Poor translation..., 29 Mar 2006
The poet needs no introduction. However, the translation is, as another reviewer stated, apalling. The iambic pentameter/alexandrine dilemma has led to some turgid translations, with padding words added in for the sake of metre.

Sickly Flowers, 22 Aug 2003
Charles Baudelaire is one of the most technically exact and lyrical of all poets. One of the main problems with this otherwise superb book of his poems is the poor translation. James McGowan has taken Baudelaire's beautiful poetry and turned it into turgid writing. The quality of the translations is indicative of the poor scholarly standards that prevail in this era. The poems are almost perfect in the original, but so many liberties have been taken, often for the sake of finding a rhyme, that often the 'essense' as well as the meaning is lost. If James McGowan had refrained from translating Baudelaire's beautiful poetry, our world would be a better place.

excellent excellent excellent (and not incomprehensible), 03 May 2003
I've rated this 4 stars as it's the english version and so although it may be oxford world classics and therefore excellently transalted, some of the rhythm and rhyme of the poems will be lost, which often adds to its personality. The french version gets 5 stars.

Baudelaire wrote brilliant poetry, and it wasn't the stuff a gentleman could recline into his leather chair with his pipe with to relax in the 19th C without (unless he was totally thick) realising that a lot of the poems (especially in spleen and ideal) are focused mainly on the dark and rotting side of life. 'spleen' was for baudelaire a sort of depressive feeling of ennui and dark restlessness, and ideal its opposite; an ecstatic state of spiritual well-being. the collection of poems ranges between these opposing poles (it is generally thought that b was a manic depressive) and are beautiful.
a lot of people in my french lit class really disliked B; saying he was a weirdo and really disgusting - some of the images and themes are, but i think those people just couldn't confront/think about the dark side of life, which B translates into his poetry and knew so well.
having written all about how dark B's poetry is, and how some people find it depressing, i personally find some of them quite uplifting - for example in one lengthy poem about a corspe rotting in the sunshine, the poet contemplates how one day his body and soul will be reduced to such a state. but implicit in the poem is hat fact that the flowers in the surrounding field grow out of such rotten material, that life is cyclic and that almost nothing is eternal.
even if you're not used to poetry, i would recommend this, as long as you're not squeamish!

A collection of poems evoking 19th century bohemiancity life, 14 Apr 2000
Les Fleurs de Mal is a meditation of the problem of being moral in a new industrial society where the distinction between good and evil no longer seems to be a distinction that can be made. Some of the poems were banned when they were first composed but this collection restores them to their rightful place within the chapters. This is a pretty good translation of the poems although it does sacrifice some of the meaning of the lines in French in order to produce rhyme in English. Read this for a beautiful and striking evocation of bohemian life.

Poor translation..., 29 Mar 2006
The poet needs no introduction. However, the translation is, as another reviewer stated, apalling. The iambic pentameter/alexandrine dilemma has led to some turgid translations, with padding words added in for the sake of metre.

Sickly Flowers, 22 Aug 2003
Charles Baudelaire is one of the most technically exact and lyrical of all poets. One of the main problems with this otherwise superb book of his poems is the poor translation. James McGowan has taken Baudelaire's beautiful poetry and turned it into turgid writing. The quality of the translations is indicative of the poor scholarly standards that prevail in this era. The poems are almost perfect in the original, but so many liberties have been taken, often for the sake of finding a rhyme, that often the 'essense' as well as the meaning is lost. If James McGowan had refrained from translating Baudelaire's beautiful poetry, our world would be a better place.

excellent excellent excellent (and not incomprehensible), 03 May 2003
I've rated this 4 stars as it's the english version and so although it may be oxford world classics and therefore excellently transalted, some of the rhythm and rhyme of the poems will be lost, which often adds to its personality. The french version gets 5 stars.

Baudelaire wrote brilliant poetry, and it wasn't the stuff a gentleman could recline into his leather chair with his pipe with to relax in the 19th C without (unless he was totally thick) realising that a lot of the poems (especially in spleen and ideal) are focused mainly on the dark and rotting side of life. 'spleen' was for baudelaire a sort of depressive feeling of ennui and dark restlessness, and ideal its opposite; an ecstatic state of spiritual well-being. the collection of poems ranges between these opposing poles (it is generally thought that b was a manic depressive) and are beautiful.
a lot of people in my french lit class really disliked B; saying he was a weirdo and really disgusting - some of the images and themes are, but i think those people just couldn't confront/think about the dark side of life, which B translates into his poetry and knew so well.
having written all about how dark B's poetry is, and how some people find it depressing, i personally find some of them quite uplifting - for example in one lengthy poem about a corspe rotting in the sunshine, the poet contemplates how one day his body and soul will be reduced to such a state. but implicit in the poem is hat fact that the flowers in the surrounding field grow out of such rotten material, that life is cyclic and that almost nothing is eternal.
even if you're not used to poetry, i would recommend this, as long as you're not squeamish!

A collection of poems evoking 19th century bohemiancity life, 14 Apr 2000
Les Fleurs de Mal is a meditation of the problem of being moral in a new industrial society where the distinction between good and evil no longer seems to be a distinction that can be made. Some of the poems were banned when they were first composed but this collection restores them to their rightful place within the chapters. This is a pretty good translation of the poems although it does sacrifice some of the meaning of the lines in French in order to produce rhyme in English. Read this for a beautiful and striking evocation of bohemian life.

Must have!, 17 Jul 2001
This novel in the form of poems is amazing not only because of its unusual form but also because of its potency. The work is vibrant and exciting; you will be on the edge of your pillow. Porter's words leap off the page. The poems stand alone and yet hang together. Great performance poetry, especially if Porter herself is delivering. This book HAS to be experienced. Poetry erupts in this one!

Poor translation..., 29 Mar 2006
The poet needs no introduction. However, the translation is, as another reviewer stated, apalling. The iambic pentameter/alexandrine dilemma has led to some turgid translations, with padding words added in for the sake of metre.

Sickly Flowers, 22 Aug 2003
Charles Baudelaire is one of the most technically exact and lyrical of all poets. One of the main problems with this otherwise superb book of his poems is the poor translation. James McGowan has taken Baudelaire's beautiful poetry and turned it into turgid writing. The quality of the translations is indicative of the poor scholarly standards that prevail in this era. The poems are almost perfect in the original, but so many liberties have been taken, often for the sake of finding a rhyme, that often the 'essense' as well as the meaning is lost. If James McGowan had refrained from translating Baudelaire's beautiful poetry, our world would be a better place.

excellent excellent excellent (and not incomprehensible), 03 May 2003
I've rated this 4 stars as it's the english version and so although it may be oxford world classics and therefore excellently transalted, some of the rhythm and rhyme of the poems will be lost, which often adds to its personality. The french version gets 5 stars.

Baudelaire wrote brilliant poetry, and it wasn't the stuff a gentleman could recline into his leather chair with his pipe with to relax in the 19th C without (unless he was totally thick) realising that a lot of the poems (especially in spleen and ideal) are focused mainly on the dark and rotting side of life. 'spleen' was for baudelaire a sort of depressive feeling of ennui and dark restlessness, and ideal its opposite; an ecstatic state of spiritual well-being. the collection of poems ranges between these opposing poles (it is generally thought that b was a manic depressive) and are beautiful.
a lot of people in my french lit class really disliked B; saying he was a weirdo and really disgusting - some of the images and themes are, but i think those people just couldn't confront/think about the dark side of life, which B translates into his poetry and knew so well.
having written all about how dark B's poetry is, and how some people find it depressing, i personally find some of them quite uplifting - for example in one lengthy poem about a corspe rotting in the sunshine, the poet contemplates how one day his body and soul will be reduced to such a state. but implicit in the poem is hat fact that the flowers in the surrounding field grow out of such rotten material, that life is cyclic and that almost nothing is eternal.
even if you're not used to poetry, i would recommend this, as long as you're not squeamish!

A collection of poems evoking 19th century bohemiancity life, 14 Apr 2000
Les Fleurs de Mal is a meditation of the problem of being moral in a new industrial society where the distinction between good and evil no longer seems to be a distinction that can be made. Some of the poems were banned when they were first composed but this collection restores them to their rightful place within the chapters. This is a pretty good translation of the poems although it does sacrifice some of the meaning of the lines in French in order to produce rhyme in English. Read this for a beautiful and striking evocation of bohemian life.

Must have!, 17 Jul 2001
This novel in the form of poems is amazing not only because of its unusual form but also because of its potency. The work is vibrant and exciting; you will be on the edge of your pillow. Porter's words leap off the page. The poems stand alone and yet hang together. Great performance poetry, especially if Porter herself is delivering. This book HAS to be experienced. Poetry erupts in this one!

Excellent analysis of social function of 1 culture's poetry, 10 Jul 1998
Abu-Lughod looks at the role poetry plays in the lives of women in Bedouin society, as an alternative to the poetic tradition of the men and a way to communicate and validate experiences outside the morality imposed by the male dominated culture. What's most fascinating for me as a student of poetry is the implicit definition of poetry that Abu-Lughod gives us along the way--a poetry defined, as Sir Philip Sidney once argued, not by its form but by the role it plays in the culture.

Poor translation..., 29 Mar 2006
The poet needs no introduction. However, the translation is, as another reviewer stated, apalling. The iambic pentameter/alexandrine dilemma has led to some turgid translations, with padding words added in for the sake of metre.

Sickly Flowers, 22 Aug 2003
Charles Baudelaire is one of the most technically exact and lyrical of all poets. One of the main problems with this otherwise superb book of his poems is the poor translation. James McGowan has taken Baudelaire's beautiful poetry and turned it into turgid writing. The quality of the translations is indicative of the poor scholarly standards that prevail in this era. The poems are almost perfect in the original, but so many liberties have been taken, often for the sake of finding a rhyme, that often the 'essense' as well as the meaning is lost. If James McGowan had refrained from translating Baudelaire's beautiful poetry, our world would be a better place.

excellent excellent excellent (and not incomprehensible), 03 May 2003
I've rated this 4 stars as it's the english version and so although it may be oxford world classics and therefore excellently transalted, some of the rhythm and rhyme of the poems will be lost, which often adds to its personality. The french version gets 5 stars.

Baudelaire wrote brilliant poetry, and it wasn't the stuff a gentleman could recline into his leather chair with his pipe with to relax in the 19th C without (unless he was totally thick) realising that a lot of the poems (especially in spleen and ideal) are focused mainly on the dark and rotting side of life. 'spleen' was for baudelaire a sort of depressive feeling of ennui and dark restlessness, and ideal its opposite; an ecstatic state of spiritual well-being. the collection of poems ranges between these opposing poles (it is generally thought that b was a manic depressive) and are beautiful.
a lot of people in my french lit class really disliked B; saying he was a weirdo and really disgusting - some of the images and themes are, but i think those people just couldn't confront/think about the dark side of life, which B translates into his poetry and knew so well.
having written all about how dark B's poetry is, and how some people find it depressing, i personally find some of them quite uplifting - for example in one lengthy poem about a corspe rotting in the sunshine, the poet contemplates how one day his body and soul will be reduced to such a state. but implicit in the poem is hat fact that the flowers in the surrounding field grow out of such rotten material, that life is cyclic and that almost nothing is eternal.
even if you're not used to poetry, i would recommend this, as long as you're not squeamish!

A collection of poems evoking 19th century bohemiancity life, 14 Apr 2000
Les Fleurs de Mal is a meditation of the problem of being moral in a new industrial society where the distinction between good and evil no longer seems to be a distinction that can be made. Some of the poems were banned when they were first composed but this collection restores them to their rightful place within the chapters. This is a pretty good translation of the poems although it does sacrifice some of the meaning of the lines in French in order to produce rhyme in English. Read this for a beautiful and striking evocation of bohemian life.

Must have!, 17 Jul 2001
This novel in the form of poems is amazing not only because of its unusual form but also because of its potency. The work is vibrant and exciting; you will be on the edge of your pillow. Porter's words leap off the page. The poems stand alone and yet hang together. Great performance poetry, especially if Porter herself is delivering. This book HAS to be experienced. Poetry erupts in this one!

Excellent analysis of social function of 1 culture's poetry, 10 Jul 1998
Abu-Lughod looks at the role poetry plays in the lives of women in Bedouin society, as an alternative to the poetic tradition of the men and a way to communicate and validate experiences outside the morality imposed by the male dominated culture. What's most fascinating for me as a student of poetry is the implicit definition of poetry that Abu-Lughod gives us along the way--a poetry defined, as Sir Philip Sidney once argued, not by its form but by the role it plays in the culture.

Excellent , 19 Jan 2007
In The Sappho History, Reynolds looks not at Sappho, but at the reflections and refractions of Sappho from the mid-18th century to today. Not a classicist herself, she has a refreshing way of reading both the poetry and the iconic status of Sappho that sends you back both to the poetry and the responses of antiquity with a new view.

Apart from her own personal responses and insights, Reynolds writes marvellously, so that her prose is a pleasure to read in its own right. The only area that I found disconcertingly missing was the surprising one of gender: what does it mean, and how does it (should it?) change our interpretation that male writers appropriate the subject position of a Greek woman?

Still, this is an excellent, stimulating book, which also has good production values, making it a pleasure to hold as well as to read.

Poor translation..., 29 Mar 2006
The poet needs no introduction. However, the translation is, as another reviewer stated, apalling. The iambic pentameter/alexandrine dilemma has led to some turgid translations, with padding words added in for the sake of metre.

Sickly Flowers, 22 Aug 2003
Charles Baudelaire is one of the most technically exact and lyrical of all poets. One of the main problems with this otherwise superb book of his poems is the poor translation. James McGowan has taken Baudelaire's beautiful poetry and turned it into turgid writing. The quality of the translations is indicative of the poor scholarly standards that prevail in this era. The poems are almost perfect in the original, but so many liberties have been taken, often for the sake of finding a rhyme, that often the 'essense' as well as the meaning is lost. If James McGowan had refrained from translating Baudelaire's beautiful poetry, our world would be a better place.

excellent excellent excellent (and not incomprehensible), 03 May 2003
I've rated this 4 stars as it's the english version and so although it may be oxford world classics and therefore excellently transalted, some of the rhythm and rhyme of the poems will be lost, which often adds to its personality. The french version gets 5 stars.

Baudelaire wrote brilliant poetry, and it wasn't the stuff a gentleman could recline into his leather chair with his pipe with to relax in the 19th C without (unless he was totally thick) realising that a lot of the poems (especially in spleen and ideal) are focused mainly on the dark and rotting side of life. 'spleen' was for baudelaire a sort of depressive feeling of ennui and dark restlessness, and ideal its opposite; an ecstatic state of spiritual well-being. the collection of poems ranges between these opposing poles (it is generally thought that b was a manic depressive) and are beautiful.
a lot of people in my french lit class really disliked B; saying he was a weirdo and really disgusting - some of the images and themes are, but i think those people just couldn't confront/think about the dark side of life, which B translates into his poetry and knew so well.
having written all about how dark B's poetry is, and how some people find it depressing, i personally find some of them quite uplifting - for example in one lengthy poem about a corspe rotting in the sunshine, the poet contemplates how one day his body and soul will be reduced to such a state. but implicit in the poem is hat fact that the flowers in the surrounding field grow out of such rotten material, that life is cyclic and that almost nothing is eternal.
even if you're not used to poetry, i would recommend this, as long as you're not squeamish!

A collection of poems evoking 19th century bohemiancity life, 14 Apr 2000
Les Fleurs de Mal is a meditation of the problem of being moral in a new industrial society where the distinction between good and evil no longer seems to be a distinction that can be made. Some of the poems were banned when they were first composed but this collection restores them to their rightful place within the chapters. This is a pretty good translation of the poems although it does sacrifice some of the meaning of the lines in French in order to produce rhyme in English. Read this for a beautiful and striking evocation of bohemian life.

Must have!, 17 Jul 2001
This novel in the form of poems is amazing not only because of its unusual form but also because of its potency. The work is vibrant and exciting; you will be on the edge of your pillow. Porter's words leap off the page. The poems stand alone and yet hang together. Great performance poetry, especially if Porter herself is delivering. This book HAS to be experienced. Poetry erupts in this one!

Excellent analysis of social function of 1 culture's poetry, 10 Jul 1998
Abu-Lughod looks at the role poetry plays in the lives of women in Bedouin society, as an alternative to the poetic tradition of the men and a way to communicate and validate experiences outside the morality imposed by the male dominated culture. What's most fascinating for me as a student of poetry is the implicit definition of poetry that Abu-Lughod gives us along the way--a poetry defined, as Sir Philip Sidney once argued, not by its form but by the role it plays in the culture.

Excellent , 19 Jan 2007
In The Sappho History, Reynolds looks not at Sappho, but at the reflections and refractions of Sappho from the mid-18th century to today. Not a classicist herself, she has a refreshing way of reading both the poetry and the iconic status of Sappho that sends you back both to the poetry and the responses of antiquity with a new view.

Apart from her own personal responses and insights, Reynolds writes marvellously, so that her prose is a pleasure to read in its own right. The only area that I found disconcertingly missing was the surprising one of gender: what does it mean, and how does it (should it?) change our interpretation that male writers appropriate the subject position of a Greek woman?

Still, this is an excellent, stimulating book, which also has good production values, making it a pleasure to hold as well as to read.

Dennis Cooper Demeuble, 30 Jul 2008
When I heard that there was another monograph devoted to my favorite writer, I ordered one immediately. Leora Lev's ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK (2006) set the bar pretty high; how would this new challenger stand up to the gold standard of Ms. Lev? When the book came I was not disappointed. There's a lot of substance here and anyone interested in Mr. Cooper's work will find hours of enlightenment, amusement, provocation and just plain brilliant work.

Well, there's one caveat perhaps, that the book suffers from using only men to write about Dennis Cooper's world. (Leora Lev is the one exception.) Perhaps diversity isn't an issue at Sussex Academic Press the way it would be in the USA? Otherwise editors Hegarty and Kennedy are chiefly interested in Mr. Cooper's novels, and the rest of his oeuvre is given decidedly short shrift. Does this reflect the emphasis of the recent Cork conference on Cooper, from which this volume is largely drawn? Wayne Koestenbaum does address the novels through their poetic qualities, making what seems in the larger context of this book the heretical observation that "His tempo has more in common with Robert Creeley's, Lorine Niedecker's. and George Oppen's, than with de Sade's, Bataille's, Genet's." I see I wrote, "How true!" in the margin opposite this note. Elsewhere Leora Lev herself calls attention to Cooper's work as a delimited energy field of cross-genre experiment that includes poetry, art, the essay, his well-known weblog, indeed his life itself as a continual adventure in writing, and editor Kennedy conducts an interview with Mr. Cooper that ranges freely, like chicken in a Sonoma organic farm, over a wide variety of Cooperania from Battleship Galactica to sculptor Charles Ray's interest in astrophysics--hmm, maybe not as wide-ranging as it seems at first sight.

The essays themselves are sharply focused and largely convincing. Damon Young pulls the yarn of My Loose Thread through the needles of Kristeva and Roland Barthes. Martin Dines, theorist of the suburbs, proves conclusively that little Ziggy from TRY rejects recent histories of suburbia to return to a previous, Forsterian "greenwood" impulse, "one that actually bears close resemblance to the ideal that inspired much of post-war American suburbia." Timothy Baker's remix of The Sluts with various limbs torn off screaming from the bodies of Blanchot, Hegel, and Adorno bears the weighty signs of gender reassignment surgery, but since, as he argues, "The Whole is Untrue," it is rather like trying to stuff an oyster in a parking meter. We find that Polish genius Witold Gombrowicz exerted a similar planetary influence over his own field of readers as does Mr. Cooper in the present day, from editor Kennedy's article on Cooper's soi-disant "Ferdydurkism." And so on. You can see there's some interesting touchstones at work in this volume. Only once in a while will the layperson find some of the theory, mmm, uh, pretentious? I nearly couldn't get into Diarmuid Hester's exploration of Cooper's celebrated "blankness" in terms of Derrida's writings on mourning (though I'm glad I persevered), because I kept wincing through Hester's opening salvo, in which "I will not speak of `mourning through Derrida' for, as I hope to show in what follows, mourning is always already Derridean and Derrida is always already mourning in advance." I never did work out if this wound up making any sense. To me, what would prevent such an essayist from writing an article which refused to speak of "eating rich French food and not gaining an ounce through Derrida" for similar reasons, that "eating rich food and not gaining an ounce" is already Derridean and Derrida is always already eating rich food and not gaining an ounce?

The homogeneity of the book, its emphasis on the novels, is broken by an opening selection of 7 or 8 brief prose poems by Cooper, and then even more radically by a center section, like a foldout of Playgirl, of poems (and lyrics?) by others, and a scattering of art inspired by Cooper. It's a charming idea, but in practice a little disastrous, chiefly because the poetry just isn't all that great. Sorry poets! But here you have allowed editors Kennedy and Hegarty to hoist you up against one of the greatest poets of our day, you were always going to come off as second rankers surely. In another context I'm sure your work is splendid. In short, anyone interested in Dennis Cooper's novels, not to mention his thinking in general, should buy this book and prepare to get it dirty.

Poor translation..., 29 Mar 2006
The poet needs no introduction. However, the translation is, as another reviewer stated, apalling. The iambic pentameter/alexandrine dilemma has led to some turgid translations, with padding words added in for the sake of metre.

Sickly Flowers, 22 Aug 2003
Charles Baudelaire is one of the most technically exact and lyrical of all poets. One of the main problems with this otherwise superb book of his poems is the poor translation. James McGowan has taken Baudelaire's beautiful poetry and turned it into turgid writing. The quality of the translations is indicative of the poor scholarly standards that prevail in this era. The poems are almost perfect in the original, but so many liberties have been taken, often for the sake of finding a rhyme, that often the 'essense' as well as the meaning is lost. If James McGowan had refrained from translating Baudelaire's beautiful poetry, our world would be a better place.

excellent excellent excellent (and not incomprehensible), 03 May 2003
I've rated this 4 stars as it's the english version and so although it may be oxford world classics and therefore excellently transalted, some of the rhythm and rhyme of the poems will be lost, which often adds to its personality. The french version gets 5 stars.

Baudelaire wrote brilliant poetry, and it wasn't the stuff a gentleman could recline into his leather chair with his pipe with to relax in the 19th C without (unless he was totally thick) realising that a lot of the poems (especially in spleen and ideal) are focused mainly on the dark and rotting side of life. 'spleen' was for baudelaire a sort of depressive feeling of ennui and dark restlessness, and ideal its opposite; an ecstatic state of spiritual well-being. the collection of poems ranges between these opposing poles (it is generally thought that b was a manic depressive) and are beautiful.
a lot of people in my french lit class really disliked B; saying he was a weirdo and really disgusting - some of the images and themes are, but i think those people just couldn't confront/think about the dark side of life, which B translates into his poetry and knew so well.
having written all about how dark B's poetry is, and how some people find it depressing, i personally find some of them quite uplifting - for example in one lengthy poem about a corspe rotting in the sunshine, the poet contemplates how one day his body and soul will be reduced to such a state. but implicit in the poem is hat fact that the flowers in the surrounding field grow out of such rotten material, that life is cyclic and that almost nothing is eternal.
even if you're not used to poetry, i would recommend this, as long as you're not squeamish!

A collection of poems evoking 19th century bohemiancity life, 14 Apr 2000
Les Fleurs de Mal is a meditation of the problem of being moral in a new industrial society where the distinction between good and evil no longer seems to be a distinction that can be made. Some of the poems were banned when they were first composed but this collection restores them to their rightful place within the chapters. This is a pretty good translation of the poems although it does sacrifice some of the meaning of the lines in French in order to produce rhyme in English. Read this for a beautiful and striking evocation of bohemian life.

Must have!, 17 Jul 2001
This novel in the form of poems is amazing not only because of its unusual form but also because of its potency. The work is vibrant and exciting; you will be on the edge of your pillow. Porter's words leap off the page. The poems stand alone and yet hang together. Great performance poetry, especially if Porter herself is delivering. This book HAS to be experienced. Poetry erupts in this one!

Excellent analysis of social function of 1 culture's poetry, 10 Jul 1998
Abu-Lughod looks at the role poetry plays in the lives of women in Bedouin society, as an alternative to the poetic tradition of the men and a way to communicate and validate experiences outside the morality imposed by the male dominated culture. What's most fascinating for me as a student of poetry is the implicit definition of poetry that Abu-Lughod gives us along the way--a poetry defined, as Sir Philip Sidney once argued, not by its form but by the role it plays in the culture.

Excellent , 19 Jan 2007
In The Sappho History, Reynolds looks not at Sappho, but at the reflections and refractions of Sappho from the mid-18th century to today. Not a classicist herself, she has a refreshing way of reading both the poetry and the iconic status of Sappho that sends you back both to the poetry and the responses of antiquity with a new view.

Apart from her own personal responses and insights, Reynolds writes marvellously, so that her prose is a pleasure to read in its own right. The only area that I found disconcertingly missing was the surprising one of gender: what does it mean, and how does it (should it?) change our interpretation that male writers appropriate the subject position of a Greek woman?

Still, this is an excellent, stimulating book, which also has good production values, making it a pleasure to hold as well as to read.

Dennis Cooper Demeuble, 30 Jul 2008
When I heard that there was another monograph devoted to my favorite writer, I ordered one immediately. Leora Lev's ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK (2006) set the bar pretty high; how would this new challenger stand up to the gold standard of Ms. Lev? When the book came I was not disappointed. There's a lot of substance here and anyone interested in Mr. Cooper's work will find hours of enlightenment, amusement, provocation and just plain brilliant work.

Well, there's one caveat perhaps, that the book suffers from using only men to write about Dennis Cooper's world. (Leora Lev is the one exception.) Perhaps diversity isn't an issue at Sussex Academic Press the way it would be in the USA? Otherwise editors Hegarty and Kennedy are chiefly interested in Mr. Cooper's novels, and the rest of his oeuvre is given decidedly short shrift. Does this reflect the emphasis of the recent Cork conference on Cooper, from which this volume is largely drawn? Wayne Koestenbaum does address the novels through their poetic qualities, making what seems in the larger context of this book the heretical observation that "His tempo has more in common with Robert Creeley's, Lorine Niedecker's. and George Oppen's, than with de Sade's, Bataille's, Genet's." I see I wrote, "How true!" in the margin opposite this note. Elsewhere Leora Lev herself calls attention to Cooper's work as a delimited energy field of cross-genre experiment that includes poetry, art, the essay, his well-known weblog, indeed his life itself as a continual adventure in writing, and editor Kennedy conducts an interview with Mr. Cooper that ranges freely, like chicken in a Sonoma organic farm, over a wide variety of Cooperania from Battleship Galactica to sculptor Charles Ray's interest in astrophysics--hmm, maybe not as wide-ranging as it seems at first sight.

The essays themselves are sharply focused and largely convincing. Damon Young pulls the yarn of My Loose Thread through the needles of Kristeva and Roland Barthes. Martin Dines, theorist of the suburbs, proves conclusively that little Ziggy from TRY rejects recent histories of suburbia to return to a previous, Forsterian "greenwood" impulse, "one that actually bears close resemblance to the ideal that inspired much of post-war American suburbia." Timothy Baker's remix of The Sluts with various limbs torn off screaming from the bodies of Blanchot, Hegel, and Adorno bears the weighty signs of gender reassignment surgery, but since, as he argues, "The Whole is Untrue," it is rather like trying to stuff an oyster in a parking meter. We find that Polish genius Witold Gombrowicz exerted a similar planetary influence over his own field of readers as does Mr. Cooper in the present day, from editor Kennedy's article on Cooper's soi-disant "Ferdydurkism." And so on. You can see there's some interesting touchstones at work in this volume. Only once in a while will the layperson find some of the theory, mmm, uh, pretentious? I nearly couldn't get into Diarmuid Hester's exploration of Cooper's celebrated "blankness" in terms of Derrida's writings on mourning (though I'm glad I persevered), because I kept wincing through Hester's opening salvo, in which "I will not speak of `mourning through Derrida' for, as I hope to show in what follows, mourning is always already Derridean and Derrida is always already mourning in advance." I never did work out if this wound up making any sense. To me, what would prevent such an essayist from writing an article which refused to speak of "eating rich French food and not gaining an ounce through Derrida" for similar reasons, that "eating rich food and not gaining an ounce" is already Derridean and Derrida is always already eating rich food and not gaining an ounce?

The homogeneity of the book, its emphasis on the novels, is broken by an opening selection of 7 or 8 brief prose poems by Cooper, and then even more radically by a center section, like a foldout of Playgirl, of poems (and lyrics?) by others, and a scattering of art inspired by Cooper. It's a charming idea, but in practice a little disastrous, chiefly because the poetry just isn't all that great. Sorry poets! But here you have allowed editors Kennedy and Hegarty to hoist you up against one of the greatest poets of our day, you were always going to come off as second rankers surely. In another context I'm sure your work is splendid. In short, anyone interested in Dennis Cooper's novels, not to mention his thinking in general, should buy this book and prepare to get it dirty.

Reading through the life of Audre Lorde, 16 Aug 2005
In Warrior Poet, Alexis De Veaux breaks through the myths and iconic status of Lorde and takes us on a journey of Lorde's transformation from lesbian "gal" to poet, social activist, cancer survivor and finally black feminist lesbian warrior poet. A homage to a great Black lesbian feminist - no one has come near Audre Lorde as yet - De Veaux is nonetheless brave enough to give us details of the not so pleasant side of Lorde such as her taking of amphetamines and bouts of abusive anger. She also lays open Lorde's relationship to white women which up to the last 10 years, dominated her friendships and affairs and her somewhat ambivalent relationship to Black women. All of which makes Lorde even more of an exceptional human being given that she had flaws like the rest of us.

An excellent first biography which has inspired me to revisit the works of Audre Lorde starting with the Cancer Journals. I begin with Cancer Journals because here I have a shared experience of the "fear, anger and disempowerment" that comes with breast cancer and the courage that comes with being a survivor. Alongside reading the essays, I am reading her poems which as well as being inspirational are a journal of her feelings and reflections on life.