Eclipses and Ellipses

Put your ear to a life, any life, and there it is, the tell-tale tremolo, slur and slap of the unexpressed....Language makes me a stranger to my own life, forcing me to speak from both sides of my mouth. --Susan Mitchell, "Self-Portrait with Two Faces"

Saturday, November 26, 2005

BOOKS FOR SALE

I'm selling some of my old books to help heal my wallet and to make way for new books. Please text or email me at nayav@yahoo.com if you'd like to buy one of them. Unahan na lang 'to. (Huwag nyo na akong pagalitan for the local books on the list... matinding pangangailangan lang.) Salamat!

SOLD! Charles Simic, The Voice at 3 a.m.: Selected Poems, P400 --- hardbound, hefty collection for those looking for a Simic sampler.

SOLD! Denise Levertov, New and Selected Essays, P350 --- helpful to both writers and readers of poetry. She has essays on other poets (Sexton, Rilke, Eliot, Williams, Robert Duncan), on poetry in relation to politics and peace, on her dislike of the confessional mode, and very helpful essays on the function of line breaks, stanza spaces, and other aspects of prosody.

SOLD! Sharon Olds, The Gold Cell, P300 --- her third collection of poems (1995), also one of her strongest. The first 11 poems tackle such random urban subjects as abandoned babies and the Pope's penis; the next section, which contains the powerful "I Go back to May 1937," explores parental issues; the next 14 poems, along with my favorite "Cambridge Elegy," are about sex and love; and the last section contains some of the most tender poems about children from a mother's point of view.

SOLD! Rainer Maria Rilke, P300 --- this handy and hardbound Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edition has a good selection for the Rilke neophyte: the entire Duino Elegies, and selections from Sonnets to Orpheus, The Book of Images, French Poems, Life of Mary, and Letters to a Young Poet. Translations by Stephen Spender and J.B. Leishman.

- Randall Jarrell, The Complete Poems, P300 --- the poet who wrote "Bats," "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" and my favorite "90 North" was once called the most heartbreaking poet of his generation. This thick book contains 471 pages of his poetry collections as well as unpublished poems and translations of Rilke.

SOLD! Yehuda Amichai, A Life of Poetry: 1948-1994, P300 --- Ted Hughes calls Amichai "the poet whose books I open most often, most often take on a journey, most often return to." This collection contains 469 pages of this paradox-loving Hebrew poet's work, including "Forgetting Someone": Forgetting someone is like/ Forgetting to turn off the light in the yard,/ It stays on all day:/ And that means also remembering--/ By the light.

- Ayn Rand, The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, P300 --- In 1969, Ayn Rand gave a series of informal lectures to a select group of friends and associated on creating effective nonfiction, from "Applying Philosophy without Preaching It" to "Book Reviews and Introductions" to "Writing a Book."

SOLD! Adrienne Rich, Fox: Poems 1998-2000, P280 --- one of my first favorite poets at her most fragmented and difficult, stretching her old themes: "the discourse between poetry and history, interlocutions within and across gender, dialogues between poets and visual artists, human damages and dignity, and the persistence of utopian visions."

SOLD! Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, P250 ---translated by Louise Varese, these 50 wonderful prose poems seem more mature than those in Flowers of Evil, though they deal with the same themes. From "Crowds": "Multitude, solitude: identical terms, and interchangeable by the active and fertile poet. The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd."

SOLD! Steven Lynn, Texts & Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory, P200 --- helpful if you're a Lit student or teacher. There are separate chapters on the different approaches (New Criticism, Reader Response, Deconstructive, Psychological, Feminist, Biographical, New Historical), and helpful sections per chapter (The Purpose of, How to Do, Sample Essay, Practicing).

SOLD! Jamake Highwater, The Language of Vision: Meditations on Myth and Metaphor, P200 --- surprisingly intelligent and eclectic, this hardbound book's 22 chapters are organized around the 22 major arcana cards of the Tarot deck and the topics they inspire in Highwater: the image of the homosexual as outlaw, cultural piracy in a time of multiculturalism, imagination as political power, etc.

SOLD! Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle, P200 --- one of Atwood's best and funniest novels, where the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber secretly becomes the writer of Gothic romances and fakes her own death. This copy even has an interview by Publishers Weekly and questions for group discussion.

- The American Poetry Anthology, edited by Daniel Halpern, P200 --- published in 1975, this contains good and early selections from Stephen Dunn, Robert Hass, Michael Harper, Thomas Lux, Lawrence Raab, Michael RYan, James Tate, AI, Charles Simic, and others.

SOLD! Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, edited by Philip Dacey and David Jauss, P200 --- published in 1986, this is a good resource if you're into traditional forms like villanelles, sestinas, kyrielles, rispettos, etc. There's a foreword by Richard Wilbur, an introduction talking about 9 methods of experimentation with form, a helpful appendix on meter and scansion, and plenty of poems by people like Ashbery, Creeley, Levertov, Merwin, Ted Kooser, James Wright and Frank O'Hara.

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BOOKS BY FILIPINO POETS: Nakakakita (pa) ba kayo ng mga kopya nito sa bookstores? Hindi? Bili na!

SOLD! Marjorie E. Pernia, Dreamweavers: Selected Poems 1976-1986, P300 --- 34 poems, divided into 5 sections: Birth, Daughters, Women Voices, Wise Women, and Pintadas. Limited signed copy, hand sewn. Back when she still used her married name.

- Alfrredo Navarro Salanga, Turtle Voices in Uncertain Weather: Poems 1980-1988, P250 --- I love this book's title. He takes his inspiration from news reports, rumors, friends' comments, and history. Edited by Virgilio Almario with introductions by Alfred Yuson and Isagani Cruz. 278 pages.

- Ma. Luisa Aguilar-Carino, Cartography: A Collection of Poetry on Baguio, P200 -- has 4 sections, 2 of which are the Palanca award-winning Configuring the Gods and Other Poems, and Disclosures.

- Ricardo de Ungria, Nudes, P200 --- this excellent collection needs no introduction. An old copy, but well worth it.

- Oliver de la Paz, Names Above Houses, P200 --- one of the better Fil-Am poets. Published by Southern Illinois University Press, this sequence of prose poems "creates the legend of Fidelito--a boy whose yearning to fly becomes a metaphor for immigration, sexual awakening, religious passion, and the imagination of a poet-in-the-making....Through Fidelito, de la Paz weaves the odysseys of Jesus and Icarus into a lush and wonderful wanderlust." (blurb by Denise Duhamel)

- Eileen Tabios, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole, P200 --- another intriguing title. This Fil-Am and former banker's prose poems are combustible, lush, sharp, erotic, experimental. Published by Marsh Hawk Press NY in 2002, this is a signed copy.

SOLD! Am Here: Contemporary Filipino Writing in English, The Literary Review Vol. 43 No. 3 Spring 2000, P150 -- with an introduction by Bino Realuyo and poems by John Labella, Marc Gaba, Eric Gamalinda, etc.

SOLD! Fatima Lim-Wilson, Crossing the Snow Bridge, P180

SOLD! Fatima Lim-Wilson, Wandering Roots / From the Hothouse, P180

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OTHER BOOKS BELOW P200:

SOLD! Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams, P150
SOLD! Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body, P150
- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, P150
- Diane Ackerman, Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems, P150
SOLD! Julia Alvarez, Homecoming: New and Selected Poems, P150
- Julia Alvarez, The Other Side: Poems, P120
- Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, P120
- R.S. Thomas, Collected Poems, P120
- Anthony Burgess, Byrne, P100

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