CRITICAL MASS

Update your bookmarks!

2008-12-15T08:41:00.002-05:00

As I'm sure any visitors to bookcritics.org have noticed, we've revamped our website!

You can now locate Critical Mass, the blog of the NBCC, at www.bookcritics.org/blog.

The site also has loads of new features, including the ability to use your NBCC membership online. Look for an email from NBCC President Jane Ciabattari letting you know about all the other great new features on bookcritics.org.

We will be rolling out new features, including our Membership functionality, every day. We'll keep you updated.

We appreciate your patience while we work out the kinks of the site. If you'd like to give us your feedback, just write us at nationalbookcritics@gmail.com.

Roundup

2008-12-13T16:33:00.037-05:00

Eric Banks visits Jonestown, 30 years after the murder-massacres:

"We expect our killing fields to be marked a certain way, and with at least a certain rhetoric of rectitude. At Jonestown, in Guyana, there are no markers, no memorials noting what took place, no manicured clearings to mark how the site looked 30 years ago, when more than 900 Americans died there in a still hard-to-imagine moment of mass suicide and outright murder. It is an open field bifurcated by a red dirt road, with knee-high bush to the north and, to the south, thick jungle. You don't even realize you have entered the site until you are already there."

Scott McLemee on Antonio Negri, coauthor of "Empire":

"Four new works by Negri appeared in English in 2008—the year we all found ourselves well downstream from that era when debate over globalization and its discontents took the form of extrapolating long-term trends. The problem now is to find a way through the ruins. I have been studying the books in a state of heightened (indeed, strained) attention—with powers of concentration periodically stimulated and shattered by arteriosclerotic convulsions in the world’s financial markets—but also through tears in my eyes.

"They are tears of perplexity and frustration."

John Freeman talks to Garrison Keillor and considers the latest entry in the McSweeney's "Voices of Witness" series, "Narratives From the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan,"compiled and edited by Craig Walzer.

Rayyan Al-Shawaf on Nadeem Aslam's latest:

"According to a Chinese proverb, the hardest things in life are three: to love someone who does not love you back, to be exhausted but unable to sleep, and to wait for a friend who never shows. The title of Pakistani-British author Nadeem Aslam's latest novel evokes images of the last of these three afflictions, and in a sense, "The Wasted Vigil" is all about waiting."

Rebecca Skloot suggests you take a look at Snowball, the Dancing Cockatoo...

Jon Stewart says: "Books make great gifts because they’re an amazing way to kill time while your website is buffering," in a cameo appearance on the Association of American Publisher's new BooksAreGreatGifts website, part of a campaign, via Facebook, Twitter, etc, to highlight book buying this holiday season.

Angie Drobnic Holan finds Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates" an "entertaining meditation." While Carlo Wolff finds the pictures in "The Narcotic Farm" leave the deepest impression.

The Kansas City Star's John Michael Eberhart writes that the 75th anniversary edition of "New Letters" contains "as good as any piece of nonfiction I’ve read in the last five years," Robin Hemley's "Field Notes for the Graveyard Enthusiast."

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: SEAN NEVIN

2008-12-12T05:09:00.006-05:00

Oblivio Gate, Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.

Sean Nevin teaches at Arizona State University, where he directs the Young Writers Program and is assistant director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. He is editor of 22 Across: A Review of Young Writers, and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA. Oblivio Gate won the First Book Award in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry.

The tragedy of Alzheimer's disease is one of the touching centers of this book, but it is only a part of a series of experiences that connect the speaker to sickness, hospital visits and patient care. Indeed, the reminders of one’s mortality and vulnerability are everywhere and everyday. The title poem suggests that dementia and memory loss, this "Oblivio gate," is one of the frightening passages before death, and that the fear this knowledge instills is the burden of those who witness and observe. Those who experience also suffer but in different ways. How did you navigate this difficult subject and manage to infuse originality in a much-discussed subject matter as Alzheimer’s? In terms of shaping it into poetry, what did you try to avoid and what was hard to stay away from?

It was not my original intent to write a book with Alzheimer's disease as a central theme, in fact I resisted it almost every step of the way. I began by exploring how the brain perceives the self, relationships and the world around us. That led to a closer look at language, how words and their meanings will sometimes morph, unravel and decode altogether during the course of a neurological disease. In a strange way, I think that resistance to an illness-themed book played a critical role in the navigation of the difficult subject matter. It was written and conceived poem by poem and over the span of many years. The book has characters and a lose chronology but that did not emerge until much later in the process of putting the manuscript together. The book found itself and I was along for the ride. The memory poems rose to the top and seemed to gravitate toward each other, it was only then that I cut several other poems in the manuscript and began to write in the direction of the obsession. I can take a hint.

I was keenly aware of the many poetic landmines that come with Alzheimer's themed poetry and I proceeded gingerly through the minefields of sentimentality, overly dark clichéd images and the exploitation of those suffering, including by this time, my own family. I did not want to capitalize on the voyeuristic victimization of the ill. That said, it is the artist that must not flinch or look away. Alzheimer’s is a much-discussed issue for good reason, nearly twenty-six million people worldwide are afflicted with the disease and that number is expected to quadruple by the year 2050. We must discuss it. Charles Simic says "everything in the world, profane or sacred, needs to be reexamined repeatedly in the light of one's own experience." Of course there is nothing new under the sun, but it is the poet's job to explore all of it and, as Uncle Ezra instructs, "make it new."

The carpenter bees that keep coming back throughout the book are intriguing, but more so two other objects that make more than one appearance: the garden gnome and the cherry Cadillac Coupe DeVille. Perhaps all three work together as the memorable images of the speaker’s youth, when his self-awareness intensifies and his place in the world becomes somewhat clearer. This was an interesting tension in the book: what is remembered and what is forgotten, what is kept and what is given up, given away or lost. Certainly the memories that a poet writes about are choices, recovery as deliberate decision. There are so many painful memories in this book and few moments of respite (like in that lovely poem “Hinged Double Sonnet for the Luna Moths”). What were some of the ways you tried to give the reader breathing room and space within the pages of this devastating book? Did the perspective of a younger speaker help the process of writing about age and dying?

Often with Alzheimer's disease, automobiles, homes, old music and random childhood memories are the last to go in a long line of subtractions. This strange kind of time travel back to one’s youth is often centered on a few objects. Like any poetic obsession worth its weight in fathers, these poems are riddled with hallucinatory metaphors and images that work as a kind of recursive stitching throughout the larger narrative to sustain an internal tension between poems. Each time I wrote a poem that I though was off-topic, I eventually saw memory right there welling up below the surface. The last poem to enter the collection was "Hinged Double Sonnet for the Luna moths." I had the table of contents done and was glad to be writing about something else for a change. A few weeks later I read the poem and realized of course it belongs in the book, it is essential. What was I thinking?

In addition to considering the reader, I as author needed moments of respite and relief in writing these poems. I wanted to be sure I was writing a book I would want to read. This idea of providing breathing room for the reader was important to me as I committed to the project. I wrote in several voices including a youthful voice, Solomon's (the main character) and his wife's voice as well. She is eventually left to cope alone. It was liberating and helped me tell a more complete story in addition to easily introducing moments of levity. Even in the devastation of the disease one finds moments of humor, joy and beauty that appear, usually when we need them most. I hope to have captured some of these moments in the book as well. The garden gnome poems give the reader permission to laugh and "Hinged Double Sonnet for the Luna moths" is a love sonnet. Oblivio Gate reveals not only what is lost, but also what is found, what is pure, and even what is funny in our fleeting lives.

In the final section of Oblivio Gate, a dozen or so "self-portraits" offer an elusive and expansive vision of who this speaker is. This inhabitant of "the widow house" certainly has the rare ability (or burden) to empathize and project. From "Self-Portrait as Scavenger Gull" to "Self-Portrait as Disaster" the persona wanders through disorientation and desolation, instability and uncertainty, "fragmented and beautiful" inside this house of grief, and each portrait is "a kind of mourning." Why did you decide to close the book with this series of "self-portraits"? If this section ushers you out of this book, what ushers you into the next one?

How to find closure after such illness and loss is beyond me, but those left behind continue on in life. I needed closure for the book, for the characters left behind, for myself and the click of a jar was not going to cut it. The book's earlier sections demonstrate a lot of restraint in both content and form. The two long lyric poems have trifurcated lines; there are several sonnets and other crafted shorter poems that make up the collection. The final section of the book is sprawling and furious, ecstatic and bereft at once. It is an incantation, a prayer, a kind of exuberant mourning and reclamation of the wreckage of ones life. "Self-Portraits from the Widow House" provides closure the way dynamite gives closure to a burning oil rig. Kaboom.

(Author Photo: J. Esposito)

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Roundup

2008-12-11T16:40:00.026-05:00

Scott McLemee waxes enthusiastic about Jeffrey B. Perry’s study "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918," and Perry's thorough Wikipedia entry for Harrison.

Art Winslow calls the author of "The Norman McLean Reader" a "big two-hearted writer."

Gregg Barrios finds that age (80) has not slowed down Mexican literary lion Carlos Fuentes.

Geeta Sharma- Jensen on lists for book babes and book boys.

Tim Brown moderates a literary smackdown, reported in The New Yorker. Pix on WNYC.org.

Todd Shy alerts us to Yann Martel's new project, sending books to Canada's prime minister:"For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website," Martel writes.

John Domini finds Daniel Grandbois "promising," in his review of "Unlucky Lucky Days" in Rain Taxi.

Ranking the Pushcart Prize Pubs

2008-12-10T10:43:00.007-05:00

NBCC member Cliff Garstang ranks the winners and Special Mentions in this years' Pushcart Prize anthology, just out.

Pushcart founder Bill Henderson, winner of an NBCC Sandrof award for lifetime achievement, will be with us on Saturday night, January 24, 2009, at Housing Works, to announce the NBCC Sandrof award winner. Others expected, to announce the Balakian winner and NBCC awards finalists: Sam Anderson, 2008 Balakian winner;Mary Jo Bang, 2008 poetry winner; Harriet Washington, 2008 nonfiction winner; Alex Ross, 2008 criticism winner, and Joshua Clark, 2008 finalist in autobiography.

Google Zeitgeist Year-end List

2008-12-10T10:25:00.017-05:00

Google now offers a magazine search function. Which reminded us to check out the year-end global top 10 list of the billions of Google searches over the past year, which starts off like this:

1.sarah palin
2.beijing 2008
3.facebook login
4.tuenti
5.heath ledger

(Tuenti? Spanish Facebook.)

Nobelist Le Clezio to Publishers: "The Book Is the Ideal Tool"

2008-12-09T20:00:00.015-05:00

Jean-Marie Gustave LeClezio, who delivered this lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature earlier this week, focused in part on the importance of the book:

"There is a great deal of talk about globalization these days. People forget that in fact the phenomenon began in Europe during the Renaissance, with the beginnings of the colonial era. Globalization is not a bad thing in and of itself. Communication has accelerated progress in medicine and in science. Perhaps the generalization of information will help to forestall conflicts. Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded—ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day.

"We live in the era of the Internet and virtual communication. This is a good thing, but what would these astonishing inventions be worth, were it not for the teachings of written language and books? To provide nearly everyone on the planet with a liquid crystal display is utopian. Are we not, therefore, in the process of creating a new elite, of drawing a new line to divide the world between those who have access to communication and knowledge, and those who are left out? Great nations, great civilizations have vanished because they failed to realize that this could happen. To be sure, there are great cultures, considered to be in a minority, who have been able to resist until this day, thanks to the oral transmission of knowledge and myths. It is indispensable, and beneficial, to acknowledge the contribution of these cultures. But whether we like it or not, even if we have not yet attained the age of reality, we are no longer living in the age of myths. It is not possible to provide a foundation for equality and the respect of others unless each child receives the benefits of writing.

"And now, in this era following decolonization, literature has become a way for the men and women in our time to express their identity, to claim their right to speak, and to be heard in all their diversity. Without their voices, their call, we would live in a world of silence.

"Culture on a global scale concerns us all. But it is above all the responsibility of readers—of publishers, in other words. True, it is unjust that an Indian from the far north of Canada, if he wishes to be heard, must write in the language of the conquerors—in French, or in English. True, it is an illusion to expect that the Creole language of Mauritius or the West Indies might be heard as easily around the world as the five or six languages that reign today as absolute monarchs over the media. But if, through translation, their voices can be heard, then something new is happening, a cause for optimism. Culture, as I have said, belongs to us all, to all humankind. But in order for this to be true, everyone must be given equal access to culture. The book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate. Its only flaw—and this is where I would like to address publishers in particular—is that in a great number of countries it is still very difficult to gain access to books. In Mauritius the price of a novel or a collection of poetry is equivalent to a sizeable portion of the family budget. In Africa, Southeast Asia, Mexico, or the South Sea Islands, books remain an inaccessible luxury. And yet remedies to this situation do exist. Joint publication with the developing countries, the establishment of funds for lending libraries and bookmobiles, and, overall, greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages—which are often clearly in the majority—would enable literature to continue to be this wonderful tool for self-knowledge, for the discovery of others, and for listening to the concert of humankind, in all the rich variety of its themes and modulations."

NBCC Reads, Fall 2008: Long Tail #5

2008-12-09T07:55:00.004-05:00

Time for another Long Tail post from the most recent NBCC Reads. This time around, we've got suggestions from blogger Mark Sarvas (whose first novel, Harry, Revised, was published earlier this year) and Janice Harayda, a novelist, former NBCC board member, and the the proprietor of One Minute Book Reviews.

Mark Sarvas: The book most relevant to the election never once mentions the words "Obama" or "McCain." But Rob Riemen's Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal is about what happens when the high ideals of culture are degraded; when "elite" is turned into an epithet; when ignorance is celebrated and high ideals are mocked. This slim volume is the most effective rejoinder to the Palin candidacy I've seen anywhere.

Janice Harayda: By coincidence, just before I got the message about NBCC Reads, I had posted two quatrains I like from a poem called "knowledge" by Tadeusz Różewicz (published in New Poems and translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston). This poem is about the shifts in the dance between certainty and doubt that occur as we get older, not as we get closer to election day (though, of course, we're all getting older in the next couple of weeks, too). But the shifts between what Różewicz calls "cogito" and "dubito"--and vice versa--may define the election if, as seems likely, the independent voters are pivotal.

New American Editor of Granta: John Freeman

2008-12-08T19:16:00.010-05:00

Recent NBCC president John Freeman has been named American Editor of Granta, the British magazine of new writing originally founded in 1889 and revived in 1979 with Bill Buford as editor.Based in New York, he will work with Granta editor Alex Clark to develop a series of author events and to provide a connection between the magazine, US-based writers and Granta’s North American and Canadian readership.

Roundup

2008-12-04T09:48:00.038-05:00

PW profiles former NBCC president John Freeman, "book review crusader," focusing in part for his NBCC work in the Campaign to Save Book Reviewing.

Janice Harayda talks to the Newark Star-Ledger blog about being a book blogger, WordPress, her Mitch Albom post, the Delete Key awards, and more.

Scott McLemee examines the Bill Clinton issues Susan Wise Bauer raises in "The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America."

Amitav Ghosh tells WNYC's Leonard Lopate the his "Sea of Poppies" is just the beginning of his Ibis trilogy. “This is my project for my next ten, fifteen, twenty years,” he says. (Read the first chapter of "Sea of Poppies" here.)

Laura Miller tends her bookshelf. And talks to David Ulin next Wednesday in LA about her new Narnia book, "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia."

Joshua Cohen spends five days focused on Kafka's "Office Writings."

Harriet blog at the Poetry Foundation website considers Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller's "New European Poets." Prufer, an NBCC board member, moderates a panel on January 23, 2009:

January 23, 2009, 7 pm Housing Works Bookstore Café.
Poetry in Translation panel: Has the US Lost Touch with World Literature?
Panelists Esther Allen, translator, co-director of PEN World Voices,author of International PEN report on Translation and Globalization;Yvette Chrisianse, South African poet, novelist, professor; Elizabeth Macklin, poet, translator from Basque of Uribe; Jill Schoolman, Director of Archipelago Books; Karen Emmerich, translator of NBCC award finalist Miltos Sachtouris, among other Greek writers.

NBCC Balakian awardee Wyatt Mason reacts to his mail after blogging about “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”

Robin Hemley reflects on Yamashita's Treasure.

John Domini admires the clarity of DeWitt Henry's "Safe Suicide."

NBCC Reads, Fall 2008: Long Tail #4

2008-12-03T14:43:00.005-05:00

Yes, folks, it's yet another Long Tail entry from the latest round of NBCC Reads. This time, we've got a twofer from Brooke Allen, a widely published critic and the author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. She chose the following two titles as a partial skeleton key to American political life:

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill) by David Cay Johnston. This is a very detailed and comprehensible explanation of how the supposed "deregulation" initiated by Reagan enabled lobbyists, politicians and corporations to rig "free enterprise" in their favor. Johnston gives many examples of taxpayer subsidies that basically exempt many businesses from competition and give their executives free rides. This is a very, very important book that shows how our economy really works behind the scenes, and reveals unsavory truths about how our hard-earned tax dollars are spent.

What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, ed. Andras Szanto, with an introduction by Orville Schell. This book came about when a group of Journalism School deans came together to try to understand why the press has failed America so badly over the course of the last decade. Looking back at George Orwell's classic essay, "Politics and the English Language," they reflected on what has changed since Orwell wrote and what has not. In twenty-first century America we are subjected to an Orwellian level of propaganda even in our mainstream press, which manipulated by spin-doctors who use new discoveries about how the human brain works. What Orwell Didn't Know contains essays by journalists like Nicholas Lemann, cognitive scientists like George Lakoff, journalism professors like Orville Schell, and many other experts on the subject. Very enlightening for anyone seeking to understand contemporary media.

NBCC Reads, Fall 2008: Long Tail #3

2008-12-02T20:59:00.005-05:00

Now that we've all emerged from a tryptophan-induced stupor, it's time to resume the Long Tail entries from the latest round of NBCC Reads. This time around, we've got suggestions from Alex Ross, who won the NBCC Award for The Rest Is Noise, and Roxana Robinson, the author most recently of Cost, as well as Georgia O'Keefe: A Life.

Alex Ross: This summer I re-read most of Joan Didion's nonfiction, in the handsome Everyman's Library edition, We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live. From the beginning, observing the rise of Ronald Reagan as a national phenomenon, Didion seemed to have an eerily focused view of where American political culture was headed. She had--and has--an uncanny ability to analyze the surface trickery that goes into the creation of what she calls "political fictions," yet she retains a profound, almost prophetic awareness of ominous historical movements underfoot. Her dissection of George W. Bush's phrase "compassionate conservatism" is a case in point. Almost nothing in this collection shows its age; indeed, Didion's writing has become ever more acutely relevant with the passage of time, as the same crimes and mistakes are committed year after year, decade after decade, in an impenetrable haze of forgetting. In "Salvador," published in 1983, Didion writes: "The American policy in El Salvador seemed based on auto-suggestion, a dreamwork devised to obscure any intelligence that might trouble the dreamer." The ambiguity of the word "intelligence" in that sentence is total and has yet to be resolved.

Roxana Robinson: I nominate the Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels, by John Updike. For me, these books reveal the deepest heartland of America. This is a flawed, limited, provincial place, full of all the messy stuff that humans have to offer: vitality and tenderness, greatness of spirit and nobility of intention, straight meanness, pure selfishness and dumb ignorance. It's the place where our political instincts--idealism and self-interest, greed and pragmatism, fear and misguidedness, hope and altruism--are made manifest. It's the place where we all actually live.

Updike's elegant prose beautifully articulates Rabbit's small-town world in all its quotidian splendor, and the writer's magisterial intelligence provides a radiant illumination of this world. The books offer a deep and compassionate rendering of the twentieth-century community that includes us all.

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: BILINGUAL CHILDREN'S BOOKS

2008-11-30T14:31:00.004-05:00

During the holiday season, one of my favorite gift choices for my nieces and godson are books. And since all three are going to be raised bilingual speakers, it's important to encourage literacy in Spanish. I found five titles that will find their way to the tree this year:

Xavier Garza, Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid, Cinco Puntos Press.

(Illustrated by the author)

Here's an original take on the famous Clement Clarke Moore holiday classic. How would the night before Christmas "translate" in a South Texas Valley setting, where St. Nick's Mexican cousin Pancho can lend a hand by distributing gifts to all the children who live along the U.S.-Mexico border? Easy: Charro Claus!

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, A Perfect Season for Dreaming/ Un tiempo perfecto para soñar, Cinco Puntos Press.

(Illustrated by Esau Andrade Valencia)

An elderly gentleman is slowing down in his later years, but not his active imagination. With the need for afternoon siestas comes the time for dreaming up wildly inventive scenes celebrating the cultural experience of a long and rewarding life.

Jorge Argueta, Alfredito Flies Home/ Alfredito regresa volando a su casa, Groundwood Books.

(Illustrated by Luis Garay)

Once refugees from a country ravaged by war and conflict, Alfredito's family has decided to visit El Salvador now that the dust has settled. Surprises both heartbreaking and heartwarming await the family as they reunite with a landscape still healing from its wounds.

Francisco X. Alarcón, Animal Poems of the Iguazú/ Animalario del Iguazú, Children's Book Press.

(Illustrated by Maya Christina González)

This collection of poetry for children is a fun and educational way to raise awareness about the need to preserve the beauty of the South American rainforest. The poems are as delightful and colorful as the depictions of the flora and fauna that make Iguazú National Park a unique and magical place.

Carmen Tafolla and Sharyll Tenayuca, That's Not Fair!: Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice/ ¡No es justo!: La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia, Wings Press.

(Illustrated by Terry Ybáñez)

Based on the true story about a young woman who led the historic pecan sheller strike in 1920s San Antonio, this book offers valuable lessons about activism and the fight for justice. As the book demonstrates: one is never too young to develop a social consciousness or an appreciation for Mexicans and U.S. labor history.

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Thanksgiving Poems

2008-11-27T16:43:00.002-05:00

From the Academy of American Poets, poems about gratitude and Thanksgiving.

Scott McLemee Ponders Information Overload

2008-11-27T10:34:00.011-05:00

Scott McLemee, reviewing "The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory" (Oxford University Press) by Torkel Klingberg, ponders information overload:"...it sometimes feels like one’s brain is being nibbled by carnivorous gnats."

A Longtime Friend Remembers John Leonard

2008-11-27T10:19:00.005-05:00

Kerry Wood, a longtime friend of John Leonard's, sent us this reminiscence:

It has all been said--everywhere but in the New York Times Book Review section where I expected to see at least a letter to the editor about the death of the man that captained that l ship so capably in its finest years and then was essentially blackballed for a decade.

I can offer nothing to compare with what I have read recently about my friend’s literary stature and accomplishments. I have known John since our high school days in Long Beach, CA, the town he wrote about in "Crybaby of the Western World," my copy of which is on a shelf behind me along with "The Naked Martini" and "Wyke Regis." John won’t be remembered for those early, unsuccessful novels. And who would believe that this man of letters and reviewer of 13,000 books would be a product of Long Beach Wilson High, the school so unfairly characterized in the Hilary Swank movie "Freedom Writers."

I remember playing basketball with him on his driveway while our mothers chatted indoors. I was a good bit taller than John, and if I would score over him from close in he would declare the shot "a minnow" and say it was worth only one point.

I was at Yale when John dropped out of Harvard; the ironies of liberal John Leonard’s going to work for the "National Review," and his staunchly Democrat mother Ruth's relocation to a home on, of all places, Nixon Street, where she still holds on at age 90, something. John had interesting tales about covering the Cuban Missile Crisis for "National Review." I was most amused when he came to UC Berkeley to complete his bachelor's degree. This gifted prose stylist couldn’t produce a Harvard transcript that showed completion of a course corresponding to English IA (or whatever they call it). His admission into and completion of Archibald MacLeish's Creative Writing seminar was insufficient to establish his writing competency. At Harvard he must have had the kind of exemption currently provided by passing the Advanced Placement test. At Cal, he had to take English 1 A and B. Recognizing the absurdity of the situation, his instructor suggested that he merely attend class, sit toward the rear, and work on whichever novel he was writing at the time.

An impoverished graduate student at Berkeley, just released from my army enlistment, I and others found cheap entertainment in picking up a six pack and enjoying the madcap humor of the Nightsounds show John DJed at the KPFA FM studio. A nickel-dime-quarter poker game always followed the show's sign-off. Weekends, John would organize beer-and-softball affairs in Strawberry Canyon. One evening he taught a group of us an egghead game called Botticelli that I have no time to explain.

During the next half-century, our meetings were occasional and widely separated in time. John had made it big. He read and read and read and reviewed in his East 78th St. home in New York City. Second wife Sue and he dined out often; Sue at vegetarian restaurants, John at meat-and-potatoes places. They socialized casually with noteworthy people. What I appreciate most is that he always found time for "noteworthless" old friends like me. When we got together, it never occurred to me that I was trading jokes and memories with the most important living American literary critic. He was just an old pal.

No, we were never extremely close friends. I knew first wife Tiana but never became acquainted with children Amy and Andrew, who were either infants or off at school when I would visit. We enjoyed dinner and conversation with John and second-wife Sue last year. John was always there, always funny and hospitable despite his physical debilities. I recently was made aware of the seriousness of his condition when I telephoned him. He had to run down the several flights of stairs in his home. It was minutes before he could get out a complete sentence. We arranged a meeting time when he would be sufficiently recovered from his weekly chemotherapy treatments to be sociable.

I read that he voted and knew the outcome of the recent presidential election before he died. I hope someone got word to him that a few days earlier, unaware that he was in the hospital, I sent him an email saying we would be in town for a week after Thanksgiving and hoped we could arrange a get-together as we had a year ago. I said I would give him a jingle. This is it, John. You are already missed and will be long remembered by your legion of friends, famous authors and us ordinary folk.--Kerry Wood

Midweek Roundup

2008-11-26T11:45:00.008-05:00

Ellen Heltzel talks to PW.

NBCC Tech VP Lizzie Skurnick takes time from working on the launch of the upgraded NBCC website and blog to interview Author and Indie Publisher Kelly Link at the 21st annual Indie and Small Press Book Fair in NYC on December 6 at 5 pm.

Marcela Valdes investigates the making and meaning of Roberto Bolaño's final novel "2666."

John Freeman covers the National Book Awards.

David L.Ulin reports on a lost Bob Dylan collaboration.

Jonah Raskin finds Malcolm Gladwell's "The Outliers" "unabashedly inspiring."

Benjamin Lytal says "Americans should be able to read [Clive James's] poetry on its own merits, free from visions of 'Saturday Night Clive.'" But...

Cynthia Haven explores a little-known connection between Czeslaw Miłosz and a controversial Polish saint, Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, widely accused of anti-Semitism, who nevertheless died in Auschwitz; before his arrest, his monastery had sheltered several thousand Jews.

Michael O'Donnell reminds us of an old Chicago joke in his review of Jay P. Dolan's "The Irish Americans."

Jacob Silverman thinks about Adam Kirsch and "literary balance" on the VQR website. Silverman, a new blogger at VQR, is a new NBCC member and a finalist in the VQR's young reviewers contest.

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: KAREN AN-HWEI LEE

2008-11-23T21:08:00.005-05:00

Ardor, Tupelo Press, 2008.

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Ardor (Tupelo Press, 2008), In Medias Res (Sarabande Books, 2004), and a chapbook, God's One Hundred Promises (Swan Scythe Press, 2002). Lee has worked as a florist's assistant, mended books in a rare-book archive, grown tissue cultures in a medical lab, and taught music lessons in the field of music therapy for mental health patients. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, she chairs the English Department at a faith-based college in southern California, where she is also a novice harpist.

Ardor is a book-length poem that's shaped by a series of fragments, many announced on the left-hand column as letters, dreams and prayers. Slowly, perhaps even seductively, these fragments coalesce to tell a narrative about love, passion, and heartache as experienced perhaps by the blind protagonist in the poem, though this narrative is more abstract than concrete. It's the recurring image of the pomegranate that suggests (despite the many Biblical references) that the story is Greek tragedy--Persephone ascending from and descending into darkness and sleep, so that there's always a second-guessing about what's real and what's imagined. What are your expectations in offering readers such a challenging book, both because it is a book-length poem and because it's difficult to encapsulate and summarize?

Although linguistically intricate, Ardor's internal fugues--prayers, meditations, dreams, letters, jottings--hover transparently, I hope, between the earthly and ecstatic. The language blends an awareness of intimate minutiae with universal desires, such as yearning to love and be loved, to give meaningful names and to inherit one, to seek God and be known, intimately, by God.

I answer this question with one raised by a poet. Anne Carson muses, "What makes a poet, accident or attention?" Both experimentation and linguistic attention can make poetry challenging. While I'm not exhorting all readers to join a revolution in poetic language, it's been noted that language-driven aesthetics are seldom considered accessible by general readerships. Indeed, poetic compression, complexity, and poetry's elliptical qualities--accidents or surprises while paying exquisite attention to language itself--may render poetry and experimental prose difficult, but to paraphrase Toni Morrison, that is what reading is.

I suppose my response is partly about attention to language itself as experience. For instance, in researching how stained glass is made, I discovered the words "leadlight" and "ferramenta." Attention shifted to surprise. The least intentional aspects of writing are often the most crucial to breaking open the geometry of craft. A unifying pulse is revealed, a flagon pours new oil or wine, or a source illuminates the internal architecture of a poem-organism. It's a cell under a light microscope. Transparent envelope with a permeable boundary. Parcel of life. Ecstatic. Protean. Alive. How does a new poem live? Where? In one writing exercise, I ask students to imagine a cell as a transparent room. What furnishes this room? Look inside. What do you see? A mitotic glass pool? A tarnished mirror, a fish vat, a box of clay shards, childhood, a burned orchard, a lake bottom, nebulae, an airplane lying in a debris field? I encourage students to use surprises to shift attention without losing focus.

A cardioid graph appears on the cover of Ardor, another enclosed shape, nearly cellular. Music, medicine, and mathematics are entwined. Cardioids appear in botanical nature, are the sensitivity pattern of certain microphones, and share an etymological root with cardiology. Advancing the quiet etudes introduced by In Medias Res (my first collection of poems), Ardor begins with an image that traces the path of a locus on a circle rotating around another circle of the same radius, forming an epicycloid with a cusp: A heart-shaped cardioid lingers on the margins where acoustical language evaporates or is saturated with fragrance.

I look outside poetry to seek forms which may loan shapes to my writings. To this end, Ardor is a book of sequential cardioids: heart to heart dialogues, mothers and daughters, a blind woman who figures prominently in my writings--readers have inquired, who is this mystery person? A response appears in my next collection, Erythropoiesis--women waiting for their bodies to heal, a hidden water sonnet, a poem that cycles, and an epithalamium or two.

The following is an example of a cycle-poem in Ardor (pp. 10-11). It depicts a woman after a single mastectomy. She's looking in a mirror while putting on a light dress for a wedding:

Coating of time

the color of patina

resembles sherry or amaretto

after putting on a light dress. Lightness:

she wears a corsage to cover the remains.

The flow of blood widens through the heart

as water emerges from a narrow channel;

the flow of blood widens through the heart.

She wears a corsage to cover the remains

after putting on a light dress. Lightness

resembles sherry or amaretto

the color of patina,

coating of time.

*

Poetry is also a natural vehicle for synaesthesia, present in Ardor through all the senses. Vowels are warm colors and consonants are cool colors, yielding rich tones, shades, intensities in form of musical perfume. When I was fourteen years old, puzzling aloud the effects of music to my piano teacher, whose name is Fern--I was remarking how a certain Romantic-period waltz sounded green yet was alternately saturated with mellow amber tones, the cork-textured key of E flat--she commented that not everyone experiences language and music in this way. (Arthur Rimbaud's synaesthetic poem "Voyelles" was unknown to me then: "A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu...") Thereafter, Fern would inquire at the start of a new piece: What color is it? What fragrance? What textures?

I rode my bicycle to flute lessons, a silver open-holed flute with a B foot jouncing in a side basket hooked to the seat. My flute teacher taught me the importance of breathing--the caesura--at the ends of phrases and the skill of varied articulation. I had an off-center embouchure, creating a warm dark tone in the lower registers but split notes in the higher ones, so she taught me to whistle enharmonics. I learned to achieve a focused tone in different registers, to maintain pitch, and to use proper breath support not to break a legato.

Poetry, like music, has pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and registers.

So, I express a hope that readers will find pleasure in light, color, fragrance, and meaning as poetic language engages experience in unconventional ways.

Finally, thoughts to share about the pomegranate: Persephone, absolutely, with seasonal imagery of descent and ascent, death and resurrection. On a personal note, a dear friend shared a Biblical meaning of pomegranates which is "memory-knowledge of good." Without any proper exegesis in the original language whatsoever on my part, I imagine this "memory-knowledge" looks like rich crimson druplets embedded in people's hearts. Additionally, I'm delighted by a reader named Teresa who recently mailed a letter to my post office box with this wonderful prayer inside: "May you be blessed with many blessings as pomegranate seeds, is a Jewish blessing that I pray for you."

Likewise, I pray this blessing for all readers of poetry, near and far.

Letters, dreams and prayers, which are communication through intimacy, create a tone that's distinctly vulnerable and, dare I gender the language, feminine. But this assessment is disrupted by the presence of mathematical quandaries and vocabulary that's straight out of Gray's Anatomy. This creates a tension that mirrors the push-and-pull between the many binaries that appear in the book: man and woman, pleasure and pain, order and chaos. The space of the page becomes conflict-ridden and complex, but it never compromises the beauty of the imagery and the fluidity of the music, even with words like "beta-fructofuranosidase." Who are some of the poets (and perhaps, texts) that you turn to for inspiration and education? What are some of the languages (in the all-inclusive sense of the word) that guide you toward poetry?

Voices returning to me over the years, variously, include Marguerite Duras, Saint Augustine, Clarice Lispector, Octavio Paz, Chuang Hua (Stella Yang Copley), Myung Mi Kim, Arthur Sze, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge; the prophets, gospels, and epistles in the Old & New Testaments; writings of mystic women and early itinerant female preachers, especially ones with fire-in-the-bones. I've written about Virginia Woolf, Theresa Cha, and Kazuo Ishiguro, so these authors are always with me in one way or another. Recently I enjoyed Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss, Eileen Tabios' I Take Thee, English, as My Beloved (wherein is the lovely phrase, "poetry as a way of life," and a marriage to poetry complete with a wedding cake and satin bridal train adorned with poems), and Mother Teresa of Calcutta's posthumous Come Be My Light.

Languages I love are the four-tone syllables of Mandarin my parents taught me, translation proficiency in French I acquired in school, conversational Spanish in southern California where I now live, medical language pertaining to life and healing I studied, the language of theology and Biblical studies on the college campus where I teach--eschatological murmurings of parousia, dunamis, pneuma; talk of synoptic gospels L and M versus Q. I take pleasure in translations, linguistic migrations, calque or loan-translation, when new words, yes, even "beta-fructofuranosidase"–-the enzyme bees use to convert nectar to honey--enrich tongues in sweet glossolalia.

A public announcement was made by publisher Jeffrey Levine that Ardor would be the first of three titles that Tupelo Press was committed to printing. This created plenty of buzz in the poetry world, where such multi-book contracts are unheard of. Does this agreement provide comfort that you have a home for your future projects or anxiety that you must certainly write publishable books? Has this shaped or affected the way you consider or revise your current projects?

This promise is a gift, the generous blessing of time. Like bread on the table, it is a "gift of protected liberty," as Ann Lauterbach puts it. Since the collections were already finished at submission, it may seem there's no more pounding coriander seed or manna flakes to make breakfast. However, a poet's labor doesn't end with book-making. New manna--provided for wanderers in the desert wilderness, as poets in American culture often live in forms of exile--still settles on the sand after the frost melts and awaits refining. I must gather it, write it down, otherwise it may vanish at day's end. There is also the irresistible impulse to be daring, to be purer in voice and vision ("what it is" rather than "what is it?"), and to find what is rare. I'm grateful to do all of this. In other words, with the promise of three books, I am free to work on new projects or focus on other areas of writing life instead of sending, waiting, revising, and sending again. At the very least, this gift saves postage; in the long run, it yields peace of mind with a space for travel or reflection.

For the past decade, I labored quietly in relative seclusion, staying out of sight except teaching students on a tiny campus with a serene chapel at its heart. Waking early in the morning, I'd sometimes walk around to see things--my attention is focused in the wee hours, although I prefer to write at night when attention dims to yield room for poetic accidents--to witness a hummingbird flick water onto its sleek green back in a granite fountain, to see magnolias hold out their immense ivory, and touch a bruised violet-skinned fig on the sidewalk. I still wake early and love my prayer walks; this aspect of my life hasn't changed. I do hope to use this gift of time to travel more often to share poetry. I encourage those who want to write, who want to hear--to listen with utmost attention--the music of rare languages, to bear witness to survival in ragged crevices of existence. Concerned less with "what is it?" or whether the manna is viable, I receive this gift not as accident but as generous provision.

(Author Photo: Tracy Estelle Tipton)

And Winner #8, the Last Winner Is....

2008-11-20T16:52:00.019-05:00

Claudia Cornejo of Hanover, NH, sent in the correct answer to the eighth and last installment of the NBCC/Paris Review "Name that Author" contest at 6:50 am EST: Elizabeth Bishop.

This was a squeaker. Nathan Chadwick of North Kansas City,Mo, hit the in-box with Elizabeth Bishop three minutes later, tied with Vikram Johri of New Delhi for second (Vikram was a winner earlier this week). Drew Smith of Austin was four minutes later. an Brady of the Literature Division of the NEA's The Big Read (we love The Big Read) logged in at 7:15 am. Annelise Finegan of Rochester was next, at 7:19 am EST. Author J.P. Smith was correct at 7:34 am EST. Nayyara Rahman was the last to reach us today, from Karachi Pakistan, around 3 pm EST, not long before posting this. Obviously Elizabeth Bishop fans span the globe.

The wrong answers included an intriguing one: Vladimir Nabokov.

Thanks to all who played these past few weeks, and to the authors and their interviewers for offering such rich material.

NBCC/Paris Review "Name that Author" Contest #8: The Finale

2008-11-20T09:46:00.007-05:00

This week Critical Mass continues to publish excerpts from interviews with former National Book Critics Circle award winners and finalists included in the venerable Paris Review "Writers at Work" series; the third volume has just been published by Picador. The reader who first correctly identifies the author will be rewarded with a complete three-volume set of the collected Paris Review interviews. Send your answers to nationalbookcritics@gmail.com. Please put "Name that Author" in the subject header.

Here is the eighth and final installment. Which NBCC award winner/finalist had this to say when questioned by the Paris Review interviewer?

"As for readings, I gave a reading in 1947 at Wellesley College two months after my first book appeared. And I was sick for days ahead of time. Oh, it was absurd. And then I did one in Washington in ’49 and I was sick again and nobody could hear me. And then I didn’t give any for twenty-six years. I don’t mind reading now. I’ve gotten over my shyness a bit. I think teaching helps. I’ve noticed that teachers aren’t shy. They’re rather aggressive. They get to be, finally."

Send your answer to nationalbookcritics@gmail.com and please put "Name that Author" in the subject heading. And thanks to all for your guesses, accurate or not, over this past two weeks.

National Book Awards 2008

2008-11-19T22:29:00.012-05:00

Announced tonight, winners of the National Book Awards:

Young People's Literature: Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic).

Poetry: Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (Harper Collins).

Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (W.W. Norton & Co.).

Fiction: Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library).

And the #7 winner is....

2008-11-19T21:20:00.023-05:00

Dawn Rennert of Concord, Mass. zipped into the winner's position with the correct answer to the seventh clue in the NBCC/Paris Review "Name that Author: contest--Joyce Carol Oates--first, at 5:23 am EST.

Runners up, with the correct answer: Drew Smith of Austin at 5:30 am EST; Gregg Barrios of San Antonio, at 5:32 am EST (what is it with this Texans!), Dennis Loney, Washington, D.C., at 6:00 am EST; Nathan Chadwick in Missouri, at 6:09 am EST; Vikram Johri emailing in from New Delhi at 6:29 am EST, and Sumita Mukherji, Arlington, Mass,6:18 am EST.

Last clue tomorrow!

NBCC/Paris Review "Name that Author" Contest #7

2008-11-19T08:23:00.007-05:00

This week Critical Mass continues to publish excerpts from interviews with former National Book Critics Circle award winners and finalists included in the venerable Paris Review "Writers at Work" series; the third volume has just been published by Picador. The reader who first correctly identifies the author will be rewarded with a complete three-volume set of the collected Paris Review interviews. Send your answers to nationalbookcritics@gmail.com. Please put "Name that Author" in the subject header.

Here is the seventh installment. Which NBCC award winner/finalist had this to say when questioned by the Paris Review interviewer?

"My nature is orderly and observant and scrupulous, and deeply introverted, so life wherever I attempt it turns out to be claustral. Live like a bourgeois, Flaubert suggested, but I was living like that long before I came across Flaubert’s remark."

Send your answer to nationalbookcritics@gmail.com and please put "Name that Author" in the subject heading. And keep an eye out for the winners and the next clue.

Excerpts from Volumes 1 and 2 at Readerville.

Another Winner, #6

2008-11-18T19:29:00.021-05:00

Vikram Johri, emailing from Delhi, India, was the first into the in-box with the correct answer--Alice Munro--at 4:46 am EST, making him the winner of this installment of the NBCC/Paris Review "Name that Author" contest.

Among the incorrect answers (one of which arrived at 4:42 am, making it the quickest answer, albeit wrong): Joyce Carol Oates, E. Annie Proulx, John Updike, Jane Smiley, Anita Brookner, Mary McCarthy, Harold Pinter, Richard Yates, and Jan Morris.

Gregg Barrios in San Antonio was first runner-up with the correct answer (Alice Munro), clocking in at 5:56 am EST with the correct answer, followed by Sumita Mukherji (at 6:31 am EST), (Drew Smith in Austin (6:38 am EST),Gary W Thomson in Omaha(6:44 am EST), Annelise Finegan in Rochester at 7:53 am EST, and Deb Fowler at 8:49 am EST.

Keep an eye out for the seventh installment tomorrow.

NBCC/Paris Review "Name that Author" Contest #6

2008-11-18T07:28:00.001-05:00

This week Critical Mass continues to publish excerpts from interviews with former National Book Critics Circle award winners and finalists included in the venerable Paris Review "Writers at Work" series; the third volume has just been published by Picador. The reader who first correctly identifies the author will be rewarded with a complete three-volume set of the collected Paris Review interviews. Send your answers to nationalbookcritics@gmail.com. Please put "Name that Author" in the subject header.

Here is the sixth installment. Which NBCC award winner/finalist had this to say when questioned by the Paris Review interviewer?

"I lived in the suburbs…the men didn’t like you to talk, and the women didn’t like it either. Then I moved to more of a mixed suburb, not all young couples and I made great friends there. We talked about books and scandal and laughed at things like high-school girls. That’s something I’d like to write about and haven’t, that subversive society of young women, all keeping each other alive."

Send your answer to nationalbookcritics@gmail.com and please put "Name that Author" in the subject heading.