Notable Waterways of Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

What I've Finished Reading

My first issue of Poetry (March 2018) arrived last week, and I couldn't be happier with my subscription. Will this be the best $15 that I've ever spent? Maybe! We have stunning poetry, pretty good poetry, poetry that isn't quite my thing but who am I to judge, essays about poetry with laugh-out-loud John Ashbery quotes in them, and reviews of poetry books that make me want to run out and buy the books, which is not always a guarantee when it comes to poetry book reviews. One of the things that makes it so great: it's short. Sixty pages of poetry, twenty pages of prose, with plenty of white space to soothe the eye and heart, and a couple of pictures here and there. It always makes me sad to get a gigantic literary magazine with three hundred pages of densely-packed prose. I feel bad for the contributors because I know that my feelings of ennui and satiation are not their fault, but I can't help feeling them.

I suspect that if you're part of the Poetry World, you might look askance at Poetry because it's rich and popular and even bookstores in Alabama carry it. There are probably aesthetic quarrels involved that I don't understand. Maybe you call it "the Billy Collins of poetry journals," or maybe I just made that up. I am emphatically not part of the Poetry World, which I guess makes me Poetry's target audience. Anyway, it's pure delight and I love it.

Just in case you were wondering:

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot

-John Ashbery

I liked nearly everything in Poetry March 2018 and was underwhelmed at best by almost all of Free Lunch nos. 3 and 6 (Autumn 1989 and 1990), which makes me worry that I'm overly susceptible to being Of My Time. But who isn't?

I also read a tonne of Anthony Powells over the weekend, but somehow I have even less to say about Powell than I have to say about anything else on Earth. I enjoyed them thoroughly & couldn't remember them very well afterward, except that some of the characters have become old friends, in the diluted Facebook sense (Our algorithm won't rest until you reconnect with: Kenneth Widmerpool). This is an accomplishment poor C. P. Snow has only managed once (with George Passant) though I promised myself/everyone I would say something nice about C. P. Snow in the middle future. I will! But it won't be right now because I had to take all the books back to the library.

What I'm Reading Now

I got Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson from the juvenile section of the library, because I can't deal with how much I love the first half of Williamson's 15-novel novel and I want to make myself extra sad when it turns all intolerably bitter and fascist, I guess. The subtitle, "His Joyful Water-Life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers" is just my flavor of twee. So far the baby otter's relationship with his mother and sisters bears a surprising similarity to that of Phil Maddison in the novels, taking into account that one is a baby otter and the other is a human boy. I'm beginning to suspect that Henry Williamson might have been an oldest child with two sisters? It's very dense and lush and Williamson's love of slightly off-kilter and old-fashioned diction is out in full force.

I'm also reading C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton, because it was the earliest book in the series I could find at Trade'N'Books. It's pretty good! There's a beautiful noir opening in a grody gym, and Kinsey Millhone, the narrator-detective, is tough to the point of comedy. I laughed at her description of how her apartments have narrowed along with her life. Millhone dresses for comfort, but felt inexplicably compelled, when she saw how fancy her new client's house was, to "blend in" by digging around in the trunk of her car for some fancier clothes. So she comes tottering in on a pair of heels last used in an unsuccessful prostitution sting, wearing a skimpy shirtdress with a stain on it, because what the hell, it was the best she could do. No one at the fancy house comments on this dubious decision. I like her.

What I Plan to Read Next

I'm taking a month-long break from 99 Novels (at least until Love and the Loveless arrives) and burrowing into my TBR shelves. I came here with every intention of listing a few of them but went away daunted without listing even one. Next time! Maybe!

Comments

[liadt]

Aw, poor poem! Have fun with future issues.

Some books defy being talked about;p

(I'm def not of my time!)

[evelyn_b]

I'm sure I will! :D

And I know I'm of my time because how could I avoid it? I just wish people would stop expecting me to be nostalgic about cartoons I didn't watch, that's all. :)

[liadt]

Nostalgia them back! Or just play annoying theme tunes at them - same difference;p

[thisbluespirit]

Aww, I hope you continue to enjoy your magazine! If it's right for you, that's what matters. I certainly couldn't be doing with a 300 page literary magazine every month, either. (And I think magazines really do date - I think it's in their nature. They're full of current news and new writers, or articles about what's happening now, whatever subject they are. I've occasionally picked up old family history magazines and they are also very dated.)

Good luck with Mount TBR!

[evelyn_b]

Good luck with Mount TBR!

Thank you! I stacked up a stack for March, and now I'm regretting it because I stacked it too high and the ennui is rolling in like lukewarm waves from a blighted sea. But I'll get over it! It's 98% just because I have to read too many things for work this week.

I don't mind most kinds of magazines being dated - I like looking at them and their terrible ads and their weird failed slang appropriations - but bulk-reading thirty-year-old poetry and fiction is rough. I feel about 90s poetry like surly 90s grunge kids felt about the New Kids on the Block.

There are always gems, of course, but a lot of what was just kind of fresh and ok at the time is a dead grey iguana now, all its color gone. Now I'd like to think I can pick out the Future Dead Iguanas of America from the permanently good stuff in Poetry March '18, but I know I can't. Oh well!

I certainly couldn't be doing with a 300 page literary magazine every month, either.

I'm sure that someone can, but I am not that someone. To be fair, a lot of them are quarterlies or annuals. But still. Still. Especially if they can't be bothered to put in any margins for the weary reader. :(

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! I stacked up a stack for March, and now I'm regretting it because I stacked it too high and the ennui is rolling in like lukewarm waves from a blighted sea. But I'll get over it! It's 98% just because I have to read too many things for work this week.

de-stack it and then hide the books in places so they come as surprise?

Especially if they can't be bothered to put in any margins for the weary reader. :(

NO MARGINS! The rotters! Well, they don't deserve to be read, then, do they?

[evelyn_b]

de-stack it and then hide the books in places so they come as surprise?

I have the object permanence of a newborn baby (that is to say, none) so I don't want to hide them, but I may de-stack a little.

NO MARGINS! The rotters! Well, they don't deserve to be read, then, do they?

You wouldn't expect it in this day and age, would you? AND YET. I picked up a new publication a while ago, young arty masthead, lots of money to burn, earnest eager editorial statement, hip as the night is long -- and not a margin to be found. They'd wrapped it up in plastic to make it look extra art-book and collectible; little did I know it was just guarding the terrible secret within.

[osprey_archer]

Henry Williamson's 15-novel behemoth still hasn't gotten to the fascist part halfway in? Somehow that seems particularly unfair: he ought to have gotten around to it earlier so his readers would know what they were getting into even if they don't have Anthony Burgess to warn them.

I hope your TBR stack seems less daunting tomorrow! Sometimes I think planning too much reading in advance can make it feel like a chore, even if they're all technically books that one does want to read. It might be good, but what if I don't feel like reading it just this minute, hmm?

[evelyn_b]

I'm sure there are warning signs, but I'm not sufficiently alert or up on midcentury British politics to be able to pick them out. I almost wish Burgess hadn't warned me, so I didn't feel on the lookout quite so much. I don't know if it's something that was present from the start or something that develops later.

It probably won't seem less daunting tomorrow, because I'm still busy (and procrastinating frantically as usual) but by the end of the week things will definitely look brighter. I shouldn't have put that many books together at once, though!

[asakiyume]

Love-love-love your remarks on Poetry magazine; makes me almost--ALMOST--want to get a subscription myself. Maybe I will in a month or two. I can tell I'm teetering. I love their Twitter feed.

Maybe you call it "the Billy Collins of poetry journals," or maybe I just made that up. I am emphatically not part of the Poetry World, which I guess makes me Poetry's target audience. --so much awesome right there.

Also, what you say about jam-packed literary magazines and the feelings they inspire makes me think that almost always it's better to offer just a small amount of something than too much of something. I remember when an acquaintance gave me like five music CDs, all music by people I had never heard of. No no no! I felt overwhelmed. Where to begin. I think I ended up never listening to some. Give me *one* CD. Don't give me ten pages of film recommendations; give me five film titles. And so on.

[osprey_archer]

YES to the second part of this comment. There's nothing more overwhelming than someone who is like "You've got to watch THIS show and THIS show and THIS show and..." and they're all approximately 25 seasons long (or so it feels like) and have spin-off shows and good God, what if I wanted to choose some of my own entertainment material at some point in the next five years?

[asakiyume]

Just hang in there until year six, lol. (But of course no, because the recommendations keep coming)

[evelyn_b]

:D I know I go in for hyperbole a little too much, but I really do recommend it. Just a beautiful piece of editing and printing, and a genuine pleasure to read. Team Poetry knows what it's about. And they have a fold-out bit in the middle for formatting that doesn't fit on their little pages!

<3

Less is definitely more when you're trying to get someone into something. I don't mind if a decent novel is a hundred pages too long, but I get impatient if a litmag is twenty-five pages too long. Maybe because I can appreciate sprawl as a novelistic value even if a particular instance of it is not for the best, whereas if a litmag is too long it just looks like indecision, or like the editors are in a rush to publish as many of their friends as possible before the money runs out.

Anyway, Poetry is great. Don't let me heckle you into getting a subscription, but DO listen to your heart if it happens to be calling for you.

[asakiyume]

Coincidentally, sovay just blogged about the same issue of Poetry! Must be an especially good one. I feel Fate is nudging shoving me.

[pocketbookangel.wordpress.com]

I’m reading one Powell a month this year, and it is a little embarrassing how much I’m looking forward to the next installment. The books have all become mushed together in my head thanks to always reading them in clumps—the world’s longest cocktail party where the only unforgivable sin is wearing the wrong coat.

Now that I think about it, the world of literature would be an amazing place if more writers produced children’s books that were animal rewrites of their adult novels. Like The Alexandria Quartet, but in a garden: Of women, the most we can say, not being Frenchmen badgers, is that they are burrowing animals. We’re all burrowing animals here, except the cats.

[evelyn_b]

Burrowing is the only kind of animal I can be until I get my shelves under control. At least they are (almost) all actually shelves now and not embarrassed stacks in front of shelves.

Now that I think about it, the world of literature would be an amazing place if more writers produced children’s books that were animal rewrites of their adult novels.

Now I wish this were an established cultural expectation so that everyone did it - everyone who expects to be taken seriously as a literary artist, that is. Of course you can't expect adventure pulpists and the people who write crime fiction to bring the right sensibility to an animal AU.

One Powell a month is probably a good approach if you want to read rather than snack on Powell. I disappointed myself a little, because after inhaling 3 other Powells at a go, I "saved" Books Do Furnish A Room for a week so I could savor the publishing gossip and then it was over as quickly as the rest (quicker, because pub. goss. goes down easiest of all the known gossips). Before I knew it those manuscript pages were floating in the canal and I picked up my head, and there I was with nothing left but the endpapers.