My Top Shelf

When I visit a home for the first time, I'm usually most interested in their bookshelves. They are my flames and I am their moth. So here's mine. Maybe I can encourage a few fellow bloggers to show me their top shelves.

Top left horizontal row (top to bottom): the new McSweeney's (a gracious gift from my mother-in-law who likes to buy me poetry books and I like to accept them), a few anon press publications, a Skein (handmade, very rad, edited by Seth Parker[I'm in the next one and very excited]), a 6x6 with the rubberband spine, a free lunch, and a Mid-American Review.

Top right horizontal row (top to bottom: the new Field, Canary #2 (#3 is on my couch right now), Skanky Possum, Zukofsky, Ted Greenwald, and a graphic arts book from the 70s that I like to cut stuff out of and paste on things.

Vertical row (left to right, just like we read): some old Greg Kuzmas, 4 or 5 print mags I'm in from 2 or 3 years ago, the beats, Jonah Winter's Amnesia, some Stephen Dobyns, 4 James Tates, Prigov and Foos from the Ugly Duckling Presse (I did a review of the Foos in Octopus #4), the big black one in the center is Charles Simic's Voice at 3 am, and then 3 more Simic's, Michael Heffernan, another Skanky Possum, an older McSweeneys, Tony Tost's Invisible Bride (this one's signed and is precious to me--I have another that is beat up), David Berman's Actual Air, Matthew Rohrer's Green Light (here's my review of it), Komunyakaa, 2 Ron Overton's from Hanging Loose, Geoffrey Dyer's Dirty Halo of Everything from Krupskaya, Lyn Hejinian's My Life in the Nineties by Shark, Fanny Howe's Tis of Thee and Lohren Green's Poetical Dictionary from Atelos, a couple Lawrence Raab, K. Silem Mohammed's Deer Head Nation from Tougher Disguises, Jalal Toufic's Distracted from Tuumba, Bukowski (more on the lower shelves), a couple Hayden Carruths, a couple Albert Goldbarths, and then 4 Russell Edsons including his novel (I bet you didn't know about that) The Song of Percival Peacock.

Now you know what books not to get me for Kwanzaa. I'll make a list of what I do want, after Thanksgiving.

Now let me see your shelves.