Tuesday, March 22, 2005

THE STICK

Nobody sent me the stick. Waaaaah!
Confirms my outsider status here. Ah well, I don't come from a cool place like New York or Passadina, but this coooooold place up here, where the snow is still quite deep on the ground.
So I cut and pasted it from Eduardo's cheery, summery pastel-wallpaper blog.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Marquis de Sade's Justine. This book has proven very fire-worthy.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Justine in Lawrence Durrell's Justine.

The last book you bought is:
Justine. No, actually: Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology, Edna St. Vincent Millay's Renascence and Other Poems, and John Donne's Poetical Works. Saw the latter on the New York Times best seller list, and just had to go out and get it.

The last book you read:
Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.

What are you currently reading?
Islam and the Destiny of Man, by Charles de Gai Eaton.
Theodore Roethke's Collected (still).
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portugese. (A cute little edition, published in '61, that fits in my shirt pocket. Great subway reading, especially for short rides)
Have bookmarks in, & definitely intend to finish:
The Making of a Poem (Norton Anthology of Forms) by Mark Strand & Eavan Boland
Mark Strand's Selected
Life, an Enigma, a Precious Jewel by Daisaku Ikeda
Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
BAP 2004
Wylah Falls, George Elliot Clarke (that bookmark has been there since last summer...)
Volta, by Susan Gillis
Introspections: American Poets on One of the Own Poems by Robert Pack/Jay Parini

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
The Collected Writings of Nichiren Daishonin (especially if the island is harsh & desolate)
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (especially if the island is tropical and lush)
Introspections: American Poets on their Own Poems (It looks good, I wanna get into it!)
Shakespeare's Collected (assuming I'm there for a long time)
The Essential Rumi translated by Colin Barks
The Lotus Sutra, translated by Burton Watson
(oops! That's six. Can I smuggle about fifty more?)

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
No. Nobody passed it to me, so I'm not gonna pway with anybody else! So there!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry. I would've passed the stick. I thought I was the last person out there to get it.

Of course, this type of excersise around St. Pat's was strange timing. I've been busy drinking, myself. How was one expected to keep up with all the online stuff?

Unknown said...

Did you mean "The Essential Rumi" by Coleman (not Cloin) Barks?

Brian Campbell said...

Yes. A typo, or misremembering -- I can't frankly remember. But looking at your question, we're all vulnerable... ;-)