Some poetry books are meant for a desk, a pencil and a quiet afternoon. Andrea Gibson’s Take Me With You is meant for a coat pocket. The /books entry notes that it’s small enough to carry around, and that’s the whole idea. This is a book designed to come along with you and be opened … Read more
I’m looking forward to reading Twisted Clay. “She loved … and killed … both men and women. She was utterly beautiful and utterly mad. This is a tale of passionate horror … a breath-taking venture into abnormal psychology … a story which cannot be forgotten. “ I have been spending a little time each day … Read more
Self-isolation is the perfect opportunity to organize our Lesbian library. Again. The shelves on our bookcases, our 25-year-old, cheap bookcases, had been sagging badly. The backs on a few had been broken during our last move, and they leaned suspiciously to the right (had they leaned to the left, I would not have been suspicious, … Read more
I was researching Love Like A Shadow by Lois Lodge, and have found very little on the book. It was published by Phoenix Press in 1935. Barbara Grier rated it A** and appears in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Checklist, where it is described as “Purple-passaged novel of a lesbian seeking true love.” Okay, cool. I need … Read more
If you were anywhere near a radio in 2012 or 2013, you’ve heard Mary Lambert. She sang the chorus of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love,” the marriage equality anthem that became a massive hit and a Grammy nominee. Her few lines in that song reached more people than most poets reach in a lifetime. … Read more
I was looking for some kind of reassurance during these tough times. COVID-19 self-isolation and distancing is hard. But I found reassurance in Living on the Home Front. Author Megan Westley voluntarily lived a wartime lifestyle for a year. She was fine at the end of it. I am reassured that I, we, you, will … Read more
“Begin here. It is raining.” That’s how May Sarton opens Journal of a Solitude. If you’ve ever daydreamed about a farmhouse in New Hampshire, a garden, a stack of books and nobody knocking on the door, those five words read like an invitation. Pull up a chair. Put the kettle on. Then Sarton shows you … Read more
Translating a novel is hard. Translating poetry is harder. Translating Nicole Brossard might be the hardest of all, because so much of her work happens in the syntax: where a sentence turns, what it leaves out, which word lands on which other word. Move her from French into English and you risk keeping the meaning … Read more
Oh the things I do for my readers. All 3 of you! I am updating the database of books, trying to find missing book plots. I found that Agnete Holk’s The Straggler was missing its plot. No problem, just search. Nope. No one has the book plot listed. So, in the interest of completeness and … Read more
Picture a lonely wharf. On it stands a clerk in an ink-blue coat, going through bales of paper. Every bale holds the writing a poet never finished, never published, or never dared to put down. Dionne Brand’s book calls it “the unwritten, the withheld, the unexpressed.” That’s the setup of The Blue Clerk, and it’s … Read more