The poems in The Ancient Book of Hip create a precise and evocative description of time and place; they celebrate that space, even as they have a witty undercurrent of critique.

…more

The LA Times has announced the finalists for their book awards, and we’re pleased that we’ve reviewed a number of them here at The Rumpus.

I’m particularly proud that we got 3 of the 5 nominees for first fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding; In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin; and Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, as well as an interview with a fourth nominee, Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust. And from the fiction category, we reviewed Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women.

In poetry, we reviewed Tom Healy’s What the Right Hand Knows and interviewed Gabrielle Calvocoressi of Apocalyptic Swing, and published poems by both of them in Rumpus Original Poems.

Finally, Dave Eggers, who we’ve interviewed and whose book Zeitoun (excerpted here) was nominated in the Current Interest category, will be given the first Innovators Award for his work as a publisher and with the 826 Literacy Centers (highlighted here).

Congratulations to all the nominees.

HTMLGIANT is sponsoring (moderating? overseeing?) their Second Annual Indie Lit Secret Santa. All you do is head over there and sign up between now and December 15, then when you get your person’s name, send him or her a book from an indie press or a subscription to an indie mag, which will hopefully arrive by December 25.

If you need suggestions about books to send, let us recommend some books we’ve loved (and if you order them through the links in the articles, Powell’s kicks us back a couple of bucks. Just saying.). We’ve also reviewed a few books this year, if none of those suit your fancy.

“The Kakutani Two-Step. It works roughly like this: belittle a novelist’s finest work to date – preferably by tossing around unsupported adjectives…say, “arbitrary,” “flimsy,” and “unfinished.” Then, five or six years later, when the novelist in question brings forth his next book, or the one after that, complain loudly about how lame it is compared to his previous masterwork, which, it is to be inferred, you adored.”

Over at The Millions, Garth Risk Hallberg discusses the epidemic of short memory among famous book reviewers, including everyone’s favorite: Michiko Kakutani.

The book, with its halting, unbeautiful, disjointed lines, proves her awareness of the difficulty of writing poetry about war, trade, immigration, Hurricane Katrina, and George Bush. These are intensely politicized issues, claimed by a blunt, politicized language. …more

Otremba’s are poems of rigorous looking. In most, a speaker coolly observes a work of art, a person or animal, the poems’ tensions emerging in part from the speaker’s struggle for knowledge and connection. …more

Gunn’s work is imminently teachable in the form of Selected Poems, but it is derived from a world that now no longer exists: the Metaphysical poets drawn through the intermingling bodies of the Summer of Love: biker leather, drug haze, and the destructive tragedy of death sought without irony or deconstruction. …more

Barbara Jane Reyes has a good response to the New Yorker article on MFA programs I posted earlier.

At Harriet, Don Share takes on poetry reviews, even though he’s tired of the whole story. I took his post as an opportunity to expound on my own reviewing policies, both as reviewer and editor.

Sam Witt asks “Who cares about poetry?” The answer probably won’t surprise you, but the article is still good.

And this isn’t limited to poetry, but it’s wordplay all the same–a chance to pun in public and not get slapped.

I’m off next Saturday while I move house. There will be a temp, so treat whoever it is kindly while I’m gone.
Brian Spears

I can save you some time if you’re thinking of going to this panel at the BEA today. We’re the future of book reviewing–or at least part of it. We do a lot of that around here, and not just best-sellers or books that big publishers are pushing. We write about books we love and the crapshoot that is the publishing business. We review poetry by poets early in their careers as well as the established names who get what meager space the newspapers still give the genre. We even do conflict-of-interest reviews. Where else can you get all that?

The future of book reviewing is online.

I say this not as a cheerleader for all things hi-tech (hell, I don’t even own an iPod), nor as some prophet of the post-physical book, but because the model of book reviewing we’re used to – delivered by the priestly class of critics; limited by paper, ink, column inches; determined by the latest microtrend and by who an author’s agent had lunch with – is clearly history. …more