Carnegie Mellon University Books

I have never honestly even tried to read a lot of poetry but I can tell you that the few poems I do like are probably as good as anything I've ever read elsewhere. Even parts of some of these can take a bite out of me. Like for instance the italicised opening section of The Confession of St. Jim-Ralph in The Incognito Lounge: this mini rake's progress is so strongly and so evocatively rendered that for a minute you don't know which is more transfixing, the story or the telling. The first time I read Ten Months After Turning Thirty I had to stand up and smoke a cigarette to calm down. The title poem too but most of them really. Not to get all Emily Dickinson here but you know when you're completely wiped out and someone somehow manages to play Breathe Into Me by Loop--or maybe even Polka Dot Tail by Gene and Dean Ween--on your Toshiba? Well that's exactly what it feels like whenever I read this electrifying collection. Denis Johnson is a God-given gift to amateur readers like me--when I read Resuscitation of a Hanged Man about fifteen years ago it was totally by accident, I had never heard of this guy, but when I'd finished I knew everything I needed to know. Amazingly his books just kept on getting better, hitting a high point for me with Already Dead--a mesmerising slow burn, magically sustained by equal measures of humour and compassion. Check out the Whitehorn episode near the end and see for yourself. There is a strain of yearning in this novel that just about poleaxes me every time. The felly even uses the word balneating, which I was happy to look up. And then there's Jesus' Son of course, a deceptively large small book, a stunner actually. The spookily beautiful opening paragraph of Steady Hands at Seattle General? The entire eight pages of Out on Bail? The blackouts built into the prose itself in Emergency? Yes, just a stunning bunch of stories. Really though there's hardly a thing Mister Johnson has written that I don't relish reading and reading again. Even the plays have soul, Bro's line in Shoppers about the britches is hysterical. So there you have it, poems, novels, short stories and plays--take your pick, it's all good. Hell, it's everything that's great about this blessedly ungovernable country. Novellas too, I was forgetting about Train Dreams--that one's a buried bleeding treasure. Esto Perpetua. With my salute too, dude.

Tess Gallagher is a blessing. Readers who have experienced a rich essential quality of living will find the resonate voice of an ageless girl underneath powerfully assembled words. This collection was handed to me by a stranger in a coffee shop in Tacoma, Washington, who said only, "here, have a book of poetry." On a quick reading it seemed like superficial, self indulgent, girlish poetry. But this is not the I, me, you, we, weep at me stuff that fills chap books and keeps vanity presses in business. In this case it only serves to, very cleverly and even handedly, disguise, or vale, the soul of writer. Later the work began to unfold its complexity and came to life right out of the page. The balanced, well tempered blending of the metaphorical and the concrete and a fairly consistant cadence, the ability to play with syntax and meaning, twisting words and sentences into unpredictable and surprising contortions only enhance the necessary meaning of the work and give it life in the minds eye where all good poetry is born.

Tess is soft, sweater soft, but don't let that fool you. She is solid, like a rock. A remarkable woman.

As written by Schuster and Zingheim "understanding what pay and benefits can do to help organizations succeed is essential and best learned early in a career. Edward Lawler's Strategic Pay and this book were the first books to address pay outside of the context of traditional pay grounded in the 1940's, when challenges and opportunities were remarkably different from what are today."

Within the context of comparison between the new pay and traditional pay approaches Schuster and Zingheim discuss some crucial concepts such as :

* base pay (market-based pay/skill-based pay, job-based pay)

* variable pay (group performance, individual performance)

* indirect pay (obtained results, employee's tenure)

* job evaluation (external/market based equity, internal/point factor based equity)

I higly recommend this pioneering study to HR professionals.

See also :

*J. Schuster and P. Zingmeim-Pay People Right,

*T. Wilson-Rewards That Drive High Performance,

*H. Risher-Aligning Pay and Results,

*J. Belcher-How to Design and Implement A Results-Oriented Variable Pay System

Tony Geraghty is uniquely well-placed to write this history, whose fine and precise balance surpasses the best Fairbairn-Sykes has to offer. No one can ever legitimately accuse Geraghty of favouritism in this fight, since he despises all three sides equally and with a perfect hate.

A British Airbrone Vet born in England of Roman Catholic Irish immigrant parents, Geraghty was personally decorated by American General Norman Schwarzkopf. While reporting from Ulster, he had the distinction of being assaulted twice in one afternoon, first by Paisleyite irresponsibles, then by Rampart-like RUC uniforms. He was also arrested at gunpoint for curfew violations at the Falls, and interrogated at gunpoint by the PIRA. In 1998, the British Ministry of Defence's "Admiral's Gestapo" Inquisitioned him over this very book. There is one other important qualification not presently mentioned. In the late 1970's, Geraghty was nearly murdered by British mercenaries headed towards Angola, after he had taken the trouble to help them find replacements in the UK. One of these mercs had been dishonourably discharged from the Paras for running guns to Loyalist paramilitaries.

Geraghty exposes Eddie Fitzgerald, O'Neill's Fenians, Wolf Tone Loc, Casement, Pearse and Connolly as embittered, vindictive idle RIF'd has-beens, salon-dwelling poseurs, and otherwise pathetic losers-without-a-clue. His linking of pre-1922 history with the current Troubles is the one weakness of the book. Before 1922, Ireland was genuinely occupied by England/Britain, and the majority of the population did suffer bona fide repression at the hands of various English/British organisms and persons. After 1922, however, Ireland was as free as America and Rhodesia, and chose to become a sectarian theocracy in the manner of Iran and Afghanistan. The majority in Ulster elected to retain their British identity, and the Williamite guarantee of freedom of worship, known to Americans as the First Amendment.

This detail, however, pales in comparison to Geraghty's comprehensive and morally unassailable unmasking of the Sinn Fein/PIRA mafia as, in the words of Roman Catholic Priest Father Dennis Faul, "a crazy outfit" that "should be disbanded." He shows how virtually the entirety of Irish Catholic identity is defined as the negation of being "not British." He exposes how violence in Ireland, instead of being a means to justify an end, is rather an end in and of itself, as reflected in 1960's IRA capo Cathal Goulding's whining that Irish Americans would not send him money unless violence was involved. Similarly, he points out how the Republican murder machine operates unencumbered by Good Friday.

Geraghty also goes out of his way to remember the Catholic victims of Nationalist terrorism: Bob Nairac; thirty-seven year old Jean McConville, mother of ten, abducted and "disappeared" because she gave comfort to a wounded British soldier; nineteen year old Marta from the Bogside, tarred and feathered for dating British soldiers; and Angela Gallagher killed by IRA gunfire. These unknown victims are like Canada's massacred Donnelly family. You never hear word one about them from Peter King, Bruce Morrison, Martin Galvin, the Kennedys, William Donohue's "Catholic" League, the denizens of the New York "Irish Echo" and "Irish Voice", and all the other stateside Fenian agitators and marks. In contrast to all these false prophets, Tony Geraghty, by keeping alive the memory of the innocents, acts in the true spirit of Catholicism, the message of love Jesus gave to his disciples and to mankind.

As well, Geraghty graphically illustrates how the Irish War has effectively turned Britain into a police state that allows intrusive government surveillance and other encroachments on freedom which "cannot be uninvented." This situation frighteningly parallels that proposed by too many American Congressmen and Senators after the Oklahoma City Bombing. Geraghty's section on Brian Nelson brings up a question raised by Carsten Stroud in "Deadly Force" and by Roger Charles and J.D. Cash's article on Peter Langan; who is worse, the people under surveillance, or the snitches paid to rat them out?

Forget the drivel by academics, defrocked reporters and other wannabe writers cashing in on the Troubles to pad their retirement accounts. With Jack Holland and Susan Phoenix's "Phoenix Policing the Shadows", Tony Geraghty's "The Irish War" is all you ever need buy and read on this subject.

I just stumbled across this small book recently, and the story of this man's life is absolutley astonishing. One of the most unique individuals I have ever read about. Unfortunately it is a rather brief book, I sure wish there was more known about Mr. Willey.

I had the pleasure of meeting the author at my university and picked up a copy of this book. The poetry is well-written and clever without being obtuse and hard to read. The subject matter mostly focuses on relationships of various types--on the impact people have on our lives, whether brief and intense or long and foundational--but everything is infused with a great sense of place and is very well described.

Caveat: I'm a biased reviewer as I read it frequently and have modeled some of my own poems from this and the work of David St. John. I think that's a recommendation too, though.

Well I am a student of Aliki's and she is a beautiful poet. She comes from a family teeming with creativity. Her poems are like wonderful paintings. . . she puts together words so that one can see her soul. And she has Soul.

I outdid myself on this one. It's f'n retarded how good it is.

This book has a unity in how/why it was conceived/written that appropriately is described as an afterward ... after you have enjoyed the marvelous results.

The first of the three sections of the book contains meditations on growing up - a marvelous tribute to mother, grandmother, grandfather and Lorca. While staying within his own concrete experience, he allows himself to identify completely with the experience of others e.g. Lorca. He does so with marvelously surprising yet precise language e.g. of asthma "exhausted in the slow foraging for breath".

The second section is turn of the century France, expressed in lyrics meant to accompany music of Eric Satie. If, in the first section, the reader notes the language, here, the reader notes the form ... Gymnopedies coming surprising close to replicating in language the form of the music yet remaining poetry for the sake of word and meaning not sound.

The last section turns to Japan. While this section includes the weakest poem of the collection, this section as a whole shows a gentle wisdom regarding humanity that is rare to find in a poet so earlier in his career. He exhibits a comprehension of the Zen view "This is the stillness / at the core of breath. / As the cranes lift, I feel no moment -". But this understanding appears to come, not out of Zen practice, but of understanding of human experience as a whole.

I was drawn to this volume through my enjoyment of Soul Make A Path Through Shouting ... I recommend them both, with, perhaps, a slight preference for this volume.

Normally when I purchase a new book of poetry I read a few poems at a time and then set the book down. With Angela Ball's book, The Museum of the Revolution, I couldn't do that. It is not often you hear of a book of poems being a page-turner...
The book's focus is a trip to Cuba, with each poem representing an exhibit in a museum. A few of the poems are just stunning and the book as a whole is a great accomplishment.