Saturday, November 15, 2008

Goodreads Review: A Poetics?

Gross stuff, but maybe that is the Herodotus. Better read all in one sitting I think. Wasn't "getting it" at all at first, but the latter part I totally got in a I think I had a dream that was this exact context kind of way. Collies are not included, although the petting of them is. A narrative of narrative itself? Chapters as characters. Characters as ideas. I had to look up insel in the dictionary, it wasn't in the dictionary, but inselberg was, from which I can kind of figure it out...Something about multiple palimpsests, two centers to the book, and to see vs to sea... vispo and fairytales. I wanted to say I read this on the plane 30,000 feet in the air, which would have been closer to the subject matter, but I finished it before we took off, due to a huge delay because of a missing oxygen "something" in the cockpit... The real subject is its subjectlessness. I don't really understand the "sample poems" and what are they samples of but I kind of, maybe realized that they are not Keith's poems but Jacob's and then it kind of makes sense. I read the whole thing waiting to get change at Thai Stick. I am often, often forgotten about but I get more reading done than people who are noticed. Incidentally, the Tofu Huarapa Krob is much much better than the Pad Huarapa. I've not barfed since 1995. Is that weird? I like the lyrical, but I don't like war. Read this in its entirety in the honey honey cafe, which is really expensive, but if you sit there long enough they give you free coffee refills and it has a sign that reads "Please let others enjoy reading." Really dug Joanne's hilarious piece revisioning Descartes! I think I really liked this but I kept daydreaming...probably just a personal defect on my part, or my period... I'm a sucker for prose poems. With illustrations. Helps to have read a "normal" translation perhaps, because it actually makes no sense. But it is a brilliant not making sense. I liked the idea of knowing the original somewhat as a sort of palimpsest. Where can i get some ayahuasca? I was so enraptured that when a homeless man asked me if he could sit down at my table, I confusedly said yes! This book will make you less uptight with smelly people. He put his backpack on the other chair, and then spread his stuff all over the table barely leaving any room for my peanut butter cookie. So then I looked up and noticed there were three empty tables... I don't really like his newer work but this old school stuff rocks the house with a UHF antenna! A rare instance where the movie is a million times better. Good day for mixed-southern nostalgia and eating an oatmeal raisin cookie at a table not meant "for one" while trying to call my friend who's been told to evacuate and not being able to get in touch w him. H.D.'s ghost everywhere and the beginning of the Drafts. Goes great with some 90's ethereal goth. Atmospheric, never quite sure where you are, but you kind of like it there - kind of poetry. I think these poems are better read than heard (in contrast to something else I just reviewed). I read every poem 12 times in a row, more or less, and want to read them 12 more times! Deceptively simple but really really complex. This book is a great laxative. I'd been constipated all week, and then was reading this in the bathroom at the yoga studio, and voila! Although the cover scares me a bit, the poetry is not scary at all. Totally wonderment and truth and beauty and so forth. Also if I ever have an "author photo," I'm totally going to wear a big, big hat and a tube top! Did this win an award? Very human, gut wrenching sequences mixed with porn searches, mixed with a very beautifully constructed aesthetic - a sort of architectural grammatics... Better in person, but still pretty vibrant on the page. I guess I'll be reading some Bob Kaufman now. I felt confused reading this and wished someone would read it to me instead of me reading it. I think it would work better for me "performed." Probably more genius than I can understand. What about the poetics of the studio apartment? But loving the chapter on mollusks! Victorian-age Language Poetry? Very weird, I'll have to read this a few more times... very easy reading, armchair enlightenment. Apparently, all you need to do is realize that awareness and consciousness are separate. Although I may have missed something. I can't do the beat stream of consciousness thing right now. Poets! I Implore You! Write Poetry not novels! Sigh... I can see how it would have been really cool, if only it were all poetry, instead of just moments. But I admire, intellectually, the genre twistingness. I admire also that it might have had a plot, although I am not sure what it was... Totally postmodern, but like in reality. It is like a sort of nostalgia, although not. Best book written ever for children or adults. I made my mom check this out every single week for months and months until she finally bought it for me! Not really up on the Traherne criticism, but was thoroughly enjoyable. He is apparently more metaphysical than the metaphysicals. And possibly buddhist. Next, or sometime, I will read Eckhart, Boehme, Plotinus, Plato, Pelagius, St Theresa, Augustine, Herbert, Vaughan. I tried to read this once. I just couldn't. Nothingness *is* sexy. I like the font. Perfect for the after TESOL certification blues. Is this flarf? Not sure why anyone is white, this book does not clear that up at all. He is just silly. I should've just reread that simulacra thing. "Wonders" confused me, as things that leave the mystical and enter into religion tend to do. Chapters and chapters on her interest in Fungi! OMG what am I doing! 4 stars for not being actual poetry, but I liked the writing about writing bits... I think I am starting to kind of understand the infinitive used as a noun thing. Maybe... The bear kind of freaked me out but I liked the dolphin parts. Not as good as I thought it would be for lifting depressions... This is not like I expected at all. I would give it 5 stars if this were the 70's. Liked him better in person than on the page... this is SO riveting; it is my kitchen book, while I am cooking, and I keep overboiling things... A lot of blood. I didn't read this but I saw the movie, I mean I went to the reading. Really funny! So funny I felt confused because I am really not used to laughing. The last bit, the title bit, with the sound motif, was really awesome. So instead of moving, I kind of use the book as armor, holding it up between us so I don't have to feel his weird erratic energy, ironically, keeping us from being face to face. I learned that I am supposed to read this book from right to left, but not until I was half way through reading it, apparently, backwards! Dear Surrealism, I love "the little house," the character, so much, I think I am her. Her story is my story. This book is devastatingly, brutally heartbreaking, possibly really disturbing. Don't read this during your menses, before, or after. Maybe that one week where everything is kind of in equilibrium, but be careful. It simultaneously made me think and was a balm for thinking too much. I learned about enclosures. After reading so many of these nature poems, after a while, it stops being about "about" since every poem seems to be saying the same thing, and seems more about different conglomerations of word clusters. I think this is his "humor" phase. If it is the end of the world and people want you to go to the top of a roof, but there are perhaps better, other things you should be doing, maybe don't go to the top of the roof, do those other things, and maybe I should start thinking now about what those other things are that I should be doing, so that when the end of the world does come, I will know exactly what I should be doing. I learnt it is not okay to drink the aftermilk. I kind of feel like I am at work reading this. I'm definitely going to quit my job. What do you read after Patanjali? This book scared the crap out of me! I learned some Italian phrases and (possibly) what it is like to have a broken leg in a foreign country. I learned about graphemes and prime numbers, and why the number one is not a prime number. I liked it better before I realized about the homonymic translation thing. Not for those who need "meaning" but lots of cool lines: "Come up and almonds are nomads." kind of like how when some one says something they think is witty and you can kind of see how it is witty, but you don't think that kind of witty is witty.

"with our
meth among the late lilacs & snow --"

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