95 Books In 2006, George W. Bush read 95 books. We will do better.

Welling is the most lyric of Christakos’ poetry books, and it moves away from the exuberance of What Stirs. The poem “The Problem of Confessionality” is posted over at Lemon Hound. This is self-aware poetry, poetry that turns around to question itself. Welling is meticulous. As always, the language is bounty. The book is situated in Sudbury, exploring the variety of nostalgia and longing that accompanies personal and family history rooted in place. Interaction between self, city, family, and memory. Thinking about this book in relation to the questions I asked about Lisa Robertson’s Office for Soft Architecture: can we write about place without acknowledging self? What happens when we try to make that subjectivity invisible? Aren’t the spaces we inhabit always filtered by our own experience with that site? Who is represented here? How would a Franco-Ontarian write Sudbury differently? This is the problem I’ve been circling. And I think Welling addresses some of these questions with its consideration of time, generation, and relationship.

~Claire