Survey

I got tagged by Cat Meng...

1. What is a book that changed your life? They've all changed my life in some way. The first book was Creeley's Pieces. I was a freshman, and bored, yet a little excited to do some research on Cummings. He wasn't Lord Byron. At the library, I picked a couple of books by Cummings off of the shelf and sat at a nearby desk, only to find a strange blue hardcover book sitting in front of me. I turned to a random page and read: Cup / Bowl / Saucer / Full. That's when the poetics lightbulb really went off in my head. I didn't know it at the time, but that book made my becoming a poet both thinkable and, more importantly, "feelable."

2.What is a book you've read more than once? I reread many books because there's usually something different to find each time you look, especially those of the poetic ilk. I suppose that an important text for me that I've reread several times is Clark Coolidge's American Ones. A friend sent me a bootleg recording of Coolidge reading the work at Naropa, and I've listened to that multiple times as well. It's like putting on a Monk album.

3. What is a book you'd want with you on a desert island? Shakespeare's first folio. That'd keep me busy. Or the collected work of Marlowe.

4. What is a book that made you giddy? Michael Gizzi's Too Much Johnson, or A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari, if only because there's so much to steal.

5. What is a book that made you sad? Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Although "sad" is not quite the mot juste. Zukofsky's 80 Flowers is very moving, akin to Bach's cello suites for me.

6. What is a book you wish had been written? Good question. I guess that old adage about being careful with your wishes might apply here. Although...if any publisher ever comes out with the collected works of Coolidge, it would not only be larger than the OED, but every volume would find its way onto that desert island with me.

7. What is a book you wish had never been written? Never? Anything by Mary Oliver. Or any of those books that instruct the reader on "how to write a poem."

8. What is a book you're currently reading? One book? I'm rereading Structuralism by Piaget.

9. What is one book you've been meaning to read? The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko, edited with an introduction by Christopher Rothko.

10. Now tag five bloggers. Jess Mynes, Joe Massey, Mark Lamoureux, Aaron Tieger, and Bridget Madden.