Recent Fun

Yesterday I read Hotel Insomnia by Charles Simic (tough for me to get past capitalized first letters of lines... shallow, I know) which was a pretty good read. Really get a sense of how a book of poems should work together from this selection.

In between or after or... 3 dimensionally timed around, I read some Ralph Angel. Been reading through his book Exceptions and Melancholies which has selected poems from a couple of his previous books to-date as well as some new poems. So far (and I've reached the final section now), I like his stuff more in the "New Poems" section and the poems in the latter half of "Neither World."

Then I read "A Room Forever" which is a Breece D'J Pancake short story in his one and only book -- a collection of short stories. Justin Crawford turned me on to Pancake last year, and I've slowly but surely gotten around to devouring a couple of the stories. So far, "A Room Forever" is my favorite. Pretty dark, yes. Shorter than the others I've read of Pancake's ("Trilobites" and "Hollow" being the other two) and written in first person.

Zachary Schomburg is coming out with a new chapbook available here http://sporkpress.com/things.html

On top of all of this, I learned that my favorite actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) will be starring next to Robert Downey, Jr. in the next Sherlock Holmes movie in December 2011! What a fantastic evening!