Drunken Boat recently asked for a short list of books I’m currently reading. Many thanks to reviews editor Shira Dentz for the invite. Check out my list here, or pasted below.
Batman: Knightfall, vol 1, written by Chuck Dixon and art by Doug Moench/Jim Aparo et al. (DC Comics, reprinted 2012)
A cross-over series whose epic storyline mirrors the size and gravitas of its new villain seeking entry into the Batman canon. I’m a bigger fan of Gail Simone’s interpretation of Bane in her Secret Sixbooks, but regardless of whose version of this roided revolutionary/mercenary you prefer, you’ll be at a loss to imagine another nemesis ever having the dark knight’s back in quite the same way.
Slot by Jill Magi (Ugly Duckling, 2011)
‘Wrenched from the tendency to ignore, I want memory wrenched from the
tendency to protest,
from the ruin of argument, saying,
“Come crowd yourself with me in rooms of the ruin.”’
Intuitions in Literature, Technology, and Politics: Parabilities by Alan Clinton (Palgrave, fall 2012)
Here’s part of my blurb for Alan’s forthcoming study: “I know of no one as capable in summoning the divergent works/worlds of James Merrill, Larry Eigner, Alan Turing, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath, Louis Zukofsky, and Hannah Weiner, no one more trustworthy in wiring us to their astonishing simultaneities.”
Stanzas in Meditation: The Corrected Edition by Gertrude Stein, ed. by Emily Settina and Susannah Hollister (Yale, 2012)
May I sing with me? Been absorbing this majestic long poem on my Galaxy’s Kindle app, which (miraculously) preserves Stein’s line breaks when you slip the S3 into horizontal viewing.
Homemade Poems by Lorine Niedecker, edited by John Harkey (CUNY Center for Humanities, 2012)
Easily the best of CUNY’s series of Lost & Found Chapbooks, and already tucked away in my desert isle suitcase.
