Thursday, July 20, 2006

Books On Order, What Others Should I Read?

Three reasons I am eager for the mail carrier (who will bring these books I ordered yesterday):

1. Solstice, Emmy Perez
2. Pity the Drowned Horses, Sheryl Luna
3. Drive, Lorna Dee Cervantes

___________

What others should I read? I am about to order Eugene Gloria's Hoodlum Birds and Jack Gilbert's Refusing Heaven. If you have a book recommendation (I'm reading a lot of poetry and nonfiction right now), I would love to hear it. And if you wouldn't mind, give me a sentence or two description and maybe even a "may remind you of" comparison. Thanks in advance.

5 comments:

Emmy said...

Thank you so much, Lee.

I love Sheryl and Lorna's work.

I just received my order of Rigoberto González's nonfiction book "Butterfly Boy" and look forward to reading it after hearing him read many beautiful essays from it this spring.

E.

Unknown said...

I really enjoyed Gilbert's book -- I hope you do too. I think his love poems are very good.

Right now I am reading Trakl -- collected prose and poems. He's weird, dark, morbid at times. He reminds me of van Gogh. I know that's not a poet, but vg's paintings are haunting in the same way as trakl's poems.

Lee Herrick said...

Michael, we'll have to compare notes on "Drive." I'm sure it will rock, since I have always loved her work. I can't believe I've waited this long to buy it.

Jenni, funny thing...I was just thinking about Van Gogh yesterday, and the letters he was writing about his paintings (olive trees) and his improved mood in the days before his death. Alice Walker recalls it in her great essay "Saving the Life that Is Your Own," one of my favorites. I often teach it in my composition courses. I'll have to check out Trakl.

Emmy, my pleasure. I'm looking forward to reading your book. I read one online and loved it, and I admire the work you're doing with the spoken word/youth project. I've thought about starting something like that up here in Fresno. btw, I don't know if you knew Andres Montoya (Sheryl received the poetry prize in his name) but he and I were friends. I published the title poem of his book (in the literary mag I started called In the Grove). Seems like you two might have had some thigns in common.

Radish King said...

Rebecca Loudon's Tarantella. It reminds me of epileptic seizures and Robert Schumann. Oh, and splitting my toe open on the escalator when I went to worship Jackie Chan at Barnes & Noble.

Rebecca Loudon

Lee Herrick said...

Thanks for the recommendation, Rebecca. I was just listening to Schumann yesterday morning. I read a couple poems from the book on Amazon, and I liked them a lot.

Cheers.