What I Read in 2010

A few friends asked for a list of books I enjoyed in 2010, having no clue that I do not keep track of what was read when and whether I liked it more than something else. New books, old ones, classics, obscure volumes found in Church basements: it all blends together. I may have read As I Lay Dying this year, but that sort of throws off the balance of power doesn't it? — you don't need me to tell you Faulkner is worth reading. But, here are a couple of poetry titles:

January 2008, by Ben Mazer
As I wrote in this space, Ben Mazer's poetic response to the suicide of his dear friend and poet Landis Everson is one of the more expansively human books I've come across. The poems in this long series are at turns bitter, heartbroken, and funny. “Beauty, humor, intellect, loss: in January 2008 Mazer gathers these disparate aspects to find a point of intersect.”

Mean Free Path, by Ben Lerner
From my review of the book at The Critical Flame: “Mean Free Path is a monumental accomplishment. Lerner has wrenched out of trademark postmodern techniques a poem sequence that is evocative, melancholy, and humane — that last trait redeeming so much that might otherwise feel coldly intellectual or haughty. As with Angle of Yaw, the program here is not a new one, but it is executed to perfection; and, in its high quality, the poems feel as if they break new ground.”

Nox, by Anne Carson
I feel silly listing this book, because I thought that its publication was a singular event in 2010 — but there are still those who haven't heard of Nox and I'd like to remedy that. It is a multimedia work of eulogy for Carson's brother, replicating a hand-made book that she put together, and it executes all the promise of mixing of found texts, images, personal stories, and poetry.

Lighthead, by Terrance Hayes
It won a National Book Award this year, which can be damning by praise in some people's estimations I know — but it really is actually quite good. Particularly strong in the home stretch. I was on the fence about the book until the final third, which bowled me over. Hayes has a unique imagination for the striking metaphor, and in his best poems there is a visceral syncopation of rhythm and off-rhyme that I love to find in verse.

The Waste Land and Other Poems, by John Beer
Yeah, he named his collection that. And this is absolutely, unabashedly, an homage to that leviathan of modernist poetry. The idea annoyed me at first — but, in reading, the book won me over. Many such revisions or re-imaginings fail because they treat the source with too much reverence, or not enough. Beer walks the fine line well. Particularly enjoyable: the Policemen's musical number in act two.