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Jamel Brinkley

Emerson Whitney + Diana Arterian’s To-Read Piles (July)

written by Diana Arterian

Emerson Whitney, author of the incredible memoir Heaven recently published by McSweeney’s, shares their to-read pile for July. They write from where they’re quarantined: “Those are literally the only books I have right now. It’s bizarre not to have my normal library but that’s what it is. (Even my normal to-read pile is like twice this.)”

Mindful Masculinity Workbook, ed. Rocco Kayiatos
How We Fight for Our Lives, Saeed Jones
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Ross Gay
Paris France, Gertrude Stein
The Groundings with My Brothers, Walter Rodney
Fiebre Tropical, Juliana Delgado Lopera

I’m so thrilled the LA Public Library does curbside pickup on holds now! I have been missing the library terribly during these months of quarantine. I’m proud of all the books I’ve read! And excited to dive into these. My shelf is bursting with books compared to even just a couple days ago.

– NEWIES –

Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, Jake Skeets
The Door, Magda Szabó (trans. Len Rix)
Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World, Katheryn Cowles
Splinters Are Children of Wood, Leia Penina Wilson
Boy Oh Boy, Zachary Doss
The Book of Delights, Ross Gay
The Lonely City, Olivia Laing
Hiroshima, John Hersey
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby (trans. Jeremy Leggatt)
Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit
Oculus, Sally Wen Mao
Lima :: Limón, Natalie Scenters-Zapico
A Lucky Man, Jamel Brinkley
Soft Science, Franny Choi
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T. Kira Madden
Teaching Shakespeare, Susan Montez
Neighbor, Rachel Levitsky
gowanus atropolis, Julian T. Brolaski
Feast During the Plague, Alexander Pushkin (trans. Matvei Yankelevich)
The World Has Been Empty Since the Postcard, Simon Cutts
Notes Toward a Pamphlet, Sergio Chejfec (trans. Whitney DeVos)
Thirty-Odd Functions of Voice in the Poetry of Alice Notley, Steven Zultanski
Translation is a Mode = Translation is an Anti-neocolonial Mode, Don Mee Choi
Golem Soveticus: Prigov as Brecht and Warhol in One Persona, Aleksandr Skidan (trans. Kevin M.F. Platt)
Second Factory, Ugly Duckling Presse

– OLDIES – (only 1!)

Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks

July 2, 2020 0 comment

Fiction Poetry Random Small Press

Diana Arterian + Jamel Brinkley’s To-Read Pile (June)

written by Diana Arterian

Jamel Brinkley, author of the recently published A Lucky Man, is kindly sharing his exciting to-read stack with us this month. A few titles that technically aren’t out yet! This gives you a glimpse.

Fruit of the Drunken Tree, Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Registers of Illuminated Villages, Tarfia Faizullah
Air Traffic, Gregory Pardlo
Barracoon, Zora Neale Hurston
If You Leave Me, Crystal Hana Kim
Indecency, Justin Phillip Reed
Last Stories, William Trevor
Mem, Bethany C. Morrow
She Would Be King, Wayétu Moore
House of Stone, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Number One Chinese Restaurant, Lillian Li

As for me, for the first time in my life I am entirely caught up on my New Yorkers. That side to-read pile you never see. I’m generally three months behind. This is a big life-win.

So, good news is I reorganized my bookshelves. Bad/double-good news is this makes tons of room for my to-read pile to expand. So many thick spines glaring at me this month…

– NEWIES –

Trophic Cascade, Camille Dungy
Don’t Call Us Dead, Danez Smith
This Little Art, Kate Briggs
The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, Carl Jung
Sour Heart, Jenny Zhang
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib
The Soluble Hour, Hillary Gravendyk
The Real Horse, Farid Matuk
Vise and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture, Peter Balakian
Passage to Ararat, Michael J. Arlen (in-progress)

– OLDIES –

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond; Conference of the Birds, Farid Ud-din Attar; Buck Studies, Douglas Kearney; The Blue and Brown Books, Wittgenstein; Confessions, St. Augustine; The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander; On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Adrienne Rich; The School Among the Ruins, Adrienne Rich; Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics, Selah Saterstrom; Experience in Groups, Geoffrey G. O’Brien; Tela de Sevoya / Onioncloth, Myriam Moscona (trans. Antena aka Jen Hofer and John Pluecker) (in-progress); In the Language of My Captor, Shane McCrae; The Four Seasons, Brandon Brown; The Lives of the Poems and Three Talks, Joshua Beckman; SPQR, Mary Beard (in-progress); The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson; The Edge of the Sea, Rachel Carson; Registers of Illuminated Villages, Tarfia Faizullah

June 3, 2018 0 comment

Fiction Poetry Random Small Press

Diana Arterian + Jane Wong’s To-Read Piles (May)

written by Diana Arterian

Poet and scholar Jane Wong (author of Overpour) shared her to-read pile, as well as some amazing broadsides! From Jane:

A recent book pile (some that I am currently reading, will have to wait until summer/the end of teaching to read, and some that I just finished reading):
Vi Khi Nao, Umbilical Hospital
Simone John, Testify
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
Ely Shipley, Some Animal
Diana Khoi Nguyen, Ghost Of
Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
Shayla Lawson, I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean
Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit

And a few more books that I have on my to-read list:
Duy Doan, We Play a Game
Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man: Stories
Bridget Talone, The Soft Life
June Jordan, We’re On: A June Jordan Reader
Hieu Minh Nguyen, Not Here
Ed. Christopher Soto, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color
Ed. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Go Home! anthology

And my new broadside acquisitions, just framed or about to be (the readings along the wall):

Kaveh Akbar, “A Boy Steps into Water”

Tiana Nobile, “Revisionist History”

Chen Chen, “Self-Portrait With & Without”

Here’s my pile which, somehow, has maintained insane levels despite my making serious progress on the long books (always a struggle).

– NEWIES –

Registers of Illuminated Villages, Tarfia Faizullah
H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
Seamless, Linda Pennisa
Light Wind Light Light, Bin Ramke
Ghost Of, Diana Khoi Nguyen
Overpour, Jane Wong
Reconsolidation, Janice Lee
Soap for the Dogs, Stacey Tran
The Edge of the Sea, Rachel Carson
The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson
SPQR, Mary Beard
The Lives of the Poems and Three Talks, Joshua Beckman
Milk, Dorothea Lasky
The Four Seasons, Brandon Brown

– OLDIES –

Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond; Conference of the Birds, Farid Ud-din Attar; Buck Studies, Douglas Kearney; The Blue and Brown Books, Wittgenstein; Confessions, St. Augustine; The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander; On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Adrienne Rich; The School Among the Ruins, Adrienne Rich; Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics, Selah Saterstrom; Barbie Chang, Victoria Chang; Testify, Simone John; Manifest, Cynthia Arrieu-King; Kith, Divya Victor; American Letters: Works on Paper, giovanni singleton; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief, Bianca Stone; Mean, Myriam Gurba (in progress); Experience in Groups, Geoffrey G. O’Brien; Tela de Sevoya / Omnicloth, Myriam Moscona (trans. Antena aka Jen Hofer and John Pluecker); Body & Glass, Rodney Koeneke; Adagio Ma non Troppo, Ryoxo Sekiguchi (trans. by Lindsay Turner); The Waste Land and Other Poems, John Beer; Suelo Tide Cement, Christina Vega-Westhoff; Some Beheadings, Aditi Machado; Compass Rose, Arthur Sze; Inquisition, Kazim Ali; Orlando, Sandra Simonds; In the Language of My Captor, Shane McCrae

May 1, 2018 0 comment