casparb's reviews
943 reviews

big fan - reading about the electrification of the USSR by candlelight during a two-day powercut? very nice. predictably sharp w/ criticism (this translation does very well and VS never sounds as dated as I feared he might). final, journalistic selection perhaps my favorite of the whole experience, particularly lyricism of the clouds, what's behind. the plane! 

reading foucault like is 2021; neat expansion; toward the social/sexual isomorphism!

bemused by the NYT's description of this as some unholy crossbreed of larkin and ashbery, Ithink critics just up & lose their shit when they encounter sustained rhyme. If anything this is the muldoon zone. although I find Seidel's usually in worse taste, with less charm . how many times do yu have to rhyme 'debonair'  

Bernhard one of them big boy have-you-ever-reads, maybe I'm too cautious to Not be a hipster. I Iiked this, gradually, obviously ibsen's his big intertext but this book also works as a cheeky answer to the (invited) question - what if a man was grouchy & wrote Woolf's The Waves. it's the right length, too, the end doubles things back and justifies some of the slowness, I feel ... anyway I'll read some more 

QUEER SENTENCES as brian teare says, in combo with Eric Sneathen's Don't Leave Me This Way, looks like I was unaware of a whole queer odyssean vibe, a moment, sun-drenched, aegean. This my first from Aaron Shurin & I'm well pleased, essentially a collection of mid-length prose poems, some very good and vibrant, with visible care & it's nice and easy to sit with. I'm wondering who else picks up these environments

eh; a big n famous classic, lauded by the likes of julian barnes & ian mcewan, which says a lot. ... it's kind of the Campus novel model, complete with bangin yr students & so on. my my. the writing itself is competent and even good at times, but you get a sense of general authorial bitterness as a motivation which discourages me , it's presumptuous. but what do Iknow 

somebody eating chcocoltate cakes several : you don't need all that

oddly my first simic book as such , largely aphorisms with longer bits flung in ... it's a dangerous form , espceically for Guys of this type , it's very hard not to sound extraordinarily pompous . Simic gets off relatively lightly , having - to all appearances - the politics of a very Centrist dad . Ican't bring myself to dislike him for it even if we're sick 

neat little group bio, not turgid but generous & plenty ... not especially Captivating either , until the final fifty or so pages when the weight of history & aggregated failure. heaps up & tumbles onto things .. yeah Iwas tearing up when Roe's talking about the first Durand-Ruel NY exhibition 

very funky little run thru of 14ers & AIDS / patient zero ... curious about what's next 4 eric