Top 5 Books of 2008

1. "My Vocabulary did this to Me" the Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
2. "Inland Sea" by Brandon Shimoda
3. Wave Books' "State of the Union" Anthology
4. "The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You" - 2nd ed., 2008 printing with note by Forrest Gander, which is how this book is a legal addition to this list...
5. After "Battlefield" and Spicer, who the fuck has the time for a fifth book

This list was really hard to make as this year I fell off the "new" book wagon and started going back and filling in the holes in my personal canon. A few authors whose non-2008 books I read this year were: Abraham Smith, Graham Foust, Mathias Svalina, Frank O'Hara, Daniel Borzutzky, Jason Bredle.

These people are all responsible for poems that made me feel stupid, awed and inspired...

Today, Anne and I were eating lunch with a friend. Anne's phone rang and, as to not be rude, she quickly turned off the ringer and went back to her story. But then her phone rang again...and again she silenced the ringer. 2 seconds later my phone started ringing. All 3 calls had been from her sister, so, now assuming emergency I answered my phone.

Emergency?

No.

Just Anne's sister really wanting to tell us that she has a class with Tom Selleck's body double from Magnum PI.

I don't know about you, but I was totally glad she called, and I only had to harbor the idea of a dead loved one for a few seconds...