AS REGARDS "MODERN EMOTIONAL INTIMACY"

This is definitely a synchronicity vs. a coincidence. Shortly after finishing a review of Nicholas Manning's first full-length poetry collection, NOVALESS (ELEMENTS TOWARDS A METAPHYSICS), I was asked to do a blurb for his forthcoming and second full-length poetry collection: HOMO SENTIMENTALIS: A GUIDE IN VERSE TO MODERN EMOTIONAL INTIMACY. What timing -- Nicholas hadn't known, btw, that I was reviewing his first book (and said review will be in next issue of Galatea Resurrects). Anyhoo, here's the first-draft blurbie of his second book:

In Homo Sentimentalis' epigraph, Milan Kundera notes, "As soon as we want to feel (decide to feel...), feeling is no longer feeling but an imitation of feeling, a show of feeling." How might that be reconciled with the actual poems wherein may be found such effectively moving text as "the moment your hair / ’s height falls * down covering / my lit body in threads / of unthinking / light"? Perhaps that it is as difficult to be artificial as it is to be sincere? Perhaps that intention (e.g. a privileging as Kundera describes the raising of "feelings to a category of value") may not manifest itself when the raw material, words let alone poems, is so subjective (or, to paraphrase one poem, are doppelgangers to their referenced realities)? The genius of Nicholas Manning's Homo Sentimentalis is that one is moved to deliberate on these questions and care about such answer(s) as they surface or not. It is pure poetry -- ungraspable but nonetheless meaningful, just like those asterisked stars interspersed throughout the poems for glimmers of, though they may not actually be, light.

And in addition to having perused Nicholas' manuscript, here's the rest of my latest Recently Relished W(h)ine List:

WINTER HARVEST:
(Listing this harvest has a fizzling-out feeling; hence, this shall be my last post about this Winter Garden 2010-2011)
500 pounds of olives (but sadly went all to compost due to City Slicker's ignorance of pressing olives for oil within 24 hours of being picked)
35 pounds of honey
18 persimmons
101 Meyer lemons
11 oranges
1 head of red lettuce
4 heads of green lettuce
2 bunches of kale


PUBLICATIONS
THE HISTORY OF VIOLETS, poems by Marosa Di Giorgio (I am ECSTATIC to have found the poems by this Uruguayan poet -- thanks to Ugly Duckling Presse for publishing and Jeannine Marie Pitas for translating -- it's a wonderful collection!)

NOVALESS (ELEMENTS TOWARDS A METAPHYSICS), poems by Nicholas Manning (a rare, unique pleasure that seduces both heart and mind, entonces, as well an admirable balance. Check out its, pun intended, harmonies!)

HOMO SENTIMENTALIS: A GUIDE IN VERSE TO MODERN EMOTIONAL INTIMACY by Nicholas Manning (see above. read in manuscript)

MEMORY CARDS: ASHBERY SERIES by Susan M. Schultz (read in manuscript. Fabulous! Await the whole series coming out from Dusie--it'll be a great read!)

PHANTASMAL REPEATS, poems by Guillermo Parra (Loved it loved it loved it! I felt the Milky Way shift, to paraphrase an Arthur Sze poem, when I read these...)

STYLING SANPAKU, visual poetry by Vernon Frazer (much fun!)

ETYM(BI)OLOGY, poems by Liz Waldner

WAIT, poems by Alison Stine (gothic in an admirably yellow vs black way--which is to say, admirably unexpected)

THE ECLIPSES, poems by David Woo

PRIVADO, poems by Daniel Tiffany

YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM, poems by Tao Lin

MY KAFKA CENTURY, poems by Arielle Greenberg

WHATEVER SHINES, poems by Kathleen McGookey

THE CORYBANTES, book-length poem by Tod Thilleman

BRILLIANT WATER, poems by Christopher Merrill

RETROSPECTIVE FORECASTS, poems by K.M. Dersley

INFERRED FROM. TWO IDENTICAL DISTANCES., poems by Ray Craig

WHITE BOOTS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS OF THE WEST by William Pitt Root

SAILCLOTH CHILD, poems by Christopher William Purdom

CHINESE NOTEBOOK, poems by Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Trans. by John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis

YOU AND THREE OTHERS ARE APPROACHING A LAKE, poems by Anna Moschovakis

EL GOLPE CHILENO, poems and art by Julien Poirier

THE NEW TOURISM, poems by Harry Mathews

VERSE. Vol. 27, No. 1, literary journal co-edited by Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki

THE THIRDEST WORLD, fiction and essays by Gina Apostol, Eric Gamalinda, and Lara Stapleton

GIVING IT ALL AWAY: THE DORIS BUFFETT STORY, biography by Michael Zitz

THE BUCOLIC PLAGUE: HOW TWO MANHATTANITES BECAME GENTLEMEN FARMERS, memoir by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

PUKKA, THE PUP AFTER MERLE, memoir by Ted Kerasote

DELIVER US FROM EVIL, novel by David Baldacci


WINES
2002 Hutton Vale Grenache Mataro Eden Valley
2007 Domaine Serene "Yamhill Cuvee" Willamette Valley pinot noir
2003 Bert Simon Serrig Herrenberg Riesling Auslese