—To the River is now available, the final book of poetry by Michael O’Brien, who passed away last fall. As August Kleinzahler writes, “Delicacy of observation, oblique precision and subtlety of movement, word by word, syllable by syllable, are the hallmarks of these poems.” Several videos and audio recordings of Michael reading can be found on PennSound.
—Listen to poet John Tipton discussing the Rosetta Spacecraft, Egyptian myth, and his poem “67P/C-G” for the Poetry Foundation. His most recent book, Paramnesia, is available from Flood Editions.
—On July 13 at 7 PM, Elizabeth Arnold will be reading from her new collection Skeleton Coast at Poets House in Lower Manhattan (with Alan Felsenthal, Christine Shan Shan Hou, and Wendy Xu).
—Tom Pickard’s Fiends Fell is forthcoming in October. In this volume, Pickard charts a single year out of a decade spent on a bare hilltop near the English–Scottish border, with the roaring wind as his only guide. In journal entries interspersed with lyrics and poems, as in Japanese haibun, he records his daily life on the fells: landmarks of border balladry, weather and wildlife, bankruptcy and lust, the struggle “between appetite and attainment” (in Basil Bunting’s words). The result is, among other things, a record of making, its trials and loneliness, its flashes of humor and sudden grace. It culminates in “Lark & Merlin,” one of Pickard’s finest sequences.
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