Customer Comments

Mary Rechner never hits a wrong note in these stories. The cover drew me in, as a good book cover should -- the kind of drawing you might find on an old-fashioned sewing pattern--women with tiny waists and prettily curved ankles. The sewing pattern is a tremendously loaded metaphor -- for the poverty of women who can't afford to buy a finished dress for an anniversary, for the wish to control the events in a life. In the first story, a woman attempts to make a special dress, while all around her chaos unfolds--a suicidal friend sits on the floor smoking, children play with scissors and pins and cut up their pajamas. The disconnect between what people do and say and what they feel is vividly portrayed, for example, in "Invisible," where the protagonist, an actress, decides to "evolve a whole new school of invisible acting" in order to keep "faking it" with Lou, even though "sex with Lou was like stubbing a toe." Rechner strikes nerve after nerve with beautiful accuracy in Nine Simple Patterns. I'm going to go read it again.

The essential Hugo -- if you can't sit in a bar with Hugo, listening to his stories and bits of wisdom and advice, this book is the next best thing. For example: "Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you'll find there is no reader. Just you and the page. Feel lonely? Good. Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone."

There is a take-no-prisoners attitude in these poems. They are nearly all written in the first person, and most are preceded by an epigraph from the Guiness Book of World Records. The epigraphs tell us what, exactly, is strange about the person in the poem, without Lenox having to use her poem's lines to do this housekeeping. It's smart to have them here with the poems instead of in end-notes. Lenox treats each strange person with utmost respect and empathy. Each one, whether they were born with strangeness or took it upon themselves, is a member of the human family. This is a skillful, masterful book, and a pleasure to read.

Yau's poems are pleasing to all the senses. Language play of the highest order. I love a poet who teaches me something -- John Yau's encyclopedic and very personal knowledge of modern art and literature is woven through these poems: is, in a way, the glue that holds them together. I keep a laptop handy so I can Google names and words unfamiliar to me. Best of all, Yau is coming to my town, Eugene, Oregon, on May 18 to teach a workshop and he will read on May 20 at the Eugene Library. Check out www.facebook.com/yauworkshop.