A Confessional Reading List for 2011: Winnie the Pooh, Comp Texts, and Kristin Bock

Crape Myrtles in Snow by Benjamin Billingsley (18"x24" monotype)

It's been a good but difficult year. Since my first post, I've gone from unemployed to, arguably, over-employed, and I am grateful. This said, the schedule of the past several months left little time for reading, writing, cycling, or submitting (unless you count submitting to exhaustion now and again). The result was a 12 pound weight gain (now vanquished) and a much better understanding of what it means to be a working teacher and poet. Despite the difficult start, I love my jobs and my life.

Although I did not manage to read much that wasn't for school, I did squeeze in some marvelous reads here and there. Some books were published this year (some by friends old, new and cyber) and some were published many years ago by beloved strangers (and have been re-read often over the past few years and months), but all of them helped me through a year of learning and losing (Margo and Kathy, you are much missed).

Here are a few of the texts in no particular order:

A Book of Luminous Things edited by Czeslaw Milosz
Prodigal: Variations by Ed Madden
The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris
Mad for Meat by Kevin Simmonds
Cloisters by Kristin Bock
Astoria by Malena Morling
The Circus Poems by Alex Grant
The Collected Ted Hughes
In the Shadow of the Mountain by Lavonne J. Adams
Collective Brightness edited by Kevin Simmonds (and yes, I have two poems in the anthology)
Please by Jericho Brown
...hide behind me... by Jason Mott
Then, Something by Patricia Fargnoli
The Collected Sylvia Plath
The Great Enigma by Tomas Transtromer
The Collected Millay by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poet Lore
New South
Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
Other Voices, Other Rooms Truman Capote
BICYCLING Magazine
Assaracus Magazine (with a big shout out to the poem "Late Testament" by Ron Mohring)
Cellophane by Maria Arana
The Lady Matador's Hotel by Cristina Garcia
90 Miles by Virgil Suarez
My Life as Adam by Bryan Borland
The First Risk by Charles Jensen
The Selected Eugenio Montale
The Collected Wislawa Szymborska


Okay, maybe I did read quite a bit, but I still have a huge stack of new books waiting for me. Good life.

Cheers and luck to you for the new year,
Daniel