Gnash Nosh

Haunted

2012-02-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Haunted 2/11

Having obtained some evidence of spirits in the basement, the team headed to the attic.

It is the ghost of a monkey, running in the cage-like room.
Frantic.
Trapped.

The attic was inspected to make sure no living animal could make the noises.

I told you so
You thought I was crazy.

In the basement a doctor chopped off the heads of monkeys.
In the attic his daughter lived with a pet monkey.

Linda keeps her candle shop open despite the problems.

Jim will not go into the attic
But loves money.

Coral

2012-02-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

Coral 2/10

Hands
color of clay pots
bloated fingers
break their casings

Callus

The cool water
is clear
opens fresh wounds
brightens the old.

Reading List 2011 : Part Seven

2012-02-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

Reading List 2011 : Part Seven

This is the last part of the reviews of my 2011 reading list. I decided to leave off books of poetry and book that I re-read. I may bring up some of the poetry at a later point. I'm working out a series of reviews and they may play into that.

Or not. We will see.

Blue Nights (2011) by Joan Didion
In 2003/2004 Joan Didion was dealing with a lot. Her husband, John Dunne died suddenly and terribly. Her daughter Quintana was in a coma with septic shock. After recuperating a little, Quintana would suddenly die in 2005 just as Didion's book on her husband's death went to print.

In the 6 years since then Didion has kept a low profile. Blue Nights is a sort of summing up. It is a lesser Year of Magical Thinking. A quieter, less focused attempt to deal with aging and the death of a daughter and life as you knew it. I would say it is unsuccessful but it is not that bad. It is just a failed attempt at summing up a life.

I love that Didion had the balls to attempt. Few can talk about themselves as clearly and wonderfully as her, and few have made such an art of spinning self-centered narratives into universal tales. This is a great glance back, a sounding call that Joan Didion is at the end of her life and refuses to go without talking about it as best she can.

Don Quixote Book 1 (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes translator Edith Grossman

We all know about Don Quixote. A man in the later years of his life takes up a tin can helmet and rides a donkey against windmills he thinks are ogres in an attempt at chivalry.

What is interesting is that that moment lasts for one chapter in a gigantic book. A book divided into two equally giant parts of 500+ pages. In those pages Don Quixote attacks priests, frees criminals, leaves a poor boy to be lashed by his master and manages to be beaten numerous times. He also gives us two (yes two) mini-novels written into the story as tales told by travelers to each other.

The wonder of Cervantes is that he shows us both reality and Don Quixote's strange hallucinatory version of it. The prose reads like poetry, like Shakespeare, like Dante. It is comedy and tragedy all in one. I will admit that the going is slow due mostly to the aforementioned mini-novels, they have no bearing on the story of Quixote and are quite lengthy. Fortunately they can be skipped.

I look forward to reading the second part where Quixote must deal with the fame he garnered from the first book. Cervantes breaks the fourth wall and apparently it is great.

To The End Of The Land (2008) by David Grossman

Man, I hated this book.

Not a single likable character. A setting made up of mostly desert and rocks with a few sparse trees. The main push of the plot is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Written in the point of view of Israelis there is little on how Palestinians feel about things and I found the moments of doubt in the characters to be shallow.

Basics. A woman's youngest son is off to war. She freaks out and decides that if she leaves her house the military cannot come tell her that the boy has died. If he dies. IF. She grabs an ex-lover and they go for a hike in the wilderness. As they walk she tells of her sons and husband. It turns out that the ex is the father of the youngest son and that the husband knows and the son does not.

I wish there was more. But that's it. It unspools in long rambling dialogue. Everyone has horrible lives, everything is sad. This is the most heavy-handed of heavy-handed stories.

I feel bad about not liking it. A lot has been made of the fact that Grossman's son was at war when he was writing the book and that the son died soon after he completed it. And I sympathize with it. Like the protagonist, Grossman wrote to avoid the reality. A sort of pocket of time where the son would forever exist no matter the outcome.

I get it. And I am so not interested in it.

Ocean Hands

2012-02-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ocean Hands 2/9

Broke
snow-capped water

Static on sand

A hand raking
leaving

A sigil, a scrawled missive

M,SW

2012-02-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

M,SW 2/8

You must ask yourself
why these bodies stack up around her

All these WASPs turning up dead
in New England

Are you killing them Jessica ?
Are you turning them into novels ?

Is this what Agatha Christie did too ?

Face Of Stars

2012-02-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

Face Of Stars 2/7

The face of the stars
is porcelain - cold painted warm

Lips frozen in a kiss

The eyes drip darkness
onto the universe - he is expanding

Is about to eat the world

Reading List 2011 : Part Six

2012-02-06T13:00:00.000-05:00

Reading List 2011 : Part Six

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955) by Brian Moore

Judith is not a likable woman. Snotty and pretentious, she frowns at everyone she comes across. She has recently moved into a new room, she keeps to herself and likes to mention how pious and clean she is.

In the pantheon of unreliable narrators, Judith Hearne occupies a special place. She is mysterious. The reasons for her move are left open-ended for half the book. She falls for a man who is only out for money, who openly says he is only interested in business partnerships. She hears what she wants to and has a very rich fantasy life. The definition of spinster, she puts the Beales to shame. Judith isn't the only unlikable character. In Moore's world everyone is terrible, full of secrets, and only a heartbeat away from despicable acts.

Eventually, a series of terrible events and misunderstandings force Judith's dark secret into the open. It is only a short trip to the end where everything falls spectacularly apart. A very Irish take on a certain time and a certain type of person.

There is an excellent film version staring Maggie Smith and Bob Hoskins.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767) by Laurence Sterne

Framed as a memoir. Written as a farcical take on memoir and the sadness usually peddled in them. This 'novel' may be one of the oddest things ever published.

A memoir that mainly tells of the conception and night of birth of the author, there is little actual story within the cover. Whole sections are crossed out. There are 10 pages missing that are then discussed at length. There is a diagram of wiggly lines, a picture of a nose, a blacked-out page that symbolizes death. I could go on. Frustrating and long-winded, Sterne created what can only be called a masterpiece of post-modernism. He out Infinite Jest's David Foster Wallace. And manages to be mostly interesting in the process.

I got tired of the book's idiosyncrasies quickly and it was a bit of a slog for me. I definitely love the book for its balls. I appreciate that after Sternes the idea of what a novel was or could be grew larger. I am grateful I read it. You will be too.

A Moment in the Sun (2011) by John Sayles

Yes. That John Sayles.

This book is gigantic. It is 955 pages. It spans 1897-1903. There is a gold rush in the first 5 pages and an elephant in the last 5. In between are the Philippine-American War and race relations in North Carolina and New York. There is a cast of at least 10 main characters and 20 minor. It is, to say the least, epic.

It was also the best book I read last year.

Sayles is a master story-teller. He knows how to set a scene and to populate it with people who react and act in ways that make you stare and watch. We follow these people from the first page as they muddle their way into the 20th century, and it is messy, sad, happy, beautiful, terrible.

The book is at its best when set in North Carolina or once the Philippine War is in the final stages. The weakest parts are the war itself and some ill-advised newspaper cartoonists opining on politicians and the famous. It is a shame, the Philippine War is a forgotten section of our history. Many Americans probably are unaware that it even occurred. It was full of racism and questionable ethics on the USAs part. And while Sayles does go there, he becomes bogged down with illness and sex and drinking and insanity on the part of his characters. Fortunately the rapid pace of the writing and the switches between character/location keeps these issues from detracting too greatly from the whole.

Do this book. Now.

Wheel of Time (Books 1-5) by Robert Jordan

These books are the literary equivalent of the Real Housewives of wherever. You come for the easy thoughtlessness and you end up staying because it is mind crack.

Jordan has essentially stolen the basic plot of Lord of the Rings filtered out all the encyclopedic, history lesson, elfin language stuff and pumped up the action, romance, drama bit. There are unwilling heroes, a magic dagger that turns the bearer evil, a villain who is never seen and is locked away in a mountain. Seriously...wholesale stealing.

All you need to know is that there are 3 boys who are swept up in the affairs of a woman with magical powers. She is trying to stem the tide of evil. They are prophesied to help her. Rinse and repeat. What makes these amazing and worth your time is that Jordan is a master at keeping you interested for huge amounts of time. Each book hovers around 900 pages. There are 14 books (will be, the last has not come out). And yet...they rush by like an article in a magazine.

The only real negative is that Jordan tends to draw time out into silly lengths. It will take a book and a half for a character to get somewhere then he will turn around and jump ahead suddenly between books.

Jordan died before the end of his series. his widow found another writer to take his notes and ridiculously long final manuscript and edit it into publishable books. This is apparently contentious to die-hard fans. I am only half-way through the series so I cannot comment on it. If you are looking for something to just occupy a moment, a train ride, a vacation. This is is.

The Day After

2012-02-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Day After 2/6

Under foot dark blue glass like the ocean : Windex

Imbedding in the heel of new shoes

Each step : sound : peanut shells cracking

There are two full Corona bottles on the sidewalk
50/50 chance they are full of piss

Super Bowel

2012-02-05T10:00:00.000-05:00

Super Bowel 2/5

I
can eat glass
in seconds

The iron in
nails keeps
my blood thick

This heap
of rotted leather
cuts my teeth fine

Those foods
meat, fruit, bread

soft.

Childhood

2012-02-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

Childhood 2/4

Where is the boy
that I was

Has he gone running into the woods
hiding under the sloping branches of a fir

The seasons are going
he may be cold - freezing - wet

Snail

2012-02-03T10:00:00.000-05:00

Snail 2/3

The snail shell found in the chamomile
means there are few steps between field and cup

The insides are candied ginger
curled across the golden curl of mica

The cup is hot and everything turns to liquid
becomes scent of dry flowers and sleep.

Reading List 2011 : Part Five

2012-02-02T15:56:00.002-05:00

Reading List 2011 : Part Five

The Odyssey: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer's Epic (2006) by Simon Armitage

After reading The Lost Books of The Odyssey earlier in the year I decided to go back to the source material. I was in New Mexico, in a small house with no TV or internet, writing my own novel. I needed epic escape (I will go into that when I get to Robert Jordan).

I didn't want to read The Odyssey again. I read it a few years ago and didn't want that book at that time. I picked up this short version by Armitage.

This is a radio play. It was produced by the BBC and it reads like a quick action adventure. I could see it as a series of shorts like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. Told only with dialogue this Odyssey moves fast and loose. Bracketed with an ever watchful Athena, we see Odysseus make his way. There are cuts, and there are characters given voice who are not in the original. But it works, a great adaptation. It also has what may be one of my favorite book covers ever, designed by Anders Nilson.

The Queue (1983) by Vladimir Sorokin

Arriving in New Mexico I decided to read books by authors I had enjoyed. The Ice Trilogy was one of my favorite books from earlier in the year. I decided to cash in on my love of NYRB (some of the most beautifully designed books around) and check out Sorokin's first novel, The Queue.

This is a different kind of Odyssey. The Soviet-era line. Told through only lines of dialogue that are never connected to a speaker, the book manages to tell the story of a man waiting to buy goods at a store. No one knows what the store sells. The line is over 1,000 people long. They wait several days. Through the book, people eat, fight, have sex, argue politics & class, and manage at the end to possibly get what they waited for.

Just like Virginia Woolf's The Waves, this book washes over you and moves quickly. It leaves you breathless and confused. An amazing first novel.

Frost (1963) by Thomas Bernhard

An unnamed narrator is sent by one of his medical school professors to watch on the teacher's eccentric artist brother, Strauch. It is the dead of winter. The village is isolated in snow and ice. The narrator and Strauch spend their days walking in the woods. Strauch tells stories of the villagers and of the land around them. Everything is bleak and violent. Each tale is filled with death and betrayal. The narrator slowly looses himself to the tales. At the end no one changes and the world continues as is.

Bernhard is a difficult writer. He is bleak, full of melancholy, and at times nihilistic. To say you 'enjoy' Bernhard is to sort of miss the point. He takes you and shows you a very dark space at the back of a closet. In there is something terrible. Of the two Bernhard books I read in 2011, this is the one I'd suggest. Just be ready for it.

Fatelessness (1975) by Imre Kertész

Kertész' book opens with Georg's father being taken away by the Nazis. Georg begins to work to help pay for expenses. He is 14. On the way to work one day, Georg's bus is pulled over and all the Jews are taken from them. The book shifts into a 14 year-old's description of life in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Through accident and luck, Gerog survives. Unflinching and shocking in its portrayal of how people can normalize any situation, Fatelessness is one of my favorite books on the subject. It avoids all the cliches and traps of WWII tales. There are no pat answers, or deus ex machina here. There are no tawdry scenes of torment. This is not suffering porn. It is honest and wonderful. Kertész' prose is sharp, to the point, and never wasteful. When he won the Nobel in 2002 they said it was "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"

This is the first part of a trilogy that continues in Fiasco and Kaddish For An Unborn Child.

The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time by David L. Ulin

I read this because I re-read The Great Gatsby. And it was given to me because I re-read Gatsby. I did not like this book.

David Ulin's son Noah has to read The Great Gatsby. He doesn't want to. This is a classic teenage reaction to a school assignment. The same kind that has gone on for all of time. In Ulin's hands he inflates this into a 'the times we live in be crazy' message.

I hate this kind of book. The whole premise is false. We may live in a world full of twitter, facebook, and 24-hour news feeds. BUT. We also are reading more as a culture. Those tweets, texts, feeds, are in TEXT. Aside from that anytime someone writes a 'kids these days' type article, I cringe and reach for something else to look at.

The idea here is that teenagers don't like to read. They never have. Perhaps it is the books we teach and the way we teach them and not that they don't enjoy the experience? Let's ask J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Myers or Daniel Handler about that shall we?

NYC

2012-02-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

NYC 2/2

The broken tower that is Manhattan -

(I was about to say 'looms' but that is a cry in the wind
a promise to no one and an explanation of nothing)

- drifts to sea grazes its bow against the bridges
and cradles itself against the edge of Governor's Island

What occurs next is murky

Is a record dribbling against the over door of Long Island

Then everything pushes out - in - to the openness

Thoughtlet

2012-02-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Thoughtlet 2/1

The city at night is a broken flashlight
blinking in the woods near Vancouver

All blue and orange and white
going on an off when you least expect

Leaving you in static rush though leaf
lines of shadows across your eyes.

NYC

2012-01-31T20:54:00.002-05:00

NYC 1/31

Metal of the city,
wrought, melting rust, bending hy-
-phen to time. You pause.

Broken Bottle

2012-01-30T15:46:00.005-05:00

Broken Bottle 1/30

Glitter under foot -
is sticks - broken bottle - turn
a page and bleed out.

Bats

2012-01-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Bats 1/29

Are bats coming down
everywhere foul grabbing hands
inching jabs killing.

Rebus

2012-01-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Rebus 1/28

<3<3<3<3<3
<3<3<3< 3<3<3<3
<3<3<3<3<3

January 27 2012

2012-01-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

January 27 2012 1/27

Flies in the kitchen.
Winter is dead long live - some
thing else. Trees bud green.

Reading List 2011 : Part Four

2012-01-26T13:00:00.000-05:00

Reading List 2011 : Part Four

About a Mountain (2010) by John D'Agata

John D'Agata is a bit of a mystery. His bios read like a very carefully constructed mask. Bare bones in a very self-conscious way. I've read all of his books. Halls of Fame is one of my favorite non-fiction books of the 2000s. I wrote a speculative essay about his childhood for a class in college. He taught a workshop I attended. He has influenced my writing in a real way. I would put him in line as the heir of Joan Didion. Which is probably a loaded statement.

About a Mountain is a book about a suicide. A book about Las Vegas. A book about the proposed radioactive dump at Yucca Mountain. It is at its core, a book about how human lives intersect in strange and wonderful ways. It is about synchronicity.

Now go read Didion's The White Album. At her best she is about synchronicity as well. Even at her worst she lays the lines we cannot see. D'Agata does this too. And it is magical even when flawed.

Distant Star (1996) by Roberto Bolaño

Distant Star is a short book, 150 pages. It is an expansion of a shorter work from Bolaño's book Nazi Literature in the Americas. The story concerns the strange history of aviator Alberto Ruiz-Tagle. He starts a strange poetic movement in Pinochet's Chile. Ruiz-Tagle sky writes his poems. Using an airplane and smoke. He comments and promotes the Pinochet government. Ruiz-Tagle is slowly revealed to be way more involved in the dark corners of the government over the course of the book. Everything is witnessed by Arturo B. and the book is framed as a story Bolaño was told. A classic double blind.

The book twists and turns and for being so short manages to read like a classic noir. It feels very close to The Third Man at times and Bolaño's use of language is amazing. A tightly wound novel. And quick to read.

The Lost Books of The Odyssey (2007) by Zachary Mason

Mason's book is weird. It reads like the actual text of the Odyssey but is clearly not.

Told in short (sometimes as short as a sentence) vignettes, the whole Odyssey story is told disjointed and broken up. Each section told as if from a different time/place. Some times Odysseus is a monster, a lover, a martyr. There are sections where he doesn't appear. The 'villains' of the story are given back story and allowed to have been wronged. The cyclops, Polyphemus, is actually a malformed man who is killed viciously by the Ithacans. In another view he is the savage demon out to eat the men.

Mason creates a whirlwind. In doing so, he manages to press Homer's epic further into myth while remarrying it to its bardic roots.

My Father and Myself (1968) by J. R. Ackerley

"The fair sex? And which sex is that?" (The Prisoners of War)

The posthumous autobiography that reveals family secrets is nothing new. Ackerley's book is a dual biography. Of himself, and by accident, of his father Roger.

When Ackerley's father died a Pandora's Box was opened revealing a secret life. The elder Ackerley was a closeted gay man. Ackerley himself was openly gay. What follows is an account of Ackerley trying to unravel the secret life his father led and Ackerley's own sad sexual misadventures.

The book's third act involves Ackerley settling at non-sexual and getting a dog. Heartbreaking, and beautiful, Ackerley captures the tensions between father and son and of the age they lived.

The Manual of Detection (2009) by Jedediah Berry

Charles Unwin closely follows the career of Travis Sivert. When Sivert goes missing, Charles is unceremoniously promoted to detective. He finds a corpse in an office and has a narcoleptic assistant who is everything but helpful.

A strange whodunit that coalesces on the idea of how one sees, how one exists, and what a person actually is. The reader watches as Charles must learn to be a detective, follow the rules and solve the mystery of his predecessor's mistakes and ultimate disappearance. Dreamy, fun read.

Doryphore

2012-01-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

Doryphore 1/26

Prig.
Glass house spiders.

This shard, ram it up your ass.

Stone is as stone.
Hard.

900

2012-01-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

This is my 900th poem of the day.

When I started this project I wasn't sure how long I would keep it going. I want to thank every one who reads these.

900 1/25

Rhazes breaks smallpox
measles through writing. Time
a continued flow.

Adscititious

2012-01-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

Adscititious 1/24

A drawer of bolts.

Broken rulers - bolts - bolts - dust.

A ball of dark hair.

Reading List 2011 : Part Three

2012-01-23T13:00:00.000-05:00

Reading List 2011 : Part Three

Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout (2010) by Lauren Redniss

Biography is a tried and true genre. Detail the beginnings of a life. The birth, glass over the family, skip to schooling, adulthood, marriage, fame, downfall if applicable, and finally death.

Lauren Redniss' book on the Curie's is not different. It parallels the two as they age, meet, fall in love, then change the world. Pierre dies young and Marie is left to win a Nobel, fall in love with a married man, is the cause of a duel, and finally to die from the very thing she discovered. All very normal biography material.

BUT.

Redniss tells this story through paintings, comic book panels and glow-in-the-dark wonders. How better to tell of the discoveries of radium and polonium then in beautifully rendered water colors? Redniss was a finalist for the National Book Award and has won many other awards for this 200 page object of beauty.

The Ice Trilogy (2002-2005) by Vladimir Sorokin

I had a bit of a Russian theme going for a large chunk of the year. This trilogy has been published in the US by the New York Review of Books publishing arm as one volume.

In 1908 in Tunguska, Russia a meteorite blast epically destroyed a large swath of forest. In the aftermath a man feel compelled to the impact site. Once there he finds the ball of space ice and cracks his sternum open on it, bleeding until he falls into unconsciousness. When he awakes, he realizes that he is one of 23,000 celestial beings responsible for the creation of the universe and it is up to him to find his amnesiac brothers and sister amongst the people of Earth. Then destroy the planet, their perceived flawed creation.

Through the three novels - Bro, Ice, and 23,000 - Sorokin takes us from a small band of special people trying to climb a mountain to reach a goal to an eventual corruption of the idea and the stunning race against time conclusion where humans must fight to save their planet from destruction. He manages to be both Chekov and Asimov. And it works amazingly well.

Extinction (1986) by Thomas Bernhard

Franz is an exile from his family's estate in Austria. He lives in Rome and creates a world for himself that he likens to high art. When his parents and older brother die suddenly in a car crash he is forced home to become the head of the estate he never wanted. He must decide the fate of the house, the lands, and his sister. All of which he hates.

Bernhard's final novel before his death in 1989. The book is written as a long form monologue. I found this after Vintage recently republished all of Bernhard's books. Honestly, I found this book a little tedious. Franz is unlikable, whiny, a misanthrope. He hates the world and the world seems to hate him, until the veil begins to fall and we see the world without his lens. A fascinating character study that will infuriate at times but pays off in the end. So good I read another Bernhard novel later in the year.

Grief Lessons: Four Plays By Euripides (2006) by Anne Carson

Anne Carson from the Preface: "Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief."

B.M.W. Knox on Euripides: "...he was born never to live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing so."

Carson is hands down one of my favorite writers. Plain Water vibrates with sorrow. Anger bubbling just under the surface. Here she takes a look at history's oldest grief monger.

Carson translates four plays: Herakles, Hekabe, Hippolytos, and Alkestis. Before each she breaks each down in short prefaces on the plays. What they do, how. She is lyric, magic, and spins these ancient tales into modern parables. Each a story where heroes are torn apart and revealed to be all too human, too frail. They break apart the stories we think we know and remold them into tales of sadness that are all too close to home.

Faithful Place (2010) by Tana French

Tana French has been a bit of a love affair for me. I have read her three books as quickly as they have been published. They are a disconnected series. This is the third one. In each the narrator was a minor character in the previous. In this one Frank Mackey is forced to return to his family home to solve a strange mystery involving a suitcase and a body under the floorboards of an abandoned house. The mystery of what happened to Frank's first girlfriend 20+ years before.

Faithful Place is not your basic murder mystery. She doesn't follow basic mystery tropes. French has a way with character. A page in and you are stuck. You want to linger with these people, know them. Similar to Haruki Murakami, French gives you the details that bring them alive. You know their inner psyche. From the city streets of Dublin to the council estates in the hills around Ireland, these books breathe.

I recommend starting at the beginning, In The Woods, then The Likeness, before reading this one. Though you can read them out of order, they each tell a different story. Her new book Broken Harbour comes out in July.

Dragonet

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

Drogonet 1/23

Cloudbreak spread unfurl
pop and scream. The world turns down.
Opens its eyes cries.