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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Sean Prentiss has commented on (6) products
The Dead Wrestler Elegies
by
W. Todd Kaneko
Sean Prentiss
, December 17, 2014
Dead Wrestler Elegies is the book of poetry for anyone who loves professional wrestling or pop culture. But it is also for those who don't love the world of body slams and head butts, those who don't love men and women strutting around the wrestling ring in spandex and war paint. So even if you've never watched a single wrestling match, give this book a read. This is a book for poets. This book was written for those who love the beauty of words on a page as much as the sight of a man flying of the top turnbuckle. For those who want to fall not just into the story of wrestlers dying young (or old), but also into beautiful prose, into thematically connected stories about a son who first loses his mother to divorce and later his father to death and searches for meaning in the ghost of their lives, pro wrestling. A beautiful book by a wonderful poet. We'll be reading much more from W. Todd Kaneko in the coming years. A great debut!
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The Least of These
by
Todd Davis
Sean Prentiss
, October 11, 2014
Todd Davis has written a book that quietly sings. As the title might suggest, much of the book is about the smaller moments, the lesser things. But Davis has a way of taking these small moments of live, life, wildlife, family, and making them echo with beautiful (a beauty of hurt, a beauty of love, a beauty of the natural world). And he is exact in his details. He knows his landscapes. He knows the animals. He knows the trees. He knows the heart of the moments he writes about. He writes specifically. And he writes true. This book is beautiful. It is one of the few books of poetry I plan to return to to read again, to learn from, to mimic, to fall ever deeper into the words, into this world.
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If Only You People Could Follow Directions A Memoir
by
Jessica Hendry Nelson
Sean Prentiss
, July 14, 2014
If Only People Could Follow Directions is a short book with short chapters, and those two things help make it a wonderful debut memoir for Hendry Nelson. The quickness of the chapters allows the readers to dive right into a book, to swim right through it. But the power of the book comes from the stunning and powerful personal narrative about a family falling apart due to addiction and mental illness. These ideas hold the reader in its current for hours at a time, pulling us through the chapters until, sadly, we're to the final chapter even though we want to narrative to continue. This book reminds me of another Counterpoint Press book. Joe Wilkins's The Mountain and the Fathers and Hendry Nelson's If Only People Could Follow Directions both possess broken and disjointed narratives where we're always moving forward, always progressing toward some conclusion, but rather than moving in a straight line it's like a coiled snake. There are vertical parts touching and linear parts touching all at the same time, so that even if all the scenes are not linearly connected they are thematically all driving toward a single goal. This technique works so well in both books. Also both books also focus on the loss of the father. And both books have that beautiful, elevated language. A great first memoir by Vermont writer, Jessica Hendry Nelson.
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Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes
by
Kerrin McCadden
Sean Prentiss
, July 10, 2014
This early morning I finished Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes. What a great way to wake up each of the last few mornings. Reading these beautiful poems that veered across landscapes, each so specifically grounded in one place but that place undefined, movable. Almost anyplace. Allowing us all to find a home in these poems. And the emotional heart of these poems travels a great and varying emotional distance. Some poems feel as if written by a hand looking down upon the narrator from a great distance, as if seen from above, maybe in orbit. The pain is seen and read but muted, old, scabbed over. Other poems bring the writer in close, intimate, to the narrator. The longing, the emptiness, the echo of loneliness palpable, immediate, fresh. And the poems have this meandering quality where they always have a point, an idea, a heart but they sometimes travel many layers or ideas before they settle upon the ending, like a snake coiled up. All is connected. All ideas touch. But it is not a straight journey from head to tail. Some of my many favorites, the ones I’ve starred with my pencil include The Death of the Reader, How to Miss a Man, Intersection, What I Said to the Night, Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes, Once, I Was Not Lonely, Ante Up, and this morning’s favorites: Bone China, Commute, Dear Day in Late September, Pennsylvania’s Grand Canyon, Second Cut, and the strange and unusual, especially considering the rest of the book, Say Sing, which reads like a song.
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In the Kingdom of the Ditch
by
Todd Davis
Sean Prentiss
, April 27, 2014
In the Kingdom of the Ditch is a wonderful collection of poetry that explores the mysterious world that surrounds us. The fish of the rivers. The deer in the woods. The gardens beside our houses. The moments of birth. The beauty of our lover beside us in bed. The ending poems, one after another, were just such powerhouses. Perigee, Deposition, the Poet Stumbles Upon a Buddha, and other poems just took me on so many wonderful journeys out of the house, out of the book, and into the wild world that surrounds us. My favorite poems are the poems that inspire me to write in the quiet morning hours. And when I flip through my copy of In the Kingdom of the Ditch, I find scribbled poems in the margins. Davis inspires us to see our world in new ways. And his poems inspire me to write.
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Mountain & the Fathers
by
Joe Wilkins
Sean Prentiss
, July 14, 2012
The Mountains and the Fathers is much like the landscape in which it takes place. Like Montana's Big Dry region, this book is big and wide and encompasses a world from horizon to horizon. And that view includes images of a dry and barren landscape, coming of age in a place that doesn't feel your own, the sadness of losing a father, the strength of community, and the harshness of surviving in a place that breaks even the strongest. Not only does Joe Wilkins bring to life Melstone, Montana and its hardened people, but he does it in a lyrical and poetic way. We don't just read of these people and this place. We feel it in the songs he sings with his words. This books feels as much a collection of poems (like his collection "Killing the Murnion Dogs") as it does a memoir. And that is high praise. This is a book to read on a mountainside. A book to read on a front porch. A book to read while driving across the great belly of America. A book to read to your lover. For comparisons, this book sings like James Galvin's "The Meadow." And it looks at ranching similar to Ivan Doig's This Earth House of Sky" or Judy Blunt's "Breaking Clean." Joe has the honesty of Mary Clearman Blew and the lyricalness of Kim Barnes. And his essays end with a punch just like a James Wright poem. Buy this book. You'll love it. You will.
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