Last, next.

60: MN Yellow
61: Shenandoah (Birch)

The Path to Nothing

Gilbert Seldes, The Stammering Century:

But it is almost impossible to believe that the wholly undisciplined followers of New Thought could understand or seriously practice the discipline of Yoga. […] For the most part, those who practiced it had not the faintest intention of giving up the world. Yoga was for them a mystic way of renouncing whatever was irritating and preserving whatever was pleasing. It was an elaborate game of pretense by which noisy people went into silence and distracted people imagined they were concentrating. The glamour of renunciation suffused the picture which they had of themselves. Actually nothing was renounced and whatever was desired was lifted to a transcendantal plane where it could be enjoyed a hundred-fold. No doubt the delusion was as effective as the actuality might have been. One fancies oneself becoming ageless and deathless, and full of perfection, sinking into eternal nothingness. And if, in fact, one was only resting a little and sinking into a perfumed bath the result was about the same. For Yoga had given a reason beyond reason. It had, in a strange way, transfigured the commonplaces of life. One was lifted successively to higher and higher planes of being, not knowing exactly where they were, but vaguely satisfied because they were higher. The little irritations of the world fell away. One was alone with the mysterious spirit and, breathing in a refined way, one returned to conquer the world.

I’ve been reassessing my “Finished” program, and I think it’s time to make a few changes.

First, I’ve long been aware that I tend to re-read books in the fall more than I read new books, so I am anticipating a decrease in my willingness to tackle new work. I’ll still be reading some new/unfinished things, but not at the expense of re-reads.

Also, I feel as though I have achieved the root reason for doing this: my poetry TBR shelf is now just over a third of what it was at the end of 2018.

And instead of weekly updates, I’ll be going back to a monthly update, like I did in April. So this will be the last update until the end of September.

• Reginald Shepherd: Red Clay Weather (Pittsburgh, 2011)

• Ken Babstock: On Malice (Coach House, 2014)
• Tracy K Smith: Wade in the Water (Graywolf, 2018)

Another week with nothing finished. I’m mired in several longer things, as well as the arrival of two new books, a Collected and a very large Selected.

Nothing. This has been a bad week — I had an allergic reaction to all of the poetry I was trying to read. Apparently there was a reason why they’d been lying around only partially-finished: I simply disliked them. Maybe next week will be better…

Last, next.

59: Mile Marker (Stars)
60: MN Yellow

• Robert Bly: The Light Around the Body (Harper & Row, 1967; Norton, 2018)
• Laura (Riding) Jackson: Selected Poems in Five Sets (Persea, 1993)

• Reginald Shepherd: Otherhood (Pittsburgh, 2003)
• James Lenfestey: The Marriage Book (Milkweed, 2017)

• Robert Bly: Silence in the Snowy Fields (Wesleyan, 1962; Norton, 2018)
• Philip Levine: What Work Is (Knopf, 1991)
• Tom Clark: Easter Sunday (Coffee House, 1987)

• Frank O’Hara: Meditations in an Emergency (Grove, 1957)
• CD Wright: The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All (Copper Canyon, 2016)

I’m this close to finishing a few books, but I haven’t wanted to rush them, and I’ve had so many distractions…

Last, next.

58: Mile Marker (Arrow)
59: Mile Marker (Stars)

Nothing. I didn’t pick up a book of poetry except to move it out of the way as I reached for something else.

• Harryette Mullen: Urban Tumbleweed (Graywolf, 2013)

I started this “Finished” experiment on the last day of 2018, and I just realized we’re approaching halfway through the year, so it seems appropriate to have a midway check-in.

I have logged 41 poetry books since the week starting on the last day of 2018, and that number would be higher if I included the four or five books I abandoned. The initial “To Be Read” shelf held just under seventy books, so you’d be forgiven if you thought this meant I’d managed to complete well over half of all the books on my TBR shelf.

But these numbers don’t tell the whole story. I’ve bought 17 additional books of poetry this year, so I still have (consults a calculator…) almost 45 unfinished (or unstarted) books waiting for me to get around to them. I’ll never cross the finish line if it keeps receding before me (said every bookworm ever).

However, I consider this experiment a complete success so far. It has encouraged me to actively engage in reading poetry almost every day, and it’s also made me realize just how difficult it can be to do something you love. If I struggle to find time to read poetry, then how much harder is it for people with a far more casual relationship to it?

It’s much easier to find the time for things we’re addicted to rather than for the things we love.

For now, I will continue to post weekly updates, but I may choose to go monthly for August or September, and give myself a chance to focus on a few more longer books (like Laura Kasischke’s collected poems, or Geoffrey Hill and JH Prynne’s enormous collected doorstops).

And at this point, I’m definitely planning to take this through to the end of the year. And beyond? We’ll see.

• Tomas Tranströmer (Bly, trns): The Half-Finished Heaven (Graywolf, 2001, 2017)
• Jenny George: The Dream of Reason (Copper Canyon, 2018)

• Tomas Tranströmer (various translators): For the Living and the Dead (Ecco, 1995)

Another week in which I didn’t actually complete anything. I’ve been drifting through some poetry collections that are re-reads for me, but the bulk of my reading has been non-fiction and several novels.

Last, next.

57: Coastal (LA)
58: Mile Marker (Arrow)

Nothing. Between Anniversaries, which I just started last week, and pushing almost everything else aside to finally finish Through the Eye of a Needle, I have devoted very little time to reading poetry.

• Melissa Stein: Terrible Blooms (Copper Canyon, 2018)
• Ada Limón: Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015)

Limón: Before buying her book from the publisher’s booth at Wordplay last week, she was only a name to me.

There is a popular trend in the current era to strive for a very informal, conversational style. When done poorly, it’s insipid, self-indulgent, and therapeutic, like reading someone’s diary. I found her best poems to be all the more powerful precisely because of how deftly she employed a quotidian voice that at times almost verged on clumsy, only to tighten up into a musical clarity all the more surprising.

I did find the collection to be a bit uneven, but that’s not remarkable; I find most poetry collections uneven.

Despite a short trip to Florida and other distractions, I somehow managed to finish three short books this week.

• Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1855 Edition) (Penguin Classics, 1986)
• Ron Padgett: Big Cabin (Coffee House, 2019)
• Todd Boss: Closer than Home (self-published chapbook, 1993)

Last, next.

56: Wednesday Green
57: Coastal (LA)