Donald Wesling

Donald Wesling

DONALD WESLING, poet and professor at the University of California at San Diego is best known for his pioneering books on modern poetics and prosody. His most recent scholarly book, published by Rodopi (Amsterdam, 2008) is Joys and Sorrows of Imaginary.

ON COMPANION ANIMALS IN KRASZNAHORKAI

I. László Krasznahorkai has one main method in his fiction: he reduces the scene to the bleakest of places and seasons, and then sub-divides the plot into thousands of tiny events that he describes in page-long sentences and chapter-long paragraphs. There is hypertrophy of description and near-elimination of dialogue. Often

WATERSHED CONSCIOUSNESS – THE DANUBE: A JOURNEY UPRIVER

WATERSHED CONSCIOUSNESSThe Danube: A Journey Upriver* Nick Thorpe acknowledges Gary Snyder up front. In this book he brings over to “the shoulders of the old Danube” (Thorpe’s phrase) some of Snyder’s ideas on ecological and cultural bioregionalism. Snyder has been writing about reclaiming the home watershed, from his farm in

THE SEARCH OF APPEARANCE

Poems of Hungary, Second Selection A Note on the Poems The Editor’s first set of selections, in the previous issue, emphasized social-political themes. This second set emphasizes art-making intention: hearing and seeing, perceptions shaped into poems, paintings. The earlier set made reference to Wallace Stevens, but this set looks more

THE SEARCH OF APPEARANCE

Poems of Hungary AUTHOR’S NOTE  We arrived in Budapest for a year’s stay on the day Princess Diana died, 1997, so these poems speak for an earlier era, then recently post-communist. The eleven poems the Editor has selected, six in this issue and five in the next, were written as