Catching up with some Hockey Poetry and Henry Miller

I know I've been off the whole blogging thing for awhile. This Norwegian summer language immersion has been rather intense and has afforded me little time in the way of posting. It's been a good summer of reads nonetheless. I recently finished Tropic of Cancer, the class by Henry Miller. I had been pestered for sometime by a writer friend of mine in Seattle to read it. What can I say other than he was right. Miller can get a little far gone with the obscenity at times. Thing is that just have to hold on and he works you through those moments to a nice shared mental space with narrator. For those of you not aware of the entire Tropic of Cancer story, it is a first person narration on an expatriot American writer in early twentieth century France (but more specifically Paris). The book was banned for many years in the US. But such has not been the case for sometime now. Regardless of history, Miller does a great job of placing us in his narrator's head. Think of it as proto-HST picaresque. It's an interesting balance against Hemingway's Moveable Feast.

Secondly, I recently finished Randall Maggs' Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems. I've typically had issues finding solid literature about hockey or centred on the hockey world. This particular collection seems to answer that problem. Maggs teaches at Memorial University in Newfoundland. He does some very nice work here bringing poetry to the hall of fame goaltender Terry Sawchuk's life. There are some very memorable pieces in this collection, most specifically "The Back Door Open Where She's Gone to the Garden" and "Long Memories." I have to admit to a soft spot for well written poems set in and around Windsor and Detroit. It's a nice piece of work and I highly recommend it as a great summer read.