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Adventures in Reading 2018
Old Reading Room at BookBar (Photo: Tricia M.) Let me admit up front that I’ve included half a dozen books here that were read as part of my work with the Professional Creative Writing program at University College. But they all turned out to be worthwhile reading experiences. Even those I couldn’t quite connect with—Juan Gelman’s The Poems of Sidney West, Ben Lerner’s Angle of Yaw, and Adonis’s powerful Concerto al-Quds, which is also recondite and nakedly anguished by turns—continue to haunt me. This is usually an early indicator of re-readings in the offing.Read More
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A Journey into the Steppe
Beautifully translated by Krishna Winston I recently finished a typically soulful, visionary novel by Peter Handke, On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House. It concerns the journey of a pharmacist from the Austrian town of Taxham, near Salzburg, who—isolated and estranged from his wife—sets out to cure himself of anxiety and dread by undertaking a long, strange journey into the Alps. There he acquires two traveling companions, and aging and all-but-forgotten poet and a once-famous Olympic skier, each on his own quest.Read More