Wanda Coleman @ Harriet

There is a star-studded cast of writers and poets posting at The Poetry Foundation blog, Harriet, for poetry month, including Black Sparrow's own Wanda Coleman. Her short post is titled “What is Poetry? Nuthin’ to Explain” which is itself a sort of prose-poem meditation on the experience of the poetic spark. “The body calls. Poetry is invited in. We read the hunger we need,” she writes. Couldn't have said it better.

For more from Wanda Coleman, check out the list of titles available right now from Black Sparrow Books, including African Sleeping Sickness.

Poets Featured at Barnes & Noble

At the Barnes & Noble Review blog In the Margin, Godine and Black Sparrow poets will be featured all week in their poetry month festivities: “This week, we offer selections from the eminent independent publisher David R. Godine, whose Boston-based press began publishing 40 years ago, and built a reputation for bookmaking craftsmanship that resulted in Newsweek magazine calling out their editions as ‘flawlessly produced examples of the arts of printing and bookbinding’.”

So far they've posted poems from former British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion's The Mower (“All Possibilities”) as well as Rainer Maria Rilke's The Inner Sky (“Spring Songs”). Check back for more tomorrow and through the end of the week!

Superior Person's Tuesday

Aasvogel n. A vulture. Ideal term for oral insults, the sound being even more offensive than the meaning, which no one will know anyway.

Each Tuesday, we'll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person's Books of Words from the Godine website. Aasvogel appears in the third.

Saroyan and Wakoski in Denver

We're proud to announce that Black Sparrow authors Aram Saroyan and Diane Wakoski will be featured readers at the AWP Conference in Denver this week. You can pick up copies of Saroyan's brand new book of essays and reviews, Door to the River, and Wakoski's poetry works The Butcher's Apron and Emerald Ice at the Tattered Cover, the local bookstore. Head to the conference website for information about attending and seeing what looks to be a fantastic line up of speakers and authors.

Midwest Homeschool Convention

Godine will be in the Midwest! We will have a table at the Midwest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, happening April 8-10th. If you are attending the show, come find our table to have the chance see our new books for yourself! We will have free poster giveaways and special deals for the duration of the show! More details at the show's website including entry fees for individuals and families: http://www.cincinnatihomeschoolconvention.com/

Wesley McNair: Writer's Almanac

Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac today features a poem by Godine author Wesley McNair, whose new volume, Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems is available through our website or anywhere fine books are sold.

McNair will be appearing this evening (Monday, April 5) at Colby Sawyer College in New London, Connecticut, to discuss his work and the process of writing poetry. In an article at NewHampshire.com, Melanie Plenda reports:

“Through photographs, report cards, early works, letters and notebook drafts, he will give an audience insight into what it takes to live as a poet.

McNair, 69, lists himself among the broken. His father left the family early on. By his mid-teens he worked the last of the farms in the Connecticut River Valley in New Hampshire and came of age in a 1960s America battered by social strife.

‘In trying to mend these broken things I am trying to mend myself, and as far as I know I’ve reached that goal,’ said McNair, who now lives in Mercer, Maine. ‘We’re all broken, of course. We all have something we didn’t manage to do, always aspiring to something higher, something more, to achieve that wholeness.’

His presentation also will include themes of balancing work with family and how he was helped through to the other side of the discouragement that comes along with being a poet.”

Easter Special

Only three days left to get Rabbit School at 25% off! The very first English translation of the 1924 German classic, complete with the same art by illustrator Fritz Koch-Gotha, Rabbit School tells the story of bunny rabbits headed off to school to learn the most important rabbit knowledge--what tasty vegetables to eat, how to paint Easter eggs, and how to make a garden grow. Buy a copy for the family Easter bookshelf right here.

Image from the email signature of our buyer at Ingram. Too charming to pass up.

Nothing Like a Storefront

IndieBound has a running cycle of bookstore photos on their front page which always catches my eye. Clicking over there today I saw this great old photo of Left Bank Books in West Villge, NYC by eroyni.

A Personal Nature

There is nothing quite as engrossing as a story of nature. From the popular “Planet Earth” TV series and the film March of the Penguins, to Henry David Thoreau's journals and Jack London's adventures, and far further back, we have sought through nature some personal experience of our inexpressible selves — and what nature gives us in return is rarely what we expect.

Godine contributes to this long tradition with Robert Leonard Reid's brand-new memoir, Arctic Circle: Birth & Rebirth in the Land of the Caribou. Donna Seaman at Booklist writes, “As Reid recounts his Arctic sojourns with awe, lyricism, and bemusement, he subtly interlaces inner and outer worlds and traces the circles of struggle and understanding, life and death. Spectacular descriptions, charming wit, and forthright reflections on what makes a place sacred become striking testimony to the importance of the Arctic wild and the need to preserve it.”

Now, in honor of the book’s long-awaited arrival, we’re inviting readers to share their own tales of the out-of-doors, and offering up a chance to win Arctic Circle for free in return. For the next week, we'd like to hear your own nature stories in the comment section here — funny, poignant, quirky, astonishing, etc. Just be honest. At the end of the week, we'll choose one lucky writer, at random, to win a free copy of Arctic Circle. Don't forget to check back on Tuesday!

Can't wait to hear from you, and good luck!

Follow the Leader

Thought you might like this! (Tip of the hat to Ron Silliman.)

Always Listen to Your Mama

Over at the Boston Mama's blog is a wonderful review of Kim Smith's perfect-for-spring Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities!

Jennifer writes, “Bursting with information, yet much more than a how-to guide, Oh Garden reads like a meditation. Smith envelops the senses with lyrical prose and exquisite watercolor illustrations, infusing poetry and wisdom from across the ages to tap into the soul of the gardener — which insists that the garden's beauty stems not from finished product, but from the cultivation itself.”

You can buy a copy of the book at your local fine independent bookstore, or directly from the Godine website.

excerpt from: Swimmer in the Secret Sea

“Johnny, my water just broke!”

Laski rose through a sea of dreams, trying to find the surface. The sea was dark, and iridescent creatures came toward him, one of them suddenly exploding into brilliance. Laski woke, sitting up in bed. Diane had her hand on the night lamp and was staring down at a water stain spreading on the sheets.

“That’s it,” he said. “Get ready.” The first wave of shock was already over him, speeding his pulse, turning his skin cold, making him shiver.

“I’d better put a napkin on,” she said. “I’m getting everything all wet.”

He took her arm and helped her to the stairs. She too had begun to tremble and they were trembling together as they passed the window and saw the forest, covered with snow. The stillness of the woods calmed him, and he paused with her on the landing, drinking in the white nectar of the moon. His trembling subsided some, but hers continued, and he walked with her toward the bathroom. She went stooped over, her arms across her mountainous stomach, where her earthquake had its origin. He helped her onto the toilet seat, then went to the closet and brought a blanket. He wrapped it around her and rubbed his hands up and down her arms, trying to generate some warmth.

She looked up at him, her teeth chattering. He hadn’t expected it to be like this, the two of them caught and shaken like rag dolls. They’d studied the childbirth manuals carefully, and performed the exercises regularly, and he’d thought it would be merely an extension of all that, but there’d been no transition. Suddenly they were being dragged over a bed of rocks. Her eyes were like a child’s, astonished and terrified, but her voice was calm and he realized she was prepared, in spite of fear and chattering teeth.

“I can control the water now,” she said. “I can keep it from running out.”

“I’ll get the truck warmed up.” He went outside into the snow. Beyond the shadowy tops of the pines the vast sky-bowl glittered, and the half-ton truck sat in the moonlight, covered with brightly sparkling ice. He opened the door and slid in, pulling on the choke and turning the ignition key.

The starter motor whined, caught in the icy hand of the North. “Come on,” said Laski softly, appealing to the finer nature of the truck, the trusty half-ton which never failed him. He listened for the little cough of life in the whining, and when it came he quickly gunned the motor, bringing the truck completely to life. “You’re a good old wagon.” As far north as they were, any motor could freeze up, any battery suddenly die, and it was fifteen miles through the thickest forest to the nearest other vehicle. He’d seen fires built under motors, and had heard incredible cursing float out on northern nights, while hours had passed and all ideas had failed and nobody went anywhere. He kept the choke out, so the motor ran fast, then turned on the heater and stepped back out into the snow. The truck’s exhaust was the only cloud against the brilliant moon, and he went through the swirling vapor, back toward the cabin, which sat like a tiny lantern in the great tangled wilderness. [. . .]

Read the rest: buy Swimmer in the Secret Sea, the novella by William Kotzwinkle, from the Godine Website.

Thoughts of Sorts reviewed in Rain Taxi

In this month's issue of Rain Taxi, Laird Hunt reviews Georges Perec's newly-translated collection of essays, ruminations, and assorted nonfiction, Thoughts of Sorts. Hunt writes, “If Georges Perec is finally starting to be known in this country as a writer who did interesting things besides write a book without the letter e, the editors of David R. Godine deserve a good portion of the credit. . . . Taken together, Verba Mundi's Perec list forms a constellation of literary variousness that well might be unmatched in 20th-Century letters.”

Well, we hope he is becoming known. He deserves a place among the giants of literature, and Thoughts of Sorts is a superb introduction.

We Second That

At the London Review of Books, Black Sparrow author Aram Saroyan writes of the joys of the small, the crafted, the perfectly well-done little book: ‘A book should be good companionship,’ Jack Kerouac said in the middle of the last century. Perhaps today, when our laptops, Blackberries and tablets make all of knowledge their province, the book may be welcomed and enjoyed more frequently as a smaller pleasure field, a lucky talisman, if you will, to be carried around or laid down on a table to remind us of the fun of random contemplation, silent exchange, reverie. Then too, for anyone so disposed, turning out copies of such an item is now a virtual walk in the park.”

I myself love chapbooks, smallish editions, handbooks, field guides, and samplings. My daily commute requires an hour's worth of diversion daily. I have an early 20th Century edition of John Donne's poetry that has accompanied me on many a short subway ride to some social event — the perfect size to slip into a pocket once arrived. Godine's Essay on Typography, by Eric Gill, and On Being Blue, by William H. Gass, are two more examples of diminutive volumes worth well more than their apparent mass.

Inner Sky @ World Literature Today

We're absolutely thrilled that World Literature Today made Inner Sky, our new translation of Rilke's selected poetry and prose, an Editor's Choice. “[Translator] Damion Searls admits that his selection of previously uncollected Rilke texts might seem like ‘a grab-bag of scraps’ (many of which were never published by Rilke himself), but his translator’s afterword casts a retrospective unity onto what might appear at first as a heterogeneous assemblage of texts. Searls calls his translation ‘a throwing of something over a wall or across a gap’ after Rilke’s notion of Hinüberwerfung, and argues that the poet’s creativity is itself a type of translation, ‘a gift from something external to where we are, something eternal.’ The Inner Sky is such a gift, and a tantalizing summons into the inner Rilke, ‘one last listening in / on the lost world we once lived within.’”

Field Notes

~ by Rachael Ringenberg: Godine Sales Manager ~

The increasing rarity of a species known as Field Sales Reps, once frequently spotted on the road driving from bookstore to bookstore, has independent bookstores very worried. Groans and pleas from store buyers have followed recent Publisher’s Weekly blog posts about the issue, lamenting the demise of reps who were remarkably good at their jobs but have been replaced by teleconferencing and e-catalogs. “Snap this one up!” cried the comments after it was announced that Katie McGarry was no longer with Simon & Schuster.

Field reps are the folks who show up on the bookstore’s steps, lugging the season’s newest and last season’s truest, so the buyer can page through the books for themselves. I am a tenderfoot at the job, with less than a year under my belt — however, I’ve managed to tramp through a fair number of bookstore doors during that time, and so when NAIBA recently sent an open letter to publishers pleading their case, and it was seconded by MPIBA (acronyms representing regional independent bookstore associations), I understood their concerns. Here is the point that rings clearest to me:

“Restricting field reps to large stores will give publishers a skewed view of what is a very diverse world — independent bookselling. Sales reps take the time to know our stores, what our customers like, and what is on our shelves. They are the industry worker-bees, traveling the region, taking ideas and trends and pollinating other stores.”

For me, on the other side of the table, every meeting with a buyer is a re-education in our titles. A book in one store will jump off their shelves, but in another it goes ignored for weeks. If a title isn’t selling as well as we expected, I can observe firsthand what the complications might be (Trim too small? Cover image confusing?) and bring those observations back to the office. From the buyer who has never heard of Rainer Marie Rilke, to the one who can recite all of John Banville’s last titles; from the one who draws a blank at the term “Caldecott Medal,” to the one who has framed Georges Perec quotes around the bookstore: I’m always jumping to keep up with their varying spheres of knowledge, and find common threads among them.

It is really a tribute to bookstore owners and buyers that face-to-face selling is preferable to emailed catalogs and phone conversations. They are ready and willing to be convinced that you have their new favorite book hiding in your bag, and their unflagging curiosity is perhaps the clearest testimony to how these businesses manage to survive despite remarkable competition.

Two Godine Poets at the University of the South

by Wesley McNair ~ February 18, 2010 ~

Today, my friend Donald Hall is to read his poems as the recipient of The Sewanee Review’s Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, and I’ve flown down with my wife Diane to introduce him. But just after our arrival, we get some bad news. Don’s friend Linda tells us he’s been sick all night with the grippe. Now everyone is worried he won’t be able to give his reading after all, particularly George Core, the editor of The Sewanee Review, who has invited us all to the University of the South for the event. George asks me to arrange a fall-back group reading of Don’s poems in case he isn’t available.

But never mind. As I unlock my door at the Inn, a bedraggled Don comes out of his room wearing dress pants and a freshly laundered shirt. Could I button the top button of his shirt? he wants to know. “Linda can’t do it,“ he says. “Now she’s feeling sick.”

They both manage to appear at Convocation Hall an hour later, and after a large crowd fills the auditorium, George starts the show, introducing the University president, Joel Cunningham, who gives Don his check. Then George calls me up to introduce Don.

What could I say about him that hasn’t already been said in a thousand introductions? I choose to tell the audience about Don’s help to me as a mentor, quoting his letters from the late 70s and early 80s about the poems I sent him.

One of the letters I quote questions my use in a poem of the word “yearning.” “Can’t you hear Bing Crosby sing it?” Don asks. “It’s Tin Pan Alley. And the word reminds me of the most prosperous poet ever to emerge from Tin Pan Alley . . . I mean Rod McKuen.” In another letter, he recommends the poetic practice of waiting: “hold poems back for a long time before sending them to a friend, because a poem “has a way of changing on its own, before anybody else’s words get into it.” Later, after seeing an extensive and self-adoring biographical note I had sent to Poetry Magazine to accompany two poems I published there, Don writes: “I think it is wise not to load on the fellowships and academic appointments. Try something that is quite reticent, non-academic and non-‘successful,’ like, ‘Wesley McNair lives in New Hampshire, where he raises goats with eyes in the middle of their foreheads.’ ”

Throughout the period, I tell my listeners, Don encouraged me about my first book of poems in progress. “Keep getting better, and improve the manuscript every time it comes back, and you will win through,” one letter remarks. Another adds, “Continue to change it. Make it the best book possible.” I explain that when my collection was at last accepted by the University of Missouri Press for its Devins Award, Don was as excited as I was. “Wes,” he said, “I could kiss you.”

I conclude my introduction by saying that today, on the occasion of Donald Hall’s prestigious award, I could kiss him. As our paths cross, he walking to the table where he is to read, I on my way back to my seat, I do kiss him.

Then Don begins, the old lion roaring a loud roar despite the residue of illness he still carries. As he reads to the rapt crowd, a table lamp illuminates his face as well as the books he holds in his hand. His first poem is a new pantoum about the horrors of 9/11. He goes on to a mixture of earlier pieces, one an elegy for farm horses, another about the suicide wish of a respected and apparently wholesome town elder, others about the long illness and death of Jane Kenyon. Above him hover portraits of Episcopal clergy from the early history of the university, wearing their vestments and expressions of devotion. At his table below the poet Donald Hall continues on, his illuminated face ragged with beard, bringing news from the broken world.

[Wesley McNair’s brand-new volume of poems, Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems, is very nearly available from Godine.]

Civilized Society from the Citizen Up

~ Feb 15, 2010: President’s Day ~

Like sudsy spume on a sandy beach, my recent reading has tossed up a couple of interesting comments about solitude, independent thought, and civilized society. I scrawled the quotes on little scraps of paper and they have been lying loose on the coffee table for weeks. It’s time to look them over one more time and then clean off the coffee table.

The first one is from a letter written in the late 1920s by the Englishwoman Vera Brittain (First World War–nurse, pacifist, socialist, and author of the heart-wrenching Testament of Youth) to her best friend Winifred Holtby (novelist, journalist, and fellow pacifist). Miss Brittain was visiting the U.S. for the first time, and she is telling Miss Holtby what she thinks of America:

“America is a civilization whose members spend all their energy in adapting themselves to each other and on the whole they succeed very well — I never met so many people with such a fear of originality, solitude and independent thought.”

Originality and independent thought do not thrive in the herd; they require solitude, and I think Americans are even more afraid of solitude today than they were when Miss Brittain wrote that sentence. Perhaps we are more afraid of it today because even less of it is available, and more effort is required to find it. Solitude requires turning off the television and radio, not checking email, not twittering, not texting, not telephoning, not being somewhere with piped-in music and always-on television screens. These days, solitude requires decision and a detour.

It’s a suspect decision, too. The message in our everyday air is that solitude means nobody likes us and that, if we move from one minute to the next under our own steam we’ll make a mistake or “miss” something. Life in herd mode is safer; regression to the mean is easier.

My second scrap of paper quotes Jane Addams, from her book, The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, published in 1930. Jane Addams was also a pacifist. She founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (still in existence) and opposed U.S. entry into the First World War. As a result, she lost most of the public good will that her Chicago settlement house work had gained her. Gradually, after the war, people calmed down and she was feted nationwide when she became the first U.S. woman to win a Nobel Prize (ironically, for peace) in 1931.

Miss Addams makes this statement:

“The patriotism of the modern state must be based not upon a consciousness of homogeneity but upon a respect for variation, not upon inherited memory but upon trained imagination.”

Wow! That wakes me up nicely. Although we exist in social groups, our families, societies and nations won’t succeed if their members all the same; they will succeed only if our differences are appreciated! Patriotism is not about using the past to constrain the future, but about using our variations to enlarge the future!

“A trained imagination.” I love that concept. Imagination requires independent thought — imagination develops in solitude like film develops in darkness. A person can’t find her imagination, let alone train it, in the midst of our saturated, attention-demanding, noisy, instantly-reacting world.

I like how these two quotes move us from individual choices to social and political choices and back again. They aren’t separable: civilized life requires independent thought, which requires solitude. Civilized society requires tolerance, which requires imagination, which takes us back to independent thought, which takes us right back to solitude.

[Kit Bakke is the author of Miss Alcott’s Email: Yours for Reforms of All Kind]

The Renaissance of 1910: Perloff on Davenport

At Sibila, critic Marjorie Perloff reflects on the essays of Godine-favorite (or at least, one of my absolute personal favorites) Guy Davenport — particularly on his collection of forty essays, The Geography of the Imagination. Perloff writes, “Indeed, it is safe to say that the writing of commissioned book reviews was the basis of Davenport’s poetics and the impetus for his own literary / visual assemblages. In a curious way, it enlarged the very revolution of 1910 that Davenport took to be long over and irrecoverable — at least on its own terms. For in the end, Davenport was captivated by any number of writers, artists, and composers who were by no means among the revolutionaries of the avant guerre. I am thinking especially of Wittgenstein, whom Davenport wrote about briefly but brilliantly in The Geography of the Imagination. Wittgenstein figures in a number of essays as a kind of reinventor of Heraclitus, but Davenport’s most sustained consideration of Wittgenstein comes in a review of the philosopher’s note-card entries collected posthumously in 1967 under the title Zettel. The five-page “polite essay” called “Wittgenstein,” written for the National Review and reprinted in Geography, tries to convey the man’s particular presence:

“ ‘Philosophy classrooms in our century have frequently been as dramatic as stages: Santayana, Samuel Alexander, Bergson — men of passionate articulateness, whose lectures fell on their students like wind and rain. But Wittgenstein, huddled in silence on his chair, stammered quietly from time to time. He was committed to absolute honesty. Nothing — nothing at all — was to be allowed to escape analysis. He had nothing up his sleeve; he had nothing to teach. The world was to him an absolute puzzle, a great lump of opaque meaning of can, of can we, of can we think? What is the meaning of we? What does it mean to ask what is the meaning of swe? If we answer these questions on Monday, are the answers valid on Tuesday? If I answer them at all, do I think the answer, believe the answer, know the answer, or imagine the answer?’ (GI 332)

“If this tongue-in-cheek account seems casual and chatty, Davenport is in fact making the most careful of distinctions between the grammatical constructions Wittgenstein studied so assiduously. ‘Wittgenstein,’ we read in the essay’s last paragraph, ‘did not argue; he merely thought himself into subtler and deeper problems’ (GI 335). This might be an auto-portrait of Davenport himself.”

Read the rest of this fine essay at Sibila, and buy Davenport's classic Geography of the Imagination at the Godine website.

Squirrel P’Nutkin

What was that cacophony of scritching and scratching coming from behind the bed? Several years ago we found a mouse stuck in one of the clothing trunks stored there, but this was impossibly loud. What now, a super-sized mouse? While gingerly poking around the trunks, I realized the noise was coming from inside the wall. I peered out the bedroom window, and to my dismay, met the eyes of an eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) as he cautiously appraised me from the electric wire that connects the telephone pole to our home. The squirrel quickly scurried back into the perfect silver dollar-sized hole he had gnawed in the right front corner soffit. The unusual sounds we had been hearing for the past several days were the squirrel zooming back and forth along the length of the soffit, gnawing, tearing, shredding, and generally having a grand time building a nest and making himself a home.

The next morning we heard him leaving the nest and, dangerously so, my husband Tom crawled out onto the porch roof and standing on tip toes, using a long pole, crammed steel wool and hardware cloth (heavy gauge wire netting that can be manipulated into whatever-shape-needed) into the hole. Later that afternoon we found all the squirrel deterrents that had been stuffed into the hole, as well as all manner of insulation and nesting materials, strewn about the ground below. Our attempts to keep the squirrel out had only served to trap his mate within. In her desperation to get out, she chewed a hole five times as big. Ridding our home of the squirrels was proving to be more difficult than anticipated and now, with the huge black gaping hole in front, our home looked like “Central Ave,” as my mother-in-law would say.

All advice from helpful friends and Internet websites led to one conclusion. We must first rid our property of all squirrels by trapping. Our friend Jim Holscher, contractor and roofing specialist, shared that, despite the fact that he had installed a new roof on a project, because the squirrels had formerly built a nest there, they ate through the new wood determinedly trying to reestablish their former nesting site.

Our first Havahart trap was too small and of no interest (designed for small squirrels). We needed Havahart model number 1030 (for large squirrels). Tom placed the 1030 directly below the telephone pole where we had seen our squirrels accessing their nest, where I could also observe it from my office window. Almost immediately after setting the trap, the neighborhood busybody phoned and informed us she was calling the police to have our trap confiscated. Reluctantly, because I hated to bother the police, I called our local department, using the non-emergency number. The officer on the line said are you joking? Of course they were not going to confiscate our trap. But to be sure we weren’t in violation of city codes, he referred me to the local animal control officer. The officer also shared his advice on effective squirrel trapping. A few days pass and still no takers to the peanut butter cracker feast arrayed in the trap.

Early the next morning, after a fresh-fallen snow, I thought that would be a perfect time to observe squirrel footprints to determine their route, to better place the trap. Fortunately, it was school vacation week, our street was very still, and I was hoping no one would see me shivering and staring up at the trees at daybreak. By 7:15 (squirrel wake-up time) I had positioned myself strategically to observe any squirrels exiting our home. The first squirrel emerged, and warily eyeing his surroundings, he dropped from our home onto the electrical wire and scurried to the phone pole. Did he head down toward the trap, with the fragrance of mini-diced apples, chunky peanut butter, and whole grain crackers wafting there to greet him? No, he scurried across the wire, in the opposite direction, and merged onto the Squirrel Super-Highway that is our neighborhood. Sailing from phone line to branch, tree limb to tree limb, and dexterously flying up and down the lengths of the trunks — very quickly the entire neighborhood became alive with the Squirrel Breakfast Club. Amidst their playful greetings and noisy chattering, all the while they were collecting food from their stockpiles in their summerhouses. The eastern gray squirrel’s summer home is the nest of loose leaves and twigs typically observed when the trees become bare in autumn. During the winter months, they rely on the food stored in their summerhouse. The breakfast fête lasted for about half an hour, when after circumferencing our neighborhood, and never once touching ground, our squirrel made his way back up Plum Street and toward our home. Before entering our nice cozy soffit, he traveled along the six-foot tall fence that encircles our backyard. As luck would have it, our fence was a thoroughfare on the Squirrel Super Highway.

Tom rigged the trap onto the top of the fence. We did not want the squirrel to suffer so he placed the trap within view of the kitchen window where it would be checked frequently. I had purchased roasted peanuts in the shell to try using as squirrel “chum.” Tom placed one peanut on top of the fence, one in the trap entry, and a third peanut at the far end of the trap. Within fifteen minutes he had a squirrel. Peanuts in the shell, plain and simple, is what squirrels live for. Thirty-eight squirrels later—as many as three in one morning—we have heard neither a scritch nor a scratch for several days. Tom kind-heartedly drove all trapped squirrels across the bridge to mature forests with densely wooded areas where we had observed an abundance of seeds and berries and plenty of rotted, fallen tree trunks, the ideal squirrel habitat. I had read that one needed to drive at least fifteen miles away or over a barrier such as a body of water, although a friend of Tom’s reported that, when out on her boat, she observed a squirrel swimming across Marblehead Harbor. We have seen several squished squirrels on the Abram Piatt Andrew Bridge, so I am not sure if the “over a body of water” theory is accurate. Some readers may object to trapping squirrels; however, squirrels carry diseases, urinate in their nests, and should be removed, more humanely, before they begin raising their young.

End Note: Squirrel Nutkin, of Beatrix Potter fame, was written about the European red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris). As have introduced species of European birds such as the pigeon, starling, and house sparrow reeked havoc with our native songbirds, the North American gray squirrel, which was introduced to Europe during the Victorian era, is out-competing the red squirrel for food and habitat.

[Kim Smith is the author of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! available through your local bookseller and Barnes and Noble. For more information about Kim, her design work, current projects, exhibits, or events, visit her website at www.kimsmithdesigns.com or email at kimsmithdesigns@hotmail.com.]

Rhode Island Flower Show

Eastern seaboard gardeners rejoice! The weekend-long Rhode Island Garden Show begins today. Godine's own Kim Smith will be signing copies of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities at the show's official bookstore (run by the indie bookseller Other Tiger) on Saturday, beginning at 1pm. Come early to get an autographed copy and free seed packet from Renee's Seeds. Famed naturalist Roger B. Swain, who penned the introduction to our Herbs and the Earth will also be a keynote speaker at the show.

The New Godine Blog Post Template

For maximum internet exposure, just add vitriol! Here's an excerpt from Chris Clarke's blog-post turned newspaper article (did I really just write that?), “How to write an incendiary blog post,” at The Boston Globe:

“This sentence contains a provocative statement that attracts the readers’ attention, but really has very little to do with the topic of the blog post. This sentence claims to follow logically from the first sentence, though the connection is actually rather tenuous. This sentence claims that very few people are willing to admit the obvious inference of the last two sentences, with an implication that the reader is not one of those very few people. This sentence expresses the unwillingness of the writer to be silenced despite going against the popular wisdom. This sentence is a sort of drum roll, preparing the reader for the shocking truth to be contained in the next sentence.

“This sentence contains the thesis of the blog post, a trite and obvious statement cast as a dazzling and controversial insight.

“This sentence claims that there are many people who do not agree with the thesis of the blog post as expressed in the previous sentence. This sentence speculates as to the mental and ethical character of the people mentioned in the previous sentence. This sentence contains a link to the most egregiously ill-argued, intemperate, hateful, and ridiculous example of such people the author could find. This sentence is a three-word refutation of the post linked in the previous sentence, the first of which three words is ‘Um.’ This sentence implies that the linked post is in fact typical of those who disagree with the thesis of the blog post. This sentence contains expressions of outrage and disbelief largely expressed in Internet acronyms. This sentence contains a link to an Internet video featuring a cat playing a piano. [. . .]”

Look forward to hundreds and hundreds of Godine blog posts based on this formula.

Black Sparrow Book Giveaway @ Facebook

We're doing a special Facebook fan page / Black Sparrow Books giveaway this week. For every 10 new Facebook fans of Black Sparrow Books who join up from now through the weekend, we will be giving away one copy of Here & Elsewhere: the Collected Fiction of Kenneth Burke to randomly selected fans. It means that if we get 50 new fans, we'll be sending out 5 copies of the book; if we get 100 new fans, we'll send out 10 copies. New and old fans are eligible to win free books, so become a fan for a chance to win and then invite your friends for better odds!

We are getting very web 2.0 around here.

Clayton Eshleman on Lascaux

At Nomadics, famed poet Clayton Eshleman (author of several Black Sparrow titles) has a really wonderful reflection on the Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux. He writes, "The area known as the Apse is a cupolar ceiling once 9 feet above the ground (which involved scaffolding to reach). Over 10 feet in diameter, it is packed with over 1400 mostly engraved figures: animals and parts of animals, comets, blazons, ovals, barbed signs etc. The all-over impression created by the Apse is that of a location and a surface so special that it cried out to be covered with markings. As Lascaux’s “holy of holies,” it evokes a primordial star map, as well as a visual pun-filled labyrinth, a kind of Upper Paleolithic Finnegan’s Wake.

"Below and to the west of the Apse is the entrance to the 16-foot-deep Shaft. In the 1960s, evidence of twisted rope made from vegetable fiber was discovered, suggesting that the Cro-Magnons descended into the Shaft hand over hand down such a rope. On the Shaft’s lower wall, to the left of the iron ladder now used for descent, is the most marvelous “scene” in Upper Paleolithic image-making. On one side is a hairy rhinoceros, on the other a bison with its intestines spilling out from a gash in its belly. Aslant under the bison is a bird-headed man, naked and ithyphallic, quite possibly a shaman in flight who has dropped his bird-headed staff as he penetrates bison paradise. While there are some 30 hybrid figures in Upper Paleolithic caves (including two in Lascaux’s Apse) that can be interpreted as magical hybrids, the bird-headed man in the Shaft is the most solid evidence that we have for the presence of proto-shamanic mental travel, or the rudiments of poetry, 17,000 years ago.

"What I have briefly described are but a few of Lascaux’s truly amazing images, some of which in their lineaments, execution, and beauty are unsurpassed in historical art. In Lascaux, humankind’s greatest endowment, imagination, is initiated, empowered, and fully realized. It is arguably the most spiritual spot on earth."

You can read the rest of his short essay at Nomadics.

E-Mail List Book Raffle: Perec's Thoughts of Sorts

From now through Friday, two fans who sign up to our e-mail list will be selected to win a free copy of Thoughts of Sorts, the new title from one of our most beloved and acclaimed authors, Georges Perec. It is a collection of the author's final works: short essays on subjects both serious and whimsical. It is a treasure for those who already love his writing as well as the perfect introduction for the uninitiated.

Simply sign up to our e-mail list for a chance to win. We promise to respect your privacy, to never share your information with third parties, and not to bug you too much.

Robert Reid at ForeWord

Robert Reid, author of the forthcoming memoir Arctic Circle: Birth & Rebirth in the Land of the Caribou, has been featured in an interview at Foreword Magazine. His advice to young writers is particularly interesting, since by-the-by Godine had the good fortune to nab his timely memoir. Here is a brief excerpt from the piece:

“Who shaped your ideas of what it means to be a writer?”

“That’s a complex question but I can mention two early influences. One was my mother, who taught me that the imagination is a powerful thing, and who gave me both the means to find it and the courage to use it. She made of my pre-school years a kind of wonderland. We did magic tricks, flew kites, designed costumes that enabled us to visit other planets. She saw to it that invisible but friendly beings left messages and prizes for me at unexpected locations around the house. One activity in particular must have contributed to the fostering of my creative courage. I would sit before a typewriter and tell my mother I was going to write a story for her. This was long before I knew how to read or write, but somehow those limitations didn’t deter me. I would sit up very straight, address the typewriter, and begin typing madly. Over the next minute or so I would churn out a page of complete gibberish. Satisfied that I was finished, I would hand the paper to my mother, who would take a glance and then begin reading. . . . ”

You can read the rest of the interview at ForeWord Magazine.

More Georges Perec at Words Without Borders

The brilliant Words Without Borders website has published an interview between Martin Riker of the Dalkey Archive Press and French literature / Georges Perec expert Warren Motte. Here's a brief excerpt to whet your whistle:

“MR: So how did you get interested in Perec?

“WM: I came across Perec like I come across most of the writers I write about, reading in a haphazard manner: I go to France and go to my bookseller and pull books off the shelves more or less at random, and become interested in some and not others, and sort of bumble my way through French literature. And that's what I did with Perec, I came across A Void, and I came across his wonderful memoir-novel W, or the Memory of Childhood, and the books floored me. I've always been drawn to books that provide a variety of reading experiences, and Perec is very good for that. To take an obvious example, A Void, his book written using only words that do not contain the letter E. You can read that book on many different levels — on the level of the detective story, for instance, where the mystery is bound up in the fact that E has absconded from the alphabet. So you've got a hospital ward with 26 beds the fifth of which is empty, an encyclopedia set with 26 volumes but the fifth volume is absent, and so forth. But you can also watch this constraint work its way through the text on other levels, in terms of a literal poetics, or a narrative innovation. Perhaps most poignantly, you can watch as Perec's constraint enables this book to say things that Perec couldn't say otherwise. That is, the absent E becomes the signifier for other kinds of absences in Perec's life — the death of his parents, the fact that he felt he had lost his childhood, and so forth. The way that this process plays out enables him to say things that he could not have said in a more conventional way, things that were quite literally unsayable.

“Getting back to your original question, though: Perec's books floored me, and as is my wont when I find some really excellent books, I read everything I could of that particular writer. Then in 1978 when Life a User's Manual came out, that too floored me.”

As you know, we were floored too. Read the rest of this interview at the Words Without Borders website.

Reznikoff at UPenn

PennSound, the center for writing at the University of Pennsylvania, has posted the recordings of a reading of the long poem Holocaust by the author, Charles Reznikoff. The reading took place on December 21, 1975, and was recorded by filmmaker Abraham Ravett, whose portraits of the author also appear on the site.

As I listen to these, it immediately strikes me that the poem is far more musical — at least, as Reznikoff performs it — than it is often given credit for being, full of internal rhymes, off-rhymes, and assonance. It reminded me of a medieval history or an epic. In some way though, and unintentionally I suppose, that is exactly what Holocaust is, the renewal of a bardic tradition that traces back to a time of lineages and monarchies: it is the preservation of history in verse form, a witness to our modern era and what was probably the defining event of the twentieth century.

Thanks to Ron Silliman for alerting us of this.

Novels with Indices

At a holiday dinner party, I was introduced to a woman who had recently seen the new Sandra Bullock movie, The Blind Side. She liked it very much, bubbling, “and it’s a true story!”

Why do movie publicists insist on telling us that their film is “based on a true story”? Because they know that we connect more deeply to true stories. And why is that the case? Because despite the American emphasis on independence and individuality, there’s another, perhaps more sensible part of us that is reassured by the similarity of our loves and struggles. We like to be reminded that we are all in this together; there is a part of us that is inevitably drawn to the chance to see ourselves in others and others in ourselves.

I go to maybe one movie a year, and I read far more nonfiction than fiction, mostly biographies. Contemporary fiction tends to be too formulaic to hold my interest, and I’m at an age when I don’t have time to burn anymore. When I do read fiction, I like to have it aged, like a wine, before I crack it open. But biography is my hands-down genre of choice.

Last month, I discovered a biographical treat in a wonderful Oxford series called “A Very Short Introduction.” Oxford has issued Very Short Introductions since 1995 and now there are over two hundred topics covered in as many volumes. The books are a lovely small size 6 3/4” by 41/2”, soft cover but with front and back flaps, very pleasant to handle. Some of the subjects must have been harder to make into Very Short Introductions than others — Nationalism for example, or Logic or International Migration or Psychiatry. Others, maybe Relativity or Schopenhauer or The World Trade Organization might have provided less of a challenge to the assigned writer.

But it was Biography that I read, written by Hermione Lee, the well-known British biographer of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton. I bought a copy for myself and one for my brother, who is the genealogist in the family — his occasional essays on family members qualify as biographies in every way . . . which raises the question: “What is a biography?”

Obviously there are many styles of biography — syncophant whitewashed versions, ax-grinding versions, boring versions, wildly Freudian versions. Stepping back from those choices, the biographer must first choose a subject — again, there are many interesting or tedious options. The traditional biography covers a birth-to-death time-frame, but some of the most fascinating ones focus on several people who lived and acted together on a particularly climactic stage.

Ms. Lee quotes John Updike as saying that biographies are just novels with indexes, which nicely sums up the trail-mix of supposition and documentation that every biographer must serve up. The best biographers are continually chewing on the problems of how their subjects define and shape the purpose of their lives, and how they give and find value in those choices. Thinking about these issues in the context of someone else’s life is easier than confronting them in one’s own life, but reading a good biography can give us a helpful nudge in the direction of a more personal application.

Ms. Lee argues that philosophy and biography both try to describe and understand human thought and activity. The narrative of a human life leapfrogs between a person’s thoughts (which we cannot see) and a person’s activities (which we can see). But what is the connection between the two and how is each weighted differently in different people’s lives? In part, that is what the biographer is trying to answer by sifting through letters, pictures, journals, articles, reminiscences, lies and truths about his or her subject.

Each of our lives is a true story, and like all true stories, the characters have the opportunity to grow and change in ways that are sometimes surprising, sometimes predictable. This never-ending combination of strangeness and familiarity is what casts the spell that binds us together.

[Kit Bakke is the author of Miss Alcott's Email; a work of fiction, with an index.]

Representing Vermont at the National Book Festival

No better way to start a short week than with a bit of great news: our children's title Electra To The Rescue: Saving a Steamship and the Story of Shelburne Museum, by Valerie Biebuyck, has been chosen to represent the great state of Vermont at the National Book Festival!

Congratulations to Valerie, who put an enormous amount of hard work into this really fabulous, one-of-a-kind book.

P.K. Page

We were saddened this morning to hear of the passing of Canadian poet and Godine author P.K. Page. Poet Lorna Crozier is quoted describing Page at the CBC News: "[Page] was such an intelligent poet. I can think of no one in literature — Canadian and worldwide — who had such an impeccable ear and such a marvellous sense of choosing the absolute, precise, exact word for what she wanted to say. There was a kind of marvellous sharpness of diction used to describe very mysterious, very ephemeral things. No one did that better than P.K. Page."

An artist as well as a renowned poet and author, Patricia Kathleen Page was born in the United Kingdom in 1916. Her family moved to Canada when Page was just three years old, where they relocated often due to her father's position in the military. She married the Canadian diplomat and one-time editor William Irwin, and lived abroad for much of her adult life. Page was the author of more than a dozen titles, from her well-known poetry to non-fiction, drama, as well as children's books. Her new and selected verse, Cosmologies, was published by David R. Godine, Publisher, in 2003, and was shortlisted for the Griffin Award for Excellence in Poetry.

Michael Lally on “A Palpable Elyseum”

At his blog, poet and Black Sparrow author Michael Lally writes, “A Palpable Elysium contains photographs of some of the many friends and acquaintances [Jonathan Williams] made from the 1950s to the 1990s (the book was published in 2002), as well as some of their artwork or their gravestones. The photographs are often as casual as snapshots and sometimes as unexpectedly unique and / or flawed. But with his commentary added to each, they become something much more, something that typically cannot be described any better than Jonathan did himself in the title he gave this collection: A Palpable Elysium.

“Even if you don't have the same taste as Jonathan, and I sometimes don't, if you read his comments often linking his subjects to other artists and friends and then look up the lives and work of all those he mentions in this book, you will have given yourself an education, on the highest level, in a particularly rare contingent of the avant-garde of the second half of the 20th Century.

“For my taste, the book is worth owning just for the quality of its production, let alone the sometimes exquisite images (his photograph of poet William Carlos Williams not long before WCW passed is stunning and one I wish I had a framed print of hanging on my wall). But it's Jonathan's commentary that makes this book unique and worth paying attention to. His fearless judgements, his ribaldry, his appreciation of the lone genius creator whether renowned or unknown (he spent a lot of time searching out so-called ‘primitive’ or ‘outsider’ artists and even gives directions to their locations so you can drive the country back roads of rural Georgia or South Carolina and go see their work yourself!).”

David R. Godine In New York City

On Wednesday, January 13, 2010, David R. Godine will take part in a panel discussion: “Current Challenges to Fine Printing and Book Design.” The talk will take place at the Grolier Club in New York City from 6-8 pm, and will also feature Ronald Gordon, designer and printer, Oliphant Press; Jamie Kamph, bookbinder; Jerry Kelly, designer, calligrapher and printer; and Luke Ives Pontifell, designer and printer, Thornwillow Press; and it will be moderated by David S. Rose.

With Kindles and iPhones proliferating with Comic Sans, what do practitioners of fine book-making see as the great challenges to making beautiful books in the coming decade? Join us as five Grolier Club members distinguished in the book arts talk about the challenges faced in producing well-made books in the 21st Century. A reception will follow. Held in connection with the exhibition “The Grolier Club Creates: Book Arts by Club Members,” on display through January 15, 2010.

Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities a Boston Globe Best of 2009

For those of you who have eagerly received new seed catalogs in the mail and are paging through with visions of tulips in your head, Carol Stocker at the Boston Globe has gathered up her favorite gardening books of 2009 to pass away the remaining snowy days — including Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! She writes "[it] captures the rapture of a gardener's journey through her own evolving quarter acre by integrating Smith's personal essays, hand's-on advice, and paintings."

Butterfly Courtyard Blooming

New notes of fresh scents. Black earth, alive, revealed! The ground becomes awash in a sea of aquamarine striped squill. Warming winds and sun showers — all of New England rejoices in May’s heart song — and the nascent bud opens her grace to the garden.

Delicious pink and white flowering dogwoods and crabapples billow into blossom. The earth between affords a spring carpet of true-blue forget-me-nots, ‘Spring Green’ tulips, and warm, buttercream fragrant jonquils, woven with dashes of the Red of Riding Hood’s tulips. The much-awaited Eastern redbud arrives fashionably late in her brilliant Persian pink dotted dress. Ostrich ferns unfurl their fiddleheads and wildflowers violet, rockbell, bloodroot, and bleeding heart dance the spring fête. Lily of-the-valley takes hold the senses and the fragrance of lilacs and viburnums envelope the courtyard. So begins the seasonal revelry of sultry scented blossoms and kaleidoscopic hues.

As the summer unfolds, sweetbay and Oyama magnolias exude their lustrous satiny perfume — the fragrant festival swells — and aromatic, butterfly-attracting blossoms begin their florescence. The air becomes impregnated with the scent of lavender, rose, lemon lily, and peony. Coral honeysuckle twines round the entryway and there, you may capture a gleam from the hummingbird’s ruby throat. Buttonbush for swallowtails, meadowsweet for azures, a butterfly, or two, or three is spied! Coneflower and cardinal flower, poppy and phlox, moonbeam and catmint, balloon flower and buddleia — yield nectar punch for intrepid travelers. A tableau vivant to bedazzle royal Monarchs, the milkweed and gayfeather feast is arrayed. With whisper soft steps, we catch a glimpse of the clearwing moth nectaring at the verbena, and a sphinx at the wand flower. Never quieting to the dog days of August, a Mexican mariachi of cosmos, nasturtiums, zinnias, and lantana continue to regale. Rose-of-Sharon throws another blossom and Rudbeckia ‘Autumn Sun’ stretches ever taller still.

Late summer has arrived, and still the stalwarts flower. Now the moon vine and morning glories embower the courtyard entryway. Hazy, slanting rays gild the late season glory in the garden. Autumnal hues and fragrances are due in part to copious members of the aster family. New England and New York asters bloom in shades of pink and purple, smooth aster and ‘October Skies,’ in shades of lavender blue. The potent perfume of Montauk daisies is surpassed only by that of the apricot-pink washed Korean daisies. Not to be ignored is the divine scent of the peacock orchids, hailing from the banks of the Nile River, and the purple polka dots of toad lily and tissue paper petal-dress of anemone, both of Japanese fame.

[Kim Smith is the author of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! which was selected by The Boston Globe as one of 2009's Best Gardening Books.]

Goat-Faced Girl Event in St. Paul

Author Leah Marinsky Sharpe will be reading from and signing her new book, The Goat-Faced Girl, at The Red Balloon Bookstore (891 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105) on Saturday, January 16, 2010, at 2:00 p.m.

In this witty, modern interpretation of a classic Italian folktale, Leah Marinsky Sharpe has crafted a light-hearted mother-daughter fable with a moral that is sure to strike a chord with readers of all ages. The illustrations by Jane Marinsky glow with rich color and playful humor. Together, words and pictures provide a zesty treat for parents and children alike.

From the Reviews
“Children ages 5-10 will relish Jane Marinsky's colorful, naïve-style paintings of Isabella learning to persevere, especially the image of her determinedly stirring a bowl of batter, unaware of the dab of chocolate on her goaty nose.” – The Wall Street Journal

"Rich storytelling and intricately imagined artwork make this debut a standout. [...] Marinsky's paintings, in the chalky, sun-bleached colors of the Italian renaissance, contain many small pleasures: the woods and flowers of medieval tapestries, the goat-headed princess licking cupcake batter off her goat nose, and a portrait of the shallow prince's just fate. A must for anyone who would rather be a sorceress than a princess." – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The cast of characters in this reinterpretation of an Italian folktale includes a lizard and witch, deserted baby, and a lovely, lazy girl troubled by a bout of goathead-itis. Not to mention a finicky prince who is shocked to discover a faun-like face on his girlfriend’s body. The story is rich with subtle reminders to be self-reliant, productive, authentic, and watchful of the motivations of others. Marinsky’s rich, renaissance-inspired artwork captures just the right imagery." – Foreword Magazine

More on Miss Alcott Herself

Hope everyone had a great holiday! We know we shouldn't be showing videos of authors talking about other books and such — bad marketing, all that — but things just aren't as stiff around here as they are in other companies, and we wanted to share this fine presentation about one of the house's heroines. So check out this C-Span video of author Harriet Reisen discussing her book, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (Henry Holt and Co.; October) at the Boston Public Library. (And if you're interested, we humbly recommend Kit Bakke's Miss Alcott's Email as well.) Along with the new PBS special on Miss Alcott, it appears that Kit Bakke was at the verge of an absolute tidal wave!

Andrew Motion Interview

Check out this great interview between Sir Andrew Motion and Chris Lydon at the podcast Whose Words These Are. Motion tells his interviewer, “A lot of the subjects of my poems are on the face of it very personal — they’re poems about my partner, they’re poems about my childhood, they’re poems about my mother in particular, they’re poems about my father, they’re poems about what happens to me in a rolling way — but I’ve always thought that the very large amount of my time that I spend engaged with the political things around my writing is evident here . . . a sense of England mutating from being one kind of society into another one. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m sort of lingeringly, damp-eyedly peering back at a golden age and wishing that it would come back again. That’s very much not my political position. I feel very much engaged with the here and now. As I say that, I also feel very struck of course by living at the moment where the old imperial idea of the UK gave way to something else.”

Andrew Motion this Week in New York

Former British poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion will be appearing this week in New York City to read from and discuss his first American collection, The Mower. The Barnes & Noble Review describes Motion's work as "poems where time textures us, where time stands in for all the forces that take in trust our youth and joys and all we have, as Raleigh put it somewhere around the turn of the 17th century. In Motion's work, this harrowing truth — long the province of the best lyric poetry — remains constant."

• Tomorrow (Tuesday), December 15, at 7:00 pm, Andrew Motion will read from his collection The Mower: New and Selected Poems, at 192 Books (192 10th Avenue)

• Wednesday, December 16, at 7:00 pm, Andrew Motion will appear at the National Arts Club in conversation with Alice Quinn, sponsored by the Poetry Society of America (Marquis Gallery, 15 Gramercy Park South)

Louisa May Alcott on PBS

Humanities Magazine has an insightful article by John Matteson on Louisa May Alcott, and reports, 'NEH-funded documentary Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, to be aired December 28 on PBS'. Mark your calendars! I'm sure it will be great.

In the article Matteson writes, 'The Alcotts’ idealism reached its pinnacle in 1843, when Bronson and an English reformer, Charles Lane, cofounded a utopian community called Fruitlands, whose members swore off all animal products, as well as coffee, tea, and any commodity generated by slavery. The Fruitlands community called itself a “consociate family,” meaning that all its members were entitled to an equal claim on one another’s loyalties and affections. Ill-planned from the start, Fruitlands foundered in less than a year, but not before Bronson and Lane had proposed that the men imitate the Shakers by segregating themselves from the women. Since the only women left at Fruitlands by this time were Abigail and her daughters, the plan essentially meant that Bronson would leave his family. Eleven-year-old Louisa responded with tearful prayers. In her journal, she begged God to keep her family together. The Alcotts did not separate. However, Louisa’s experience of first gaining a larger family and then watching her biological family nearly dissolve left a tremendous impression. It both convinced her of the importance of family unity as a bulwark against misfortune and opened her mind to the possibility of forming close attachments on some basis other than blood or marriage. Both the centrality of the family and a willingness to redefine family on broadly inclusive terms were to characterize much of her later writing.'

Of course, we at Godine know all about it, thanks to Kit Bakke's extraordinary and engaging book, Miss Alcott's Email: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds. It is particularly popular with book groups, and we've offered a selection of resources as well as a special offer if you decide to make it next month's pick.

Local Bookstores Just a Click Away

Clicking around the New York Times' Best Books of 2009 lists, I noticed their snappy new integration of IndieBound's database of local bookstores. Maybe this has been up for awhile and I haven't noticed, but it seems like a great addition for the season. Buying local seems that much more sensible when it's a mere click below Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I've already used IndieBound's local bookstore finder when I'm hunting for new bookstores in unfamiliar areas, and they've proven handy because their extensive database is consistently updated by taking submissions from local customers, not to mentioned their integrated Google maps.

Life a User's Manual: a Recommendation

At the Oxford University Press blog's Holiday Book Bonanza, Simon Winchester, the printer and typophile, writes, 'Georges Perec is my absolute literary hero because of one giant, magical, marvelous, sprawling, irredeemably clever and unforgettable book published just before he died, translated into English by another genius-figure named David Bellos (and who also wrote Perec’s biography) and which came out in Britain and America under the title Life A User’s Manual. This majestic monster of a book remains, year after year, now decade after decade, my single favourite book – the Everest which I constantly aspire to climb, the model of literary accomplishment which lies before me on each occasion that I write one of my own books, and which goads me to hope that in time I might achieve such mad and magical excellence.'

New York Times Best of 2009

David R. Godine, Publisher, is proud and excited to announce that Genius of Common Sense, the young adult biography of Jane Jacobs written by Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch, has been chosen as one of the eight New York Times' Notable Children's Titles of 2009! It is the first book for young people about Jane Jacobs, this heroine of common sense and author of the groundbreaking work The Death & Life of Great American Cities, a woman who never attended college but whose observations, determination, and independent spirit led her to far different conclusions than those of the academics who surrounded her.

Through her tireless efforts, Jacobs helped save neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village in New York City and the historic North End of Boston from destruction by bold city planners, and helped change the way we think about cities and the people who actually live in them. The New York Times writes, "No stodgy history text . . . Genius of Common Sense [is] loaded with primary sources like photographs and contemporary news accounts that bring alive [this story] for any teenager wondering how she can make a difference in the world."

Bound to find a place among modern children's classics, Genius of Common Sense makes the perfect holiday present for that inquisitive, obstreperous young lady or lad in your life — and is available now through the Godine website or wherever fine books are sold!

People Say We're Crazy

The first thing that people usually say at trade shows or conferences is, "Godine makes such beautiful books!" We take great pride in that, from the page margins, to the typography (call us crazy, but over digital types like Georgia and Arial, we prefer Minion or Miller, Bulmer or Bell), to the printing quality, and — perhaps most important to the public — the cover or jacket design. Some say they aren't all gems though. At The New York Times, Joe Queenan describes the effect of book design on his reading habits:

"It all added up. Until now, I’d thought that I had set these books aside for so many years because they were too daunting or, in the case of Thomas Mann, too dull. Now I realized that what these books had in common was that they were ugly. Really, really ugly. The 1987 hardback of George Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual [ed: edition in question pictured to the left, & no longer available; our new edition pictured to the right] is a dreary reimagining of a Balthus street scene. The shabby 1991 hardback edition of the Thomas C. Reeves biography A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy looks as if somebody in the design department got desperate and pasted clip art onto the cover seconds before it was shipped to the printer. A 1997 edition of The Bad Seed comes adorned with a photograph of a macabre doll that bears an odd resemblance to a girl I sat next to in fifth grade. A girl who creeped me out.

"Gradually, I realized that the books I had put off reading for so long all had covers that screamed: “Pulp me! Pulp me!” I’d owned Jorge Luis Borges’s Personal Anthology for 35 years, but had never opened it because the cover looked like somebody had smeared mustard all over it. This may also be the reason I’d never taken a crack at Wallace Markfield’s unjustly overlooked novel Teitlebaum’s Window, or Don DeLillo’s Libra. Graphic vileness was also the common denominator linking Stock Market Logic; Three Plays, by Sean O’Casey; Can You Drill a Hole Through Your Head and Survive?; History of the Conquest of Peru; The Crying of Lot 49; L’Assomoir and even The Satanic Verses."

Ah, the best laid plans . . . but at least we're in good company!

Godine Authors in “PEN America”

The new issue of PEN America landed on my desk the other week with its surreal collaged cover and enticing topic: “Make Believe.” While I always enjoy finding new writers in translation between the covers of PEN’s semi-annual journal, I was especially pleased to recognize in the contents of Issue #11 two names of our very own: Damion Searls and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Searls is the translator of a new volume of poems and prose by Rainer Maria Rilke, The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams, due out early next year from Godine, and Le Clézio is of course the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize and author of the recently published Desert, as well as The Prospector (Godine, 1993, 2008).

In response to a question from PEN to imagine a book one wished had been written, Searls considers the eighty-eight plays by Aeschylus lost in the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria, all the books Walter Benjamin did not live to write, and a thousand-page mystical Jewish treatise on the aleph, among others. The brilliant thing about this question of PEN’s is the creative challenge it lays down for the author, after all, in dreams begin responsibilities…

And if you missed Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s last-minute appearance at the 2009 PEN World Voices Festival in New York last year, you’ll be happy to know Issue #11 includes a transcript of Le Clézio’s public conversation with Adam Gopnik at the Festival — enjoyable reading covering topics from Creolization, to the bibliophilic delights of the Larousse dictionary, to living a life of action versus one of contemplation. Thank you PEN for yet another vital contribution to the world of letters.

A Child's Holiday

Elizabeth Bluemle, the children's book buyer at Flying Pig Bookstore in Vermont, points out Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales as one of her reliable "go-to" Christmas books in her blog post at Publisher's Weekly. She writes, "It's the sheer acrobatic brilliance of the language here that we most love. This is the most delicious read-aloud for having words trip off the tongue." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

If you're in the Boston area, you can also catch a performance of Thomas' classic story at BCA Plaza Theatre in the South End through December 23rd!

Oh Garden! Review at The Patriot Ledger

At The Patriot Ledger, master gardener and college professor Thomas Mickey has a very complementary review of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! by Kim Smith. He writes, 'This book is a joy to read for anyone looking for inspiration for a garden, small or large. Plant lists, plant habits, plant history, plant care, all find space within these pages. The color and the fragrance of the plant’s flower most captivates the author. She chooses certain plants because of their colors, mostly white, and then shades of rose and light blue. A flower’s fragrance welcomes a visitor to the garden during any season.'

You can browse the book and buy a copy at our website.