Whew. What a week. Three book launches, Word on the Street, some recuperative vegging to follow, and now where was I? The Anthologist. Briefly: everything I'd hoped a novel about poetry would be. Paul Chowder is narrator, tour guide, largely washed-up but oddly inspiring New England poet mired in the challenge of writing an introduction to an anthology of rhyming poetry. The book is a fascinating defense of formal poetry and a very apt portrait of a poet writing today. It was an indulgent read for me, full of discussion of poetics and trappings of writing life. And so funny, too, all of which is a tall order.
My copy was borrowed from a friend who teaches a first-year university poetry course and it was fun to try to guess what she might be planning to teach from each of the pages she'd folded over. What she could have taught: meter, a basic who's-who of American poets, how to blast through a bout of writer's block. It's all there.
Because I am feeling rather lazy tonight, in lieu of any more of my less-than-inspired thoughts on the matter, I offer instead this great nine-minute recording of Nicholson Baker talking about the process of writing the book:
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On Wednesday I head home to BC for an extra-long Thanksgiving and then down to Portland, Oregon. I hope to stop off at some bookstores in my travels. First, the very new Sitka Books & Art in Vancouver, just opened last month by one of the former owners of Duthie's Books which finally, sadly closed its last store earlier this year. Also Powell's City of Books in Portland where I will likely while away most of a day. Can't wait.
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