Two Lists

I've still got devices on the mind. Somehow, despite being not-nearly-as-device-oriented-as-I-might-be, I've still been thinking about it quite a bit. With healthy doses of egotism too, as I thought to myself that my iTunes playback software on my laptop would be shuffle-proof since my taste in music, as documented there, would defy any kind of satisfaction-generating playlist, since it'd be just too diverse (though perhaps brilliant in its general demonstration of taste across eclectic genres). So I hit the shuffle button after first starting a song that I actually wanted to hear (that's right, I get Jefferson Airplane songs playing in my head sometimes; I'm not ashamed) while doing some work on a poetry document, and here's what played:

Jefferson Airplane: Today
Jefferson Airplane: House at Pooneil Corners
Kool Keith: Supergalactic Lover
Elliot Sharp: Diurnal
The Fucking Champs: Fozzy Goes to Africa
Discharge: In Defense of Our Future
Les Savy Fav: The Slip
Sonu Nigam: Aaj Ki Raat
Ultramagnetic MCs: Give the Drummer Some
Wolfgang Rihm: Hoelderlin-Fragmente, mvmt. 6
Johannes Brahms: Tragic Overture
Jeff Mangum: Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone
Ultramagnetic MCs: Ced-Gee (Delta Force One)
Gyorgy Ligeti: Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet, mvmt. 3
Mono Puff: Nixon’s the One
Pascal Dusapin: Quatour III, mvmt. 1
Orchid: Death of a Modernist
Brian Ferneyhough: Shadowtime, Scene VI: 7 Tableaux Vivants Representing The Angel Of History As Melencholia (2nd Barrier): Laurel's Eyes
Sufjan Stevens: In This Temple, as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth
The Nation of Ulysses: A Kid Who Tells on Another Kid is a Dead Kid
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: 09-15-00

Pretty crappy, I know. Hipster-of-the-late-nineties-early-oughts with mostly-modernist classical music sprinkled in. I took the onset of the GY!BE song (twenty-odd minutes long) as a perfect place to stop this nonsense.

But, I was thinking of lists, because back on Memorial Day weekend, Jack had mentioned that he wouldn't mind getting a poetry "required reading" list from me--and another friend of mine also recently asked me more or less the same question--which has also recently been further informed by my recent cutting of my collection of books in half (meaning I got rid of quite a few of the poetry books that I owned) so I've been mulling that over a bit, and here is the list (in no particular order) of books that mean the most (without which I wouldn't be writing the way I am) to me these days, so far as poetry goes:

George Oppen: Collected Poems (esp. the volumes This in Which & Of Being Numerous)
Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems (the poems of 1962 - 1963)
Emily Dickinson: Collected Poems (you might go for one of the Selecteds, but I've just been keeping this book out recently, grabbing it and reading a few poems, pretty much every evening)
Robert Hass: Time & Materials
Robert Creeley: Life & Death
Jacques Roubaud: The Plurality of Worlds of Lewis (before which you should read his Some Thing Black)
Tomas Tranströmer: The Great Enigma: Collected Poems

So there you go; now you can read along with Pete!