The Likes of Us

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have just received word that The Likes of Us: Photography & the Farm Security Administration has finally, after many years of hard work, arrived in our warehouse. From the book's page at our website:

Housed at the Library of Congress, the archives of the Farm Security Administration constitute an essential visual record of American life from the late 1920s through the onset of the Second World War. Guided by the adroit hands and watchful eyes of the master photo editor Roy Stryker, the FSA archive includes the work of dozens of photographers, from acknowledged giants like Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange to Marion Post Wolcott and Russell Lee, whose names and work may be less familiar.

Stryker's approach to his photographers' assignments was a bracing mix of structure and improvisation. He sent his artists across the country to shoot for a few weeks, mostly in small towns and rural areas. They worked from what Stryker called shooting scripts – laundry lists of possible subjects and situations – but were always free to explore their own perspectives on a locale, its inhabitants, and their activities. When negatives and prints arrived, Stryker would guide his artists with suggestions, advice, and sharp-eyed criticism, all designed to elicit their best work. At this he was strikingly successful.

This book collects work from nine of these trips – Evans in Louisana and Alabama, Shahn in West Virginia, Lange in California, and others – uniting them with Stryker's shooting scripts, letters, and other relevant archival documents. What emerges, beyond the images themselves, is a complex and vital overview of the FSA at work, not just the work, but how the work evolved and matured under Stryker's guidance. Appropriately, the book concludes with photographs of New Orleans, the only city photographed in depth by the FSA artists.

Reproduced in duotone, the 175 photographs in The Likes of Us – all printed from the original negatives at the Library of Congress – offer a rare opportunity not only to see a choice selection of famous and little-known images but also to understand the working of one of the government's most original and creative pre-war initiatives.

William Logan Poem of the Day

This is a bit of nota bene. Today's poem over at Poetry Daily is "The Fatal Shore," a fine piece of verse by William Logan. The poem is from his new collection, Strange Flesh, forthcoming from Penguin. Until then, have your fill of Logan's work with two titles from Godine – Difficulty and Sullen Weedy Lakes.

Kenneth Burke and WALL-E

Inside Higher Education explores the connection between the new hit Disney / Pixar film WALL-E and author Kenneth Burke. Scott McLemee writes that 'Burke’s fiction and poetry tend to be overlooked by chroniclers of American literary history. But his experimental novel Towards a Better Life has exercised a strong influence on other writers — especially Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man was deeply shaped by it. He also had a knack for being in interesting places at the right time. For example, he discovered and made the first English translation of Thomas Mann’s "Death in Venice"; and in the course of his day job as editor for The Dial, Burke helped prepare for its initial American publication a poem called “The Wasteland,” by one T.S. Eliot.'

Overlooked no more! Burke's Here & Elsewhere: Collected Fiction is on sale at the Black Sparrow Books website, just $11.00 for the softcover edition only through our website.

Davenport at Harper's

This weekend at the Harper's blog Wyatt Mason discusses Godine's own The Geography of the Imagination, by Guy Davenport. Mason writes that the collection is 'one of the twentieth century’s most varied, diverting, probing and re-readable works of thought and prose. . . . its forty essays on literature and art have provided a generation of writers and readers a continuing education on how to look, think, write, feel.'

Aftershocks – New Arrival!

The newest Verba Mundi has just arrived in our warehouse – Grete Weil's collection of short stories, Aftershocks – and it is available right now through the Godine website! Weil's stories powerfully explore the role of immigrants and displaced people though the lens of post-Holocaust Jews scattered across America. It is a moving, artfully constructed collection of stories, translated from the German by John Barrett.

Adam Kirsch wrote of Weil, in The Boston Phoenix, that 'In her desire to bear witness to the Holocaust . . . Weil wisely doesn't attempt to show us what it is like to be a victim or a murderer; [she] shows us what it is to be a bystander. And, as she delicately suggests, we are all bystanders to something.' You can also read Ben Lytal's review of Aftershocks at The New York Sun.

Bob Williams at Three Percent reviewed George Perec's classic avant-garde 'novel', Life A User's Manual. He writes, 'Life is thus a collection of tales – and especially of tales within tales. Despite the persistently urban setting, Life is in the oldest of literary traditions, that of the storyteller. . . . a masterful assembly of lunatic scholars and assorted eccentrics as they pursue slightly or very demented goals. There is humor and humanity in all this and every detail is richly rewarding, the kind of book rewarding enough to forever leave the reader breathless and gratified.'

Skylight Books is a fine local bookstore in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, specializing in literary fiction, cinema, and LA-related titles. This weekend they revive the Revolution-era practice of the salon (what a great idea!), and the topic of conversation just happens to be the catalogue of David R. Godine, Publisher.

To wit, 'Yearning for witty repartee and intellectual stimulation? How about wine and hors d'oeuvres? Come join us for our new monthly series, Skylight Salon, where our staff shares their faves from small presses and independent publishers. A modern-day mixer for the literary minded. This month: Monica highlights the David R. Godine, Inc., a sweet little publishing house out of Boston, MA that puts only the best fiction and nonfiction that wouldn't get published otherwise. Home of Black Sparrow Books as well as Verba Mundi, this a diverse publisher with a superb list of beautifully bound books with intellectual weight.'

Linda Bamber Reading

Black Sparrow's own Linda Bamber, author of the debut collection of poetry Metropolitan Tang, will be reading at the legendary Blacksmith House at 56 Brattle Street in Cambridge this upcoming Monday, April 28, at 8:00 pm. She will be reading with fellow poet Ann Killough. If you're in the area on Monday night, we hope to see you there!

Jonathan Williams

We were sad to hear of the recent passing of Jonathan Williams, a wonderful avant-garde author and photographer, and the founder of The Jargon Society Press. He was a student of Black Mountain College, like so many of the great artists of his generation, and as an independent publisher supported the careers of many important authors: Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, and Robert Duncan, to name a few. In 2002 Godine published a selection of his photographs accompanied by short biographical entries, entitled A Palpable Elysium. Included within are portraits of Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, and others. We offer the book at a special rate through our website, in honor of this American original.

Leland Kinsey – Burlington Free Press

Sally Pollack at The Burlington Free Press reviews Leland Kinsey's new collection of poems, The Immigrant's Contract in the "Big Ideas" section. She writes that 'Kinsey's book-length poem functions nonetheless as biography and history – and as an original and riveting form of both. His work is a strong and moving evocation of a person, a place and a way of living that exist no longer.'

Motion in the Times II

Another review of Andrew Motion's memoir In the Blood in the New York Times today. Richard Eder writes that 'Andrew Motion, Britain’s current poet laureate, has written a childhood memoir that is Arcadian in the first or golden sense, though not without pain. . . . The memoir’s energy lies less in a vital urge to face the past than in an urge to shape it with language.'

Arthur Krystal Interview

At BiblioBuffet, there is a great interview with Arthur Krystal, and some very kind words about his collection of essays The Half-Life of an American Essayist. Lisa Guidarini writes, 'Whether writing on topics such as beauty, sin or laziness, literary essayist Arthur Krystal embodies the very best of what the essay should be: informative, interesting and eclectic. Elucidating his subjects by way of his at literary yet accessible style, his refreshingly snarky wit shines through in a way that’s completely endearing. It’s hard to imagine a more delightful or appealing combination in an essayist.'

The Immigrant's Contract, Kingdom Books

Kingdom Books in Vermont has posted a very nice review at their website of our upcoming collection of poems The Immigrant's Contract, by Leland Kinsey. Beth Kanell writes, 'There it is: That taste of a tongue that's word-swollen from another time and another experience. . . . Here's what Philip Levine might sound like if he'd been raised among the water and wood mills of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, instead of finding his way in the factories of Detroit.'

Toad to a Reviewer

Toad to a Nightingale, Godine's second collaboration of the brothers Leithauser, was reviewed in the Boston Globe this week, along with XJ Kennedy and Kenneth Koch:

'Light verse of an elegantly whimsical bent has long been a sideline trade for the industrious poet and novelist Brad Leithauser, who nevertheless once likened the genre to the Carolina parakeet, a candy-colored chatterbox that's been extinct for more than a century. One gathers he wasn't entirely kidding, which would explain why he seems determined not to let the charms and graces of larksome versifying die out.

Leithauser's latest collaboration with his brother, Mark, an artist and senior curator at the National Gallery of Art, has the retro feel of a cozy fireside picture book, but it's no antiquarian bauble: Arrayed in eight constellations of sprightly lyric sequences, mainly composed in neatly turned octaves and fine-tuned haiku stanzas, the poems brim with an urbane jeu d'esprit that knows the difference between the winsome and the twee, leaving no doubt as to just how much exacting discipline the delectations of sparkling light verse entail. Bracketing the book's mixed bag of impish bagatelles (ranging from "Periodic Riddles" on "Neon" and "Uranium" to a clutch of eldritch nocturnes called "Furnishings of the Moon") is a lively flyting match between the heralded songster and the lowly amphibian of the title, and anyone with a rooting interest in the survival of poetic wit and fancy should find it heartening as well as fitting that the underdog toad gets the last word: "Earth's fairest dreams are born of earth - / Born sometimes, even in the scummy Ooze of a drainage ditch . . . including those / Where I am your ventriloquist, / And you, my dear, my dummy." '

Congratulations Newton Award Winners

From the desk of The Daily Gazette: 'Swarthmore’s Newton competition is the oldest college book collection competition in the nation. Students vying for the top three places submit annotated bibliographies of their book collection, which are judged by committee of librarians and a faculty member. . . . First-place winner Jake Brunkard’s collection consists of about 65 books published by Black Sparrow Press, an independent press that publishes “underground” literature.' Glad we could help!

In the Blood – NY Times Review

A very nice review of this beautiful memoir by the British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion – Langdon Hammer of The New York Times describes In the Blood as 'superbly clear, intimate and evocative,' and writes that 'The power of this sad, attractively modest memoir comes in his resistance, which can only fail, to the demandthat he grow up.'

Keep an eye on our events listings (to the left of this column) for Motion's readings and appearances in New York this Spring.

Holocaust – The Boston Review

A really insightful and generous review from Kathryn Crim at The Boston Review, of Charles Reznikoff's moving long poem, Holocaust. Crim writes that Holocaust 'remains open like a photograph, shocking and repellent. Unlike a photograph, however, we cannot easily turn away from it; its length demands engagement with these atrocities for the duration and requires us to become – as the poet became – a witness. . . . The reissue of Holocaust and the resurrection of its modest author argues for the kind of moral vision and voice perhaps only poetry provides.'

Country of Pointed Firs

At the So Many Books blog, Stephanie has posted a very sweet review of Sarah Orne Jewett's classic novella The Country of Pointed Firs. Stephanie writes that the book was 'filled with moments that made me laugh. There were some that made me cry too and others that were so beautiful they took my breath away.' In finishing the book, she writes, she 'felt like I was leaving home.' A perfect sentiment. The Godine edition is gorgeously illustrated with by Douglas Alvord.

Jazz & Twelve O'Clock Tales – The Village Voice

The reviews for Wanda Coleman's new collection of short stories Jazz & Twelve O'Clock Tales just keep rolling in. Yesterday in the Village Voice Carol Cooper wrote, 'Coleman's musical ear allows her to capture subtle differences in class, regional origin, self-confidence, and aspiration with every word her characters utter. She reveals the complex inner lives of hipsters and hustlers, actors and addicts, all striving as they struggle with romance, racism, and economics. These portraits are sympathetic but unsentimental, drawn with almost surgical precision to encapsulate problematic aspects of black America's reality. It's Coleman's particular genius to make sense of these puzzle pieces; once she puts them together, they read like a map of psychological trigger points for personal growth and transformation.'

You can also listen to the ecstatic NPR review of the book from 'All Things Considered,' and read the review from Joan Frank at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Every Eye Review

At One Minute Book Reviews, Janice Harayda looks at Black Sparrow's Every Eye, by Isobel English. Jan writes, "This elegant novel might sound like the literary godmother of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Like that Man Booker Prize finalist, Every Eye is a slender book about an English couple on a honeymoon – in this case, belated – near the ocean. And like On Chesil Beach, it comes from a distinguished British author who writes about how early misunderstandings can reverberate for a lifetime. Yet Every Eye is everything that On Chesil Beach is not – subtle, persuasive and rich in insight."