November 28, 2006

Prospective reading list for after I turn in grades; that is, my book order came in from SPD and I'm excited, but have to delay my enthusiasm:

Ron Silliman, The New Sentence (Roof, 1977; repr. 2003). I saw Stephanie toting this around the other day and thought 'Damn! I wish I hadn't left that back in Nanjing.' So I re-bought it as it's been a while since I've read it and now seems like as good a time as any to reacquaint myself with it.

Ron Silliman, Under Albany (Salt, 2004). Haven't read it yet, and thought why not?

Ron Silliman, Tjanting (Salt, 2002). Likewise with the one above. These both came out when I was in China and too broke to afford books from America (this title is a reissue from 1981). A Ron triple bill, again why not?

Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics (Stanford UP, 2005). Mostly it was the title of chapter 2 that did it for me: "What is a Poem? Or, Philosophy and Poetry at the Point of the Unnamable." Indeed, what is a poem? That and I love when philosophers (especially French) write about poetry.

Araki Yasusada, Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada (Roof, 1997). Kent Johnson's hoax that forces the reader to contemplate how much a poet's biography matters to the reading of a text. Ah, crushing the myth of the poet while also exposing how much biography matters for publication.