Thursday, September 16, 2010

What is Nicole Walker reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Nicole Walker, author of This Noisy Egg (Barrow Street Press, 2010).

Her entry begins:
I’m reading Vanishing Point, by Ander Monson, again. I’ve read this book several times even though it’s only been out a couple of months for a few reasons. The first is that I can’t quite qualify what Ander’s doing. He seems to me to be teaching how to think about nonfiction. It’s a theoretical book in a lot of ways. How to we remember, how do we misremember, in what way do collective memories trump individual memories, how do we think and record memories and does writing them down trump everything? In the first essay/chapter, Ander writes about being vetted by lawyers before serving on a jury. The idea of whole truth and nothing but the truth isn’t investigated in some philosopher’s declarative sentences but through the lens of his mother’s death. But this is where I have trouble getting to how the book works: it’s not a memoir, as the cover of the book asserts. His mother’s death is...[read on]
Among the praise for This Noisy Egg:
"I enjoy the ferocity of [Nicole Walker's] language, seeming simplicity wrapped in complex structures. The mark of great poetry, for me, is a book that makes me want to fling it down and start writing. Walker’s poetry inspires me in this way."
Lynn Kilpatrick

"This Noisy Egg makes us consider a new world constructed by an intrepid “I” armed with her own brand of sassy humor."
—Cole Swenson

"This is a book of luscious verberations. Of sonic and imaginative exuberance. Of emotional and grammatical restlessness."
— Bob Hicok
Visit Nicole Walker's website and blog.

Writers Read: Nicole Walker.

--Marshal Zeringue