Monday, October 03, 2005

Tooting my Own Horn

If I can't tell you, who can I tell?

Over at New Pages, where they review literary magazines, this shows up about the latest issue of Parnassus:

Parnassus

Poetry in Review

Volume 28 Numbers 1&2

2005

If you haven't used all your vacation time yet this year, you might want to consider taking a few days off just to read this issue of Parnassus—it's that good. Don't plan to travel with it, at 470 pages it's nearly too big to fit in a carry-on bag. But, if care about intelligent writing and about poetry, however you do it, make room in your life for this issue. There is some truly magnificent writing here with something to satisfy every serious reader: essay-reviews (Danielle Ofri on recent anthologies of writing by doctors, Karl Kirchwey on modern verse drama); essays and poems on travel and place (Wendy Steiner on learning she has breast cancer while on a trip to Russia, William Logan on Florida as myth and metaphor, Marsha Pomerantz's beautiful poem on Kenya); critical essays (Eva Badowska on Wislawa Symborska and Joel Brouwer on C. D. Wright). Whatever you do, don't skip Eric Murphy Selinger's essay "Rukeyser Without Commitment," one of the smartest and sassiest essays I've read on Rukeyser. If you've always liked her work, you'll like it better now. If you never been a Rukeyser fan, this essay will change your mind. And if you've never read Selinger before (I hadn't) you'll be seeking out his work again. [Parnassus, 205 W. 89th Street, #8F, New York, NY 10024. E-mail: Parnew@aol.com. Single issue $15. www.parnassuspoetry.com/] Sima Rabinowitz

Hum te-tum-te-tum... That puts me in a fine, fine mood to start the New Year, folks. Now all I have to do is write another one. And another. And so on. It's a hard-knock life.

5 comments:

Mark Scroggins said...

Grand to see you back, Reb Eric! And them's good big words on yr Ruk piece. Indeed "smartest & sassiest," but they're wrong on outcomes: if you've always liked her work, you've gonna be kind of pissed off; & if you haven't been much thrilled (like yr humble elderly friend), you're gonna thank Mr. S. for clarifying why!

Rockin' oud! Is this an eBay find? Does it have a pickup?

Anonymous said...

Interesting blog! Eric, check out my poetry column which appears bi-weekly at www.dfire.org. Look under "Original Works" and "The View from First Avenue," this is my regular poetry column for Drexel University's on-line magazine of culture, arts and politics called DRAGONFIRE. Poetry and reviews of poetry books there, too, all edited by Henry Israeli.

Emily Lloyd said...

Wow. A big Rukeyser fan already, I'll definitely be picking up a copy. Congrats, Eric.

lin said...
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