Favorite Reading of 2011
I’ve wandered back through my notebook with eye toward making a list of books that most enlarged my perspective, tickled my fancy, and/or puzzled me in a productive way in 2011. Needless to say, the list is completely subjective and idiosyncratic. New books and old books are mixed together, and I highly recommend them all:
Poetry
Adonis, Adonis: Selected Poems (2010)
A. R. Ammons, Collected Poems 1951-1971 (1972)
Bob Arnold, Yokel: A Long Green Mountain Poem (2011)
Ed Baker, Stone Girl E-Pic (2011)
Robert Bly, Talking in the Ear of a Donkey (2011)
Brandel France de Bravo, Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices (2010)
René Char, Furor and Mystery & Other Writings (2011) and The Brittle Age and Returning Upland (2009)
Robert Cooperman, My Shtetl (2010), The Words We Used (2009), Letters to Juliet (2010), and The Ranch Wife (2011)
Gloria Gervitz, Migrations/Migraciones (2004)
Jonathan Greene, Inventions of Necessity: Selected Poems (1988)
Seamus Heaney, Human Chain (2011) and Sweeney Astray (1983)
Francisco Hernández, Antojo de Trampa: Segunda Antología Personal (1999)
Dale Jacobson, Shouting at Midnight (1986), Factories and Cities: A Poem in Two Parts (2003), and A Walk by the River (2004)
Bill Knott, Collected Sonnets 1970-2010 (2011)
Philip Levine, News of the World (2009)
John Martone, Shooting Star (2011)
Antonio Porchia, Voices (online only: the best translations I’ve seen of these difficult poetic letters to the Ineffable)
Yannis Ritsos, Stones (2009) and Shadows of Birds (2009)
Don Wentworth, Past All Traps (2011)
Meir Wieseltier, The Flower of Anarchy: Selected Poems (2003)
Novels
Roberto Bolaño, The Skating Rink (2011)
William Michaelian, A Listening Thing (2011)
Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)
Juan José Saer, The Witness (1991) and The Sixty-Five Years of Washington (2010)
Osvaldo Soriano, Shadows (1993)
Belles Lettres, Memoir, History, etc.
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (1997)
Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2009)
V. F. Cordova, How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova (2007)
Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief (2010)
Hans Peter Duerr, Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and Civilization (1987)
Clayton Eshleman, Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld (2003)
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (1989)
Róbert Gál, Signs & Symptoms (2003)
Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World (2002)
Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries—A Sourcebook: Sacred Texts of the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean World (1987)
Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010)
Thanks for the list and the wish, Lyle! I got both of Valzhyna Mort's books for Christmas and am looking forward to them, and Rich's book is in my stack. The rest are new to me. Good to know my consciousness has new paths to hobble down in 2012….
And Happy New Year!
A few I've read during the past year that I particularly liked:<br /><br />** Poetry:<br /><br />Adrienne Rich, <i>Tonight No Poetry Will Serve</i><br /><br />Robert Bly, <i>Talking into the Ear of a Donkey</i><br /><br />Scott King, <i>All Graced in Green</i> (Thistlewords Press)<br /><br />Valzhyna Mort, <i>Collected Body</i> (Copper Canyon)<br /><br />Robert Bohm, <i>Closing the Hotel
Happy New Year to you, too! I hope you find something in the list that you like….<br /><br />Cheers!
Happy New Year, Joe! Thanks for a look-see at your list. Quite a few I'd never have known about otherwise, and some reminders of ones I've wanted to read but never got around to it. Thanks for including the links.