….. Barbara

Tomaz Salamun ….. Long Ago from 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book

Ksenia Golubovich ….. “The broken ring …” from 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book

Aleksander Wat ….. Imagerie d’Epinal

Angela Veronica Wang ….. New York Boys I Miss Kissing …

These are the poems I hand copied in 2015. When I read a book of poems I tuck a placemark in next to what poems strike me, those I wish to read again later. When I return to the marked poems and read them and read them once more I decide whether this time in leaving them it will be okay to leave them forever. If it isn’t okay, then I hand copy each one onto binder paper and add the poems to a three-ring binder. These are the best poems of the year. Wouldn’t they be for you?

Of the 14 poems, 9 were written originally in a language other than English. I know these only in translation.