WHAT I'M READING: YURIY TARNAWSKY, "LIKE BLOOD IN WATER."

Ok. Every writer who blogs seems to talk about what books s/he's reading, and that's a very popular thing to do both here and in GB -- I don't know about France, Syria and Argentina. But that's how lit bloggers get famous, and if they don't get famous, they at least inspire writers to send them galleys and freshly minted books, hoping that the lit bloggers will promote them. So the lit bloggers manage to say something about a book, and even if the mini review or rave or passing note is written in grammar that shows they never learned how to diagram a sentence and can barely construct one, let alone a paragragh (oy), no matter ... they become instant cyber review stars.

Let me make this perfectly clear. I'm not reviewing anything. I don't know how to review, as if there's a tao de reviewing. I don't have an MFA or PHD, and I didn't major in English in college (though I did take as many creative writing classes as I could). I can only say, wow, this writer's imagination makes me want to jump ship or remain on board, or this writer is so over-rated and with his/her adolescent humor, I'm getting mourning sickness, meaning I'm grieving over the dearth of writers that make my boat leap out of the water and into the sky (the same boat that capsized from heavy clunky prose by the latest popular and best selling novelists. Not that I frequently read best selling writers. And not that best selling writers are totally BAD. Some of them know the difference between lay and lie, I and me, would've and had, drank and drunk, sank and sunk, and so on and so forth. But but but ---- I have a predilection for writings that demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt a love of the language, an enjoyment of language that obviously tickles the funny boned head of the author while s/he's in the throes of the writing process, as well as the reader who loves the language and what language loving writers can do with it. And loving writers DELIGHT in language as rhythm/music, imagery, and a means to discover the myriad ways of seeing and knowing what one actually sees and knows.

So, ok --- if you want stolid, workhorse sentences, imagery that doesn't surprise you, but a plot and characters that grab you, make you cry, give you great insight into why your grandmother killed her out-of-wedlock infant and let the crocs eat her/him (in swaddling clothes yet), get thee to another bloggy. I personally speaking myself love my funny bone tickled and my imagination jerked out of the water of the infinite wisdom of the unconscious into light. I love to laugh out loud, delight in becoming delighted, surprised, challenged, but not so challenged that I get a headache. I love the author who charms my unconscious and makes me want to write in response to her/his (or his/her) writing, an author I'd love to collaborate with and even with whom I'd love to collaborate, a writer skilled in constructing a universe to which I've never been, though paradoxically, a universe which is familiar to me -- as familiar as my first breath, which of course I can't recall. But no, familiar, as in there's an empathic sensibility I feel and recognize as I read the book. Maybe it has to do with my Ukrainian ancestry. It's strange. I think of some of my writings and think, ah, Yuriy Tarnawksy would appreciate that! He would "get" it, while others don't. Wouldn't he love "3 Silly Love Stories," recently published in La Petite Zine? Wouldn't he get the absurd pathos of my play "Ham & Hen"?

So -- I'm going to tell you that I'm reading the first book I've ever read by Yuriy and I'm loving it like crazy. "Like Blood in Water, " is not a novel, thank gawds -- it's a series of "mini-novels," or surrealist stories/tales that offer the reader voyages through worlds of joy and inanity, intensely familiar landscapes, though incongruously so -- landscapes or worlds that make no sense yet profound metaphorical sense, as the reader in tune with the poetry of his or her self would understand.

I have other books in my cluttered apartment with insufficient bookshelves, collections and novels given to me by new friends and acquaintances who give me their books because they appreciate what I'm doing with my e-journal and sometimes they just like who I am. And they're all wonderful authors whose books I'll probably mention sooner or later. But only one at a time.

Now soon back to my second play: Moving the Mountain: A Metaphor in Motion.