Pitt Books

I really enjoyed this collection of thirty-nine poems. Occasionally, Glazer is wordy to the point of being difficult to understand. (For an example of this, simply read the title.) But usually she knows just what words to say. There are many moving poems in this book. One of my favorites, "Real Life #4: Playground" deals with a babysitter keeping two children who don't yet know their mother has died at the playground as long as possible. Another, "Real Life #7: Summer", deals with a woman taking care of her father. He appears to be suffering from dementia, while she suffers from a lack of money. This financial problem leaves her in an uncomfortable, heartbreaking situation. The themes that hold the book together are nature, decay, and parent-child relationships. Definitely worth a quick peek at the library; maybe even a place on your bookshelf. As a person who tries to buy books as selectively as possible, I'm glad I own this. I plan on rereading it in the future.

Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orleans, duchess de Montpensier, who was always called "La Grande Mademoiselle", has been a figure who has facinated French historians for centuries - unfortunatley, there have not been many books in english about her eventful life.

Born in 1627, Mademoiselle was the first grandchild born in the royal family of France for several centuries. She was destined to be a matrimonial pawn for her family because of her closeness to the throne and the immense fortune she inherited from her mother. She was in her time, the richest woman in France and it's greatest heiress.

We have been fortunate that Mademoiselle thought to write her memoirs during her lifetime. These have been used as the basis for this book. However all her assertions and ommissions have been cross-checked. The author presents a fairly straightfoward accounting of the princesses life. From her early years and the inattention of her father, Gaston (to whom she owed her royal position) and her conflicts with the court, to her later disgrace and exile and grand love of the Sun King's courtier Lauzun.

At the end of the book are three lengthy appedix' (or essays more correctly) dealing with Mademoiselle's writings and her much coveted fortune.

The only complaint I have about this book is that despite lengthy sections dealing with Mademoiselle's writings we actually hear very little of her voice in it. We are given a fairly objective view of her life by the author, but it could possibly have been enhanced by at least one section which let Mademoiselle speak for herself.

One earlier english work on Mademoiselle "La Grande Mademoiselle" by Francis Steegmuller, 1956 reproduces her written "self portrait" and this book is worth looking up for that alone.

Aside from the text it is nice to see such a well bound and produced book as this with nice study covers and acid free paper - designed to last the test of time. A timely reivew of this very active princess' life.

This book sets out to describe the ninety or so British racecourse that closed during the twentieth century, often including diagrams. At the back of the book are a list of British racecourses that closed before 1900 and a list of closed Irish racecourses.

The racecourses described include some that, in their prime, were quite important, especially Manchester and Hurst Park, both of which closed in the early 1960's, although the majority were minor racecourses. Another noteworthy racecourse was Gatwick, one of many that were seized by the Government for use as airfields during the Second World War. Unlike most of the others, Gatwick never returned to its former use as it was used as the site for an international airport.

Indeed, this book provides a usefuly study for those who are interested in how land use has changed down the years - roads, schools, housing estates and golf courses are just some of the things that have been built on the sites of closed racecourses. In a few cases, there is more evidence of their former use.

The book was extensively researched over seven years, but it has one obvious flaw - the omission of Blaydon - and for that reason, I have to take a star off (very reluctantly - it really is a superb book otherwise). A song was written about a meeting at Blaydon in 1862 that was cancelled because of bad weather - it has since become famous as the anthem of Newcastle United (a club that didn't exist in 1862). This book lists the course among those that closed before 1900, stating that races were held there in 1861, 1864 and 1865. In fact, the final race meeting there was in 1916 (qualifying it for a full entry in this book) - it was abandoned when a riot broke out following the disqualification of a winning horse. It may be that meetings at Blaydon were infrequent, but it seems strange that the author missed this one. An electricity power generating station was built on the site - yet another different use for a closed racecourse.

As I write this, no British racecourse has closed since 1981 - that was Stockton, on which a huge shopping complex was built - and there are plans to open at least one completely new racecourse, the first for over seventy years, so the future for British racecourses is bright.

Despite the omission of Blaydon, this is an excellent and fascinating book, though its interest is primarily of historical value. If you are interested in the subject, this book is well worth the search.

Postscript - the new British racecourse to which I alluded eventually opened in 2008 at Great Leighs, conveniently situated between London, where there are plenty of people, and Newmarket, where there are plenty of horses.

This book most invites me to ask what has happened to David Young's poems? Is he the same poet who now edits anthologies? In this 1979 selection for the Pitt Poetry Series, he was nicely knitting unusual syntax with a Roethke and Goethe-like earthiness. Anglo-Saxon shades, Slavic tones, notes of violence and lyricism that remind one of the Brothers Grimm, and a beautiful long title poem prefaced by an old english poem by MS Digby (1272-1283) about all the names of the hare: "The cove-arise/ the make agrise/the wite-wombe/ the go-mit lombe/ the choumbe/ the chaulart." About 77 ways of saying hare in Old English. The poem has ten parts which make a kind of archipelago: old bones, the names of constellations, a portrait of Shakespeare, the ancient words themselves coming to the surface to lead one to meaning. All this culminating in the kind of final section that makes you love the ancient words that survived, and the newer words quick as a hare, or even a metaphor. From part four of the title poem: "And what's the rain's name?/ Certainly not cloudcurd, aireggs. A bear staggers through the raspberry canes,/a crow feather falls through a noontime pine,/a pail of yellow oil tips into a cistern./Rain walks down the gangplank, waving./Climbs windbreaks. Stipples windows. Freckles sand./The farmhands'faces glisten, yes that name is right. The one name. Rain." And from "The Day Nabokov Died" an elegy to the author not personally known: "1. I looked up from my weeding/and saw a butterfly, coal black,/floating across Plum Creek. Which facts/are laced with lies: it was another day,/it was a monarch -- if it was black,/it must have been incinerator fluff. A black hinge,opening and shutting." Fascinating, kinetic, without sacrificing meaning, human feeling.

For her second collection of poems, Kate Daniels drew upon personal experience and Greek myth. Writing about the drowning of a friend's son, she used the myth of Niobe as a leaping-off point for the imagination. In the book's conclusion, Daniels changes the myth to provide both her contemporary heroine and Niobe a redemption they deserve, and that we, the readers, need. Loss, motherhood, grief--these are popular themes in poetry, but it's a tribute to Daniels that she uses them in new and interesting ways.

Love the quality but the print turned out to be too small for me, other than that its a keeper

Of the various translations of Horace's Odes into English, this is the best I have found. The translations stay close to the literal meaning and sequence of the originals, yet are rendered into English poetry (not a prose crib.) Horace is a frequently complicated, dense poet, so the translations are often rather complicated and dense. A reasonable number of explanatory notes are provided in the back. My main reason for withholding a fifth star is the cheapness of the physical presentation: in order to save space, the poems are run together rather than being presented on separate pages, and the typeface is small.

People of African descent in North America came into a Baptist religious experience. The African Ancestors who survived the Maafa remembered and applied some of their African patterning and awareness to their 'forced faith'. These acts of cultural retention held within the Baptist Church are largely ignored by most researchers because so many of the retained Africanisms were assimilated and their origin occulted in what we know today as "American" culture.

This book is well written and informative, as it speaks of and compares elements of the Afro- Baptist ritual to similiar concepts preserved in Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian experience in the Catholic Church, finally discussing them on an equal footing.

P-47 PILOT: SCARED, BORED & DEADLY is former Thunderbolt pilot Jack Pitts' chronicle of flying 90 combat missions with the wartime 371st FG. Pitts' book differs from other published biographies and autobiographies of P-47 pilots in several respects. First, Pitts flew ground attack/fighter-bomber missions. Second he kept a detailed mission log which he uses in this book to accurately describe those - often hairy - missions.

Pitts reported to the 404th FS, 371st FG, 9th AF, based at St. Mere Eglise, France on 23 August 1944. His first combat mission was on 7 September; his last on 9 May 1945. In between those dates Pitts, a member of C Flight, bombed and strafed various targets in France, Belgium and Germany including supply convoys, trains, railyards, airfields, etc. He ended the war with a DFC and 11 Air Medals.

After a very brief personal bio, Pitts jumps right into the action. He first presents his mission log entry followed by contemporary comments that explain or amplify the mission summary. While some missions were rather dry strikes on suspected troop concentrations in wooded areas, etc., others were white-knuckle affairs with beaucoup flak bursting all around.

Because of the wartime log entries, P-47 PILOT has an immediacy few other air war books possess. In many cases Pitts' contemporary comments helped clarify the mission although he sometimes got too technical or long-winded. Likewise, more background on the 371st would have been helpful before Pitts began the account of his missions.

The book includes over 60 photographs of Pitts, his squadronmates, Group aircraft, wrecked German trucks and locomotives, etc. Photo reproduction varies from good to awful.

For those wanting a rare, firsthand account of 'down-and-dirty' fighter-bomber ops, P-47 PILOT will be of interest. Recommended.

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