Book reviews: I write them, for I consider reviewing certain books a vital exercise for finding clarity in my own thinking. However, I try not to read reviews of my own books because my book is already written, after all, and I wrote it the way I did because that’s what I wanted to do, that’s what I thought I should do, and I did it the best way I knew how (and who the hell is that schmo anyway?) If some random reviewer doesn’t like it, TFB (tough frisbees). But of course… it’s too tempting… Yeah, I read them. The pay-off for this foolishness is that once in while there is a review that makes my whole month, and not so much because it tickles my ego (although it does) but because the reviewer so profoundly understood and appreciated what I was trying to do. And this one review somehow, truly, makes writing a book, and bringing it into the world, feel… sigh. Maybe a little less quixotic. Dear poetically-inclined reader, I point you to Greg Walkin’s review of Meteor.
> The webpage for Meteor is here.
> A recent Writers’ League of Texas Q & A with me about Meteor & etc. is here.
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These days I am not writing much poetry because I am working on my memoir / portrait of Far West Texas and related podcasts and essays. But the Muse has her whims and wiggly ways. This is what happened last week when, weirdly, I was thinking of Federico García Lorca’s “Romance sonámbulo” as I read Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archäischer Torso Apollos.” Typed on a 1967 Hermes 3000. It’s a macaronic.
UPDATE: Joseph Hutchison has posted his elegant translation of Rilke’s poem plus some fascinating links to read more about it here.
“What Happened to the Dog?”
A Story About a Typewriter, Actually,
Typed on a 1967 Hermes 3000
“Silence and Poem” on the 1967 Hermes 3000
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