Fiction

Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W. W. Norton & Co.)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)
Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

I picked wrong on the Booker Prize,  but that has not dissuaded me from trying my luck again. Far North is The Road-style-postapocalypse-via-global-warming that if it wins might be taken as the literary equivalent of Obama’s Nobel award thus I shant pick it. Let the World Spin might be seen as having its merits exhausted by the documentary Man on a Wire. American Salvage and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders are collections of stories, the former might be too Americentric, but the later has potential depicting the harsh life in Pakistan but with humor. Finally Lark and Termite is a “wonderful coming-of-age tale of grief and survival”. I would think that Far North has to be the odds on favorite to win, and though Lark and Termite will probably turn into an Oscar nominated movie, I’ve got In Other Rooms, Other Wonders winning.

Poetry

Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin)
Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)

You’ve got to think that Phillips is the favorite, plus he seems to have the nicest covers in the business. Armantrout is an interesting choice as is Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, both interesting, and Waldrop is here because we’re all so desperate for an epic to separate itself. While any of the later three would be a small surprise I can’t see Lauterbach winning this and have to say that Carl Phillips will get the award.

The awards will be announced Nov. 18th

Presto

“Breaking
Anna Nicole news

as she buries
her son.”

*

“What do you want
to be?”

Skeleton suits
and Superman outfits -

inappropriate touching
on drugstore racks.

*

Presto!

Paris of flies
re-tie

the old knot
mid-air.

*

Blonde wigs and
wizard caps.

“I want to go back!”

Invisible knot.

I want to be that!

hist      whist
little ghostthings
tip-toe
twinkle-toe

little twitchy
witches and tingling
goblins
hob-a-nob     hob-a-nob

little hoppy happy
toad in tweeds
tweeds
little itchy mousies

with scuttling
eyes    rustle and run     and
hidehidehide
whisk

whisk     look out for the old woman
with the wart on her nose
what she’ll do to yer
nobody knows

for she knows the devil     ooch
the devil     ouch
the devil
ach     the great

green
dancing
devil
devil

devil
devil

        wheeEEE

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And don’t forget to pre-order it.

1. Ordet
2. The Son
3. The Miracle Maker
4. The Gospel of St. Matthew
5. Diary of a Country Priest
6. The Passion of Joan of Arc
7. Decalogue
8. Babette’s Feast
9. A Man Escaped
10. Andrei Rublev
11. Au Hasard Balthasar
12. The Seventh Seal
13. Ikiru
14. Winter Light
15. The Mission
16. The Apostle
17. Trois Colours
18. Jesus of Nazareth
19. Jesus of Montreal
20. Francesco Giullare di Dio
21. Dead Man Walking
22. Stalker
23. Magnolia
24. La Promesse
25. Sunrise

[for the rest see MovieMail]

Many of these I haven’t seen, but quite a few are on my list. Glad to see a good selection of Kieslowski and Tarkovsky high up. Still working through Bergman’s catalogue, but what I’ve seen has impressed me, though  I rank The Virgin Spring over his Wild Strawberries. The Apostle along with Crimes & Misdemeanors and The Big Kahuna are bold choices but there’s still a lot of dross on this list: Dead Man Walking, Millions, Hotel Rwanda don’t strike me as weighty enough (but at least it isn’t Life of David Gale, Pay it Forward and Crash). I am happy to see that Magnolia broke into the top twenty five.  Yi Yi ranked at thirty is a good showing, for one of my all time favorites.  I would replace Dogville with Manderlay, myself. The most embarrassing choice is It’s A Wonderful Life. Blechk.

Leaving out Gattaca is unforgivable, and even The Truman Show should probably be on here too. Amadeus? Chariots of Fire? The Thin Red Line is far and away the best “spiritually significant” war movie, it’s a shame that it was left off, Days of Heaven too.

I’m not much a Di Piero fan, but his New Endymion is spicy.

But here’s A.V. Christie : Atmosphere to cool you off.

Teresa Svoboda had a nice description from Glass of Water Encounter:

She dances only in her necklace,
scotch-lit surely. He touches his glasses.

Dean Young’s also with a nice line: “in a world made brief with flowers”

From A.E. Stallings’s Blackbird Etude:

here he signs the air
with his invisible staves,
“Trespassers beware”—

Craig Arnold’s Meditation on a Grapefruit, plus there are several more poems from Christian Wiman’s tribute to Craig Arnold.