Book Shout Outs 2

I am almost always reading three books at a time, usually spread across genres, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, as essays, memoir or history.  Right now on my bedside table  these three are among the offerings.

Chris Abani has a way with words, his prose has the music and richness of poetry, his poetry is a deep well of sweet water, his fiction holds with his genealogy of fine story-telling. The Face: Cartography of the Void (Restless Books) is an extended non-fiction essay on his face which tastefully blends his expertise and talents in each genre. For example:  “In WESTERN THOUGHT, composition creates beauty. Perspective. Symmetry. The Golden Ratio. An impossible one-sided ideal. In West African thought, composure creates beauty. Balance, Equanimity. Serenity. The essential nature of a thing…”

The publishers say of the “Face” series: Alternately philosophical, funny, personal, political, and poetic, the short memoirs in THE FACE series offer unique perspectives on race, culture, identity, and the human experience from some of our most dynamic literary writers. Our inspiration for The Face comes from a passage by Jorge Luis Borges:

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”

 The book left me wanting more.  Within a relatively few pages Abani looks and the meaning of face- keeping face, having a face, facing realities, facing history,  with humor and bittersweet reflections on family, culture, legacy and race.  The book makes me want to look at my own face and the teachings it can give.  It also makes me want to read other books in the series.

American Letters: works on paper (Canarium Books) is giovanni singleton’s second book.  It is an exciting book of poetry as a visual art, poetry with its own cartography, poetry that interrogates the reader and decodes the poet.  It is divided into 12 chapters that taken together give a global reflection of what poetry can be or do. Her influences are wide ranging, Nina Simone and John Cage, Buddhism and Lucille Clifton, abstract art, and current events.  For me chapters two, four, and five, cagedbird, canon fire :: cosmic clay to be colored and illustrated equations are the most powerful.  Here are a few offerings.   Each chapter is a story, a journey, a song, so what you see, while a complete poem, is only one or two verses of the song.

from caged bird:

PERFORMANCE SCORE for cagedbird

* Every occurrence of “bird” acts as a site for improvisation.

from canon fire :: cosmic clay to be colored

Golden Sardine: a mesostic
after Bob Kaufman

from illustrated equations

illustrated equation no. 1
something about a look. . . something about seeing. . .

This is a book that is modern, as in modern art, sometimes impressionistic sometimes abstract, controlled emotion and at unexpected, but logical moments, swirling passion.

If you would like to read more about Giovanni Singleton and her work here is an interview she did for my site.

And as I am teaching it, my fiction of the month is So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (Arsenal Pulp Press) I am rediscovering the power of a really searing short story.  The stories vision society in the future, and at times in a mythical time that could be past, present or future, that is multicultural and informed by visions of a universe that reflects the realities and possibilities of cultures growing through, from, and past the legacies of colonialism. Divided into five sections, The Body, Future Earth, Allegory, Encounters with the Alien, and re-Imagining the Past this book gives voice to Africans, Asians, Indigenous voices and varied North American and British writers of color.  As a lover of science fiction that transforms and invigorates with the energy of a story well-imagined with careful attention to craft, this book encourages one to fly to so many places and believe in their possibilities.