Top 5 Books of December 20th @ 2:37 am

1) The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen

"I went to your house after you were dead
Nothing left except your pet white goat
grazing in the green meadow."
--from "Dying Again" p. 377

2) The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

"One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for which one believes.
That's what one wants to get near."
--from "The Man on the Dump" p. 202


3) Hello From the American Desert by Lee Ranaldo

"how not to get played on the radio
how to keep a good thing quiet
how to roll with the punches and
keep on keeping on
further up the road."
--from "Our Music" page 16 & 17

4) Gargantua and Pantagruel By Francis Rabelais (Burton Raffel translation)

"He went to see the jugglers and the clowns, the magicians and those who peddled wonderful, half-magical remedies, and contemplated their games and tricks, their somersaults and smooth patter, especially those famous montebanks from Chauny, in Picardy--born with silver tongue, every one of them, able to sell water to people people swimming in a lake or firewood to those inside a volcano."
--page 63

5) Fatstick Magazine Edited by James Wilk in 1998

"Learn to voice your direct love for men and women
Take every challenge no matter how mammoth the scale
Work through the night."
--Cliff Fyman from "What to Learn from Beowolf"