I saw this book recommended by one of my favorite authors, Michael Cunningham (he wrote THE HOURS). Michael teaches a Creative Writing course at Columbia University and I'm sure he implores his students to read this one. It is an easy, simple read of "I REMEMBER..." lines of memories from the 1940s and 1950s. It is a 'must read' for any writer who has writers block as it will spur new ideas into one's head, encouraging one to write their very OWN 'I Remember' lines. I really enjoyed it, relating and laughing several times--I ended up finishing it in one day as a break from another book.

Yes, and we remember you, Joe. Lovely man (not that I ever knew the geezer) and the originator in this work of the Je me souviens format for which Georges Perec (of the pretentious/ludicrous Oulipo group)is always given credit. Did Georges discover Joe via Harry Mathews? Anyways, he wouldn'ta minded. An American original; pity he never turned his hand to opera libretti. When can we expect the Collected Writings please?

I didn't think it could be done, but Joe Brainard has managed to keep me interested through a book-length poem! It's all about the pop culture references and those universal moments of feeling just plain odd. Every stanza begins with "I remember", but he manages not to make it boring at all.

Blaise Cendrars is often considered the great poet of modernity and metropolitanism, and the opening long poem here, 'Easter In New York', certainly grapples with the present, as the starving, despairing narrator wanders through the Big Apple by night, confronted with prostitutes, beggars, deformed musicians, thieves; stared at with hostility by strangers, afraid of his own shadows. The trash-filled seediness of New York, the tense ethnic melting-pot, the spiritual banality of capitalism (in the form of Banks and skyscrapers), the jostling mechanisation of the mob, the roaring subways are all vividly captured. This is largely achieved by the insertion into Cendrars' famously plain style of unfamiliar or violent words that create a sense of wrenching alienation.

What is bizarre is that Cendrars frames this modern narrative with a monologue addressed to Jesus on Good Friday. At first when he bemoans the lack of spirituality under modern capitalism, his visits to dank libraries to look up famous artistic representations of the Passion , as well as books and hymns, we may feel a conservative impulse.

But the more the poet ruminates on representations - rather than manifestations - of Christ, the more we notice that it is Good Friday, the day Jesus died, all the year round; that there is no redemptive resurrecton in this living hell where even suicide is too expensive.

This again mirrors the language's development. The poem's form is a series of steady, regular, rhymed, Latinate couplets, but as the language, images, sentiments become more violent, despairing, urgent, this form begins to burst until the final hallucinatory denial suggest escape. Some of the verses, such as the narrator accompanying God down a nameless street, His side gashed, the houses filling with blood, the occupants withering with sin, have a Wildean savour (I'm thinking of his stories and prose poems) as if to bridge the gap between the ancient and modern.

There is an excellent introduction, by Jay Bochner, to Cendrars' life and art in this book, and the translations (by a practicising poet, Ron Padgett) have been acclaimed by prestigious worthies like the great John Ashbery, but they seem problematic to me. Padgett's attempt to translate the poems as verse results in many distorting omissions and cmpromises, and reduces Cendrars's methodical rhythms to singsong. It's okay for the likes of me, I have enough French to struggle with the original, but English readers might lose something. In one case he translates the word 'aube', clearly meant in the context as 'alb' (the priest's vestment), as 'dawn', its other meaning, used punningly throughout. This makes me fear for the rest of the text's accuracy.

em.. She asking me " I must be find web of Edwin Denby's report! "....... V.SU : o.....k.....a.......y...... ......anybody help me....

The second long poem in this volume, 'Trans-Siberian Express and little Jeanne of France' is a vast improvement on its derivative predecessor, 'Easter in New York'. We can feel beginning the Cendrars mode in full flow, the extended, rhythmic, almost Whitman-like expansiveness.

The poem details a trip by the poet through Russia on the titular train during the 1905 Russian Revolution and Sino-Russian War. It contrasts his vagrant, poverty-stricken life with the inhuman brutlity of war (a foretaste of the mechanistic infernoes of the 20th century); the forward movement of the train with his development as a poet - the poem is as much about the writing of a poem as an historical travelogue.

Cendrars' modernity is apparent in the poem's rhythms, often simulating the thrilling momentum of a hurtling train, as often breaking off, lurching, rattling. His 'plain' imagistic power is at full steam (horrible pun), as much at ease with awe at travelling through a new, alien country, as disgust with the horrors of war (the mutilated arms of soldiers dance in a passing carriage), and the sadnesses of those lives marginalised by great events, such as the little prostitute of the title.

Although deriving much of its energy from nascent modernity, the poem also traces the connection between science and progress with war, barbarity, apocalypse, the forward thrust of humanity leading only to its destruction. But it is in the detail that life affirms itself, and the closing rejecting, melancholy coda cannot quite dispel the rush of the journey.

Includes advice on how to teach the writing of poetry and prose--everything from haiku to horror stories; ways to publish student work easily and inexpensively; dramatic improvisations; techniques for songwriting and musicwaking; examples of creative work by children