Close Calls With Nonsense

Our edition of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman speeds towards completion, like Tuckerman’s “bird that shuts its wings,” though such a bird would probably be diving– I hope the book doesn’t sink, but catches some prey in its elegant bill. By “our” I mean that the actual textual edition, the edition per se, is Ben Mazer’s: I just wrote an introduction and contributed some of the notes. He’s been a pleasure to work with, and superbly thorough in textual matters (as makers of editions surely should be).

I review the new Nicholson Baker novel, or “novel,” or maybe “introduction to poetry,” in a recent SF Chronicle. It’s a good one, though not his best– and it won’t take you long to read.

Jordan reviews several rock shows. I wish there were a wormhole through which I could get to Madison whenever I wanted to get there. (Same for the Twin Cities, of course.)

Andrew Seal reviews me, generously and thoughtfully. He also indicates that what I write in Close Calls about D. A. Powell doesn’t help him understand what Powell’s new book does differently from Powell’s prior books, to which I reply: stay tuned.

Robert Archambeau, responding to Kent Johnson at length, responds to me in passing (as Robert Baird responded to me earlier): Archambeau and Johnson (not to be confused with Devin Johnston) are defending, indeed advocating, a Chicagoland poetry scene, claiming– with some plausibility– that it’s the most promising set of youngish poets operating in American English right now. I’d like to see the same (again, plausible) claims taken up by somebody who lives somewhere else.

The new Jubilat looks good. So does There, a journal of place-attachment and literary geography (more or less), making clear how vast the subject is (I’m glad I only write about it in relation to particular authors!). So does this music book. Some of our friends are in it. So does this music school, where Nathan and I watched an orchestra rehearse today!

This memoir and its author absolutely deserve their recent popular success: it should appeal both to people (like me) who care first of all about craft,the arrangement of chapters, the timbre of sentences, and to people (like the large majority of the large public for life-writing) who just want the stories of eventful lives clearly told. The attention has gone first of all, and understandably, to the part about adoption. I wish she would say more somewhere about how it felt to be a nontraditional student at a very traditional and selective small college. (Maybe she already has and I’ve missed that essay.)

I’ll be at some of these events celebrating the New Literary History of America. See you soon.