Illinois Books

Ira Sadoff, Barter (University of Illinois Press, 2003)

Few things make my heart leap like the prospect of a new, unread book of poetry by Ira Sadoff, one of the best poets presently working in America. The only problem is that I tend to read them all too quickly, and am then stuck waiting for another two or three years until Sadoff releases his next book.

Barter fits all those angles exactly. It's a book that begs to be consumed in one sitting, despite the reader's knowledge that it's going to be a while before you get any more. From the very first poem, Sadoff lets you know he's going to be breaking every conventional rule, and doing it in such a way that you can't help but be awed:

"Nevertheless, I want to talk about it. Those scarred bodies
on the hospital table, they're white chalk children use
to deface the sidewalk. The deer fed in the gazebo,
where the salt lick was barely safe from the fox." ("The Soul")

Not only does the man use "soul," the most overused word in poetry, in a poem, he uses it as the title. And despite its subject matter, the poem still comes off as brilliant, original, a combination of the nature poetry of Hayden Carruth and the language poetry of John Ashbery, but with Sadoff's distinctive, authoritative voice.

This is what poetry is supposed to be. A while ago, I proposed (in a review of Clay Eshleman's delicious Hotel Cro-Magnon) changing the canon that gets taught in schools to something that kids will actually like. Barter is a book that should fit well with a new curriculum. Don't let this one get away without reading it. **** ½

For anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of big city politics in the 80's should get their hands on this out of print book. This is not abstract poli sci, but a detailed journalistic account of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's last campaign in 1987 and his polarized battles with City Council and the powerful white ethnic ward machines.
This book packs a lot of detail and personal accounts and goes beyond just Washington but deals with his various opponents including ex-Mayor Jane Byrd and City Council leader Eddie Vrdolyak. Even if you're not from Chicago, this is fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in raw street level big city politics; the kind of politics that is Chicago as an ice-cold Old Style and a big brat on a hot July day at Wrigley.

This work fully measures up in quality and importance to the original four-volume Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, first published in the 1880's. Articles by such key participants as Longstreet, Sherman, Custer, Grant, and Joe Johnston make this an essential work for any Civil War collection

I enjoyed every single poem! Thanks for sharing these with us, Amy!

Mike Spence is a Viet Nam vet and published novelist who has quit writing, opting for employment with the Chicago PD: "I won't keep letting some dream humiliate me." He's paid too high a price for that dream and is now confronted by a city filled with entitlement, well-dressed young men in SUVs who don't have any idea of what soldiering means, Mike's world as separated as two continents, this one and Viet Nam. Yet another vet, Donald Goetzler spent his time in country policing his brothers in uniform, returning to the security of a corporate job, from which he has just retired. Donald also views everything through the prism of the war, both men's futures shaped by an exotic, brutal experience that delivered harsh lessons in loyalty, survival and the profitable ways of war.

Now the US is on the cusp of another war, this time in Iraq, Viet Nam a distant memory save to those whose lives have been profoundly changed by the conflict. A murder and a photograph trigger Spence's identification with the frustrations of soldiers returned to a home country that hardly remembers the nightmare, tuned into the fine points of the murder while other cops look away, molding theories to fit the crime. In such subtle measures does the author build his story on the troubled histories of two vets, each involved, if only tangentially, with Anne, a Vietnamese woman who has assumed a particular place in each man's imagination: "Without her the cop will become junkie sick." She is the link to their past, the history that follows them like a black cloud, infecting their days and burdening their dreams while the rest of the world moves on, oblivious: "You have to realize the inevitability of things or you'll never move on."

A complex tale, the intensely poetic prose creates fractured images, leaking from the protagonists' psyches, blink-quick insights that fade before the picture is complete. The author imbues his novel with an otherworldly ambiance, the wet of rain a reminder of Vietnamese jungles and endless tears, of brokenness and loss, of cynicism and despair. In the end, a haunted past leaves three people without words, the ravages of war all consuming in a blind city, remnants of Viet Nam embedded in their souls, a long-awaited vengeance surfacing like a sleek shark. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

On Marianne Moore ...

"The keynote of Williams's 1925 characterization of Moore, and of the diminution of Moore subsequently, is his image of the porcelain garden. As used within Williams's essay, this is a positive image. It is meant to underscore Moore's uniqueness and originality."

On Emily Dickinson . . .

"a tiny friend of tiny living things. Since she supposedly never left her home and garden, she could be read as the poet of the conservatory, the potted exotic of American verse."

BECOMING CANONICAL IN AMERICAN POETRY by Timothy Morris offers a brilliant compendium of essays on Walt Whitman as the "American Homer," Emily Dickinson as the "Supposed Person," Marianne Moore as William's "Porcelain Garden," along with articles on the early reception of Elizabeth Bishop, and the continuing presence of Emily Dickinson.

With humor, history, and wonderment en excellent introduction to how these great writers became "great' in orthodox and unorthodox scholarahip.

These poems, sited in Kalamazoo MI (and a few other midwestern towns) and in Liberia (Africa) are beautiful. Her voice and her eye, noticing small things, juxtaposing them with surprising things, are lilting and engaging. Perhaps it's because I just heard her read from this and an earlier collection last week; perhaps her spoken voice lingers in my ear. But even on the page, there is a lightness and fundamental optimism, or hope, in the way this woman sees her wide-ranging world. I most love the poems in which she calls up her far-flung friends and family, calling on London, Accra, Chicago, Jersey City... and the ones in which she notices the small things in her yard, in her memory of home. This is very much a trans-cultural sensibility and vision.

This is a great resource book written through actual experiences of the authors. Great pictures and references. The book shares information that is not readily available through tourist information. It makes you want to get out your bike and ride along with nature. One does not have to be biking to enjoy the Bed &Breakfast establishments visited in the book.

This book is for the fairly serious scholar of music interested in an in-depth examination of Beethoven's Violin Sonatas. It is not for beginners in the study of music history. A high degree of familiarity with music theory and with the works in question, as well as with Beethoven's piano sonatas and many other works, is assumed. In that context, however, the book is a treasure, with a great deal of truly original and captivating insights into these unique and emblematic works. This originality of a necessity creates rather sharp stylistic and theoretical differences among the perspectives of the various authors. Seek the uniform taxonomical approach elsewhere. Musical citations are abundant and beautifully laid out on the page, although occasionally their sheer size demands that they not be placed immediately opposite the relevant text. The notes and bibliographical references are very useful to students seeking further study of the composer and his world.

BENCHMARKS is a brilliant book of insightful, incisive, even FUNNY 30-year-old science fiction book reviews originally published in the pages of late, lamented GALAXY magazine. Budrys takes close looks at SF classics like Frank Herbert's DUNE, John Brunner's STAND ON ZANZIBAR, Ursula LeGuin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, Philip K. Dick's THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH, Larry Niven's RINGWORLD, Roger Zelazny's CREATURES OF LIGHT & DARKNESS, ISLE OF THE DEAD, & LORD OF LIGHT, Samuel R. Delany's EINSTEIN INTERSECTION & NOVA, Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS anthology, & 100's more, plus great overlooked classics -- & shows not only how & why these books succeed (or fail), but passes on priceless advice to would-be SF writers, & snapshots of how it felt 2 B an SF writer 30 years ago. A MUST 4 NE serious SF reader or writer! Budrys was the best book reviewer of his time in the SF magazines of the late 60's, late 70's & early 80s. 2 bad he isn't still reviewing, the modern SF scene could use the input....