Currently reading
Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories
Operation Greylord: The True Story of an Untrained Undercover Agent and America's Biggest Corruption Bust
Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto
My System: 21st Century Edition
The Wheeling Year: A Poet's Field Book
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love
James Madison: A Biography
The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805
The Language Book (Poetics of the New)
Published in 1978, this work is a splendid example of minimalism and the phenomenon of the Art Book. Another reviewer has done a great review of the book, with pictures so you can get a feeling for the physical space the book occupies, which is notable. See it here: http://dbqp.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-coincidences-into-sentences.htmlI shall restrain my review to the poetry itself, which I'll be the first to admit is not the complete idea of the work, so take this as you will. I'm saying here, and fully admitting, that by speaking only of the words, I'm not reviewing the book in it's complete form or intention. That said...I'm sure in 1978 that deconstructed narrative like this was less common. Sadly today it's not. This is better than the others, but it's awfully hard at times to form a connection with the reader. These hundreds of fragments paint a story where the reader is invited/forced to fill in the blanks, a non-uncommon technique of minimalism. However I personally must lack the imagination required (or I'd like to think, a background of experience enough in common with the creator) to fully do so, since the effect often times was of catching a cell phone conversation with many missing gaps. Just wasn't the flavor I loved. Some WILL adore this, no question. I'm just not one of them.
