Poetry is a fine art. The carefully wrought words of a Shakespeare, of a Keats, of a Wordsworth, of a Dickinson...these are not to be taken lightly. It might seem that my boy Wallace Stevens simply tossed off the lines "Among twenty snowy mountains/The only moving thing/Was the eye of the blackbird" before giving them to his secretary at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company to type up, but there's no doubt that he labored over and reworked them many times before they became the first stanza of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. As well, I've no doubt that I could write for the rest of my life and never come up with anything as beautiful. And yet, just as a garden gnome, while certainly not on a par with the David of Michelangelo, can be art when placed, well, artfully, and in the proper setting, so with words. O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, compiled and arranged by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, is found poetry at its most sublime. Phil Rizzuto--"The Scooter"--was a shortstop who spent his entire career with the New York Yankees, first as a player and later as the radio and TV voice of the team. His commentary-- rambling, often stream of conscious, always liberally peppered with his catch phrase, "Holy Cow!" was also,when arranged just so on the page, strangely beautiful. Try this: Field of Butterflies Absolutely! If you don't get a little, A few butterflies, No matter what you do, On the first day of anything, You're not human. Or how about: Asylum Got some chocolate-chip cookies here Murcer. So don't ask me any questions For a batter or so. All right? Okay, I admit that to read O Holy Cow! as poetry one has to have a highly developed sense of whimsy and a willingness to take a Zen leap and simply be one with it. If you do, though, you will be rewarded with rare gems and things on every page that make you go "Hmm".

The second volume of Revival is not quiiite as awesome as Revival, Volume One You're Among Friends, but some of that is just the inevitable settling that occurs when reading a series which starts with such a bang. Revival, Volume Two: Live Like You Mean It collects issues 6-11 of the ongoing Revival series, which details the travails of the town of Wausau, Wisconsin in the days and weeks after a discrete number of their dead get back up.



These reanimated people aren't cannibal shamblers, and the reanimation does not appear to be contagious. Although the setting, art style and dialogue is naturalistic, there's an edge of the supernatural: rural noir, Midwestern Gothic. While the revived seem mostly unchanged, some are still...twitchy, and everyone is on edge. The town is quarantined; various jurisdictions jockey; locals sandbag the Feds; religious leaders attempt to score points; scumbags attempt to profit. You know, the usual with a civic trauma.


This second volume sinks into the boredom and profiteering of the quarantine, with minor revelations punctuated by lots of wheel spinning, both literal and metaphoric. Winter is deepening. I wasn't real enamored of the meth brothers and their theatrics - it felt like too much of a red line under a point - but the several conversations between two central sisters, the weird, dumpy religious lady lit up with her faith, the Hmong woman's monologue - all of this worked in the strange, understated, deflected language of my Midwestern people.



Fuck it, Tim Seeley is my new boyfriend.

This is the true story of a real war horse, as told by his owner, General Jack Seely. I say this to draw the distinction between Warrior: The Amazing Story of a Real War Horse and the fictional book War Horse, which is now also a Spielberg film.

The story starts with a chapter about Cinderella, Warrior's mother, who was also owned by Seely.

This is a very personal record, written by a man who obviously loved horses, and particularly Warrior. It was written whilst Warrior was still alive, and includes comments from many who were associated with this remarkable beast. He was a truly amazing horse, with an almost unbelievable personality.

How he survived the whole four and a half of years of World War One, when an estimated million horses were killed in that war, is incredible. He had shells and bulidings and earth drop on him. A horse that he was nose to nose with was shot, and he hardly flinched. He led a charge near Amiens, which could have been regarded as a turning point in the war.

Despite the descriptions of major events leading up to WW1, through the war, and beyond into the forties, I found this much more interesting than very exciting. It was akin to enhancements to a personal journal of the aritocratic British leader that General Seely was. It seemed to be written for himself and his family.

One of the most interesting points that General Seely made was that he thought that there would neve come a time when horses were "the most important element of modern warfare," and that the planners should always make sure of an adequatesupply of horses in time of war."

What would he have to say in this world of drones and guided missiles?

This is a fascinating book, and I recommend it.