Graham George > Recent Status Updates

This is one of those books that makes me want to read a hundred other books immediately

I now want to read everything this woman has written

"you, on the edge of rainshot shadows,
con the world into lamenting anything
until no one can recall how true stories end."

So far, this is even better than I had been hoping.

"Und schwer wie das Hier-/und Hinaus-ins-zweite-/Dunkel-Gewogen-/werden."

"Blume—ein Blindenwort.
Dein Aug und mein Aug:
sie sorgen
für Wasser."

I'm in love with Celan's images and sense of language. Reading his stuff in German is just incredible.

"Du rollst: das schwarze Hagelkorn der Schwermut / fällt in ein Tuch, ganz weiß vom Abschiedswinken"

"wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis / wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln / wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes"

Somehow, I found a fiction read just as hallucinatory and obtuse as "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". I like this much more than Deleuze/Guattari, though; my readerly compulsion to connect the dots into a narrative feels like it communicates those "thousand plateaus" in a cool way.

I've only just started, but I'm already so impressed. In the first Canto, Mary Jo Bang updates antique allegory and inject it with slang and wit, creating an extraordinarily entertaining work of lyrical translation. All I want to do is pick this back up and read more.

[Read through the introduction, notes on translation, and Canto I & its notes.]

Some of the more out-there stuff Cummings came up with is a bit too far in Jabberwocky territory for my tastes. On the other hand, his love poems are so much more evocative than anything I've read of Neruda's. There's just enough nonsense for the romance to ring completely true.