Poem of the Week by Jack Spicer

Let's start the week off with a little Spicer, shall we?  This is from my vocabulary did this to me: the Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 2008).


Aquatic Park
A Translation for Jack Spicer

A green boat
Fishing in blue water

The gulls circle the pier
Calling their hunger

A wind rises from the west
Like the passing of desire

Two boys play on the beach
Laughing

Their gangling legs cast shadows
On the wet sand

Then,
Sprawling in the boat

A beautiful black fish.

Jokes

Appropriated from Tom Gauld & The Guardian Saturday Review, all the way over on the other side of the pond.

Robert Wasler — Microscripts

New Directions has been putting out some really classy, good-looking books this year. I've mentioned Roberto Bolaño's Antwerp quite a couple of times, and last week I talked about Anne Carson's Nox; well here is another exciting and beautiful addition for your bookshelves...

The long awaited translations of Robert Walser's (The Assistant & The Tanners) Microscripts!

When Walser passed away in 1956 the executor of his estate, Carl Seelig, assumed that the small strips of paper were covered with markings around a millimeter or two high. Seelig figured that Walser had been writing in an undecipherable code while being hospitalized for schizophrenia in the Waldau Sanitarium.

What have now been termed Walser's Microscripts, turned out to be a miniaturized form of the Kurrent script, a kind of shorthand for German-speaking countries that was used until the mid-twentieth century. These Microscripts turned out to be early versions of Walser's novels and countless stories. New Directions has collected some of these stories, along with full-color plates of the original Microscripts.

These short stories are wonderful, masterful examples of the great storyteller Walser was. Susan Bernofsky has done an excellent job translating and Walter Benjamin's afterword is captivating.

Any fan of Walser (or literature) will get endless pleasure from this book.

The Metaphysical Misadventures of Dr. David Throckmartin (and Other Tales)

I began Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica a couple of days ago, drawn to one of our remaindered copies due to the Henry Darger illustration NYRB had decided to slap on the cover of their edition. Not only did Hughes' 1929 masterpiece (#71 on The Modern Library's list: The 100 Best English Language Novels of the 20th Century, FYI) draw me in immediately, but it has also inspired multiple themes that I'm looking forward to applying in my summer reading list. Most importantly, tropical adventure. Last summer my reading, for whatever reason, revolved around major bummers. Example: In 2009 suddenly saw myself outside of my own body, lounging in the grass of one of San Francisco's many beautiful public parks, toggling between Suicide and Nausea. Though proud to have tackled an existentialist classic and a staunch psychological text back to back, still I asked, "What the hell is wrong with me?" and vowed that the next summer I would get it right. So, tropical reading '10 it is.

What's exciting about this is to me about this idea is the inherent insanity of the tropical setting. It, in theory, gives a book a strong backbone to begin with. Along with the fun of attempting to visualize what is to most an intriguing, foreign setting, the questionable moral state we call human nature seems to easily compose its dramas on remote islands or wayward vessels- human isolation and the dynamic will of the world (extreme weather conditions) ultimately must to come in to play. Man versus nature versus man versus man themes are practically unavoidable.

Here's a brief list of a few I'm excited to start. The what I've got so far and the little I know of them:

-Peter Mattheissen's Far Tortuga
What Mattheissen originally intended as a short article became a novel, a meditation on the sea itself.

-Stephen Marche's Shining at the Bottom of the Sea
A documentation of an island that never actually existed. This one comes with a high recommendation from my colleague, NPB.

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
Short non-fiction surrounding the life of a sailor who survived some dubious set of circumstances at sea, eventually found washed up on a Colombian beach.

-A. Merritt's The Moon Pool
A 1919 tale of some sort of a man named Dr. Throckmartin and his metaphysical misadventures in The South Pacific. This book has chapter titles like Larry and the Frog-Men and looks to me like it will be the most sci-fi novel I have ever even expressed an interest in reading.

So far any other ideas that I've had fall under the categories of ALREADY READ (Island) and DON'T PARTICULARLY CARE TO READ (The Beach), so if you have any suggestions I'd be obliged to listen. Four books is not gonna' cover the next three months, y'know?

Book of the Month: The Invisible Bridge

Each month, Green Apple selects a brand-new book that we love and recommend unconditionally. In fact, we guarantee you'll love the book--if not, we'll refund your money.

Since we know you like to laugh, we have produced an amusing video to accompany this month's selection. If you like it, pass it on.



This month's book is a first novel by an ex-SF writer. Her earlier collection of short stories (How to Breathe Underwater) was highly lauded, and her debut novel, The Invisible Bridge is also receiving wonderful reviews like this and this.

Here's Samantha's "shelf-talker:"

It is hard to list all the ways in which this ambitious novel (set in Paris & Hungary before & during WWII) succeeds. It is a sweeping historical account (I swear I kept thinking of Anna Karenina as I read) grounded in what is, at its core, a love story.

To try to do justice to its long and looping plot would be to sell it short, so suffice to say that it's the best book I've read in at least a year (and I read a lot of books) and that it manages to be both thoroughly engaging and important, with a capital I. I'm in awe of Orringer's talents as a story teller. And now I'm just gushing. You will, too.
--Samantha

Convinced yet? Buy the book by clicking here.