• WS Merwin: The Lice (Atheneum, 1967; Copper Canyon, 2017)
• Anslem Hollo: Guests of Space (Coffee House, 2007)

On Creative Longevity

It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life; he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life, he must never grow complacent, never be content with life, must always demand the impossible and when he cannot have it, must despair. The burden of the mystery must be with him day and night. […]

[The artist] must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy. Many lesser poets have it only in their youth; some even of the greatest lose it in middle life. Wordsworth lost the courage to despair and with it his poetic power. But more often the dynamic tensions are so powerful that they destroy the man before he reaches maturity.

–Humphrey Trevelyan, from his introduction to the 1949 edition of Goethe’s autobiography, Truth and Fantasy from My Life

(via)

This may be the first week I finish only one book, if that. In fact, this may be a zero books week.

I’m pushing slowly through several longer things while trying to get to the end of a few shorter ones. But I’ve been fighting a cold, and I haven’t been able to focus on much more than my binge-rewatch of The Wire.

• Galway Kinnell: Three Books (Mariner, 2002)
• Tomas Tranströmer (Fulton, trns): The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems (New Directions, 2006)
• Nicola Stӑnescu (Cotter, trns): Wheel with a Single Spoke (Archipelago, 2012)

Stӑnescu: He bears a strong resemblance to early Residencia-era Neruda — that wild, defiant surrealism that’s almost violently playful. (Pairs well with Andrei Codrescu who, of course, sees Stӑnescu as a profoundly important influence.)

• Harryette Mullen: Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006)
• Linda Gregg: In the Middle Distance (Graywolf, 2006)

Gregg: Mostly harmless. A few bright and surprising poems in an otherwise pedestrian collection. Minimalism is one thing, but not quite going far enough is another. Some poets benefit from seeing many of their poems together, others are better one isolated poem at a time. Linda Gregg, for me, seems to be among the latter.

• Paul Celan (Joris, trns): Breathturn (Green Integer, 2006)
• GS Giscombe: Prairie Style (Dalkey, 2008)
• Rimbaud (Ashbery, trns): Illuminations (Norton, 2011)

Ken Levine:

James Garner was very self-effacing. On acting he once said: “I’m a Methodist, but not as an actor.” In his memoir he wrote: “I’m from the Spencer Tracy school: be on time, know your words, hit your marks, and tell the truth. I don’t have any theories abut acting, and I don’t think about how to do it, except that an actor shouldn’t take himself too seriously, and shouldn’t try to make acting something that it isn’t. Acting is just common sense. It isn’t hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.”

• Larry Levis: The Widening Spell of the Leaves (Pittsburgh, 1991)
• Erin Belieu: Slant Six (Copper Canyon, 2014)
• Mary Ann Caws (ed): Pierre Reverdy (NYRB, 2013)

Levis: Fluent, grounded, and stunningly virtuosic.

Last, next.

53: Clandestine (A)
54: Kraft (lined)

• Ken Babstock: Days Into Flatspin (House of Anansi, 2001)
• Ursula Le Guin: Wild Angels (Copper Canyon, 1975/2018)
• Shirley Kaufman: From One Life to Another (Pittsburgh, 1979)

In light of the appallingly large number of unread and under-read books of poetry currently glowering from the two full shelves behind me, I have resolved to finish reading two books of poetry each week this year. I’ll be keeping track of what I finish with this tag.

These books arrived for xmas this year.

No poetry? No. I have sixty-eight books of poetry on my TBR shelf: thirty-seven I’ve started but not yet finished, and thirty-one others I haven’t even begun. (C’mon, I lived a 20-minute walk from Powells for five years; I can resist everything except temptation.)