TonyH's perambulations 2010

Not used the word perambulation for so long I had to check it on dictionary.com and yes it is a word, and I especially like the idea it is 'to traverse in order to examine or inspect'.

I'm glad the group is open (and open in being open) - look forward to posting thoughts on next year's reading (ahem this year for those reading after 1 jan).

More of the same messy musings from me I am sure - though I'm also thinking of maybe starting to write reviews, just to practice them, but hopefully in doing so not trying to do more than giving my reaction and some sort of flavour, not criticism.

My 2009 Club Read log: http://www.librarything.com/topic/55215

To summarise it a bit, I completed the following:

The mysteries of pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, love his writing!
House of Light by Mary Oliver (I'm a big fan)
Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1798 version - lots of magical writing, inspiring.
Dubliners by James Joyce - very good, didn't inspire me as much though.
Living with 'The Gloria Films' - very intersting account by Gloria's daughter of the famous (to therapists anyway) Gloria films and the story of Gloria's life.
V. by Tony Harrison - excellent
Something to Tell you by Hanif Kureishi - very enjoyable, I liek his writing.
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, very good, though I think I am enjoying his short prose more (an ongoing project).
Songs for Coming home by David Whyte - thanks Urania for this tip.
Prelude, 1799 by William Wordsworth - wonderful.
Tell me the truth about love by W. H. Auden - gained new respect for him this last year, but this collection didn't inspire me as others have.
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. excellent.
Selected Poems 1976-1997 by Andrew Motion - my first sampling of him and I enjoyed it a lot - gentle but long lasting.
A wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami - very enjoyable, soem great moments. good enough I decided to read the rest in order.
One Secret Thing - by Sharon Olds - very good, felt an intruder at times as a man.
Why I Wake Early - more Mary Oliver
Evidence - and more Mary Oliver, all good.
Where Many rivers Meet - David Whyte
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon - second attempot at it and really connected to first few chapters this time and enjoyed them very much.
A Shropshire Lad - A. E. Housman - I think it would be fair to say that despite some nice bits I hated this, found it like being lectured on the way the world is. Sorry, I know he is well loved/
Swithering by Robin Robertson - very enjoyable.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - excellent and not a cold writer as I feared, will be readign a lot more by him.
The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy - very good. Found them quite stylistically conventional but putting a certain possible wife's view that seems a lot rarer.
Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson - very intersting.
Last Evenings On Earth - by Roberto Bolaño - a wonderful collection of short stories, enough to make me try his longer work.

Ongoing reading:
Infinite Jest by DFW, a sentimental education by Flaubert, the complete short prose by samuel beckett and several others.

So, I started the New Year off with a reread The Catcher in the Rye. Really I did. I was just in the right mood. A couple of years ago I read the rest of this guy’s books and liked them and all. That was back when I was doing the 50 book challenge. But I never went back to Catcher, which I read once before about twelve years ago I think, when I was a kid (thirtyish or something, I can’t even remember). And of course it’s so much more than I did remember. He’s got a pretty good eye and ear this writer guy. Really, you can tell. At least that’s how it seems to me. I want to be careful though, I don’t want to be one of those guys that believes he understands it all about everything and all and loves himself and everything he says. That’s about the last thing I’d want. But you see I have this urge sometimes to write a review for this librarything thing, just to see if I can you know. I like English and had a few ideas about this Holden kid and thought I’d give a composition go. But I’d hate to be crumby or phoney, especially about this goddam book or that kid. So maybe I’ll never write a proper review, I mean if I can’t even write one about this goddam book which does give me some ideas which I’ll just hold court on here, to myself, as it were, almost.

So, if I can get my commas in the right places (as if that’s even important) what do I want to say about it? Its probably all been said by Professors and stuff, who are supposed to know all about this kind of thing but they never seem to put it to you right when they do, even though you really want to know and everything. And then you go and read the reviews here and there is this split between people that love it and people who just can’t stand it. Some of them even hate Holden! I mean, what a thing to say when you really think about it, that you hate anybody or have no time for them. It just about makes me goddam depressed. All right, so he’s a bit of a spoiled little rich kid, but is that his fault? I definitely don’t think so. And he’s a prodigy, a singularity, but it seems to me he’s not in communication with anyone about who he is and being his real self with them and all that because they all seem such phoneys, they don’t even try to understand his story. And he’s such a good communicator, if only he knew its ok to be and there are people you can say who you are to. I mean he even says on the first goddam page how his parents don’t like to share too much. And alright, maybe you can tell from his reaction to Allie’s death that he was already a bit gone – but then he just lost his brother and his grief just hits you again and again throughout. And maybe its grief about his brother, but also about life and how people live and how they seem phoney, playing it like a game, pretending its something else unless you happen to be lucky enough to get like just one person, perhaps, to be real for you and then they might just go and die or something because things like that just happen, really they do. I wonder how anyone can see this book simply as a coming of age story or a story about being a teenager. Maybe it is partly that. It seems more a novel about falling apart in a very unique way. Very well observed. He does have Phoebe.

I can’t keep it up talking like Holden like it is fun – it can be for a while, then the fun just goes. It is a terrible thing that happens to him. Really. I know.

I find it wonderful writing. I hope one day we see some more Salinger. I really do.

I wonder how anyone can see this book simply as a coming of age story or a story about being a teenager. Maybe it is partly that. It seems more a novel about falling apart in a very unique way.

Brilliant thoughts on Catcher, which I love, and I agree wholeheartedly with the statements I quoted above. Your views are particularly interesting to me because of your experience & interest in therapy.

When I read it as a depressive teen, I felt I understood Holden perfectly. A decade later, my depressive spells tend to feel more Hamlet than Holden, but Catcher still resonates with me very strongly (I reread it a couple of years ago). Salinger conveys so well that feeling of everything around you being unreal & disgusting.

Thanks Meddy.

I work with mild issues, not longer term with more acute ones, my experience there is of another sort.

Yes what you've said explains it to me - if I had read it as a teen I'd have found it resonating.

Salinger's use of language is what makes him special for me. He's so colloquial, so 'teen' (bearing in mind my vast age...).

Lawrence Durrell said of Auden, 'he manumitted the colloquial'. I think this might also apply to Salinger.

Looking forward to following your ramblings and musings, Tony. Always one step behind you.

Likewise Mr Cat.

I like that description of Auden, have heard it before, didn't realsie it was Durrell (whose Alexandria book has been sitting on a shelf here for best part of this decade). Yes I agree about Salinger, who I find staggering.

Actually, he says that in the Alexandria quartet.

The whole quote is here:

(one of the best bits of literary criticism on the major poets in English I have read.)

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2008/03/durrell-on-poets.html

tomcat -- I can't believe I forgot you'd posted that link - how rude of me not to reply. I will go and read it right now this minute!

I have come here for another reason though -- I just heard of the death of J. D. Salinger, which makes me sad, especially having just reread the Catcher in the Rye (as above).

I just heard, too. I think I'm going to pull out Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories and reread.

Hi, I really enjoyed your review of TCitR as Holden. And it looks like last year you read some books that I've been interested in (I've been meaning to try Winterson and Murakami, so I'll be tuning in to see what you're reading. And I'm so glad you've discovered Nabokov. You must try Ada.

And, yes, RIP Mr. Salinger. :(

Thanks citygirl - I see The Onion commented on J. D. S's death in a similar style, about how all the "phoneys" were reacting to his loss. I felt a bit guilty about mine as I know he got an injunction against that purported sequel last year.

I started Pale Fire some time ago and should get back at it -- one of my many currently unfinished projects. I look forward to his others greatly.

My reading since Catcher has been limited - I'll say more later but mainly I have dipped into various short story volumes as I had to read 4 by different authors for a 1 day workshop I am doing. the authors being Barth, Faulkner, Carver and Mansfield.
Also am still stuck on book 2 of Paradise Lost for the Salon group read -- I have yet to get a grip of getting a grip of what he's saying reasonably quickly.

Meddy -- did you read some Salinger?

tomcat - I finally read the Durrell (was diverted yesterday). I know not of Pope and a little bit more of the others mostly - but I found it fantastic. I am not sure I agree about Shakespeare, he is so brief, and it may be one of those things I am reluctant to agree on as it is so right and succcinvt and unthought of previously by me as a generality about him. Very enjoyable reading - maybe when I am done some of my current half worked through efforts I must give Alexandria a go. I liked him on Eliot.

Glad you enjoyed it Tony. They are just little snippets of ideas, starting points for thinking about the poets he mentions. But I have always found them fruitful and highly accurate for those poets I know well, Keats for instance, and Auden. Durrell did write a book on poetry criticism, I seem to remember, but I'm not sure if he ever published it. It would be worth reading, I think. His letters to Henry Miller are full of this kind of stuff.

I think these ideas are poetic without being in that sort of structure, interesting.

Hello reading thread, miss me?
hello tony, yes, things have been somewhat sterile on here.
Sterile eh? well fear not for I have not been, ermm . . .

- a little scary perhaps as conversations with myself go.

I have finished a book! lumme.

It was For the Islands I sing a memoir/autobiography by the poet from Orkney George Mackay Brown. I found it highly enjoyable. He strikes me as having been very good at being true to himself -- and yet I have no idea how true a thing that might be to say of him. I read it and think ahh I know this and that and the other about history or literature -- yet he was undoubtedly better read of poetry and literature than me but is not pompous and yet he is very sure of some of what he thinks. He also studied literature at university which I have not. So, what I think chimes especially for me is this mix between the late developer but also enthusiast, somewhat self taught or taught in a non regular way. And someone who did not sell himself to fit the praise of academia either. Somehow that resonates with my own path with literature (not saying I haven't sold myself for academia though, sadly)
I also liked very much his own assertions about what poetry and writing is -- very much something he said about a writer dwelling in images, and, damn I can't find it but I think he was saying not in ideas. I like this as it seems to be something I am starting to try to find my own way with in my writing. For a while I have thought I'd like to write nonsense -- in a bid to get out of the habit of always trying to make sense, but just writing images or perceptions may be another way to get rid of reason and thinking I know stuff. SNIP

All in all Mackay Brown's was a very interesting, wonderful book from someone I'd suspect would have been very interesting to talk with. Am also enjoying his poetry, what I have dipped into, so far.

I'm having second thoughts about my giving books star ratings on the librarything star ratings thingy - I justified it to myself as just my personal log of how I valued a book, with no great critical pretension or statement -- but can't get passed now how it can seem to others who see my star ratings. So think will drop them from now on, for a trial.

I have been busy with other things too - though only completed one other book (see below). I am still reading full catastrophe living which I was thoroughly enjoying and is very engagingly written before stopping for a while. Also nearly half way though the wonderful Zen therapy by david brazier, nearly as far as i got 5 or 6 years ago - a wonderful book, i'll say more when I finish it.

Also attended a workshop on Keats and greatly enjoyed (huge understatement, the whole day was exhilerating) our look at several poems...I become a bigger and bigger fan.

The other book I finished was alice in genderland - an apparently very honest book, at times very frank, about a journey into self acceptance beyond socially given convention and a binary view of gender, by a psychiatrist. Good luck to her/him, may it help many. A positive read. ETA and if a binary view of gender then also the ability to cross it, and why not, a liberating book about a liberation.

Also for my own reading loggage as a personal diary -- really enjoyed this interview in 10 parts with DFW, a link so I can find it again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP9TWD5QaRY&feature=related

There you are! I've been wondering where you got to. Welcome back to your thread. :) Looks like you have been busy.

(To answer your question from much, much earlier, I didn't get to do any Salinger rereading. I still(!) haven't finished War and Peace and have been spending my spare reading time on that, mostly, with some P.G. Wodehouse to lighten the mood now and then. I did take Franny and Zooey on vacation, but didn't get to it. Yet.)

Thanks Meddy, good to see you too :)

I was thinking about trying war and peace sometime, maybe anna k first -- and I still have most of those unfinisheds I already have -- and have been terrible about keeping up with the salon's reading, when it was such a good idea.

At least with the Salinger, whenever you get back to him, you know what a treat you have to look forward to. Could think of it as a good bath, which reminds me of Zooey I think.

I finished Paul Batchelor's The Sinking Road last week. I enjoyed it, though maybe not as much as my first read of Snow Melt which I think I linked to on last years thread (here's the link again if you want it quick. (deleted hearsay report from a friend of the poet's view, of no nastiness, not like me really, but something modelled and nudged to repeat it, silly to do so and may seem what it was not). The personal poems did interest me most, I didn't enjoy the Ovid or Gilgamesh translations (if that last is a translation) but did enjoy the Suibne translation and the rest.

Love your Catcher review in the style of Holden!

Thanks fanny, good to know :)

I'm envious of your workshop on Keats, Tony. Any insights to share with us?

I feel a beginner with Keats, certainly compared to yourself. One thought I like - we were talking of his Sonnet on the sea and who it was written for (edit - to be correct we talked of who it is addressed to) and someone suggested the 'madding crowd', which seems true ("Ye, that have your eye-balls vexed and tir'd/ Feast them upon the wideness of the sea") and a little later I was thinking and it occurred to me it may have also been written as a message to himself and for some reason I like that idea. I can make no claim as to whether it is true or not, but I suspect I may learn a lot in thinking about it as I read about him and investigate its trueness. if I remember the letter that went with this sonnet I think it was a first poem for a while and at a moment of refreshing himself.

There was lots else - I wrote notes, when I have time I will look through and see if I remember anything that might be of interest. It was extremely enjoyable with an excellent teacher and nice group. Some time after it I watched Bright Star, which has some lovely moments -- I am not sure I know enough to know but I wondered if the writing of the poems was accurate to chronology in it. Lovely moments, listen to me! good film.

sounds like a really interesting workshop. I think Keats used poetry as a way to help himself deal with his life:

'a thing of beauty is a joy forever'

he was able, I think, to overcome his depressions by meditating on beauty.

I will look out for the movie. I'm hoping it will come to Taiwan.

Tomcat - the movie is on dvd in case it never makes a cinema round your way.

Its interesting what you say about Keats and depression -- I have got no further in my reading and study of him -- but you made me compare him a bit to Housman who also was depressed and also wrote poetry to help him I think...and I think you'll remember how I reacted to (most) of that. I think Keats does something different, not harking back as I remember Housman....but I get a sense of acceptance through his meditations. For example "when I have fears that I may cease to be" suggests to me transcendence -- though I am not sure the person that taught us agreed with that, and she is very good. I can't remember anything similar in the Housman -- or not in the same sort of way, more an acceptance of your lot and revel in it while you can...for me the world opens up to Keats when he sees his scale in it.

this may all be very obvious?

I've been reading bits and peces of all sorts -- especially discovered Elizabeth Bishop and Norman MacCaig, and so far like them both very much. Also rewadign now The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (teaching me about poetry).

I also finished the sound and the fury - will try to post a few thoughts soon, just my reactions.

When I have fears... is a very good example of Keats's great spiritual maturity in this regard. Throughout the poem, feeling is contrasted with thinking, and at the end he is able through the power of thought to achieve some kind of (Buddhist?) detachment from the world.

I think/till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

It is one of his greatest poems.

I like what you say about the world opening up to Keats when he sees his scale in it. Very true.

Yes, Buddhist(?) detachment from the world --- but also not detachment at all as I think when he gets to where he gets to he is deeply part of the world and accepting of that part. Maybe thats just my own bias.

You're right to ignore my meanderings on Housman, I'll have to try him again, maybe my own bias again.

The Sound and the Fury - what a book, with quite a reputation. I bought it 20 years ago and its taken till now to get all the way through it - two previous failed attempts. The first time, given the reputation for difficulty it has, I am sure I was trying too hard -- this time it did not seem intellectually difficult really, just took some open listening (reminded me of listening to a client or anyone tell a story of themselves, certainly the first 2 sections at least) -- yes I will have missed many a nuance but I got somewhere, followed its course overall this time.
Where it definitely struck me as difficult this time was in emotional content. I haven't found the phrase to describe what its like, but words like that title 'bouquet of barbed wire' come to mind, or an idea of concrete on concrete in the sun - its just a hard hard situation to read about that seems set to expose any moments of reprieve from awfulness as just that, some sort of sop that may actually make things worse in the long run if we try to depend on them. Makes me think now its about loss and avoiding it and the consequences of that.

Also finished The Anthologist which in many ways is also about loss. Especially about being lost - and reminded me of heuristic research or a process of grief and which I really enjoyed very much. And I learned all sorts of things about poetry from it - I will especially be trying Louise Bogan soon (and of course liking very much else, but she and Roethke are new to me). It also struck me in being lost as being very much about focus and losing focus on some things whilst obeying an imperative to be very focussed upon something in particular -- and how part of the key of focus is also being able to change that perspective, again possibly learning about attachment to a recompense.
It also reminded me why I started reading collections in their entirety instead of skipping from poem to poem, work to work or anthology to anthology. I really enjoyed this -- lovely.

Edit -- but maybe the thing about focus or being lost is that to be really lost in something you need to be really lost and unable to focus or find your bearings as you might usually - and trust being lost like that, that you have to lose that to start to find your way again by first not finding it at all. well, it makes sense to me.

I have been reading but have not finished anything for a while - until today. I came across a copy of People one ought to know by christopher Isherwood with illustrations by Sylvain Mangeot. Nonsense poems that made me smile - written by Isherwood as a young man working in the household when the illustrator was 11. I'm looking forward to sharing them.

Continuing to meander down the river Notworryingaboutfinishinganything. A lovely river it is too, after the faster flowing Tryingjustthatbittoohardattimes. Or maybe its just my weather is more suited to this stream for now. Bought mum an ipad - lovely it is too -- but somewhat annoyed (as annoyed as my meanderings allow) by their advert playing on the idea you can have more books than you can read in a lifetime on it, which seems very strange as any librarythinger knows this is nothing new surely? I guess it somehow sounds attractive. Perhaps.

Anyway - back to what stops I have made and books chalked off for eternity as having been read by me even if I one day grow so I cannot even remember them and so might as well never have bothered (on those days alone I add).

North and south by Elizabeth Bishop - Wonderful! No point interpreting these poems to you, or saying too much about them, go and read them, just wonderful. Ok so I am cheating a bit as I am really reading the whole Complete poems but could not wait to comment, especially given my lazy hazy rate of progress. So good I also bought the library of america collected poems, prose and letters on several recommendations. Beautiful.

breakfast at tiffany's also wonderful. Only slight disappointment is that I have been wrong for some time imagining Capote chuckling at writing it the way the movie ends.

Some claim to gentle meandering - the very next day he goes and reads a whole book of poems.

Writing in the Dark by Richard Caddell. I was introduced to this at a recent class on contemporary local poets, the poem we read impressed me (as Paul Batchelor had on a previous course). So, I finally got round to reading the rest - not a huge volume, but well worth it. Very tender poems, written gently with intensity. A poet living with Leukaemia as he wrote these (he died in 2003) who explains in his Foreword that he wrote the notes for the poems on a Psion literally sitting in the dark outside, some in England and some in Japan. I imagine a sense of stillness from sitting outside through sunset into the dark at different times of year and that, that stillness, seemed apparent in the poems - meditative, as in very alert but somehow ok.
The poems were sometimes so spare I wondered about them and their line breaks too, but every time I did so spending more time with them rewarded me I think, suggested my own stillness (still point! thank you Mr Eliot) which helped me with them. Also poems very much about edges between black and white, light and dark, land and sea and life and death I suppose though that is not so crudely put. A book to reread, inspiring.

I finished The Quickening Maze last week by Adam Foulds -- its strange, somehow I didn't like it but I am not at all sure why. Much of it was beautifully writen and many passages I liked a lot. At times i wondered if the characters were less characters than ideas of characters, but then how can we ever escape an idea of character? even of our own? chance events and immediate reactions, the sudden and unexpected might make it seem more authentic? I don't know I'm making this up as I go along. Just something I did not quite like much as I liked a lot of it, maybe it was reading of such stuckness at a time I am not stuck.

There's an excellent essay by Tom Paulin on the relationship between Bishop's letters and her poetry, in which he shows how the genesis of some of her poems is in her letters. it's in this collection of Essays:

Writing to the Moment

worth reading.

hey tc, thanks for this - I've been away a few days and just saw it. Will read asap, perhaps when less hungover.

I found keeping a journal helped my academic work, some essays were definitely born in there -- and now some e-mails and some of my (less frequent) journalling help those occasional poems - and was thinking if I ever get round to writing more that more frequent journalling may help with that again, a way of helping to distill.

Well, I see was wrong to say I'd read that in a bit -- I have to get the book first.

recent books I have managed to finish are:

Agape Agape by William Gaddis. I really liked this and its dithyrambic tone and interest in the first Agape (no, sorry I have not figured out how to put the accent over the final e - well I have but it doesn;t seem to work in email and web pages, somethign to do with fonts no doubt). It does leave me with a question though - a tone of the essays that came with it is of high minded praise, if I was feeling cynical I'd say almost worship, for someone saying these things. And I think they are important things to be said. But he's not alone in saying things, at least some similar things I think, maybe not eactly what he says. the notion of Agape (the first A-gah-pe not the second a-gape) was new to me i think and yet what it means was not of course new to me. However if it is about developing christian fellowship or community or a sharing of love then I find it curious (and curiously unmentioned in the essays included) that the narrator for all his advocacy of agape is so far removed from the mass, the 'herd' as he actually puts it. Maybe he's more honest than me. But it seems to raise a question to me of how to dminish that gap between him (or me) and the 'herd' -a question he never even recognises, seemign to stick in a position of them needing to reach agape the way he does. So it seems the title may reflect upon him, at least so it seems to me. I can only wonder if Gaddis thought so, or how far the boundary between himself and the narrator blurred.

Then The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald. I started this at the start of a holiday and really clicked with it on a train journey and then put it aside for several weeks to finish more recently. A beautifully written book -- it seems to me that I find it hard to describe it -- in fact I want to find it hard to describe it -- anything I say is not the same as the experience of reading it and may seem trite. Some of it contained (hi)stories I had heard before, but always fresh and always aware of the humanity of protagonists. I will be reading him more.

Of course having posted I have an answer about Agape agape - the narrator's experience as he writes.

Tony - Gaddis has barely come across my radar - but having followed your link he sounds interesting. The theme of mechanisation of the arts chimes with a key interest of Walter Benjamin. That immediately makes me interested.

As to Sebald, I have read and greatly enjoyed The Rings of Saturn. A unique outlook/commentary on what he sees, with memory and inner worlds as important as the real observable world.

I have Austerlitz and Campo Santo patiently awaiting their turn in the rank.

Zeno - Benjamin gets mentioned in Agape Agape, if not in the work then it certainly was in the introductory and ending essays included with my edition. In fact Gaddis may have quoted him in the text.
I feel daft for not realising earlier my answer to the narrators agape-ness, at least in part: pain. Though he shows no sign of awareness of his gap to apage (from my perspective) prior to his current dispensation.

I have The emigrants to read next by Sebald, in fact bought it on the holiday I started the rings of saturn on and could not resist reading the first chapter there and then, also wonderful.

I have JR and Agape Agape yet to read by Gaddis. I read The Recognitions and Carpenter's Gothic a while ago. Both outstanding. The Recognitions is HUGE in every sense of the word.

There was talk of including him in one of the tome reads for the Salon in 2011.

I have The recognitions but have put it off for some time given my ability to stall at present in long books. My enthusiasm went up recently as so many people have spoken to me about it and I heard T. S. Eliot and the Four Quartets were important to it -- I have been listening to the Four Quartets on and off all summer, after a very good Poetry Please on R4. Then with my initial reaction to Agape Agape I put it back on the shelf...and since realising what I should have earlier (emotional intelligence under question!) about Agape Agape its calling to me again.

Have sadly read little for some time.

I started and have really enjoyed Memoirs of Hadrian so far - just have made no progress for several weeks. An interesting read when i was reading Pascal's Pensees at the same time (Pascal uses the ideas of epicetus for one as one of the people he is responding to). The Yourcenar is alive but the discipline espoused by Hadrian might be putting me off --thats probably my fault and misunderstanding. I think i am more taken with Pascal.

I finished "you are her" by Linda France (apparently no touchstone) -- a very enjoyable poetry collection by a contemporary local poet. Some poems I did not like but many I did -- she has interests in local history and also Buddhism and it seems to me also in soem aspects of healing that are of interest to me.

have also been reading various poetry - Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. For a class tonight soem Andrew Marvell - excellent of course and a very enjoyable class. I really like his ambivalence and wit, his stance.

But work has taken up a lot of time -- am dreaming of time to read and write, but yes some discipline within it.

You are her by Linda France is apparently not in anybody's (including your) library on LibraryThing, which accounts for there being no touchstone. It also is not recognized in an advanced search at BN.COM.

Robert

Tony - my step son is doing a writing course at university. He favours poetry over novels, and Marvell is his favourite. He wrote and presented a poem in the Marvell style for my brother in law's wedding, and it was very good. It surprised me how good he was.

I have Memoirs of Hadrian and rifling through it thought it looked quite interesting. Just haven't had time to start on it yet.

Mr. Durick (edit -- sorry, Robert I should say!) -- I was loaned a copy for my library's poetry reading group -- its almost ehnough to make me purchase one now to rectify this omission. But the place to look would be amazon.co.uk (where I eventually found it).

Its very interesting, very enjoyable, very good zeno (Memoirs of Hadrian) -- think it just reminded me of something not so enjoyable, or prompted me to remember some things not so much fun, nothing direct in the book, a whiff of my experience of some Latin lessons, memories of translating Caesar (which I should have loved).

Your step son's writing sounds interesting. I think Marvell is very interesting and am impressed by anyone emulating him.

Tony - somehow I lost track of your thread and I'm just now catching up since May. It's been a very enjoyable thread...especially all the reviews of poets I otherwise I have never heard of.

Thanks dchaikin, Good to hear :)

Memoirs of Hadrian is one of my all time favourite books. I found it inexpressibly moving and wise. I hope you get into it later, Tony.

big fan of Marvell here too.

Am no further on with Yourcenar.

Recent reading has mostly been for some courses I've done. A sgort story course that covered:

Guy de Maupassant, 'Useless beauty'; Henry James, 'Four meetings'.
D H Lawrence, 'The man who loved islands'; Ernest Hemingway, 'Soldier's home'.
Isak Dinesen Karen Blixen,'The deluge at Norderney'; Eudora Welty, 'No place for you, my love'.
Joyce Carol Oates, 'Upon the sweeping flood'; Ann Beattie, 'Greenwich time'.
Leslie Marmon Silko, 'Yellow woman'; Jorge Luis Borges, 'Deutsches requiem'.

Very enjoyable. Favourites would be James, Welty, Silko and Borges - but hard to choose from some of the others.

Also read some of Keats' narrative poems - the eve of st agnes, Isabella, lamia, la belle dame sans merci. Wonderful.

And Shelley 'the triumph of life' which really came to life for me through a class.

But no heavy tomes finished - must try harder, looking back at the year I don't seem to have finished much at all.

The Blue Lonnen by Katrina Porteous

short book of poems with some wonderful photographs, borrowed from the library after seeing her read. Its written with much dialect from northumbrian fishing villages and I thought I might not get this reading as I had when she read, but it was ok and had a glossary. It really brought the old fishing villages to life, at the same time as marking the passing of the old fishing ways. A lonnen is a path or a lane. Will read it a secodn time for sure.

Life Studies by Robert Lowell

I read this last week in a day or so, my second bite at it. First time I got put off somewhat by my perception of its tone. At times it still strikes me as in some way having his head up another part of his anatomy - but I am forgiving him much more for that having read it all and since reading it all it is just growing and growing in my imagination. All the explanation for that tone is given in the text, and not just that, explanation for how things were as he relates them -- and isn't anyone entitled to take that tone in self examination? I know I am sensitive to it exactly becuase I know I have taken such a tone myself (in speech not poetically and nowhere near so assuredly). Overall now I like it more and more - tender and touching, wonderful. I must read more from him.

Rain by Don Paterson

I really enjoyed this collection, accessible but not at the expense of depth, just lovely. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and planned to read it again before posting any comments, but other things have intervened. But I will be reading it again - I also bought a copy for a friend for Christmas. I especially remember how it plays with perspectives, or invites you to see a certain way. The second and third poems in had already sealed its place for me as a favourite.

The end of this reading year - my smallest number of completed books for several years, but an exciting year in which I have read lots and lots, much of which I will complete later.

And so on into 2011: Tony's 2011 Club Read journal

reviewing threads - I don't like much of my own tone at times on this thread.