Books at Sage

28 October 2009 | Uncategorized | salomd

This wonderful novel by the author of The Mezzanine and Human Smoke is the story of Paul Chowder, poet of little note, who is struggling as he tries to finish the introduction to an anthology of rhymed verse. In Baker’s inimitable style, Chowder informs the reader in crystal-clear detail about the tropes and conventions of rhymed verse, a style few contemporary poets still employ. Chowder picks on some of his favorites, particularly W.S. Merwin, and looks back to Walt Whitman as he also gives us insight into the mind of a sometime-academic fighting his own intellectual impotence. I have been reading Nicholson Baker since his first novel was published in 1986. He is a brilliant wordsmith. He will be speaking at Russell Sage College in the Fall of 2010.

Nicholson Baker. The Anthologist. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009. 243 pp. $25.00. 1416572449.