am both a reviewer & a reviewee. (Isn't that a Dylan song?)
A hard task as reviewer driven by a harder task master (mistress). First time in almost 50 years I've reviewed a book, not since I used to review detective novels for the N.Z. Listener. Had to take a hiatus from the blog to get it done, barbed emails flying at me, whipping me (love it, love it!! more, more!!!!), exhorting me to contribute to making this the largest - the stats are overwhelming. I think it's 2 million books reviewed by 1,123,457 reviewers in this issue - GR yet. Goshdarn it, that is one driven woman. Mind you, I was four months overdue in delivering said review. Mea culpa.
Being reviewed was much, much easier. & much more pleasant. Thank you Nicholas for the kind words. episodes is a book of poems that owe a lot to the people I share this electronic world with. & what I've liked about the various responses to the book is that everybody seems to have a different favourite poem. Nicholas Downing quotes from one - a ficcione which I repost below - that has grown on me considerably since I wrote it.
The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde
The few photographs
of Genghis Khan that
are known to exist
date from the Barnum &
Bailey years & show him
standing either before
a backdrop of The Great Wall
or outside a circus tent
made up to resemble
a yurt. Invariably
he is dressed in western
clothes - derby hat, three-
piece suit, wing collar, a
pair of shiny black boots
over which are the spats
that were de rigeur
for the time. It is said
he chose to appear
like this so as to be
unrecognisable to the
Lords of the Spirit World
who would otherwise
capture his soul
through the capture of
his true image. The beard,
so important to the Han,
is bound by a leather
thong, pulling it together
in a pigtail as if to face
the queue of servitude
full on. He is a small
man, an innocuous uncle,
an unlikely claimant to
the title of Conqueror
of All Asia which was how
he was promoted. Perhaps
his appearance is why his
act never proved popular;
though historians of a
slightly later time identify
the lack of popularity as the
first stirrings of the American
xenophobia against all Asian
races. After this the programs
of B & B never mention him
again; though there is a single
photograph taken shortly
after Bailey’s takeover
of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
Show in which, at one end of
the back row of the lined-up
Native Americans, just under
the first F of the banner
“The Former Foe – The
Present Friend”, is a stocky,
elderly, clean-shaven man
wearing a feather head-dress
that trails on the floor, looking
out into the distance, blankly,
as if there were no soul
left for the Lords
of the Spirit World to take.
