Twofer Tuesday: Travis Macdonald’s N7ostradamus reviewed by Charles Freeland and by Michael Leong

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Travis Macdonald
N7ostradamus

BlazeVOX [books] (2010)
ISBN: 978-1-60964-009-5
168 pages

Reviewed by Charles Freeland

A mere twenty-five years separates the first printing, in 1555, of the quatrains of Nostradamus and the first printing, in 1580, of the Essais of Michel de Montaigne, an astonishing number, really, when you consider these two Frenchmen seem to come from not just different ages, but entirely different planets. Nostradamus, sitting on his brass tripod, scribbling his obscure predictions with the assistance of some candles, herbal stimulants and, of course, the “divine spirit”, strikes me as emblematic of the last throes of a medieval Europe that gloried in witch hunts and alchemy, in angels dancing on the head of a pin. The direction of all such God-haunted attention is forward – toward coming millennia and raptures and whatever else might cleanse the present cesspool the true believer finds himself immersed in. And its attitude is inevitably one of certainty, of Knowing with a capital K. This from Nostradamus’s Preface to his quatrains: “ … the divine spirit has vouchsafed me to know by means of astronomy.” Twenty-five years later, Montaigne’s attention, something of an entirely different nature than his countryman’s, is focused occasionally on the present, the religious wars that are tearing France apart, but more especially on the past – that enormous fund of classical scholarship and erudition-- the Plutarchs and the Senecas -- that assists Montaigne in his every attempt to forge some understanding of what is happening around him, and ultimately within. The attitude required here is, of course, in direct opposition to the overweening certainty of Nostradamus and his ilk. It is a skepticism mined from the original source of that long list of classical antecedent, from Socrates himself. This is Montaigne’s version, from the Essais: “I determine nothing. I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.”

Out for review

• Samuel Amadon, Like a Sea (University of Iowa Press, 2010)
• Oana Avasilichioaei, Erín Moure, Expeditions of a Chimæra (BookThug, 2009)
• duncan b. barlow, Super Cell Anemia (Afterbirth Books, 2007)
• Laynie Browne, The Desires of Letters (Counterpath Press, 2010)
• Melissa Buzzeo, Face (BookThug, 2009)
• Juliet Cook, Fondant Pig Angst (Slash Pine Press, 2009)
• Kate Durbin, The Ravenous Audience (Black Goat, 2009)
• Elena Fanailova, The Russian Version (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)
• K. Lorraine Graham, Terminal Humming (Edge Books, 2009)
• Rachel Levitsky, Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009)
• Olga Tokarczuk, Primeval and Other Times (Twisted Spoon Press 2010)
• Peter Waterhouse, Language Death Night Outside. Poem. Novel. Translated by Rosmarie Waldrop (Burning Deck, 2009)
• John Dermot Woods, The Complete Collection of People, Places, & Things (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

Brandon Downing's Lake Antiquity reviewed by Lucy Ives

Brandon Downing
Lake Antiquity

Fence Books, 2009
182 pp. full color, 9"x11"

Reviewed by Lucy Ives

Lake Antiquity is a large and very nice kingdom adjacent to but not nearby where you live. Ruled by a proto-fascist space lord from the year 3016, it resembles nothing so much as nineteenth-century London. At the shores of its eponymous lake, view such floral marvels as the talking “Navel Orange Tree” (see page 10) and cheery “Fungo Adulto” with characteristic red cap (page 33), as well as decorative bouquets and twining flourishes too numerous to mention. Thrill to the sight of live muppets dozing amidst Roman ruins (pages 61, 185), as flocks of massive disembodied heads float blithely across the horizon (pages 54, 70, 84, 86, 105, 120, 122, 142, 153, 182, 184)! The nearly unspeakable beauty of the people of this land is matched only by the glory of their ancestral songs, many of which are included here for the first time in painstaking and effective translation. Just take a listen to one excerpt: