Currently reading
Taiga?s True Views: The Language of Landscape Painting in Eighteenth-Century Japan by Melinda Takeuchi (1994-06-01)
The History of England, Vol 2
The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle
Cicero: On Moral Ends (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
Das Goldene Vlies: Dramatisches Gedicht in Drei Abteilungen
Euripides IV: Rhesus / The Suppliant Women / Orestes / Iphigenia in Aulis
Notes from Underground & The Double
The World of Thought in Ancient China
The Last Generation of the Roman Republic
The Legend of Gold and Other Stories
John Reibetanz (b. 1944), an American who emigrated to Canada during the turmoil of the Vietnam War era, is a poet who, on the evidence of this one book, tells stories of small lives, lives which are somewhat eccentric or damaged, including his own. But Reibetanz expresses his solidarity with these lives by penetrating the crusted surface to show the reader the internal logic, the necessity, of the form the life has taken. Some could find that these stories cross the line into sentimentality, but, to my taste, the sincerity of his empathy and the aptness of his language assures this does not occur. It is not often that he generates knots of verbal energy in this book, something I look for in great poetry, but Reibetanz does stay well away from the verbal flatness to be found in so much contemporary versification. And there were moments of surprise, moments I look for, when an unexpected metaphor, not strained but perfectly discovered, or phrase, or adjective, startles and opens a door one did not even know was there. Near Relations opens with a poem inspired by a photo from a large series of photographs made by Lewis Hines in 1908-1909 which provides deeply moving documentation of the then standard practice of child labor in the USA. I've located the photographic muse of this poem, and it should be seen while reading the poem. It is non-downloadable, so here is the link:http://www.nytstore.com/Spinner-in-Whitnel-Cotton-Mill-Lewis-Hine--1908_p_7955.html The final stanza of this poem:She would not call it work, my sitting for hours staring at a pointbelow her intolerable gaze and above the soiled neckbandof undershirt that lines her collar, intent on catching from thoseslightly pursed lips the unearthly thread of what she's about to say. (GR's damned text defaults don't allow the line indentations to come through, sorry.)