Titles Read in 2017

January

Gilliamesque by Terry Gilliam

Holding Company by Major Jackson

Poems of the Hundred Names by Henry H. Hart

Hung: a meditation on the measure of black men in America by Scott Poulson-Bryant

Yang Wan-li by J. D. Schmidt

At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid

Great Balls of Fire by Ron Padgett

Poetry East #88/89 Autumn 2016 [contains one of my poems]

On Beards by Ely Shipley

This Man’s Army: a war in 50-odd sonnets by John Allan Wyeth; intro by Dana Gioia

The New Teen Titans #26, 27, Drug special, 28 - 34, and annual #2

The Adventures of Mr & Mrs Jim and Ron by Ron Padgett and Jim Dine

Invincible: ultimate collection, v. 10 by Kirkman and Ottley

February

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal by E. K. Weaver [read online]

ABBA Unplugged by Karl French

Po Chu-I: selected poems translated by Burton Watson

Fodor’s Belize 2016

Merry Men #1 comic by Robert Rodi, Jackie Lewis

Brave Disguises by Gray Jacobik

Oh Joy Sex Toy vol. 1 by Erika Moen

Mayfly issue 62 Winter 2017

Toujours L’Amour by Ron Padgett

Set the Boy Free by Johnny Marr

Mining the Oort by Frederik Pohl

Oh Joy Sex Toy, v. 2 by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan

Snow on the Water: the Red Moon anthology of English Language haiku 1998 edited by Jim Kacian

Pelvis with Distance by Jessica Jacobs

The Big Something by Ron Padgett

Oh Joy Sex Toy, v. 3 by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan

March

The New Teen Titans, #35 - 37, Batman and the Outsiders, #5, NTT #38 - 44, annual #3

Tulsa Kid by Ron Padgett

Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander

Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

A Glimpse of Red: the Red Moon anthology of English Language haiku 2000 edited by Jim Kacian

Controlled Decay by Gabriela Jauregui

Planetary: all over the world by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

Best American Poetry 2010 guest editor, Amy Gerstler

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

Pegging the Wind: the Red Moon anthology of English Language haiku 2002 edited by Jim Kacian

Dear Friends: American photographs of men together, 1840 - 1918 by David Deitcher

Planetary, vol. 2: The Fourth Man by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

Goldilocks and the Water Bears by Louisa Preston

Planetary, vol. 3: Leaving the 20th Century by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

April

Poems of the Masters: China’s classic anthology edited by Red Pine

The Horses: new & selected poems by Richard Silberg

Wasting Time on the Internet by Kenneth Goldsmith

A New Resonance 2: emerging voices in English Language haiku edited by Jim Kacian and Dee Evetts

The Straight Line: writings on poets and poetry by Ron Padgett

Fairyland: a memoir of my father by Alysia Abbott

Kitaro by Shigeru Mizuki

Tales of the New Teen Titans, #45 - 59 (1984 - 85)

Planetary, vol. 4: Spacetime Archaeology by Ellis and Cassaday

Chapter and Verse by Bernard Sumner

Best American Poetry 2011 guest editor, Kevin Young

No Time for Dancing by Adam Hammer

Elizabeth Bishop: a miracle for breakfast by Megan Marshall

Triangles in the Afternoon by Ron Padgett

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Blood Work: selected prose by Ron Padgett

May

What Is Obscenity? by Rokudenashiko

Red Indian Road West: Native American poetry from California edited by Kurt Schweigman and Lucille Lang Day

The Spoken Word Revolution edited by Mark Eleveld

The United States of Paranoia: a conspiracy theory by Jesse Walker

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

You Never Know by Ron Padgett

Bachelor Girl #1 a mini comic by Amy Martin

Families and Survivors by Alice Adams

The New Teen Titans (1984) #1 - 11, annual #1, #12 - 15

Love Is Love: a comic book anthology to benefit the survivors of the Orland Pulse shooting 

Capacity #8 a mini comic by Theo Ellsworth

How to Be Perfect (2007) by Ron Padgett

The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

June

Step Across the Line: uncollected nonfiction, 1992 - 2002 by Salman Rushdie

When We Rise by Cleve Jones

Many Times, But Then by Ann Lauterbach

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

July

The New Titans #50 - 54 by Marv Wolfman and George Perez

Alone and Not Alone by Ron Padgett

The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander

Unseen City by Nathanael Johnson

How Long by Ron Padgett

Bukowski in a Sun Dress: confessions from a writing life by Kim Addonizio

Poetry Nov 2015, vol. 207 no. 2

Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment by William J. Harris

Thin Soils by Sim Warkov

Reaching by Sim Warkov

Grandchildren by Sim Warkov

Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

In My Own Dark Way by William J. Harris

The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer edited by Robert B. Jones and Margery Toomer Latimer

This Side of Time by Ko Un

My Brother’s Husband, vol. 1 by Gengoroh Tagame

August

Collected Poems by Ron Padgett

Jack Holmes and His Friend by Edmund Field

The High King by Lloyd Alexander

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

Mayfly issue 63, Summer 2017

September 

Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-box: uncollected poems, drafts, and fragments by Elizabeth Bishop

Other Minds: the octopus, the sea, the deep origins of consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith

The Spoken World Revolution Redux edited by Mark Eleveld

Supermutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank

Hip-Hop and Rap: Complete Lyrics for 175 Songs [read to page 100]

Askew #20, 2017

October

Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

Crisis on Infinite Earths, #1 - 12, by Marv Wolfman and George Perez

The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting by Anne Trubek

The Poetry of Ishikawa Takuboka by H. H. Honda

Poems to Eat by Takuboku

Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong

Complete Poems by Blaise Cendrars, translated by Ron Padgett

Punk USA: the rise and fall of Lookout! Records by Kevin Prested

Not My Small Diary #19: Unexplained Events edited by Delaine Dorry Green

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Bound for Canaan: the underground railroad and the war for the soul of America by Fergus M. Bordevich

November

The Stranger in the Woods: the extraordinary story of the last true hermit by Michael Finkel

Sad Toys by Takuboku Ishikaway, translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinada

A Semblance of Adulthood a mini comic by Erika Sjule

Night Hag a mini comic by Rayne Klar

The Vision, vol. 1 by Tom King

The Vision, vol. 2 by Tom King

Poetry March 2017, vol. 209 nol. 6

Be Your Own Backing Band comics by Liz Prince

Paradise, Indiana by Bruce Snider

Slipstream #37 Bergatti & Farallo, editors

MIXD AZN QUEERS June 2017, a zine edited by Jess Wu-O

I’m a bad person and so are you mini comic by Geoff Vasile

Copperhead by Rachel Richardson

Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, vol. 32 no. 1 2015

“Do You Have a Band?”: poetry and punk rock in New York City by Daniel Kane

December

Chronicles, volume one by Bob Dylan

Hundred-Year Wave by Rachel Richardson 

Moominsummer Madness by Tove Jansson

Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry

Perv: the sexual deviant in all of us by Jesse Bening

Big Bucks: the explosion of the art market in the 21st century by Georgina Adam

Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson

Poetry April 2017, vol. 210 no. 1

Best Poems of 2017

Ernest J. Berry …… haiku “impressive name”

Blaise Cendrars …… The Formosa: Life

Bernard Eibond …… haiku “frog pond”

Carolyn Hall …… haiku “enough blossoms”

Yvonne Hardenbrook …… haiku “solstice afternoon”

Duriel E. Harris …… Self Portrait at the Millennium

Paul Hoover …… God’s Promises

Gary Hotham …… haiku “fog”

Takuboku Ishikawa …… “That story of an affair”

Byron Jackson …… haiku “everywhere”

Major Jackson …… Narcissus

Ling Ju Jung …… Night Reverie

James Longenbach …… Snow

Nikola Nilic …… haiku “moonlight”

Linda Noel …… Time Frame

H. F. Noyes …… haiku “subway posters”

W. F. Owen …… haiku “in the park”

Ron Padgett …… Album

Ron Padgett …… Alone and Not Alone

Ron Padgett …… The Ems Dispatch

Ron Padgett …… Nunc

Ron Padgett …… Postcards

Ron Padgett …… Tom and Jerry Graduate from High School

Carl Patrick …… haiku “fireflies”

Po Chu-I …… Aboard a Boat, Reading Yuan Ninth’s Poems

Po Chu-I …… Night on the West River

Jeffrey Rabkin …… haiku “after coming in”

Rachel Richardson …… The Horses

David Rollins …… haiku “this long journey”

John Sheirer …… haiku “talking in her sleep”

Doug Sherman …… haiku “long meeting”

Sun Yun Feng …… Riding at Daybreak

Anna Tambour …… haiku “preoccupied”

Rick Tarquinio …… haiku “winter night”

Wang An Shih …… The Plum Tree

Wang Chih-Huan …… Climbing White Stork Tower

Wei Ying-Wu …… Chuchou’s West Stream

**

If this is your first visit to Dare I Read, welcome. If you’ve been here a few times you already know about my “Best Poems” lists. Today’s list consists of the poems I read in 2017 and decided I could not leave behind. As I read I keep handy a stack of placemarks. If I read a poem I want to read again, I pop in a placemark. I revisit the poem until it wears out for me, or until I decide I have to keep it. In the latter case I hand copy the poem into a looseleaf notebook.

The haiku comes primarily from anthologies published by Red Moon Press. I worked my way through what I could find in libraries. 

I’ve enjoyed Ron Padgett’s poems as I’ve encountered them here and there. This year I took on his books in chronological order. I was surprised to find that the copies held by the Berkeley Public Library were often checked out. There were even holds queues. For poetry! People waiting in line for poetry! It wasn’t until we caught up with Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson on DVD that I clued in on what was driving the popularity. The movie’s poet protagonist writes poems that are written by Ron Padgett. So there were some new interviews with Padgett based on his contributions to the film, which I also read. Ron Padgett’s Collected Poems also is freshly out. It’s big and thick. I got to it after I read the slim volumes, so I would only have to heft it to read poems I otherwise couldn’t find. In one of the interviews Padgett says when he met Adam Driver, the Paterson actor, Driver told Padgett he’d read the big Collected all the way through. Padgett seems to have been tempted to respond, “You didn’t have to do that.”

Cherronesus, Metropotamia, Pelisipia, and more!

In Bound for Canaan, his book on the underground railroad, Fergus Bordewich describes a plan worked on by Thomas Jefferson in 1784, while Jefferson was a member of the Continental Congress. The arrangement would have restricted the extent of slavery in the growing nation:

[N]ewly opened lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi … were destined to fill with settlers. [Jefferson’s plan] would have prohibited slavery in all the western territories … south as well as north. Had [the] plan been adopted slavery would never have been extended to the present states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, or presumably to those west of the Mississippi. Congress failed to approve the plan by a single vote.

That’s one of those points in history you can point to and say, but for one vote things would have been different. 

Besides the dispensation concerning slavery, Thomas Jefferson’s report on the Western Territory also included suggested borders for new states and names for those states. Some of the names are little different from what came to be. Some are rather different. Here they are:

SYLVANIA

MICHIGANIA

CHERRONESUS

ASSENISIPIA

METROPOTAMIA

ILLINOIA

SARATOGA

WASHINGTON

POLYPOTAMIA

PELISIPIA

source: Bound for Canaan: the underground railroad and the war for the soul of America by Fergus M. Bordewich

beggar woman, wandering pilgrim, insane literary colored man, and more!

Gerrit Smith was a wealthy white abolitionist in 19th century New York state. He had a “Grecian mansion” and “owned at least 750,000 acres.” Smith was generous, too. Besides handing out donations to individuals and organizations with a special interest in funding anti-slavery work, Smith explored ways to deed over thousands of acres to former slaves in the hope they might become self-sufficient farmers.

He sounds like a pretty great guy. Smith kept a diary and in it recorded a little bit about each of the many travelers he welcomed to his big house. I love the excerpts that appear in Fergus Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan, a book on the underground railroad. I have to share:

Mrs. Crampton, a beggar woman, spent last night with us. Charles Johnson, a fugitive slave from Hagerstown, took tea at our house last evening and breakfasted with us this morning.

Mr. William Corning, a wandering pilgrim, as he styles himself, dines with us. He is peddling his own printed productions.

Poor Graham, the insane literary colored man, has been with us a day or two.

Elder Cook and William Haines of Oneida depot arrive this evening. Mr. H. is a ‘medium,’ and speaks in unknown tongues.

Dr. Winmer of Washington City, with five deaf mutes and blind child take supper and spend the evening with us.

We find Brother Swift and his wife and daughter at our house, where they will remain until they get lodgings. There come this evening an old black man, a young one and his wife and infant. They say they are fugitives from North Carolina.

A man from ____ brings his mother, six children and her half sister, all fugitives from Virginian.

An Indian and a fugitive slave spent last night with us. The Indian has gone on, but Tommy McElligott (very drunk) has come to fill his place.

source: Bound for Canaan: the underground railroad and the war for the soul of America by Fergus M. Bordewich

Notes toward an autobiography by others

In her book The Argonauts Maggie Nelson says:

My writing is riddled with … tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

I was surprised once when someone told me after a poetry reading, “You speak with such authority.” Like Maggie Nelson I grew up including “tics of uncertainty” in my writing. It reflected my thinking, didn’t it? Who really knows. Knows! Being certain of something should make you suspicious. Be open to other possibilities and, at least occasionally, what seems impossible.

I remember as a kid there was a period I added the word “no” to anything sarcastic, i.e., “That’s the most beautiful dirt clod I’ve ever seen — no!” I don’t know how I picked it up, and I don’t remember anybody bringing my use of it to my attention, but at some point it hit my ear wrong. Why was I so frequently contradicting myself? It took conscious work to purge the “no”. 

When I noticed I was constantly using phrases like “I think” and “it seems to me” in my writing and that other writers weren’t I wondered where the difference was. Were the others writing what they thought? Yes. You are reading them to find out what they think, I said to myself. They don’t have to write “I think” because it is understood that what they are writing is what they think. This made sense to me. So whenever “I think” appeared redundant — “I think ice cream is too cold!” — I would cut it out. “Ice cream is too cold!” is not a universal opinion thus I must not be speaking for everyone. I must be speaking for myself!

Leaving out “tics of uncertainty” creates an illusion of certainty. Or, as Maggie Nelson says, evokes “a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to [the speaker].” You get used to figuring out whether the person speaking is speaking from a place of authority, a place of personal experience, a place of knowledge, by following their argument a bit. Does it hold together? Does it make sense? Does it match your experience? They may be more wrong than right but still be worth attending to. 

Nelson goes on to say she opens a lot of her letters or emails with “Sorry,” as in “Sorry for the delay. Sorry for the confusion. Sorry for whatever.” She adds, “I’ve had to train myself to wipe the sorry off.”

I’ve done that too. Who really cares that I’m sorry when I haven’t written a blog post in months? You’re writing one now, Glenn. What is it you’re putting fingers to keyboard to say? Other than that you are sorry, of course. Other than that you are terribly sorry and you feel bad about neglecting the blog and doing other things which are not important either.

source: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

You can play

I was a fan of a number of bands on Lookout! Records. From Green Day to Pansy Division to The Mr. T Experience. I like the way Kevin Prested’s history of the label starts right out with an anecdote featuring one of those aspects of punk that I’ve always found really appealing, that is, you can play. You don’t think you can play? Pshaw. Here’s a guitar or a bass or a mic to sing into. The rest of us will help you out. We have a gig next week.

In 1984 Larry Livermore was publishing Lookout Magazine (print-runs of 50 copies) when he started a punk band. Why let go a good name? Livermore called his band The Lookouts. His girlfriend left the band not long after it was begun, it seems. But Livermore wasn’t ready to give up.  

[Larry] Livermore salvaged the drum kit left behind by his ex-girlfriend and now ex-drummer [of the Lookouts]. Sue Rhine met Larry at the gay club The Stud in San Francisco, and after sharing some dance floor moves, they reconvened outside to get better acquainted.

Sue Rhine: … When [Larry] suggested that I ought to consider being the drummer for his punk band, I laughed out loud. I had never thought about playing drums before. Was this a joke or maybe a very strange pickup line? He insisted he was indeed quite serious about this and explained that, based on my dancing, he could detect some sort of natural rhythm. He told me that he had a drum set, a rehearsal space, and that he could easily show me what to play.

Sue Rhine does try. But the one gig she plays doesn’t go well. At least, she decides her “wimpy drumming and lack of stamina” aren’t up to her own standards, and she decamps to Maui. 

There have been those who didn’t give up so easily. Some went far. Most didn’t. But they made music, or, I like to think, made a righteous noise.  

source: Punk USA: the rise and fall of Lookout! Records by Kevin Prested

Good work is good work

Clearly Meant is a thrice-yearly interview and reading series I host at the Berkeley Public Library’s Claremont Branch. The reading takes place on a Saturday afternoon, from 2:00 to 3:00. The second year of the series finished up in June. 

The series is fairly unusual in that it is a small local reading that focuses on one poet. The poet reads her work, then sits for an interview with me and a discussion with the audience. There is no open mic.

To get word out about the poet and the reading I create an eight page chapbook that is handed out free at every library branch. I make fliers and post them. I list the reading in local online event calendars. BPL has a Facebook page and I try to get the reading promoted through that.  

Audience turnout, however, really depends on whether the poet promotes the reading to her friends and fans. If the poet doesn’t bring in friends and fans, we have a small audience. There just aren’t many who will show up for a reading by an unknown poet.

The smallest audience we had up to this June was a turnout of eight, if I remember right. That was for the most well-known of the poets I’ve so far invited. I figured the small turnout was because the poet didn’t expend much effort at promotion. That’s fine. Promotion shouldn’t be the poet’s job. Promoting is a separate energy and different from creating. Our other events have drawn 15 to 20 attendees. 

Until this June. The Clearly Meant for June had a grand total of one audience member. 

I’ve been a featured reader where that sort of thing has happened. You could cancel, I suppose, but there you are, holding your stack of poems, a little magazine bookmarked with its pink Post-It, you’ve practiced your patter. I bet there are people who have performed to a totally empty room. 

If the room were totally empty I imagine I would walk away. But if one person is there, well, when you read to an audience of any size each person hears your words as one person, you might as well let your poems out of silence to the person who has brought her ears.

The June poet read for us, an audience of two: me and the audience member who was also a poet. He uses the Claremont Branch frequently and has come to other Clearly Meant readings. The June poet and I sat down for the interview. After some Q&A we added our audience member and he was pretty interesting too.

I chose the June poet partly because I knew she was very active in the community. She hosts a reading series at a bookstore. She helps organize an annual poetry festival. I see her at literary events around the area. I looked forward to a lively discussion with her and her fans. 

Perhaps the turnout was small because another poetry event was scheduled at the same time at another branch of the library. Perhaps the turnout was small because it was an unusually hot day and people considering their options chose against the one that required sitting in a little unair-conditioned room. After the reading, the June poet told me the Clearly Meant reading was one of three events where she was featured that weekend. Perhaps the turnout was small because she was overexposed. Perhaps it was just random. We pay the featured poet (another rare thing for a poetry series), so having a tiny audience is looked at askance by the budget people. A series very few attend is a series that gets canceled. That’s too bad, but that’s what happens. 

I’m prepping for another Clearly Meant in October. I’ve designed the flier and am working on the chapbook. I get paid for putting this all together because Clearly Meant is an official library program. Good for me! It’s nice to be paid for something you like to do. Even people who don’t attend the reading will read the poet’s work because the chapbooks do get picked up. That’s a good thing. Anyway, good work is good work. I hope we get a room full of eager listeners in October. But who knows?

In July I was reading a collection of essays by Kim Addonizio, a writer who lives in Oakland. Kim Addonizio has published books of poetry, novels, a couple books on how to write. She’s almost famous! But her essay “How to Succeed in Po Biz” is a jumble of anxieties and mishaps. 

“Many are they who harbor the burning desire to become successful poets and rise to the top of their profession,” Addonizio begins. “To see one’s name on the cover of a slender paperback, to have tens and perhaps even dozens of readers, to ascend to a lecture podium in a modest-size auditorium after being introduced by the less successful poet, who is unsure of the pronunciation of your name — these are heady rewards.” 

Note the number of readers the “successful poet at the top of [her] profession” can expect: “tens.” It’s sarcasm. But it’s true. I would be “the less successful poet” in this scenario. 

Later in the essay, Addonizio spins out a more dramatic version of the reading. Besides the negotiation over the honorarium and the rigors of travel, Addonizio contemplates how unsociable she is. “You are a writer, after all, and prefer to be alone in your own house with your cat. You don’t really like your fellow humans, except for your boyfriend, whose stories and mannerisms can be usefully stolen and put into your writing.” Ultimately the reading takes place before “an audience of three in a six-hundred-seat auditorium. …Tell yourself [i]t is the work that you love, and sometimes you even get paid for it. Tell yourself you are lucky, that people envy you.”

source: Bukowski in a Sundress: confessions from a writing life by Kim Addonizio. 2016. Penguin Books, New York. 

Titles Read in 2008

January - May

Watchword issue 9, 2006, Liz Lisle, editor

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

Spectral Snow: the dark fantasies of Jack Snow by Jack Snow

Premonitions: the Kaya anthology of new Asian North American poetry edited by Walter K. Lew

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry: first annual edition edited by Alan F. Pater

Ants Dissolve in Moonlight by W. B. Keckler

Some Nights No Cars at All by Josh Rathkamp

In the Hub of the Fiery Force: collected poems of Harold Norse, 1934 - 2003 by Harold Norse

Shark’s Tooth by Marc Elihu Hotstadter

New and Collected Poems by Ishmael Reed

Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons, poems 2001 - 2006 by Al Young

Golden Handcuffs Review Winter/Spring 2007, vol. 1 no. 8, Lou Rowan, editor

Flying in Water by Barbara Tomash

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Cannibal Casserole: new and selected poems, 1996 - 2006 by Julia Vinograd

When God Gets Drunk by Julia Vinograd

Jubilee by Roxane Beth Johnson

A Poetry House Built with Four-by-Fours: an ongoing collection of pseudo-immortal poems, chapter 1 by Mel C. Thompson

Eleven Eleven: a journal of literature and art vol. 4, 2007, Ben Lerner, faculty editor

The Cave Paintings of Baja California: discovering the great murals of an unknown people by Harry W. Crosby

Another World: a second anthology of works from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project edited by Anne Waldman

King-Cat Classix: the best of King-Cat Comics and Stories by John Porcellino

King-Cat Comics and Stories #68, 2007, by John Porcellino

Breaking the Fever by Mary Mackey

Iron House: stories from the yard by Jerome Washington

The Fixer: a story from Sarajevo by Joe Sacco

Tarahumara: Where Night Is the Day of the Moon by Bernard L. Fontana

Tantalum issue 1, 2006, editors: Yasmine Alwan and Cynthia Nelson

Teaching a Stone to Talk: expeditions and encounters by Annie Dillard

The Devil’s Teeth: a true story of obsession and survival among America’s great white sharks by Susan Casey

The Violent Land by Jorge Amado, translated by Samuel Putnam

That Salty Air by Timothy Sievert

American Splendor #1 - 4, 2008, by Harvey Pekar, et al

Dark Star Safari: overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux

The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico edited and with an introduction by Miguel Leon-Portilla

Waterwalking in Berkeley poems by Alan Bern

The Dream of Water: a memoir by Kyoko Mori

Too Much Coffee Man: How to Be Happy by Shannon Wheeler

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Notes from Travels by D. L. Emblen

Mineshaft #21, Spring 2008, edited & published by Everett Rand and Gioia Palmieri

Dreams Are Another Set of Muscles by David Shaddock

Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty by Greg Rucka & Ed Brubaker, writers; Michael Lark, art

Alexander the Great: selected texts from Arrian, Curtius, and Plutarch edited by Tania Gergel

Words in Your Face: a guided tour through twenty years of the New York City poetry slam by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Madonna: Like an Icon by Lucy O’Brien

Sorry for Snake #3, March 2008, edited by Jack Morgan and Sara Mumolo

UR-VOX: journal of the underlying voice #2, 2002, Lee Ballentine, editor

Innocent Killers by Hugo Van Lawick and Jane Goodall

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson

Deep Survival: who lives, who dies, and why: true storeis of miraculous endurance and sudden death by Laurence Gonzalez

The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Wlater Bates

Fence #13 (vol. 7, no. 1), Rebecca Wolff, editor

Ploughshares Spring 2002, vol. 28, no. 1, Cornelius Eady, guest editor; Don Lee, editor

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A Glimpse of Nothingness: experiences in an American Zen community by Janwillem van de Wetering

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

The Power of Babel: a natural history of language by John H. McWhorter

Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ Standard English by John McWhorter

My Lives by Edmund White

Smile When You’re Lying: confessions of a rogue travel writer by Chuck Thompson

The Buried Book: the loss and rediscovery of the great epic of Gilgamesh by David Damrosch
June

My Song Is the Light: California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology 2007 edited by Mary Lee Gowland

6 X 6 #15, Spring 2008

Free Lunch #30, 38, 39; Ron Offen, editor

The Youngest Science: notes of a medicine-watcher by Lewis Thomas

Otherhood by Reginald Shepherd

Astonishing X-Men: vol. 1: Gifted; vol. 2: Dangerous; vol. 3: Torn; vol. 4: Unstoppable Joss Whedon, writer; John Cassaday, artist

Circus World by Barry B. Longyear

Poems by Herman Hesse, translated by James Wright

The Little Dog Laughed by Joseph Hansen

July - October

Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara: a memoir by Joe LeSueur

13 poems in black and white by Jason Biehl

Crashing the Gate: netroots, grassroots, and the rise of people-powered politics by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

Monterey Poetry Review vol. 1, no. 2, Spring 2005

Wishing for Wings by Assotto Saint

In Search of Nature by Edward O. Wilson

Prize Poems, 1913 - 1929 edited by Charles A. Wagner

The Complete Peanuts, vol. 2: 1952 to 1954 by Charles M. Schulz

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Galileo’s Daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith, and love by Dava Sobel

Complications: a surgeon’s notes on an imperfect science by Atul Gawande

Yeti #2, 2002?

The Believer vol. 6, no. 5, July/August 2008

When I Was Cool: my life at the Jack Kerouac School by Sam Kashner

The Ten-Cent Plague: the great comic-book scare and how it changed America by David Hajdu

Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler

The Late Show by David Trinidad

Dinosaurs: the most complete, up-to-date encyclopedia for dinosaur lovers of all ages by Thomas R. Holtz, Jr

Visible Word, Sound: from vision to voice chapbook for Geof Huth reading at Canessa Gallery, San Francisco

Hemlock Fare #1 and 2, by Daniel J. Beck

Signs of Life: channelsurfing through 90s culture edited by Jennifer Joseph and Lisa Taplin

Primary Trouble: an anthology of contemporary American poetry edited by Leonard Schwartz, Joseph Donahue, and Edward Foster

Great Mirrors Shattered: homosexuality, orientalism, and Japan by John Whittier Treat

Light from a Nearby Window: contemporary Mexican poetry edited by Juvenal Acosta

Pagan Babies by Greg Johnson

Conan, vol. 1: The Frost-Giant’s Daughter and other stories by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord and Thomas Yeates

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

All the Small Poems by Valerie Worth

Road Fever: a high-speed travelogue by Tim Cahill

Skid by Dean Young

Cometbus #51: The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah by Aaron Cometbus

Ojingogo by Matthew Forsythe

Capacity by Theo Ellsworth

November - December

Tranny: Boys Will Be Girls by Fiona Mallratte (Steve Lafler)

The Elephant’s Secret Sense: the hidden life of the wild herds of Africa by Caitlin O’Connell

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: the life of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger

Ampersand Squared: an anthology of pwoermds edited by Geof Huth

Texistence by Geof Huth and mIEKAL aND

National Geographic April 2008, vol. 213, no.4

The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the beginnings of superstardom in America by Larry McMurtry

Laika by Nick Abadzis

Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

[When I initially posted this list I had misplaced a notebook recording the summer of 2008, so I left a gap with a note to that effect. I have found the notebook! Thus the list as posted is now as complete as my book log. - August 13, 2018]