Thames & Hudson, 2023
daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
There are three books I've read, and then re-read over the last year — each about the same size (under 300 pages), each with less than attractive book design to its merit — in fact the Prose book, perhaps by accident or intent, appears to have been published in 1974: the book's size, Milton Glasserish design, cheap paper stock, an old Doubleday-feel etc., and all three books are straight-up originals. There is something about being relaxed, even confident, and telling it like it is. With a buoyant style.
If the authors aren't personal friends, they should be.
The Prose is shown above, the other two, not to miss, are below.
Francine Prose, Harper, 2024
November
Where is my dear sixteen-year-old-cat
I wish to carry upstairs in my arms
looking up at me and thinking
be careful, dear human
Sixteen years. How many days since
I found you as if an urchin in a snowstorm
and you moved in assured
learned the territories of the house
and what became your garden
Only now do we see the horizon
where you pushed two or three times
then slipped into
Was it too soon or too late
that last summer of your life
when we watched your walk
down to a river to take a sip
from its ongoing flow
Oh Jack I miss your presence everywhere
in the corners of rooms, in every chair,
or nesting in a cardboard box
Take me back where the past can again enter
those early remembered rooms, our snowbound street,
lift me upside down in your arms, I cannot stand it
I need a journey too. Have I slept my life away,
do I understand anything? Will I wear a bell
like yours into the afterlife where language
no longer exists and we gather only linked sounds
like oars from a passing boat,
those few syllables
to recall tenderness
You no longer wait for us
All day long, Basho wrote,
A lark sings in the air
Yet he seems to have had
Not quite his fill
_________________________
Michael Ondaatje
A Year of Last Things
Knopf, 2024
For all the kitten cat videos you watched
Now read the best one
A sheaf of 3 in wrap band
enclosing 40 new haiku poems
& plenty of art work
by the southwest sojourner
______________________________
$ 20 postpaid in the USA
Overseas please add $5