David St. John Books

Indeed, All We Are Saying: The Last Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono pulls out the punches. The book shows how far former Beatle, John Lennon, had come and where he was headed. David Sheff's "Playboy" interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono is the most fascinating piece of oral history about Lennon's life as well as the story behind every Beatle song. Sheff intimately takes reader through the studio, John and Yoko's Dakota apartment, and down the neighborhood coffeeshop sharing a cappuccino. All We Are Saying presents an extremely candid and frank interview that was held two months prior to Lennon's passing. Sheff reveals Lennon's growth and new beginning that would unfortunately be cut short.

All We Are Saying does not lack in humor and seriousness. This was the man, not the Sixties icon who sang against a "Revolution," who still had dreams and aspirations to accomplish at the time the interview was conducted. For fans of Lennon as well as the Beatles, this was Lennon stripped down and open for questions, and he merely tells it like it is or was. He expresses the breakup of the Beatles, and emphasizes that they were great, but they were in the past. He talks about the ups and downs of his individual experience from being a heroin addict to a househusband. He was living in the here and now, and the music that he was making at the time reflected that mantra. Though the references he made about the music scene now appear dated, Lennon was ahead of his game and kept up with bands, such as the Clash, Pretenders, and the B-52's. He even raves how the B-52's rip-off Yoko's style of music.

Sheff writes the interview in clear and picturesque narrative. For every new chapter, he introduces the reader to where the interview is going. However, the concluding portions of the book appear too rushed. Sheff appears to have wanted to discuss or at least learn about every tidbit about each Beatles song, which almost portrayed a to-do list, and at times it appears as if he did not want to run out of tape. From the transcript of the interview, Lennon appears too tired to talk about each and every Beatle song as he answers with yes and no answers. For the most part, Lennon wanted to speak about his new album at the time, "Double Fantasy", and new projects he was planning.

All We Are Saying is an important document of the life of John Lennon. For Beatle and Lennon fans, the book is quite ironic and sad due to the circumstance, but that should not stop any one from learning more about one of the most legendary artists of the twentieth century.

This for me is better than any other book because it is reading the acutual words that John said. He gives his own first hand comments on each song (no guessing what each song was about -- he tells you). When he can't remember (it was the 60's after all) John will say so. The most important thing he says is "get interested in your own life" meant in the very kindest way John wants to remind us that we can identify with him, we can love him, but to please NOT make him to focus of your life -- YOU should be the focus of YOUR life. His insights to life can help you acchieve insights of your own. John rules! But I am thankful that he reminds us it is not important to memorize his height and weight or other "facts" but rather to LIVE the life we have -- as I wish he had the option to do. American must stop naming cruel people and making them famous if we do not want more useful people to be killed by those who have little human value -- of course that is only my take -- I can't rule YOUR thoughts (and for that you should be glad ha, ha).

Get the book if you are a Beatles or John Lennon fan... ;-)

INCLUDES AN AMAZING SERIES OF QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSIONS, THAT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN! I WAS SURPRISED AT SOME OF JOHN'S ANSWERS; BUT IT DID MAKE SENSE COMING FROM HIM. I WON'T SPOIL IT FOR EVERYONE....SO EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT A DIE HARD LENNON FAN, YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED BY THIS FUNNY AND TOUCHING PIECE OF WORK...JUST BEAUTIFUL!

John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono give an excellent interview by pulling out all stops. Sheff's interview in "Playboy" with the pair is a vital oral history about the former Beatle's life and his insight on each Beatle song. Sheff takes readers on a Magical Mystery Tour through the recording studio; the Dakota and in and around the neighborhood. The interview is candid and direct; readers are given a clear look of and at John and Yoko.

John is shown, warts and all in real, living color. He is not glamorized nor vilified; he is presented as the man that he was. John Lennon was many things to many people; Sixties icon; musician extraordinaire; artist; spouse; father; author; actor; joker; interviewee; "militant pacifist," an oxymoronic term. John was a very complex man and this Rubik's cube of a book puts the pieces together in such a way that readers can readily assemble their image of John Lennon.

John makes no bones abut the Beatles being part of his past; he appears to want to move further down the Long & Winding Road without further Hard Day's Nights in re his Beatle history. It was also interesting to learn what groups and artists John liked and how he felt they influenced him.

Hats off to Sheff for introducing readers to each person in the interview. If there is one literary pitfall to avoid, it is never, repeat, never spring characters or real people onto readers without introducing them. That weakens a work and Sheff is quite adept at dodging this trap.

John appeared to be moving at a quicker pace in this interview; whereas Sheff wanted to discuss the Beatles more in depth, John gave one word answers to Beatle related questions and seemed eager to discuss his 1980 album, "Double Fantasy" as well as works he was planning after that.

This is a bittersweet book for Beatle and Lennon fans because of John's untimely death in late 1980. Even so, the book remains an excellent source of information about the man who founded the World's Number One Band, the Beatles and the man who made the world listen.

Listen to John Lennon.

My favorite Lennon quote comes not from this book, but from the Beatle's set during the Royal Variety Performance for the British Royal Family in 1963: "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." I love that, though I've been told you need to be raised in the British class-consciousness to fully appreciate the insolence of that.


I grabbed this book just out of curiosity, as a Beatles fan and a Lennon fan in particular. I read in a review that Lennon goes through the whole catalog of Beatles songs and comments on them. I thought that would be interesting to read. Yoko Ono was the least of my concerns, but they were and are a package deal. I bought into the popular cultural conception of Yoko as the villainess who broke up the Beatles. So the first thing that struck me, reading these interviews, is what an intelligent, sympathetic, and likeable figure she is, when heard in her own words, in the comforts of her home base. And the two of them together actually seem like a nice, well-matched couple, decent people who- against the odds- had found contentment amid the surreal circumstances of their lives. No doubt that they are eccentric in some ways, and some of their philosophizing has that post-Hippie, flaky, dated feel, as you might expect. They are artists after all. But at the same time, they surprised me at times at how level-headed they came off. Despite the near deification of the Beatles, it is John who continuously reminds us that they were just a rock and roll band that was in the right place at the right time and wrote some good songs. And they are able to honestly talk about the strain on their relationship caused by their celebrity. With all the typical defiant talk about letting people think whatever they are going to think, Yoko admits to the heartache of bad press: "It's a very strange thing that society can do that much to a relationship, but it does because we're social animals. We're social beings. A relationship is not isolated from society." "Society can break an individual. That is what happened." John, too, often displays the vulnerability buried within the armor of the iconoclast: "We're both sensitive people and we were both hurt by a lot of it." Enough time has passed for them to analyze the hostility garnered by Yoko, as a woman, when she began managing John's business affairs. John talks about the attitude towards Yoko at these meetings where she was the only woman, "They're all male, you know, just big and fat, vodka lunch, shouting males, like trained dogs, trained to attack all the time." Yoko is wonderful, chiming in with "I was emasculated." Then launching into her formulation of male aggressiveness, "you must have the womb-envy thing," she speculates. Men are aggressive to mask their intimidation and jealousy. After all, she notes, "we give life."

The most valuable part of this book, in which John systematically goes through almost every Beatles and solo Lennon song, is a concession John granted after blowing Playboy's scoop by giving an interview to Newsweek magazine. We get John's feelings about each of the songs as well as the memories triggered by them, what was going on in that period of his life and how they were written. Though John continues with the superficial model of `John songs' and `Paul songs,' we see that the truth is more complicated, they wrote the best of the Beatles "one-on-one, eyeball to eyeball... both playing into each other's noses." We see why they were great together (and why George and Ringo are two very lucky men to have been along for the ride) and why neither of them, as solo musicians, could produce songs that measure up well to the Beatles. There are several examples of the two of them contributing little touches to each others songs, the little shadings that profoundly deepen the work. Without Paul, John was mostly a writer of catchy tunes, superficial fluff with great hooks. Some of Paul's solo works come close to the best of the Beatles, but for the most part, he was missing the nuances- the melodies and tenderness- of Paul's sound. A song like "Michele" is a perfect example. Paul wrote a pretty little love ballad. John heard it shortly after hearing Nina Simone sing the blues, and he suggested the bluesy "I love you, I love you, I love you," bridge. Paul writes "It's getting better all the time," and John adds "it couldn't get much worse." Paul writes "We can work it out" and John adds "Life is very short..." Or conversely, John writes about "A Day in the Life," about a man violently killing himself, and Paul adds the sweetest little lick to ever float into a song from nowhere: "I'd love to turn you on." And so on. I particularly recommend this section as a morning commute read, riding the train with Ipod in hand, keeping the songs in your ears as you read John's analysis of them.

Of course, one can't read these interviews without being constantly reminded that John was assassinated just months afterwards. It gave me chills to read some of John's philosophizing in that light, "Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are great examples of fantastic nonviolents who died violently. I can never work that out. We're pacifists, but I'm not sure what it means when you're such a pacifist that you get shot."

And the heartbreak is palpable when reading of the pride John took in stepping out of the action and becoming a full time father to Sean. "Here we are: I'm going to be forty, Sean's going to be five. Isn't it great! We survived!"

St. John's On Marriage and Family Life is so biblical and still relevant for the 21st century. There are only a very few things in these writings that might be considered more historical than practical. This book makes a great wedding or anniversary gift.

This great work, from the great pastor known for his practical yet profound preaching, contains the remedy for the crisis in Christian marriages today. We would do well to return again and again to these core lessons of faith applied to the practical living out of our marriage vows. It would not be a stretch to assert that all subsequent works on marriage are mere commentary to St. John's tried and tested 1600+ year old advice.

Do not suppose you are ready for marriage or a good spouse unless you tackle this most challenging of works on the subject. It is a difficult teaching of sacrificial love that is all too uncommon in marriages today. It is a challenge that most will find difficult and abandon. But it is truth that cannot easily be dismissed. A true remedy for the self-serving so-called "self-help" platitudes that fill the marriage advice shelves of bookstores today.

Not for the faint-hearted, but then, neither should marriage be. Get it and make it a book you return to again and again in examining your conscience and reinvigorating your marriage. The cost of applying the advice is far greater than the cost of the book, but the payoff in your marriage is beyond measure.

This text is easy to read and understand, I recommend it to anyone, whether or not they are considering marriage. The book is most definitely appropriate for High School age and up. However, the lessons that are taught in "On Marriage and Family Life" should be taught to children from birth.

St. John Chrysostom's homilies on marriage and family life are refreshingly free of political correctness. He teaches that women have the duty to obey their husbands, and that both men and women should be chaste before and after marriage. And yet, this book seems to be aimed more at men then at women; they are taught to love their wives as Christ loved His bride, the Church, which was not obedient or beautiful or good until He offered His life to make it clean.
The teaching in the book is timeless, but sometimes seems particularly relevant to our age. For instance, "Let them shun the immodest music and dancing that are currently so fashionable....Remove from your lives shameful, immodest, and Satanic music, and don't associate with people who enjoy such profligate entertainment.... Will this sort of life be distasteful for a young bride? Only perhaps for the shortest time, and soon she will discover how delightful it is to live this way. She will retain her modesty if you retain yours." (page 60) This seems more relevant to our day than to his until you remember that he was murdered for denouncing the empress for promoting these entertainments.
If you want to be a good, Christian husband, this book will speed you on your way. I would especially recommend it to men who are engaged, so that they can enter into the married state with the right intentions.

The Advice given it this short work is great. Please, though, don't think that this is an entire work that Saint John wrote on marriage and family life, rather, it is just a compilation of modern times of a few seperate sermons which Saint John gave on days in which the Scriptural readings were dealing with marriage. Many would consider it chauvanistic, but others, like myself, know it's not so much chauvanistic as realistic. A must read and a must take-to-heart.

David St. John's "The Red Leaves of Night" is a must-read for all lovers of sensual, intellectual, and entertaining poetry. St. John's use of language is simply elegant while his descriptions are vivid and tangible enough to transform the text into a picture book. As he writes in the poem "Music", "It became my passion to explain everything/ With music even the randomness of starlight or death" we as readers plead for more lessons because we know he is speaking the truth! David St. John's collection is a modern example of what poetry is and what it can truly be!

These meditations on sexual intimacy, memories of love & desire, the passage of daily and historical time, color, place, and language are both devastatingly beautiful and raw in their emotion. St. John deals in abstractions, but I would not call him an abstract poet. Perhaps you could call it invention, perhaps it is metaphor or alchemy - he is toying with the line between the concrete and the abstract. _The Red Leaves of Night_ begs the question of when a detail - the color of a woman's clothing or the tune she hums - is concrete and when it becomes a mere thought, an abstraction. Ultimately, St. John suggests that concrete and abstract are two sides of the same coin - that every word and every object has the potential to be (or to signify) both, though that potential is neither neutral nor safe.

This book was gorgeous. I immediately slid into his perception of places and relationships; his tone and language flowed well and were easy to follow, including everything from contractions in "Nocturnes & Aubades" to a faintly antiquated tone in "Troubadour." The naked body does not inhibit him, either; his descriptions mythologize the natural beauty of the nude. Also, in a contemporary sense, his choice to leave out punctuation for several poems is brave, for he does it well. I only wish I could form poems as lovely as his. Even though the title poem leads the reader "to some newly solitary / & distant home," the journey there is worth it.

I found David St John's The Red Leaves of Night to be a captivating and stimulating read - both in its thematic sophistication and elegance of language. St John shows a capacity for precise and economic use of language which results in a clarity which fully reveals the strength of his poetic imagery. This strength manifests most clearly in the many sensual metaphors which he uses to describe the human body. These wonderful images accumulate throughout the collection and their highly visual nature makes the poems come alive with images of the naked bodies which populate the text. The poems impressed me with their thematic sophistication, the clarity with which they expressed ideas, the intimacy of their detail and the honest nakedness of the subject matter. The Red Leaves of Night is a collection of immediate, passionate and powerful poetry.

St. John is one of our masters, and The Red Leaves of Night is a gift to all readers of poetry who believe in the power of language to enact desire, embody mystery, and restore wonder. The sequence of Aubades and Nocturnes is dazzling; the final section of the book is very nearly transporting.

What can I possibly say about this poet? He is beyond. This book will mess you up in all the best ways. You won't regret it.

Now in a newly revised edition that includes verses from "Elegy", Larry Levis' (1946-1996) final collection of poetry, The Selected Levis, gathers inspirational and moving verse whose lyrical, picturesque wording evokes an atmosphere all its own -- sometimes beautiful, sometimes bleak and dark. But some things are not possible on the earth./And that is why people make poems about the dead./And the dead watch over them, until they are finished:/Until their hands feel like glass on the page,/And snow collects in the blind eyes of statues.

I'd like to make a correction to my review--when I wrote this I was so excited about the collection that I wasn't thinking straight! There are no poems from his last full collection, Elegy in here; the Selected Poems ends with the Widening Spell of the Leaves. I didn't mean to misrepresent this volume. But if you've never read any Levis before, buy the selected, and buy Elegy, and work from there.

I think it was Michael Levenson who said that "It's easy to have an opinion, but so hard to write a sentence that counts." Nearly every one of Levis's sentences counted, through a deep and original sense of line and a voice that easily alternated between the fierce and tender. Except perhaps from his first book, nearly everything that Levis wrote resonated--he's one of the best, and sadly, one of the most underrated, of the poets of the 80s and 90s.

He did this by creating new KINDS of poems; the cadences (particularly in his later books) are singularly his, and tonally the poems can be elegaic, or funny, but they're not just "feelings put on paper." His poems aren't merely glib, vague confessional prose broken up arbitrarily into lines, as seems to be trendy lately. Tonally they might vary from the elegaic to the absurdly funny--but they are all part of a deep exploration by Levis of human experience. He is often rooted in regional soil (the hardscrabble California vineyards of his childhood) but he is not a "regional" writer; in other words, whatever his experiences in life might be, he uses poetry as a way to transform them, merely than just describe them. He can write a poem about Belgrade, and have the same type of unbounded imagery, rhythms, and lyrical force than he has writing about "home."

Perhaps the greatest poems here are the Elegies from his last book, in which the elegies themselves become kind of semiautonomous creatures in of themselves (the titles say much to this regard: "Elegy with a Thimbleful of Water in the cage," "Elegy with a Petty Thief in the Rigging," "Elegy with an Angel inside its gate," etc), and are probably the best sequence of poems I've seen in a long long time.

In short, this is a fine introduction to Levis's work--but if you're hooked, you're going to want all of his books anyway (most of which are thankfully in-print by both Pittsburgh and Carneige Mellon). It has been awfully hard to pin down in words what makes his work so special, because in many ways, just like his poems, it defies easy categorization. His poems don't necessarily provide nice morals at the end; they aren't sugar-coated. But I can't think of another poet--even Sylvia Plath, whose work I love--who I regret (grieve, really) had died an early death. With any luck a hundred years from now people will be reading, passionately, Levis's work.

Great book! Elegantly produced book of poems by one of the best poets writing today. The poems are subtle, sensuous yet wholly accessible. David St. John is a poet who feels things passionately and makes the reader feel them, too. Photographs are incredible, too.

PRISM is an absolutely gorgeous book -- amazing poetry by one of the best poets writing today.  It has dozens of elegant, eloquent sonnet-length poems by David St. John plus 16 full-color photographs by Lance Patigian.  But, still, the book has humor and plenty of (yes!) old-fashioned romance and sentiment.  Many of the poems are love poems; and all of them are about colors in one way or another.  This is a book you can pick up, open, and begin reading anywhere.  A great book to read aloud to a friend or lover.  I'm going to buy several more copies to give away as Christmas gifts!

The first time I read John le Carre's novel 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy', I had to make a chart to keep track of who was who. I didn't mind, because the intricacy of his world is part of its beauty. I *did* mind that I couldn't figure out what the spy jargon meant. I've now read the seven Circus novels multiple times, but instead of a chart I keep David Monaghan's fantastic guide next to me when I do. It's indispensable for the jargon definitions alone (but how did he find out what a "mailfist job" is?). More pleasurably, he identifies every character --even unnamed ones like "narcotics agent"-- and captures the personality of each in just a few sympathetic lines from hints sometimes spread out over several books.

Monaghan maintains le Carre's own skeptical voice, treating all the information as if it were friendly but not completely reliable office gossip. For example, after noting that Ricki Tarr, though reckless, is nevertheless loyal and competent, Monaghan wonders almost sadly if the boy was hired back after the Haydon case. Going into great depth in the pages on George Smiley, he tries to sort out which crimes can be laid at Smiley's feet (Jerry Westerby's murder--probably) and which can't (Liz Gold's murder--probably).

One sees that in le Carre people are largely viewpoints: "Mrs Pope Graham considers Norman to be sensitive but for Smiley he is a grubby little voyeur." Nevertheless facts are facts: Prideaux digs up his gun on Tuesday, not Sunday, no matter what else the novel may say.

Readers sometimes complain about le Carre's overly complex plots, especially in the Circus novels. This guidebook can loosen the "very clever knots," but first-time Circus readers must beware. Any entry can contain a monstrous spoiler.

Monaghan clearly loves le Carre's work. I do, too, at least through 1980. I doubt I would keep going back to it if not for the help of this meticulously crafted, thoughtful, and well-written book.

This is a genuinely amazing book. It lists and analyzes all the characters in the novels, gives a detailed history of the Circus, and provides absorbing commentary on who did what to whom in the books and what that says about Le Carre's most important themes. I've never seen anything like it, and that includes books about writers who have devoted followings like Conan Doyle or Tolkien. And Monaghan's book is lucid and readable as well. He really should update this to include "The Russia House" and "The Secret Pilgrim."

An exploration of the dark sides. Very disquieting images. Addictive stuff.

Selected, compiled and edited by the team of Morley Clark, Jane Downs, C.B. Follett, and Susan Terris, Cloud View Poets: An Anthology - Master Classes With David St. John is an impressively diverse collection of 82 poets who each had in common that they studied poetry with David St. John (Professor and Chairman, the Creative Writing Department, University of Southern California) in one of eight weekend seminars he gives each year. Each poem in this anthology was written contemporaneously with the poet's enrollment in one of those seminars. The range, styles, subject matter, span the spectrum, but taken altogether provide an impressive (albeit collective) representation for the quality of those instructive seminars, the professor who taught them, and the students who enrolled in them. Why We're in Bakersfield: We're waiting for your voice to drop, for your 'nads to reach their apt angle.//True, the city is scruffy in spots,/but there are parks and trails and sushi bars/to complement the taquerias.//We're waiting for you to become interesting,/for your brain to blaze neon.//Meanwhile we bear the heat,/squeegee the dust from our windshield and/watch people wheel their babies through the mall.//Mornings we find ourselves downwind/of the ample valley--scent of barns and cow dung,//first light rising over the Tchachapis/from the Mojave beyond, sixteen-/wheelers headed our way.//We long for that light, and wait for you. -- Joel T. Katz

I love this Book. I bough it for my Church Choir, and it is awesome

This is a nice edition of the "Dracula" play that entertained audiences in the 1920s before being transformed into a classic film in 1931. The book contains two plays, in fact: The 1924 version adapted from Bram Stoker's novel by British actor/manager Hamilton Deane and the later 1927 American version adapted by John Balderston. The plays are illustrated with black-and-white photographs of performances from the 1920s to 1970s, the people involved in the productions, promotional posters, and miscellaneous items related to the plays. Interesting information about the plays, including quotations from old press notices, are found in the margins. David Skal, the book's editor and author of "Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen", has written an informative introduction outlining how "Dracula", the play, came to be written and found enormous popularity in Great Britain and the United States.

Touring actor and manager of a theatrical company, Hamilton Deane was the first person licensed by Bram Stoker's widow to write an adaptation of her husband's popular novel -for a paltry percentage of the profit. First performed in 1924, Deane's play found popular success in the provinces before traveling to London. Deane took the role of Professor Van Helsing himself, and Raymond Huntley was the stage's first Count Dracula. This is a three-act play whose dialogue is unnaturally verbose and repetitive. As every adaptation is compelled to mess with the characters, the Texan Quincy Morris has been transformed into a woman. No one could call it good, and no critic did. But Deane's "Dracula" found wild success with audiences.

American producer Horace Liveright commissioned journalist John Balderston to rewrite the play for Broadway in 1927. Raymond Huntley reprised his role as the Count in America, and Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi took on the role as well, although his limited facility with English compelled Lugosi to learn his lines phonetically. The 1931 Universal film of "Dracula" was adapted from Balderston's play and starred Lugosi. John Balderston would find more success in Hollywood as a screenwriter, including an Academy Award nomination for 1944's "Gaslight". John Balderston's play is longer, more polished, and generally more effective than Hamilton Deane's. The character change in this version has Lucy and Mina exchange roles. The play received mixed reviews, but audience's loved it. After the 1931 film made him a star, Bela Lugosi retuned to the role on stage. The Balderston/Deane play had a very successful revival as late as the 1970s -resulting in another film- which featured sets designed by Edward Gorey and Frank Langella in the role of Count Dracula.