Contact

You may email Susan at shdonne77(at)gmail(dot)com

Books, the kind in which I usually read a few pages a morning, tend to pile up at one end of my breakfast table. On this MARCH morning I’ll describe the current stack, before I may return some to the shelf to allow for substitutes. But I’ll keep David Surette’s collection Stable here a bit longer, to enjoy and learn from his intense, funny, and loving poetry about animals. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Pictures From the Gone World, his early poems in a pocket-sized book I ordered from the Grolier, is a delight. I’ve also been rereading Obama Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander’s American Sublime. George Saunders’ unique short stories have a place at the table, in his collection Tenth of December. Finally, a Christmas gift: Brandon Stanton’s photo collection Humans of New York. And having been a human in New York during some important years in my life, I love this boisterous appreciation.

A note from JANUARY: Charles Simic’s The Life of Images, a collection of his essays and reviews, is on the table now. along with Arthur Sze’s translations of Chinese poems, The Silk Dragon, and beneath them a beautiful poetry anthology edited by Kate Farrell, Time’s River, the Voyage of Life in Art and Poetry.

I don’t usually read fiction in the morning. But this week I’ve reread a story in The Complete Short Stories of Natalia Ginzburg, the distinguished Italian writer. “German Soldiers Pass Through Erra,” written in 1945, is a powerful account of people in a remote village caught in the immediate aftermath of war. Somehow it’s Eboli, and “The Lottery”, and mostly Ginzburg at her gentle, specific and laconic best. We care about this handful of villagers we meet in a few pages – and it hurts when we lose them.