I picked up T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party on the side of a city street, one of a stack of books being thrown out by someone with a taste for poetry and Eastern religions, to judge by the other books. I gave it a quick scan and discovered it was a play, so I didn’t shelve it with my other poetry books. It made its way to the basement and I forgot it existed.

Then yesterday, there it was, in the dining room, somehow having made the trip back from the basement and into a place of prominence. I don’t know how this one book was spared in the frenzy of moving and packing and loading and donating, but it was. I read it this evening and was completely captivated by it.

The play is difficult to describe. It’s set in London and begins at a cocktail party. There is almost no physical action in the play. Rather, it’s a series of conversations between a half-dozen or so people, all of whom are having various sorts of existential crises. There is one shift of setting and many surprising connections are made between the various characters.

This can hardly be called a review, can it? Suffice to say the play’s stark rendering of people’s life choices was very moving and appealing to me, particularly at this moment in my life. I think I may try to get some folks together to read this play at some point. And in the meantime, I recommend it to you.

David Budbill isn’t a hermit or a recluse or a misanthrope, although he chose four decades ago to move to a mountain and write poems and play the flute. The thing is, unlike the image that immediately conjures, Budbill still seems gregarious and connected and invested in friends and family. Oh, and he moved to the mountain with his wife.

While We’ve Still Got Feet (Copper Canyon Press, 2005) is a joyous collection of poems informed by the work of Chinese and Japanese recluse-poets and by Budbill’s own distilled observations. The poems are clear and often arresting, filled with wry humor and a refreshing matter-of-factness.

Budbill, who also publishes the overtly political and progressive e-newsletter The Judevine Mountain Emailite, sprinkles the occasional political commentary into his poetry. Of course, looked at from another perspective, his entire existence is a political act and a commentary on the system of consumption and greed that has grown up here on the same soil that provides the foundation for Budbill’s mountain home. Here is one example of Budbill’s combination of humor and insight:

***

It’s Now or Never

Eat, drink, and be merry, for
tomorrow you will surely die.

Get together with your friends.
Enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.

I’m pretty sure this is all we get.
I can’t be absolutely certain, but

of all the people I have known who
have passed over to the other side

not one has sent back any news.

***

At its heart, Budbill’s poetry is a clear expression of his vision of life, a vision to which he has remained true despite what I can only imagine are temptations to move back where things are “easier.” Budill is no recluse, no hermit — but he is a striking example of having the courage of one’s convictions, and the kindness to share those convictions with others.

Highly recommended.

In the realm of wrong answers, someone
always has the radio on.

– from “I Will Sing the Monster to Sleep, & He Will Need Me”

I’ve been watching the middle seasons of Stargate SG-1 again. If you’ve never seen the show, the premise is that there are Stargates that allow instant travel between planets. You step into one on your world and step out into some completely other landscape.

To get around the problem of having to invent new languages for every race of alien encountered, the producers cut the knot this way: They explained that a particular race of evil aliens had captured many humans from earth and sprinkled them throughout the galaxy to use as slaves. So most of the folks you encounter are human. And most of them speak English, albeit with some interesting variations in dialect. And no, that last bit doesn’t make any sense, but it sure is easier than having to learn Klingon.

Which brings me to John Gallaher’s Map of the Folded World (University of Akron Press, 2009). Gallaher has managed to create a language all his own using English words. Reading his poems, I felt like I’d arrived on some other world where the linguistic building blocks were familiar, but the physics of assembling them was completely different, surprising, otherworldly.

Map of the Folded World gathers momentum as it goes, and traveling through it I was quickly swept up into Gallaher’s deft use of language, not really needing to know what something meant so much as to hear how Gallaher had opened up the possibilities of the words by putting them next to one another in surprising ways:

I don’t feel it’s helpful to quote sections of his poems (although I started the interview with my favorite line from the book) because his poems are so dependent on being whole. To remove any piece for study under the microscope would be to miss the point. Gallaher is sculpting, constructing, imagining, transporting the words. Similarly, although I’m sure these poems would be captivating individually, Map of the Folded World is a book. It is held together by the strength of Gallaher’s imagination and by the cascading wash of the language. By the time I reached the end, I felt almost as though I could speak the language; as though I could understand what some of the natives were saying, and maybe even try to carry on a rudimentary conversation of my own.

I love clear, narrative poetry. For me, this is not that. What it is, instead, is something equally valuable and maybe more rare — a transformative experience that comes about through nothing but the careful placement of word blocks on a landscape of Gallaher’s own devising.

Highly recommended.

I have a soft spot for good vampire books. I love the original Dracula, particularly it’s fast-paced epistolary style. I also enjoyed the first few books in Anne Rice’s original series. And I’m sure that if I started Twilight or any of the other currently popular brooding-emo-vamp series, I’d guiltily enjoy those, too.

But Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan have written a larger, more intense book than the current crop of tween sensations. This is a vampire novel that strikes deep at the heart of our modern fears of terrorism and biological weaponry. The protagonists have all the technology of the modern-day disease fighter at their disposal, pitted against an ancient — but intelligently updated — foe.

For me, The Strain is just what vampire books are supposed to be. It is fast-paced. It’s villains are sometimes cunning, sometimes brutish. It’s heroes are flawed but basically good. And the odds are heavily stacked against them.

If I have one complaint, it is that volumes two and three in this trilogy are not to be released until 2010 and 2011. What a pain in the neck. (See what I did there?)

Donald Hall, one of the country’s great poets, writes with passion about Dock Ellis, one of baseball’s most colorful figures. If all you know about Dock Ellis is that he once pitched a no-hitter on LSD, then you need to read this book and learn the other 90% of his story. And if you, like me, have never heard of Dock Ellis at all, Hall’s engrossing account will acquaint you with a man who deserves wider recognition, as much for his constant support of the black community and his commitment to fighting drug addiction as for his on-field stats. Highly recommended.

Joseph Moncure March wrote this tale of debauchery and deception in rhyming couplets in 1928, just before the world descended into the depths of the Great Depression.

Decades later, artist and author Art Spiegelman (of MAUS fame), found a copy in a used bookstore and fell instantly in love with the darkness and depravity of March’s lost classic. In 1994, nearly 70 years after the publication of The Wild Party, Spiegelman published this illustrated version.

March’s short, taut thriller beautifully captures the grim determination of a group of down-but-not-out actors, dancers and vaudeville performers as they use drink and sex to mask the depression of their everyday lives. Spiegelman’s woodblock-style illustrations add the perfect touch of dark sensuality that at times turn to stale, harshly lit reality. The poem builds to an inevitable climax of violence that nevertheless leaves the reader sitting up straight and waiting for the end.

William S. Burroughs said of The Wild Party: “It’s the book that made me want to become a writer.”

Highly recommended.

Scott Douglas’s memoir of his life as a librarian is hard to put down. So hard, in fact, that I took some additional bathroom breaks at various points just to keep reading.

Douglas loves libraries, but not for the reasons you might think. In fact, this look behind the curtain shattered many of my notions about who librarians are and why they choose to be librarians. (Hint: It’s not about the books.) I appreciated Douglas’s look at his profession as an example of public service.

Douglas is skilled at allowing his personality to come through without it taking over the story completely. Case in point: I was very surprised when he identified himself as a conservative Christian about halfway through the book.

Because the book is nonfiction, several of the storylines had less-than-satisfying conclusions, at least from my “Hollywood ending” point of view. That made the stories feel more real, though, even if they left me a little sad by the end of the book.

Douglas’s writing is fresh and fast-moving, and certainly worth reading for anyone interested in the secret lives of librarians.

Recommended.

Kooser’s book is aimed at the beginning poet, but anyone could pick up useful ideas about revision, metaphor and simile, and imagining an audience. Kooser’s writing is warm and often funny, and his advice is realistic and practical. This is not a book to read if you’re looking for a quick way to become a famous poet. But if you’re interested in putting in the necessary hours (and hours and hours and hours) needed to turn out respectable writing, Kooser can help you use your time more productively and enjoyably.

Recommended.

Journalist and comic book artist Joe Sacco has been rightly praised for this intense account of his time in the Palestinian territories during the first Intifada. Sacco decided from the start to tell the Palestinian side of the story — not to aim for the false balance of much of modern journalism. His graphic novel is primarily a series of interviews with Palestinians, some arranged in advance and some on the spur of the moment.

If you enjoyed Art Spiegelman’s MAUS books, you’ll probably like Sacco’s work.

Highly recommended.

This is essentially Artimage’s script for a BBC Radio production of the Odyssey. He condenses — if that’s the word — the story into a series of conversations between its characters.

The language is both rich and readable, everyday and heroic. Armitage uses the conversations to strike at the core of the story, and to offer a look into the psychology of gods and men.

Despite its much shorter length, this Odyssey manages to retain its epic scope. For those not familiar with the original work, this version may serve as a fine introduction. And for those who are steeped in the classic poem, this Odyssey offers a fresh perspective.

Highly recommended.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this collection, which gathers together Eisner’s three graphic novels about the mythic Dropsie Avenue, a street in New York patterned after Eisner’s own childhood neighborhood. I’d never read any of Eisner’s work, famous as he is, and I mostly thought of him as the creator of The Spirit, a comic book hero.

This trilogy, though, is both an autobiography of sorts for Eisner and a biography of a street in New York City. The three books share an attention to detail combined with an epic sweep of history. Eisner explores religion, the meaning of life, aging, poverty, immigration, racial and ethnic relations, and the development of urban centers with a keenly observant — if not objective — eye.

The black-and-white illustrations are perfect for the stories. The drawing has a raggedly realistic style that catches every piece of cracked plaster, every shadowed face, every trick of the light.

Recommended.

The shortest review Rolling Stone ever published was a one-word review of the album Chase by the band of the same name. The review was:

“Flee.”

In that spirit of brevity, but with the opposite opinion of the work in question, let me say:

“WowthisisanamazingbookinfactoneofthebestbooksofpoetryI’veread.”

Highly recommended.

This brilliant graphic novel tells the unvarnished story of the development and amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The book is no hagiography of the document or its authors. Hennessey and McConnell point out the flaws in the Constitution and its unfortunate application to restrict the rights of many Americans.

In total, though, this book, like the best history books, inspires both an appreciation for past events and a desire to improve conditions going forward. Hennessy and McConnell are to be commended for furthering the cause of Constitutional literacy. Get this for every middle- and high-school student you know, and get a copy for yourself, too.

Highly recommended.

I learned about Arthur Guiterman because several of his poems were included in the Library of America’s book American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse (American Poets Project). I was so taken by the poems I read there that I decided to find some of his books online. They’re all out of print, but fairly easy — and relatively inexpensive — to find.

The Mirthful Lyre was published in 1918, when Guiterman was in his late 40s. It’s divided into several sections: Folks And Things; A Few Children; To The Littlest Of All; Fauna And Flora; and All-Out-Doors. Many of the funny poems are in the first section, but I was most impressed and moved by the All-Out-Doors section, Guiterman’s series of love songs about nature.

The nature poems are sensitive and adoring, displaying the poet’s obvious passion for escape from his city life. He seems to be completely at home in the woods, lovingly describing the animal life, the sound of the wind in the trees, and the stillness of travel by canoe.

Guiterman is well worth searching out. Highly recommended.

If comedic-philosophical-absurdist-hip-hop-opera poetry is your thing, you’re going to dig DJ Spinoza. I picked this up on the advice of a blog. It’s a fast read, and one that I think will reward repeated attention. This first edition is limited to 1,500 copies, and I’d get one if I were you.