{"id":71568,"date":"2022-07-03T00:07:15","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T04:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=71568"},"modified":"2022-07-03T00:10:05","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T04:10:05","slug":"i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2022\/07\/03\/i-arrogantly-recommend-by-tom-bowden-30\/","title":{"rendered":"i arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Peter Saul: Donald Trump in Florida, 2017<\/p><\/div>\n

I arrogantly recommend…by Tom Bowden <\/strong>is a monthly column of small press and books-in-translation reviews by our friend, bibliophile, and retired pavement inspector Tom Bowden, who tells us, ‘This platform allows me to exponentially increase the number of people reached who have no use for such things.’<\/p>\n

Links are provided to our Bookshop.org affiliate page. If unavailable, please call, we’ll try to help. Most of the reviewed titles are stocked at Book Beat. Thank you for your support! Read more arrogantly recommended reviews at:
\nI arrogantly recommend… by Tom Bowden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent<\/a><\/strong>
\nHarriet A. Washington
\nColumbia Global Reports<\/p>\n

Harriet A. Washington is a researcher and reporter of medical malfeasance whose work has received recognition and awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Oakland Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award, and who lectures at Columbia University. The subtitle of Carte Blanche contradicts Washington\u2019s argument; namely, that medical consent was only ever a thing after its violation: So, for instance, while Nazi doctors were rightfully tried at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity by forcing medical experiments upon unwilling participants, lawyers for the doctors\u2019 defense noted that non-consensual medical experiments of the most horrific nature were routinely practiced by the medical establishment of the prosecuting nations\u2014the hypocrisy was as unappreciated as it was falsely self-righteous. So, while \u201cmedical consent\u201d is the ethical standard within the U.S., good luck having it granted to you if you are a person of color.<\/p>\n

As Washington shows, non-consensual medical experimentation never ended with Tuskegee, and it continues to this day in cities where Black populations are significantly high. In fact, with a population 86% Black, Detroit makes an ideal hub for non-consensual research (housed at Wayne State University), including injections of synthetic blood offering high rates of mortality and harm to various organs and neural pathways. Coercion and refusal to disclose what has already happened are also means of obtaining non-consent, and Blacks in the military (men and women) and prison are also targeted far more than their white counterparts. They are forced to make sacrifices that will most benefit those who least look like them.<\/p>\n

Washington documents how these egregious ethical abuses are possible, the legal loopholes that exist created specifically to avoid consent, the for-profit (!) institutional review boards that rubberstamp approvals for coercive practices, and potential solutions to these problems. Carte Blanche<\/strong> is as important as its revelations are awful.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch: The Collected Motorcycle Poems<\/a><\/strong>
\nDiane Wakoski
\nBlack Sparrow Press<\/p>\n

In the late \u201860s and early \u201870s, some young women writers began questioning the status quo of their place in society, a society which treated them as less than fully human and their aspirations as trivial indulgences. Of a small representative sample of books from the time, in addition to, say, Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Edible Woman (1969) and Annie Ernaux\u2019s Les Armoires vides (Cleaned Out) (1974) one would add Diane Wakoski\u2019s Dancing (1971, as The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems).<\/p>\n

Here is a young woman, early 30s, single and bitter. Bitter at betrayal by men, past lovers\u2014but rather than turn all that anger inward (she turns a fair amount of it toward her face and body) she rages against being treated as disposable, unworthy of commitment. Being first abandoned by her father as a child, \u201cDiane\u201d of the poems seeks approval from men who would have little to do with her. Despite (because of?) her obvious talents and intelligence, she finds herself inexplicably unattached. The uncertainty of the inexplicable leads to fear (self-doubt) and anger (over betrayal of specifically her), examined over the course of this cycle of poems. Back in the day, an impassioned plea for being treated with honesty, truth, and respect passed for \u201cradical politics,\u201d much as it still does today.<\/p>\n

From \u201cTo Celebrate My Body\u201d:<\/p>\n

where
\nyou had only
\nto touch me
\nothers had
\nto present a history,
\na bibliography,
\nand a justification<\/p>\n

but<\/p>\n

no question
\nremains,
\nthat a gift
\neasily given
\nlightly received
\nis wasted<\/p>\n

no one can
\ntouch me
\nthe way
\nyou can \/ I should say
\ndid<\/p>\n

but<\/p>\n

no question
\nremains
\nyour touch
\nwas not lightly
\ntaken<\/p>\n

and my body
\nhas spent
\na lot of years
\nawakening<\/p>\n

(Full disclosure: Wakoski in the late \u201880s, early \u201890s served on my dissertation committee in the English Department at Michigan State University. I never wrote the dissertation, so she and I only ever had chatty conversations.)<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Hers<\/a><\/strong>
\nMaria Laina \/ Karen van Dyck
\nWorld Poetry Books<\/p>\n

Karen van Dyck has rendered Maria Laina\u2019s Greek into still, meditative moments reflecting the self-confidence of a woman on the early end of middle age. (Laina, born in 1947, published Hers (in Greek) in 1985.) None of the poems are titled, but here\u2019s one that hints at the book\u2019s mood:<\/p>\n

She drinks a cup of coffee
\nand gets pleasure
\nfrom lighting a cigarette.
\nShe will not grow old calmly.<\/p>\n

Most poems are brief\u2014none over a page\u2014and epigrammatic, evoking moods and scenes easily imagined as film clips. Here\u2019s one on the palpable erotics of self-assurance:<\/p>\n

As she grows older
\nshe departs with greater ease.<\/p>\n

Perhaps even allure.<\/p>\n

As alluring to others as self-confidence may be, the allure does not also signal need. She remains erotically self-sufficient:<\/p>\n

She has nothing to say.
\nShe simply touches herself
\nand watches herself
\nand wants<\/p>\n

Laina expresses one woman\u2019s autonomy in gentle, understated terms and rhythms that van Dyck conveys exquisitely.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Ghazals<\/a><\/strong>
\nMir Taqi Mir (Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, trans.)
\nMurty Classical Library of India \/ Harvard University Press<\/p>\n

Mir Taqi Mir was an Urdu poet born in Agra, India whose poems were based on the Persian ghazal tradition. Living from 1723 to 1810, Mir was thus roughly a contemporary of William Blake, Byron, and Coleridge. Ghazals are a poetic form of five to 15 rhyming couplets (rhyming in Urdu, that is) that typically deal with melancholy aspects of love. As with Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets, most of Mir\u2019s ghazals are clearly directed toward a woman, while some are directed at males, underage boys. With Mir, poor boys serve as a physical counterpart to the idealized female epitome.<\/p>\n

Here is ghazal 97 in its entirety:<\/p>\n

Yesterday some friends took me into a flower garden.
\nI didn\u2019t find fragrance similar to hers in the rose or in the jasmine.<\/p>\n

The sweet tongue of the beloved slays me.
\nHow I wish that tongue were in my mouth.<\/p>\n

Like a whirlpool I went round and round in this ocean.
\nMy life in my native land was spent in vertiginous wandering.<\/p>\n

If I went to my grave with this charred and smoldering heart of mine
\na blazing fire would consume my shroud.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re what makes me live, but oh, your tight-fitting dress is a cruelty.
\nI can see that your body has the soft and delicate style of the soul.<\/p>\n

I fear it might cause your body to go numb\u2014you are much too delicate\u2014
\nthis close-fitting dress of yours that clings so tightly to your body.<\/p>\n

Mir, it would be a catastrophe if she looked me full in the face\u2014
\nshe who turned a world upside down with just a wink of her eye.<\/p>\n

After being rejected once again by his female beloved, Mir seeks out boys for physical release. However, this practice seems to be an eccentricity of Mir\u2019s rather than an accepted cultural solution to a romantic impasse, since he reports being socially rejected for seeking out boys. \u201cWhat deadly grievous sin did I commit in giving my heart away to the boys? \/ Why is everyone in the city, young or old, gossiping about it?\u201d (Ghazal 112). (As the late translator Shamsur Rahman Faruqi notes in his introduction, sexual ambiguity also extended to ghazal conventions, too, since\u2014for a couple of centuries\u2014the beloved was addressed as male rather than female.)<\/p>\n

Faruqi\u2019s notes and introduction to Mir and his poetry are excellent for providing background and clarifying some of the subtler nuances of Mir\u2019s allusions and Indian poetic practices.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a>Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945-1976<\/a><\/strong>
\nDan Nadel, editor
\nBad Dimension Press<\/p>\n

Peter Saul is as an artist during whose early career almost thumbed his nose at the idea of Pop Art (which he was at first associated with): instead of mechanically reproduced paintings in homage to mechanically reproduced objects, \u00e0 la Warhol\u2019s soup cans (but before Warhol came along), Saul made teen-like cartoon doodles, some of them (like \u201cCuster\u2019s Last Stand #1\u201d and \u201cWashington Crossing Delaware\u201d) show an affinity with Basil Wolverton\u2019s Mad magazine-era drawings, while others (like \u201cUntitled (Blue Interior)\u201d and \u201cMaster Room: Hide Away\u201d of 1960 and 1961) share affinities with Basquiat\u2019s painterly tics (which came much, much later). And, unlike the icy surfaces of Warhol paintings, Saul\u2019s pictures never made his audiences wonder what to make of them.<\/p>\n

Peter Saul<\/strong>, the book, provides a look back at the artist\u2019s life from age 10 to age 41, based on the letters he wrote, largely to his parents, at first, then his art dealer, Allan Frumkin. The topics include his assessments of the art world\u2019s collectors, museums, and viewing publics; and his assessments of the qualities that make a painting great\u2014mainly, interesting ideas and the technical chops to best portray them. As with his subjects\u2019 compositions, Saul\u2019s book\u2019s subtitle is both ironic and a poke at academic values (so-called professionalism). In 1945, when this book begins, Saul was 10 years old and at boarding school. As an artist, he had two pieces of good fortune: his parents had the means to support his aspirations, and early success in the form of showing and selling internationally by age 28.<\/p>\n

There is less art world gossip than explanations of his intentions, verbal descriptions of his paintings, which work of contemporary artists he liked (S. Clay Wilson\u2019s cartoons (!)) and disliked (found Frank Stella\u2019s constructions shallow), and the casualness with which exhibits are arranged. With his exhibition history beginning in Europe then expanding across the U.S. (NY, Chi, LA), he brings to his aesthetic assessments first-hand international experiences in trends, movements, and preferences among the viewing public, collectors, and museums. His paintings\u2019 themes included Vietnam, racism, hypocrisy, sexual exploitation, and avarice.
\nThese themes put off some viewers, while his neon-colored, surrealistic cartoon style led some reviewers to assume he wasn\u2019t serious.<\/p>\n

While praising his own art for its offensiveness and bad taste, he also reports being able to sell every painting and drawing he makes, often having difficulty keeping up with demand, despite the bad reviews. And just who were these collectors of offensively lurid images? For Saul, the best of them numbered about 50,000 across the world, only they who had the taste and sensibility see the craftsmanship behind the crass\u2014those whose opinions mattered to him. But by age 40, around the time this book ends, he is telling his art dealer that he\u2019s tired of being offensive and wants more people to like his work so he can be a success. Perhaps Saul might appreciate these lines from The Clash\u2019s song, \u201cDeath or Glory\u201d:<\/p>\n

I believe in this
\n\u2014and it\u2019s been tested by research\u2014
\nthat he who fucks nuns
\nwill later join the church.<\/p>\n