Perfect reference book along with being a fun read: Shakespeare's Insults: Educating Your Wit

Recommended for all.

There will be little learning die then that day thou art hang'd.

So: Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens.

Or, in a more conciliatory manner: Peace good tickle brain.

There's a film by Brian Johnson about Purdy called Al Purdy Was Here. A colleague also introduced me to Peter Van Toorn whose poems are witty and playful.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Awesome! As a Canadian I searched for Canadian poets to begin my poetry journey and all of my searches started and ended with Leonard Cohen. I love Cohen's songs, but I wanted someone else and I couldn't find any names so I will definitely check those guys out.

You might also check Anne Carson, and though she's better known for fiction, Margaret Atwood is a fine poet.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Yes, Al Purdy Was Here is a good portrait of Purdy. Here's a 7-minute video that has some footage from Brian Johnson (not all of it from that film) of Purdy and other Canadian writers: .

And here is Gord Downie doing a performance (with Purdy's voicing) of his most Bukowksi-like poem -- "At the Quinte Hotel": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKeczB3wrg.

Always glad to recommend Canadian poets. You could PM me when you'd like more recs or if you want more specifics (about titles of books or poems, e.g.).

Carson is extraordinary but not as accessible as most.

Atwood is an unstoppable force, and was a well-known poet before she had her success as a novelist. One of my favourite poems (from the opening of Power Politics) is also one of her briefest:

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye.

Reading Gallows View (the first DCI Banks novel) by Peter Robinson. Robinson is a master plotter and turns more than a few good phrases. I knew at the end of the first chapter that I wouldn't put this book down for long until I was done.

I gave Strunk & White a quick runthrough. Simple and practical, easy to ignore the out-of-date stuff. The little book can't help but improve your style.

Also I gave John LeCarre another try, this time with The Constant Gardener. One of those books where everything seemed great -- style, plot, themes, setting -- but for some reason I didn't care. Might've been the narration.

In regards to LeCarre...I’ve read and reread his spy books, particularly the Smiley trilogy. Probably will again. This is the heart of his genius. I gave up on Gardener, The Tailor of Panama, The Little Drummer Girl, others for no good reason but boredom

Reading in Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. It is the first V.I. Warshawski novel.

He’s definitely hit & miss, and he lost a bit of edge once the Cold War was over. I thought The Little Drummer girl was good, but if you only read the smiley trilogy, you’d have the best of it.

I have to say that perhaps because it reveals the dark dynamo that animates LeCarre’s best work the semi-autobiographical The Perfect Spy is remarkable in its self examination, its self knowledge

I'm reading The Wise Heart, Jack Kornfield's brilliant 2008 book on Buddhism and psychology. He calls it Buddhist psychology, so maybe that's a thing now. I believe Kornfield to be a stone-cold genius/prophet/mystic, that type of thing. And I'm not even officially a Buddhist!

Also I got a free Kindle version of 1984 for being an Amazon Prime person, haven't read this since I was a freshman in high school back in 1970s. Still a great book, Orwell GOAT obviously.

I just finished Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. Takes place in the south around the Civil War and unravels this twisted story of a southern family's rise and fall. Multiple narrators with different beliefs of how things happened can make it difficult at times but it's worth it. This is one of my favorite books I've ever read. Southern gothic at its best.

The Frontiersmen by Allan W. Eckert is a historical novel based on the life of Simon Kenton. The style is easily digestable, and there are everyday details you wouldn't get in a broader history. Some nice secondary portraits of Daniel Boone and especially Tecumseh.

You know Tecumseh had to be way cool to have Sherman named after him!

Poetry runs thru my sluggish brain as the snow thickly covers my Virginia farm. I’m no academic but I understand SOME poetry and when I don’t, but want to, I follow Shakespeare’s dictum “by indirection find direction out” and let a soft focus inform my consciousness. ‘On Poetry’ by Glyn Maxwell is helpful and a witty read besides.
My farm is posted with poetry rather than warning signs. Some are mine (published and unpublished) some my betters. Outside my window I can see the cardinals sitting in the snow clotted cedar dropping down to the bird feeders their red ornamental bodies streaking my posted poem ‘Cardinal in Cedar’ with guano. As I ride my tractor I pass by Ted Hughes’ ‘Hawk Roosting’ pinned to a large oak where the raptors observe the Mexican’s chicken pen next door. I rush by Frost’s ‘Stopping by the Woods’ desiring something darker. (Homage to Robert Frost...Brodsky, Heaney, Walcott a good read) and find in the coldest most secluded part of the farm my favorite poem...

The Snow Man
BY WALLACE STEVENS
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

It's one of my favorites as well. Over the past twenty-five years, I've had the chance to meet many of the finest poets in the country because of my colleague and friend, Randy Blasing. Randy has invited poets to read in our Galway Kinnell poetry series, and, almost without exception, US poets cite Stevens and Frost as primary influences.

Unfortunately, Randy has retired, so the poetry series probably ends with his retirement. Over the years, I have been fortunate to meet US poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and even a Nobel winner. One of the more delightful poets, Steven Burt (who may also be going by Stephanie Burt), is well worth reading. His poetry criticism is well written and insightful.

PS. I also got to buy him lunch after the reading.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

I've just finished it. Liked it, but a tad slow going in places. Seemed like a meditation on 9/11 to me, but I have no idea if that is what it really is about. Pynchon is no Delillo, I think Inherent Vice is best of what I have read so far.

In the middle of listening to The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood... it took a little while to get into it due to the style of writing, and then it's pretty dark and the imagery can be chilling.

This book has been on my short list to read for a very long time, and I purchased it a few years ago, but never got around to reading it. Overall, I am very impressed and I will probably start exploring more of her works.

Oryx and Crake is a good book to do next: More of a post-apoc book than a dystopian future, but well written and it's the first part of a trilogy that's completed (nothing I hate more than reading two excellent novels then finding out the third isn't being published for a year).

Nice, I read it in the winter of 8th grade and it was a watershed moment for my young art appreciation. I think I didn't realize up to that point that unhappy endings were a thing. There's an old computer game called Manhunter: New York that I played at that same time as well, which was described on the box as "Orwellian". You played a person living under an alien totalitarian regime in 2002. 1984/Manhunter had a huge effect on me.



Might revisit 1984 for my 25th anniversary in a couple years. I'm thinking I'll go with Down and Out in Paris and London in the meantime.

Not forgetting Road to Wigan Pier. Orwell is indeed, a heavy, heavy hitter.

Aren't all Kindle books *Ahem, cough* free?

Kornfield sounds my kind of thing, thanks.