CCA Bookshelf
The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart By Gabrielle Calvocoressi
The Wild Creatures: Collected Stories of Sam D’Allesandro Edited by Kevin Killian
Persea Books, 2005 Paperback, 80 pages, $13.95 From a circus fire in Hartford, CT, to the oversize bodies that fill the screens in “From the Adult Drive-In,” these poems juxtapose spectacle with private moments, collective experience with individual voices. Calvocoressi received the Paris Review’s Conners Prize for “Circus Fire, 1944,” which appears in this collection, her first. She teaches in the MFA Program in Writing.
Suspect Thoughts Press, 2005 Paperback, 160 pages, $12.95 Poet, novelist, and Visual Criticism faculty member Killian edited this posthumous collection of stories by Sam D’Allesandro, who died of AIDS in 1988. Killian’s introduction places D’Allesandro in the context of the “new narrative” writers of San Francisco in the 1980s (Killian was among them). There are 18 stories here, including long out-of-print work from D’Allesandro’s previous books, and previously unpublished pieces that Killian transcribed from the author’s notebooks.
Drawing from the Modern, 1975–2005 By Jordan Kantor Museum of Modern Art, 2005 Hardcover, 229 pages, 180 color illus., $39.95 Kantor situates contemporary drawings as the production of “a younger generation of artists literally trying to draw themselves out” of the art movements of the 1960s. They did so not only with ink, charcoal, and pencil, but also with Cover Girl Thick Lash mascara (Janine Antoni) and human hair tied onto paper (Mona Hatoum). Kantor, an associate professor in the Painting/Drawing Program, was formerly an assistant curator in the department of drawings at MOMA.
glance | spring 2006
Mah-Jongg: From Shanghai to Miami Beach By Christina Cavallaro and Anita Luu ’97 Chronicle Books, 2005 Hardcover, 176 pages, 100 illus. (color and b/w), $14.95 “Mah-jongg is seductive,” the authors write. Photographs of hand-carved bone tiles from the Qing Dynasty hint at why. In this illustrated handbook—with contents ranging from rules for play and strategy to recipes for pot stickers and kugel—the authors’ love for the traditional Chinese game spreads out to encompass its history
and the communities that its players form. Coauthor Luu (BFA, graphic design) also designed the book. 23
The Face of Poetry: Portraits Edited by Zack Rogow University of California Press, 2006 Paperback, 370 pages, 49 b/w photos, $29.95 Portraits of poets by photographer Margaretta K. Mitchell, inspired by the Lunch Poems Reading Series at UC Berkeley, which Rogow coordinates. He teaches in the MFA Program in Writing.
The Return Message By Tessa Rumsey ’02 W. W. Norton, 2005 Hardcover, 99 pages, $24.95 “Does glass count as a wall?” asks Rumsey, a poet and a graduate of the MA Program in Visual Criticism. With doubled titles, the pages of this beautifully designed book both mirror and distort each other. There is space for long lines, and for silence. Rumsey received the 2004 Barnard Women Poets’ Prize, judged by Jorie Graham, for this collection, her second. Faculty and alumni: Please send notice of your book publications to glance@cca.edu.