Top Ten Poets (at least for me) in 2009

I should be writing, and not doing this. And I hate lists, but how to resist? Here is my addition to the end of year lists; these are the poets who have spent the most time rattling around in my head. First they kept me up and then invaded my dreams. The books were not necessarily published this year. They are in no particular order.

1.) Patricia Young. Here Come the Moonbathers. Sensuous, raw, looping, fascinating, what words, what words.
2.) Norman Dubie. Selected and New Poems. A minimal Baroque genius. A story teller. Stunningly beautiful.
3.) Patrick Lane. Go Leaving Strange. A terrible genius who loves delicate flowers and delicate pain.
4.) Adam Sol. Jeremiah, Ohio. Playful, deep, masterful with the long poem and poetic story.
5.) Mahmoud Darwish. The Butterfly's Burden. Such longing, such delicacy.
6.) Zbigniew Herbert. Collected Works. Humanity reflected in all its disorderliness. Brilliant works.
7.) Lisa Robertson, The Weather. A storm of the heart and mind. Repetition like candy.
8.) John Ashbery. The System. You may not know what's happening but something sure is happening. That's really the point.
9.) Lucie Brock-Brodio. The Master Letters. The densest of the dense. Imagination goes leaping across wide chasms.
10.) Etel Adnan. The Indian Never had a Horse. Melancholic, sharp, mystical.

Happy Holidays Artists and Readers !!

Infrarealist Musings and Other Poetry

Two of the shorter short stories in the world are the known Hemingway: "For sale, baby shoes, never worn." (which he facetiously called his greatest work) and the Dinosaur by Augusto Monterroso, which goes: "When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there." Christmas stocking stuffers.

I don't feel like reviewing a book today but I will mention a few tidbits I've come across. Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview is an interesting if unfulfilling read. I wanted more intro with wider and deeper discussion. The first interview is great, the last that appeared in Playboy is terrible. I can't fully recommend anyone buying it.

I've gone back into Wallace Stevens. It's so great and subtle. There's even a Yale lecture in two parts on line, one presented by Langdon Hammer, and another by Marie Borroff the classics scholar. They're worth listening to on a snowy afternoon, especially if you like building snowmen -- Stevens said people should enjoy poetry the way a child enjoys snow.

I also came across the notebooks of Robert Frost, a thick book edited by Robert Faggen. It sparkles with thought and the little I've read has been pretty incredible. His work is stricter in every way than I would tend to head, but I grew up with this stuff and he was, for a while, in my neck of the woods.

Finally, and this is sort of off topic, I discovered Matthew Heard's article "What Should We Do with PostProcess Theory?" which is great. PostProcess theory considers that writing is not a skill to be learned, rather it's something to be exercised as a hermeneutic activity by "entering into specific dialogue" with other people and their interpretive strategies. Whats so wonderful about this article is that Heard speaks about tangible ways to utilize such a methodology in the classroom.

On Santa's naughty list: Those Idiotic Xmas Lists of the year's Notable Books.