I have three piles of books these days. With each pile I read a little of one book, a little of another. The main pile is by the bed. It tends to have several books, more than I’m actively reading. This is in case while I’m reading in bed I decide I want to try something new but don’t want to get out of bed to go looking for it. There are also books that I’ve gotten some way into but have stalled on — hit a slow part or something. I’m not going to list the ones I’ve stalled on. If I get back to them, they’ll be eligible for another pile post.
The second pile is on the windowseat in the library upstairs. I love windowseats! The third pile is at my desk at the public library. Since I am stalled in those books by default right now — with the libraries closed, I have no access — I won’t list them here.
Upstairs pile:
Haiku World: an international poetry almanac
by William J. Higginson
1996. Kodansha International, New York
I just started Haiku World this morning. It’s both an anthology of haiku from around the world and something different, a handbook for classifying haiku by season. Japanese poets have recourse to these sorts of handbooks (called saijiki). It’s a reference, like a rhyming dictionary; poets use them to … well, I guess it’s to make sure you used the right season word? … Here in Berkeley the contrast between the seasons is not great. It can be quite cool in the summer with the fog in and we never get snow. The season-obsession of Japanese haiku is not mine. Flipping through the book I see Higginson give a term, Scarecrow, say, or Kelp-Bladder Popping, both of which are words evoking autumn, he says. Higginson provides something of a definition (“In autumn … kelps wash up on the beach, and children love to pop their air-pockets.”) Often there are two or three haiku under the season term. In the case of Kelp-Bladder Popping, there’s one by June Hopper Hymas:
no children with me
to pop the kelp bladders
ocean’s salt-bitter smell
Multi-America: essays on cultural war and cultural peace
edited by Ishmael Reed
1998. Penguin Books, New York
Collections of essays are like crackers. I munch my way through them, nodding or shrugging. I’ve been enjoying this. Various thoughtful takes on “multiculturalism,” mainly in the context of the US, although there’s a personal essay by a black woman in Berlin, and another on the neglected history of British people of color.
Shake the Kaleidoscope: a new anthology of Modern poetry
edited by Milton Klonsky
1973. Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster, New York
With its Mod cover, depicting five poets crowded into a window, I expected this mass market size anthology to feature all the usual suspects and most the usual poems. But I’m pleased to say editor Milton Klonsky has eccentric tastes. The poets are Americans and Brits, but not all are familiar names. When the name is familiar, the poem may not be. There’s one poem by Elizabeth Bishop, but it’s not “The Fish” or “The Art of Losing”; rather it’s “Visits to St Elizabeth’s”. I don’t mind. I like “Visits”! Klonsky gives three pages to Samuel Greenberg who wrote in obscurity, but whose poems were discovered by Hart Crane (Crane also stole some of them). The anthology clearly reflects the tastes of its editor. I like that.
A House for Mr Biswas
by V. S. Naipaul
1961/1984. Vintage / Random House, New York
This is the novel that made V. S. Naipaul famous. It’s quite long, almost 600 pages in this mass market edition. Mr Biswas lives on the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean among an Indian immigrant community. The narrator refers to the main character as “Mr Biswas” even when flashing back to childhood: “Mr Biswas loved the calf … He took it for walks across damp fields of razor grass and along the rutted lanes between the cane fields, anxious to feed it with grass of many sorts and unable to understand why the calf resented being led from one place to another.” The novel can strike me just right and I can read it for an hour or two. But I’ve stalled in it a couple times.
Bedside Pile:
Tales of Magic Land, vol. 1: The Wizard of the Emerald City and Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers
by Alexander Volkov
translated from the Russian by Peter L. Blystone
1991/2010. Red Branch Press, Staten Island, NY
The Wizard of the Emerald City is a translation/adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. In producing his Russian version Alexander Volkov added some incidents — an ogre, a flood — and eliminated some — the dainty China Country, the fighting trees. Volkov’s Wizard was originally published in 1939. It was a hit! It was such a hit that Alexander Volkov went ahead and wrote his own sequels. Though L. Frank Baum wrote several sequels to The Wizard, Volkov’s sequels were independently created, were not translations from Baum. Peter Blystone says Volkov even revised his Wizard further to prepare readers for his own sequels. The Baum books were not available in the Soviet Union, so a generation of kids behind the Iron Curtain grew up fans of Volkov’s Oz rather than Baum’s.
I was always curious about the Russian version of Oz, which Volkov called Magic Land. I’m glad we have Peter Blystone’s translations. Only the first sequel was available in an English version until Blystone came along. I read that version 30 years ago or so. When I got Blystone’s Volkov I started with book number three. But now I’ve come back around to the series. Last month I read Blystone’s version of Volkov’s Wizard. It’s not that much different from Baum. Blystone even uses Baum’s original phrasings sometimes, and maybe he shouldn’t have because Volkov is not Baum. Anyway, I’ve now started Urfin Jus and His Wooden Soldiers.
Poems for the Millennium, vol. 4: The University of California book of North African literature
edited by Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour
2012. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
Not a skinny book! At our 750 pages it’s a book that I’ve been working on for some time. I like it. It’s a rare poem that strikes a personal chord, but that doesn’t mean I’m not learning things and enjoying the experience.
Blue Unicorn: a tri-quarterly of poetry
vol. XLII, no. 2; spring 2019
John Hart, editor
San Rafael, CA
This issue has a poem by me in it. Blue Unicorn favors poems in traditional forms, though publishes much free verse.
Poetry
vol. 201, no. 5; February 2013
Christian Wiman, editor
Chicago, IL
The first 13 pages are devoted to the adventures of a schizophrenic (?) who chooses not to take his medicine. There’s a several-page feature in the middle devoted to the painter Joan Mitchell.
Namesake: book two
by Isabelle Malancon and Megan Lavey-Heaton
self-published, originally appeared on the web
https://www.namesakecomic.com
I ordered the first two hard copy volumes of Namesake after an Oz friend enthused on Facebook. The story is mostly set in Oz, though it is no more Baum’s Oz than was Volkov’s Magic Land. I like the art and the story’s pretty good. I have the feeling, though, that the story has barely begun. I’m a third of the way into book two and it feels like there are several volumes of story to come.
The Uninhabitable Earth: life after warming
by David Wallace-Wells
2019. Tim Duggan Books / Crown / Random House, New York
This is my last library book. I’ve finished all the others and they are waiting patiently to be returned. The topic of Uninhabitable Earth alone kept me from being eager to read it. One might expect the book to be a drag — all doom and gloom! And it is. But I didn’t expect to find the author so annoying. On page six Wallace-Wells offers, “I am not an environmentalist.” Later he says something to the effect that if not for all the bad effects global warming will have on the human race, he wouldn’t much care. After all, he’s not “a nature person.” I’ll probably finish the book. I seldom abandon books, especially if I think they’re of value. But … hmf.
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