The Spoils: June 2012

1. American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics, edited by Claudia Rankine and Lisa Sewell (reviewed here and here)
2. American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language, edited by Claudia Rankine and Juliana Spahr (reviewed here)
3. He Do The Gay Man In Different Voices by Stephen S. Mills
4. Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets, edited by Brett Fletcher Lauer and Aimee Kelly (reviewed here)
5. Love-in-Idleness by Christopher Hennessy (poet interviewed here; reviewed here, here, here, and here)
6. Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets, edited by Blas Falconer, Beth Martinelli, and Helena Mesa (interview with Falconer about the book here)
7. My Imaginary by Laura Madeline Wiseman (audio recordings here)
8. Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook, edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson (sample quotes here, eight full essays available here, reviews here and here)

Four Things

I am, at the moment, so intrigued by:

1. Invisible Cities: not just the book by Italo Calvino (the first of his works I’ve read and still my favorite after nearly two decades), but the multimedia design project I just downloaded
2. American Women Poets in the 21st Century: not only because of the poets who appear and how they’re presented in this anthology (a selection of poems is followed by a statement of poetics from the poet herself and then a critical essay about them by another), but also because its subtitle (“Where Lyric Meets Language”) is something I aspire to in my own work
3. Ghostlier Demarcations: not only for borrowing (from Wallace Stevens) a great title for a book on “modern poetry and the material word,” but also because every poet Michael Davidson discusses is someone I find intriguing, if not inspirational in one way or another
4. Living in Ballardian Times: not only for being the syllabus for a course on Ballard that I want to attend but one I want to teach