Reading

Today I read Matthew Rohrer's A GREEN LIGHT while running on a treadmill. I read the whole book on the treadmill. It is a good book to read. I want to read more while I am doing other things. Running while reading made me feel twice as productive and pushed me through a window at certain points so that I could feel things triplicated.

After that, while waiting for the gas people to come turn my gas on, I read Daniel Brenner's THE STUPEFYING FLASHBULBS twice back to back.

According to the FENCE BOOKS website this book has sold only 150 copies so far, though it won the 2006 Fence Modern Poets prize. It deserves to sell a lot more. It reminds me of the Rohrer but also is more surreal and battered. It kind of invents things without sounding over-languaged. I liked it a lot and read it twice.

Here's a poem from it that I liked. I hope it is okay to put it online.

HERE IS A JUMP ROPE AND SOME ICE CREAM
by Daniel Brenner

The interviewer asked my mentor
If he had made anything up
This was before the engine burned up
With the patterns in it
But anyway during that moment
He was a role model and he
Told the interviewer no I didn't
Make anything up while throwing
A paper airplane




Most of the other poems in the book are much more chopped and strange but that one made me laugh. You can read another one of the more definitive poems and more about the book at the FENCE BOOKS BACKLIST PAGE.

Okay. Buy books.