Author: EPaquin

Pen Chants or 12 Spirit-like Impermanences by Lissa Wolsak. New York: Roof Books, 2000. $9.95 (paperback), 74 pp.

As Reviewed By: Ethan Paquin

New from Roof Books (the New York house that brought us L+A+N+G+U+A+G+E magazine, and books by its prominent practitioners including Charles Bernstein, Ray DiPalma, Hank Lazer, Jackson MacLow and Ron Silliman), Lissa Wolsak’s Pen Chants feels like it’s ushering in a new day of sorts for the Language school.… continue reading...

Other Traditions by John Ashbery. Harvard University Press, 2000. 168 pp. $22.95 (hardcover)

As Reviewed By: Ethan Paquin

Other Traditions proves that Ashbery’s classic poem “The Instruction Manual” is more than reverie: he truly does well at writing informative primers.… continue reading...

Thieves of Paradise by Yusef Komunyakaa. Wesleyan/ University Press of New England, 1998. 130 pp. $19.95 (hardcover)

Talking Dirty to the Gods by Yusef Komunyakaa. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2000.… continue reading...

Signs and Abominations by Bruce Beasley. Wesleyan University Press, 2000. 136 pp. $12.95 (paper)

As Reviewed By: Ethan Paquin

Despite the freedom in his fourth book–plentiful sectioning of poems; spatial liberalism (experimentation with enjambment, spacing, indentation); lofty language; the use of up-to-the-second names and places–Bruce Beasley has written a piece of supreme symmetry, has crafted an architecture so streamlined as to be the subject of a Charles Sheeler gelatin print.… continue reading...

Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese by Sam Hamill. BOA Editions, 2000. 280 pp. $19.95 (paper)

As Reviewed By: Ethan Paquin

Thomas Merton, whose The Way of Chuang Tzu is perhaps one of America’s better-known translations from the Chinese, begins that book by explaining his “translation” process was essentially “’imitations’ of Chuang Tzu, or rather, free interpretative readings” culled from “four of the best translations of Chuang Tzu into western languages.”… continue reading...

Economy of the Unlost (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan) by Anne Carson,. Princeton University Press, 1999 (hardcover, $29.95) and 2002 (paperback, $14.95).

As Reviewed By: Ethan Paquin

Just because one can write something, one doesn’t necessarily have to write it.… continue reading...