How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith
I heard Mr. Smith interviewed on a podcast and his eloquence and enthusiasm made me want to read his book. Clint Smith is a renowned poet and it shows in his beautiful prose. This book is a tour of places that involve the history of…
Bob Thompson, This House is Mine, Diane Tuite editor
On an unusually cloudy Los Angeles day I saw this exhibition of Bob Thompson’s work at the Hammer museum. I had no idea who he was but his large, colorful, magistral canvases provided all the sunlight I needed that day. The paintings are arrestingly original…
How I Became a Tree by Suman Roy
More than a year ago I gave up my car and became much more earthbound getting places more frequently by foot or bike. I am no longer so frequently in that unreal, disembodied state that comes with driving 25 or 30 miles an hour in…
Such Color, New and Selected Poems by Tracy K. Smith
I got turned on to Tracy K. Smith when Amanda Gorman read Tracy’s poem ‘Declaration’ on the New Yorker Poetry podcast. This collection pulls from several of her collections over the past twenty years and covers a lot of ground; personal, historical, political, social and…
Poetry Notebook by Clive James
Clive James who died in 2019 had a long period of terminal illness which is reflected in this book published in 2014. I picked this book up at ‘Word after Word,’ an amazingly good bookstore for a town the size and nature of Truckee. I…
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strauss
I read this book because of a quote from it in Louis Menand’s ‘Free World’, ‘the world began without man and will end without him.’ This fits with my focus on post-humanism, looking at all of life without favoring human life. Menand made clear that…
Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx
I’ve recently come to a deeper appreciation what is beneath my feet and in particularly the soil which is magical. When I saw Annie Proulx had written this book, I pre-ordered it from the publisher. She makes no claim that she is either a scientist…
Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
I saw the cover of this book in a promotion by University of California Press in the New York Review of Books and I bought it based on nothing more than the stark image of prehistoric looking edifices on a treeless background as if it…
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