what I’ve been reading lately:
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In Search of London by H.V. MortonDa Capo Press, 2002 (originally Methuen, 1951)
Quirky and fascinating and sweet London essays from the post-WWII years. Morton captures the span & glory of history, from Roman London onward: monarchs & intrigue & so many old buildings. Though his tone can be sentimental or overly nostalgic or a little stuffy (referring to bebop as “the latest disharmony”), it’s mostly just wonderfully
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Not All Tarts Are Apple by Pip GrangerPenguin, 2003 (originally Bantam, 2002)
Soho (London) in the 1950s, rhyming slang (“she’s probably too Brahms to give a monkey’s”) and all the pimps and their girls, the mobsters, and seven-year-old Rosie at the center of it all. Fun and charming, though sometimes precious or sentimental: sentences like “Now I like the telly as much as the next person, but
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Marcovaldo or The seasons in the city by Italo CalvinoTranslated by William WeaverHarcourt Brace, 1983 (originally Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1963)
Every chapter of this book (the chapters rotate through the seasons, starting with spring and ending in winter) made me smile: each one was just as lovely as the last. Italy in the early ’50s, Italy in the mid ’60s: factory work, a polluted river, kids who ask their father, “Are cows like trams?” Marcovaldo
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Acts of Levitation by Laynie BrowneSpuyten Duyvil, 2002
Beautiful and obscure, flights of fancy, flights of language. A photographer and a writer: light, images, reflections, mirror-images. Constructions: creating the self, creating images, creating reflections. A clothing-optional tearoom, water everywhere, birds and plants and city streets, visions and dreams: no idea what’s past or present, what’s real or not (but in books, do such
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Begin Again: Collected Poems by Grace PaleyFarrar Straus Giroux, 2000
I already knew I loved Grace Paley’s short stories, and it turns out that I love her poems, too. I love her city-poems, about streets I recognize, like “An Arboreal Mystery” (which begins with the lines “On Jane Street in October/I saw three gingko trees”) and “20th Street Spring” (about the seminary way out on
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Fear of Subways by Maureen SeatonThe Eighth Mountain Press, 1991
Sometimes this book seemed dated: not just because New York in 1991 was a different place from New York in 2000, in 2005, but maybe also because’s of Seaton’s particular politics and experiences, her life and her anger and the shit she had to deal with on a daily basis because of who she loved,
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Dizzy by Cathy CassidyViking, 2004
It’s Dizzy’s twelfth birthday, and her “New Age traveler” mom, who left when Dizzy was four, suddenly appears in her life again, with plans to take Dizzy on the festival circuit for the summer. To the reader, it’s clear very early on that Dizzy’s mom, Storm, is bad news: she’s flighty and selfish and dishonest,
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Birdland by Tracy MackScholastic, 2003
Jed, an 8th grader, is dealing with the aftermath of his older brother’s death: his dad has renounced Judaism and thrown himself into work; his mom’s on leave from her job, but isn’t very present as a parent. Jed, meanwhile, is having a hard time speaking. When his English teacher tells the class to document
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Dailies & Rushes by Susan Kinsolving
The first poem was perhaps my favorite: a child asks for a magnifying glass when she means to ask for a microscope. Also pleasing: “My Late Father’s Junk Mail.” Elsewhere, slightly less interest: Kinsolving does interesting things with form, with rhyme and half-rhyme, but nothing really grips.
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Valentine Place by David LehmanScribner Paperback Poetry, 1996
Some of these poems (all about men & women) struck me as too obscure: not pleasant to try to unpack, more like hitting a wall. I do enjoy Lehman’s tone, though, his line-breaks and ends of sentences, but I like it more in other books, not this one.