Brief review of Maureen Thorson's Applies to Oranges

Applies to Oranges by Maureen Thorson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Maureen Thorson's Applies to Oranges is an excellent first book of poetry. The oranges, spiders, ships, and Zeniths almost become recursive magical traps looping the reader into the speaker's longing. Some poems were stronger than others and some seemed to rely more on surprising language than content or structure, but even with this slight criticism, A to O is one of my favorite poetry books this year. As well, it's from Ugly Duckling Presse which consistently publishes lovely editions, and this collection as a book is really well-designed and looks great in its dark blue and orange letter-pressed cover.



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Just finished the first quarter of a new manuscript...

...and it feels terrific (and cetainly took long enough...).

Here's a poem from Somewhere there is a forest

O floor, O foothills. Languor
holds deep here, this tight
fitness of your mouth to mine,
cursive of your tongue
caught in my indecision, perfect
as quarks as photo emergent
as birth in its soup; soon wreckage
becomes what it is so nothing needs
be what it ought not; nothing
ought to be here in me but
the grace of your sweat, tender
looks, hips rolling yonder.

This one is a bit romantic I think. Anyhow, there are 24 more in this section, "The Book of the East;" now comes the fun part of sending these out, while finishing writing "The Book of the North."

Banned Book Week

This week, and until October 2, is Banned Books Week! I'm not going get on my pedestal too much here, but obviously it's pretty damn stupid to allow one group to tell another what they are allowed to read (if, for some, another type of rhetoric is more helpful, we can call this type of censorship Un-American. See? There's the librarianesque preference for "yes, and" rather than "no, but").



In any case, books get challenged all the time all over the place (check out the map linked below), and it's my job, and yours, to advocate for our freedom to read whatever we choose and for libraries to carry what their varied communities want. I've yet to meet anyone who has admitted to challenging a book, probably because deep down they know it's a jack move. With that, remember: you can call their bluff, and shame them into reconsideration.

Check out the links below for other Banned Book Week resources:

• 
  Map of Censored Books
  


• 
  Voice of Youth Advocates Banned Book Page
  


• 
  American Library Association of America's Most Often Challenged Books of the Century
  

Librarians do rock.

Thanks Wired for posting this and thank you Central Rappahannock Regional Librarians for making librarianship a little more awesome.

Sayonara Satoshi Kon.

I hope your trip to whatever dream awaits is as vibrant as your films. Your vision will be missed.

Oh no del Toro!

Normally I avoid most things MTV but noticed this comment about a potential Hellboy III movie from Mike Mignola and felt compelled, reluctantly, to share:

[re: del Toro's Hellboy III] "My Hellboy is not going to have kids,” continued Mignola. “My Hellboy is going to die, but I want to be the one who does that. And if del Toro does my ending, there won’t be a lot of surprise when I get to the end of the comic.”

Normally, I think Guillermo del Toro's talented, imaginative, and over-all rad (c'mon, you know that movie was awesome), but if he were to give Hellboy some kids, I may have to boycott his work henceforth.

But if you are into the whole Hellboy/infant thing, than this might be for you:

Okay, so this is actually from January of this year, but I just saw it and thought it was pretty awesome, so I'll pass it along to all the rest of teh internets lollygaggers like myself who are a little slower but have some fascination with both fashion, samurai, and absurdity. I would like to share with you the Coco Chanel Samurai Yoroi set:



Maybe some high fashion armor for Usagi Yojimbo?