96 through 103. (Caple through Eichhorn)
Here’s my next batch, leaving me seven books away from my personal goal of 110. I’m not going to talk about all of these, but they’re all worth checking out.
96. The Semiconducting Dictionary (Our Strindberg) - Natalee Caple
Rich and interesting, but I wish I knew more about August Strindberg since Natalee is clearly drawing deeply from his biography for her gender-bending revision. Definitely a book I’ll have to pick up again and one that gets more interesting as you get closer to the end of Strindberg’s life.
97. Relational Aesthetics - Nicolas Bourriaud
98. Patternicity - Jim Johnstone
99. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory - Andreas Huyssen
100. The Lateral - Jake Kennedy
101. Update - Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler
Stolen fb updates turned into prose poems working a similar kid of procedure as their Apostrophe. Not quite as surprising as Apostrophe, probably due to the ways I’m already immersed in the day-to-day of fb. Still pretty fun and definitely more approachable than Apostrophe. See if you can spot the two lines that I wrote in the Robert Frost section.
102. XEclogue - Lisa Robertson (r)
Robertson can turn a phrase like very few other writers I’ve encountered. “I needed a genre for the times that I go phantom.”
103. Fond - Kate Eichhorn
A long poem driven by theories of the archive (with shadows of Derrida and Carolyn Steedman). I’m fascinated by Eichhorn’s takes on revision here as they provide the book with bursts of energy. I’ve got a copy of her most recent book Fieldnotes, waiting for me as well. If it’s better than this, as Jon suggests, or even as good as this, sign me up.
- ryan
