David Wheatley offers here a speedy response to Christopher Reid’s book: ‘I hereby proclaim The Song of Lunch an instant classic.’ The phrase is something of an oxymoron, but I know what he means. You decide.
And in today’s Guardian – I almost spilt my coffee – a double-page spread on August Kleinzahler, a New Jersey/San Francisco poet whose readership here may be small (me, C, H, R, a few others) but is passionate. Is that what a cult is? Any gruffness – look at the photo: hat, cat, and an expression that isn’t a scowl but isn’t far off it either – comes with an undertow of sensitivity to light, angles, distances, and thrilling ways of getting language of different registers (street, literary, technical) to cohabit on the page.
3 comments:
Kleinzahler. Any links to his stuff you can recommend?
S – thanks for dropping by. Kleinzahler doesn’t have much of a presence on the net. Four poems from some years ago at booksmith.com/reader/fourpoems.html. Little point, in the circumstances, of suggesting the local library; the offer of a book parcel still holds. C
Book parcels are always welcome, craved, even. Thankyou, I'll look at that link.
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