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Greetings!
We have a week full of great events. On Monday, Patrick McGrath will read and sign TRAUMA. There are two events on Tuesday, with Lucinda Franks signing her memoir, MY FATHER'S SECRET WAR, and Ann B. Ross reading and signing MISS JULIA PAINTS THE TOWN. Mississippi mystery writer Nevada Barr will read and sign WINTER STUDY on Wednesday. And Thacker Mountain Radio is on Thursday, with local writer Ace Atkins and musical guests Rocket 88 and Effie Burt.
"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If
your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." - Leonard Cohen
April
is National Poetry Month.
Ten
years ago Knopf began a tradition. To celebrate National Poetry Month, the
publisher sent a poem a day by e-mail for 30 days to anyone who asked to
receive them. Each day during the month of April you can receive a poem from
some of the best poets in the world including Mark Strand, Mary Jo Salter,
Julia Hartwig, and Richard Kenney, as well as classics from Frank O'Hara,
Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Koch and more. This year, they'll also be featuring
special podcasts, gorgeous printable broadsides, and signed books.
To
join the Poem-a-Day party, visit http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/poemaday/.
Here's a poem from Mary Oliver's new book RED BIRD (release date 4/15/08) to get you in
the mood:
Percy
and Books (Eight)
Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over the top of it and moans.
He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.
The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.
The tide is out and the neighbor's dogs are
playing.
But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!
The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories
that rise and fall and turn into strength, or
courage.
Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was
enough.
Let's
go.
Our Dear Reader
newsletter and the current calendar are available at
www.squarebook.com.
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EVENTS
MONDAY,
APRIL 7, signing/reception at 5 p.m., reading at 5:30 p.m.
Patrick
McGrath
TRAUMA
(Knopf,
hd. 24.95)
From
the author of ASYLUM and PORT MUNGO, McGrath's superb
storytelling and trademark themes of passion, truth, and madness make
darkness so fantastic and close to home at the same time. RH BUY NOW!  TUESDAY, APRIL 8,
signing at noon.
Lucinda
Franks
My Father's Secret
War:
A Memoir
(Miramax, pb. 14.95)
In a memoir that, according to Joyce Carol Oates,
"moves with the dramatic and moral urgency of a Graham Greene novel,"
journalist Lucinda Franks discovers that the remote, troubled father that she
grew up with was in fact a spy-a secret agent who worked behind enemy lines
during World War II. BUY NOW!
TUESDAY,
APRIL 8,signing/reception
at 5 p.m., reading at 5:30 p.m.
Ann
B. Ross
MISS
JULIA PAINTS THE TOWN (Viking, hd. 24.95)
It's
a rollicking read as Miss Julia struggles to save the courthouse, her
marriage, and her sanity in the ninth book of the popular series. BUY NOW!
WEDNESDAY,
APRIL 9, signing/reception at 5 p.m., reading at 5:30 p.m.
Nevada
Barr
WINTER
STUDY (Putnam, hd. 24.95)
A new Anna
Pigeon mystery set in Isle Royale National Park. Between the sub-zero
temperatures and the ominous goings-on, this book will thrill you and
chill you to the bone.
BUY NOW!
Thacker
Mountain Radio, April 10
Musical Guests:
Rocket 88 and Effie Burt Ace
Atkins
WICKED
CITY (Putnam, hd. 24.95)
A meticulously
crafted thrill ride of a novel that delves into the sordid past of
Phenix City, Alabama, a southern town just a day's drive and a few
decades ago away.
BUY NOW!
The
TMR website is www.thackermountain.com.
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SCANNING THE FRONT TABLES
WHY
POETRY MATTERS
by Jay Parini
(Yale University Press, hd. 24.00)
Poetry doesn't matter to most people, observes Jay Parini at the opening
of this book. But, undeterred, he commences a deeply felt meditation on poetry,
its language and meaning, and its power to open minds and transform lives. By
the end of the book, Parini has recovered a truth often obscured by our
clamorous culture: without poetry, we live only partially, not fully conscious
of the possibilities that life affords. Poetry indeed matters.
Poet Molly Peacock writes, "Parini is a scintillating guide to the
unfathomable...This is the perfect hip-pocket compendium of signposts to
Poetryland." BUY NOW! 
CATCHING
LIFE BY THE THROAT
by
Josephine Hart
(Norton, hd. 26.95)
This book
unites the sound, sense, and sensibility that lie at the heart of great poetry.
It features eight great poets, with brief, accessible essays concerning their
life and work and a selection of their poems, and it is accompanied by an
80-minute CD recorded live at the British Library: Ralph Fiennes reading Auden,
Edward Fox reading Eliot, Roger Moore reading Kipling, Harold Pinter reading
Larkin, and more. BUY NOW!
THAT LITTLE SOMETHING
by Charles Simic
(Harcourt, hd. 23.00)
From Booklist: "Simic's
concise, silvery, and sardonic poems sketch grim vignettes in a world of
absences... Simic, a pivotal voice of our bloody times, draws on dark fairy
tales, Shakespeare, and pulp fiction as his poems rise from the page like the
smoke of the last cigarettes of the damned."
BUY NOW!
FIRE TO FIRE
by Mark Doty
(Harper, hd. 22.95)
This book collects the best of Mark Doty's seven books of poetry, along
with a generous selection of new work. Doty's subjects-our mortal situation,
the evanescent beauty of the world, desire's transformative power, and art's
ability to give shape to human lives-echo and develop across twenty years of
poems. Here one of contemporary American poetry's most lauded, recognizable
voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our times. BUY NOW!
THE GHOST SOLDIERS
by James Tate
(Ecco, hd.
22.95)
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate returns with his fifteenth book
of poetry, an exciting new collection that offers nearly one hundred fresh and
thought-provoking pieces that embody Tate's trademark style and voice: his
accessibility, his dark humor, and his exquisite sense of the absurd. BUY NOW! |
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BOOK SENSE PICK
 GIRLS LIKE US
by Sheila Weller
(Atria, hd. 27.95
So many songs. Carole King's years in the Brill
Building where she wrote for others- Up on the Roof, Will You Still Love Me
Tomorrow, Natural Woman-to her own "Tapestry" and You've Got a Friend.
Joni Mitchell's poetic stories in song-Both Sides Now, Chelsea Morning,
Woodstock. And Carly Simon's That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should
Be to Anticipation to You're So Vain. Along the music way,
their lives encompassed the issues facing women in the 60s-competing with the
guys, female sexuality, career v. home. Reading this book was great fun,
revisiting my youth on a voyeuristic trip. Everybody is here, playing musical
beds and musical marriages, egos swamping life. Writing the songs of a
generation. EC BUY NOW!
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OPENING LINES
"'One Sunday afternoon in March 1922, a school
friend casually asked me if I wrote poetry. I, who had never written a line or
even read one with pleasure, decided at that moment that poetry was my
vocation.' Just like that. And therein lies the mystery of Auden." - From
CATCHING LIFE BY THE THROAT by Josephine Hart
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