Some of a new WWAATD contributor’s current reading.

Greetings and felicitations.  I’m your newest We Who Are About To Die contributor.  First, I want to thank Daniel Nester for offering me a chair at the blogging table.

You who consume the words before your eyes are experiencing my inaugural contribution to We Who Are About To Die.  Know that I value your consumption, but please cover your mouth when you cough.

The following is some of my current reading, listed in alphabetical order by author’s name:

 
• The System of Dante’s Hell by Amiri Baraka. This is, as far as I know, his only novel.  It’s part of “Three Books by Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones),” a Grove Press paperback I found on a Barnes & Noble remainder table in the 80s. I’m just getting around to reading the novel now. Considering Baraka’s persona, this 1965 work isn’t what you’d expect. It’s neither political nor Beat. The writing leans more toward the experimental and is almost dreamlike in a mean-streets-of-Newark sort of way.  If I had to draw a connection between its style and that of any of the author’s Beat compatriots, it would be, believe it or not, to William S. Burroughs.  Here’s a sample from the chapter titled “Thieves”:

Violence to my body.  To my mind.  Closed in.  To begin at the limit.  Work in to the core.  Center.  At which there is – nothing.  The surface of thought.  Pure undulation at the midyear, turned yellow as deserts, suns.

                                                                                                Cement

room.  stones, in place.  Fell there, perfect.  For echoes, murders.  Blood looked strange on the street.

The System of Dante’s Hell is out of print, but one chapter appears in The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, published by Basic Books.

• Cool Limbo by Michael Montlack (NYQ Books, 2011).  Michael published a trio of chapbooks prior to Cool Limbo, his first full-length collection. I agree with Edward Field, who calls it “fun to read.” Michael’s poems are like notes and postcards from that friend who always seems to have something interesting and entertaining to say.

Sample from my favorite poem so far, “Gertrude, you hadAlice. But I had him (so briefly) and now we don’t even talk.”:

Well, you could just call him.  You could just call.  You could.  You could say something.  Something about anything.  About anything you might want to call him about.  About him not calling.  About wanting to call.  About wanting him to call.

Disclosure notice:  Michael and I share a chapbook publisher, Poets Wear Prada.

• Earthquake Came to Harlem by Jackie Sheeler (NYQ Books, 2010). Jackie has long been a force of nature on the NY poetry scene. Her poetry can be as hard as a Manhattan sidewalk and can sting like a paper cut.   She alternates between sympathetic, but not sentimental, contemplation of both ordinary and marginal lives and extravagant, almost apocalyptic visions.

Sample from my favorite poem so far, “The Maker”:

God made the Trade Center

because he needed a place to watch the city

over good food late at night with rich companions

and a place to aim his flaming planes.

Why do I like “The Maker”? Because I like extravagant, apocalyptic visions. In fact,  I’m planning to have one tomorrow.