The Logan Notebooks

Mountain/West Poetry Series

by Rebecca Lindenberg

Clouds, mountains, flowering trees. Difficult things. Things lost by being photographed. Things that have lost their power. Things found in a rural grocery store. These are some of the lists, poems, prose poems, and lyric anecdotes compiled in The Logan Notebooks, a remix and a reimagining of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a collection of intimate and imaginative observations about place—a real place, an interior landscape—and identity, at the intersection of the human with the world, and the language we have (and do not yet have) for perceiving it.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2014

About the author

Rebecca Lindenberg earned a BA from the College of William & Mary and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Utah. Her essays and criticism have appeared widely, and she has been a guest blogger for the Best American Poetry Blog. Her collection of poetry, Love, An Index (2012), focuses on her relationship with her partner, the poet Craig Arnold; Terrance Hayes described the poems as a “litany of losses and retrievals” that “remake the elegy form.” Her second book, The Logan Notebooks (Center for Literary Publishing, 2014) won the 2015 Utah Book Award.

Lindenberg’s honors include an Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a MacDowell Colony Residency, and a fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center.

Reviews

[Natalie Johansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought nothing could be as good as Love, An Index, but I was so wrong. This collection is wonderful.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems about living in Logan Utah, inspired somewhat by "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon."

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems, connected by place and a penny-colored dog, show reactions to setting, of an academic in a midwestern setting. But the most marvelous work Lindenberg presents are an absolute mastery of lists. Check this one out:

In the trunk of the car, we keep: A hatchet, two sleeping bags, a gallon of water, matches, gas can, tampons, bungee cord, headlamps, jumper cables, winch, wrench, glucose, windex, a pack towel, a first aid kit with Cipro and burn ointment, an empty paint can because who knows, salt for snow, salt for food, Sriracha sauce, frost-scrapers, umbrellas, toilet paper, goggles, three kinds of tape, an old mason jar, a few books, and some rubber gloves. So far, the only thing we haven't used is the gas can.

This list encompasses a lot of what I like about these poems found mostly in paragraphs. There is a richness of detail, of diversity, with momentary delights in sound (I like the pairing of winch and wrench), rhythms ("an empty paint can because who knows" stuck into the middle of a very staccato section of items), but just when the list could almost seem to go too far with detail, she hits us with the zinger that the one item that seems most practical in a car (the gas can) is the one item that has gone unused. Lindenberg's exploration of place is similar in regard--we are faced with the difficulties of weather and bothersome neighbors, but the beauty of sky and being with the one you love. Quite a marvelous book.

[Crysty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love, an Index is still my most favorite collection of poetry start to finish. But Rebecca Lindenberg comes through in this collection as well.

Here is one poem for you to enjoy:

Improvisation (Away)

The world is full of lost places-
you know you're there

when nobody can find you,
not even the dead.

The valley is a rich furrow

terraced with crops, orchards
farmers read from left to right
under savaging sun.

Flies whine
in the streets, in the hours

when the water is off. At night,
dark blue and beheavened

with stars, a black cat
stalks long-necked geckos

across uneven orange roofs.

There is no Eden I'd prefer to these

long days so much away, steep
white streets blank as any page

I've never written.

[Ross Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most readable books of poetry I've read - at least, the most readable that I thought was actually any good. I read it in fewer sittings than I typically do poetry because, where I normally feel fatigued by too many poems in a row, like I'm getting diminishing returns from reading on without taking a break, I had a hard time putting this one down.

I also enjoyed how confident the writing is. I didn't think that every single risk these poems took paid off, but I was convinced, at all times, that Lindenberg knew exactly what she was doing.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love me some western american literature, and this collection is going to go right into that category of things to love. Some of my favorites:


Billboards
The West
The Real West
Temples in the Wilderness
Other Wests
Insects
Mountains
Mountains (yep, there are two poems entitled Mountains one after the other)
Things You Can Never Have Back
Fires

[Ron Bernas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection of a wide variety of poetry. It gave me new appreciation for prose poetry, which I generally call "paragraphs."

Here's a fun example from among a lot of list poems:

THINGS YOU CAN NEVER REALLY KNOW
How someone might remember you. What you'll come to regret.

How far you have to go to find here.

[Lauryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it’s more of a 4.5? I really really enjoyed this. I found it at a used bookstore in Bushwick a few years ago and literally only picked it up because it had “notebooks” in the title and was about the West. I’m definitely gonna reread this one. And it makes me miss the West

[Sue (s.j. Shalgaire) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed travelling through this collection experiencing her vivid cinematic portraits of place. I've visited Logan and the places in Utah she shares with authentic voice and these works returned me there, plus some. Juxtaposition of form and sublime within the raw organic.

[Dallas Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just re-read this. One of the best books there is about the American West.

[Eva Gachus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did kind of feel like I was reading someone's notebook. That can be boring.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obsessed with the opening cloud poem. Some great pieces throughout.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, just didn't hit me as hard as Lindenberg's previous collection.

[Elizabeth Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

some of the best poems i’ve read in a long time. and the way it comes together as a collection with clear intent and almost a story arc? wowza! read this book!

[Jasmine Boehnke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The freshest revival of poetry and prose I have ever read, marking our natural world and presence as the most important traits we must never surrender.

[Kate Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard, beautiful poetry. Charming mentions of inherently Utah scenes and landscapes. Discrete but reaching into universal.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a dancer, this poet makes the leaps and dips appear effortless, seamless, easy. Such richness in the ordinary, the lists, the wandering and wondering.

[Abigail Zimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A listy kind of book, in consideration of what makes a poetic subject. Lindenburg’s poems are gatherings on the topics of trees, mountains, insects, winds. On things that matter and things that have lost their power. Set in many kinds of wests, but mostly Utah, Lindenburg chronicles dailyness, the beautiful and impossible things that happen and also the things that are simply there. It’s an easy, meditative book to fall into, and one that grows in loveliness the longer you sit with it.

A few favorite lines:

“Do you want to be my you?
It’s not hard. Poetry is nobody’s
native language. Or the only one.”

“Somewhere between the sayable and unsayable, poetry runs. Antidote to the river of forgetting.”

“But anger is different. . . . Not a movement of soul, but the soul failing to move you—to empathy, or at least patience.”

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gravitate towards poems about little intimate moments in life, nature, and lists featuring beautiful words. Lindenberg's The Logan Notebooks hits all of those sweet spots, sometimes in the same poem! She is the kind of poet you push on people who are not sure they like free verse poetry, or any type of poetry for that matter.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Generally I hop around in a collection of poetry. This one I read straight through, and then started over again.
A favorite list from "On Natural History": "Tyrannosaurus, Utahceratops, Excalibosaurus, Troodon, Stygimoloch, horned demon from the river of Hades, Argentinosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, Archaeopteryx, the ur-bird, its miraculous feathers."