The very first post on this blog (when I thought it would be strictly poesy damaged) was about Bill Luoma's Works and Days. I think I can safely it's one of my favorite books, not that I'm too well-read or anything. It makes sense to give it the sentimental designation 'favorite', because as Alice Notley says on the back (and Anselm Berrigan said in a review of the book I read in an old Po Proj newsletter at Zack's house) (Zack has these old issues of the Po Proj newsletter which John gave to him)(love you John), but like I was saying both of them remark how readable this book is. And I just realized in an more subjective way that no part of it, not even Astrophysics &You or The Annotated My Trip To NYC, projects BOOK outwardly. So much poetry, even terrific poetry, projects BOOK at a little point in the air midway between you and it. But when I read Works & Days I see no projection between me and the book. None of it feels like it was written to be published. How often can one say they read a book and it feels that way? So there are all kinds of words I could throw around here. Maybe 'intimacy' and 'the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' are on a teeter totter in my mind. In My Trip To NYC, I like the first sentence of each paragraph, and want to read more. 'Jennifer can smoke and I really like her style.' 'Evan and Steve have an 85% hit ratio.' 'I admired the way one side of Cindy's hair fell longer and eyeward.' 'There was an ump named Norm who liked Douglass and he's still the best ump in the league.' Almost all of the beginning sentences of paragraphs have a person's name in them. At first I wondered if there was a method used to write them. Maybe not knowing exactly what this method was detracted from my understanding of it... Now, after reading through it again, I'm not so worried about that.