Chamber Four

Here’s the fourth installment of our Best Books of 2009 series, all about nonfiction. Keep up with the rest of the series here.

And now for something a little different…

Yes, the books I’m about to recommend all came out this year (at least in paperback), and, yes, I can absolutely recommend these books to interested readers without any hesitation on my part.  But before reading on, you might just want to consider one word of warning: poetry.

It’s not a subject we’ve touched on much here at C4, but it is a subject we (or at least I) would like to address more in the coming year since digital publishing has implications for this form, too.  For now, I’d simply like to offer, in no particular order, four new titles from four of my favorite poets as a reminder to anyone out there who might care to know it that good poetry is still being written today. …
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Author: Nicholson Baker

2009, Simon & Schuster

Filed  under: Literary, Poetry

The Anthologist is a book that’s hard to summarize, because it doesn’t have much of a plot to speak of. Paul Chowder is a middling poet with an unenviable career, who has compiled an anthology of rhyming poetry soon to be published. Paul is a procrastinator, and his dalliance in finishing the introduction for the book in time for his deadline exemplifies his attitude toward the rest of his life. Even when his girlfriend leaves him and finances crumble to nothing, Paul just wants to read and muse upon poetry.  And the meat of this book is comprised of those musings. …
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