Archive - September 2010

Go Home Bones (Poems) by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1964–66) Pudding House Chapbook Series $10.00 (to order jen@puddinghouse.com) 30 pages 2010 Quantum Chaos (Poems) by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1964–66) Big Table Publishing Company Chapbook Series $12.00 39 pages 2010 Reviewed by Jan Worth-Nelson (Tonga 1976-78) IT’S POIGNANT, AND POTENT, to be reading Tony Zurlo’s anti-war poems in his 2010 chapbook Go Home Bones on this day, the ninth anniversary of 9/11. I’m stilled and tearful, as the day’s observances roll out like dirges on NPR, taking in Zurlo’s grief-infused “The Mystery of You,” for example, that ends, “Each morning a diminished/congregation rises/for the ritual./Each prayer/ another syllable missing.” Zurlo won the 2010 Peace Corps Writers Award for Outstanding Poetry Book published by a Peace Corps writer (for his 2009 collection The Mind Dancing). He is a prolific writer (this site, a bit behind, lists 14 books in his bibliography) and his . . .

You’ve got to love this! The UW-Madison Writing Center (which, by the way, is very good!) has introduced a new and short (non-credit of course) workshop for those of you with ‘special needs,’i.e., writing your Fulbright application essay, your APA documentation, and also “writing Peace Corps application essays.” I’m all for such workshops, and I won’t mind taking it myself, but when it comes to getting into the Peace Corps, it ain’t the essay that counts: it is the experience and skills of the Applicant. (Of course, getting into the Peace Corps should be based on one’s writing skills, but I’m not running the agency.) However, whether you join the Peace Corps or not, if you are in Madison, Wisconsin, do yourself a favor and take the workshop. You’ll be a better writer and a better person for it. The Writing Center is run by Brad Hughes. And he’s a good . . .

Matt Davis who wrote the wonderful Peace Corps memoir, When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale, and where he was a PCV from 2000-02, will be leaving shortly for Damascus. Matt graduated in May with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has just gotten a Fulbright to spend 9 months in Syria. He plans on working on a novel and reporting on, and researching, a nonfiction project about the cultural scene in Syria’s capital. Matt, as you may recall, was 23 when he left Chicago for the Peace Corps and a Mongolian town called Tsetserleg. Living in a ger, he had a tough go as a teacher, lived through a brutal winter, a rough romance, and then, as he writes, he fell into the trap many Mongolian men succumbing to: drinking constantly. The longer he was in Mongolia, the deeper he fell into depression . . .

Cockeyed by Richard Stevenson [aka Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962–64)] MLR Press September 2010 215 pages $14.99 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza  (Ivory Coast 2000–02, Madagascar 2002–03) I HAVE TO BEGIN THIS REVIEW of Richard Stevenson’s Cockeyed, the latest installment of his Donald Strachey Mystery series, by saying that I’ve recently discovered Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories, those masterful and disturbing looks at gay life in Weimar Germany just before the rise of the Nazis. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read Isherwood before this summer — my wife’s taking a Brit Lit course and I’ve been snagging her books — but at the same time it’s been sublime to wallow some weeks in great literature that’s been completely new to me. All right, you know the old reviewing trick, mention the author under review, then the “great” author he or she is most similar to: hence Stevenson and Isherwood in the . . .

Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) has written about China in three lovely books, and lives today in Colorado, where, by the way, he is the very new father of twins! He has now turned his amazing journalistic and literary skills on the southwestern section of Colorado where uranium created a cancer epidemic back in the ’50s. He writes about all of this in the September 13, 2010, issue of The New Yorker. You might want to check it out. It is rather amazing how all the talented RPCV writers have come out of China. I have written about this ‘China gang” before. There is Peter, who published Country Driving: A Journey Through China  to Factory in February, and also Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) and his The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed that was published by Walker in 2008. And other writers as well. These guys are serious and important. You should . . .

 [This article by Mark DiIonno appeared on September 9, 2010, in the New Jersey Star-Ledge.] BERKELEY HEIGHTS – Author P.F. Kluge’s life has been a global travelogue, taking him far from his childhood home in Berkeley Heights. The Peace Corps took him to the Pacific Island of Palau, and among his favorite places are the Austria village of Altausse, and the Island of Mallaca in the Bay of Bengal. His novel “Biggest Elvis” takes place in the shot-and-beer and g-string town outside the Navy base in Subic Bay, the Phillippines. “Master Blaster,” due out next year, takes place on Saipan, where U.S. Marines battled Japanese soldiers in World War II. After a life of exploring other cultures, Kluge, 69, decided to rediscover his own. “A Call from Jersey,” which was released this week, takes place mostly around Berkeley Heights and centers around an immigrant story rarely told: that of the . . .

Mosquito Operas: New and Selected Short Poems Philip Dacey (Nigeria 1963–65) New York: Rain Mountain Press July 2010 73 pages $10.00 Reviewed by Sandra Meek (Botswana 1989–91) PHILIP DACEY’S MOST RECENT BOOK is an unusual one for the world of contemporary American poetry; rather than being organized by thematic arc or by the chronology of their writing, these poems are brought together because of one shared formal trait: simply, they are all short. In his author’s note that begins the collection, Dacey describes the book as “a kind of family reunion,” noting the earliest of these poems dates back to 1970. From the very first page of poems, this book does exhibit a wild diversity of both subject matter and tone not unlike an extended family gathering where, say, an angst-ridden teenage boy in black eyeliner and fingernail polish might be forced into the buffet line next to his back-slapping, . . .

Jason Boog is an editor at mediabistro.com’s publishing Web site, GalleyCat (www.mediabistro.com/galleycat). His work has appeared in The Believer, Granta, Salon.com, The Revealer, and Peace Corps Writers, and he is a contributor to the Poetry Foundation’s  poetryfoundation.org. This piece appeared in the December 15, 2009, issue of Wabash College’s on-line magazine. Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana is a small and very good liberal arts college for men. This article by Jason is one in a series of ongoing conversations about what it means to be a man in the 21st Century. • A Man’s Life: Sad Men by Jason Boog (Guatemala 2000-02) I lost my job in December 2008, unemployed at the beginning of the longest, coldest winter I can remember in New York City. Up until then, everything had been going swimmingly: I was a staff writer at an investigative reporting publication, taught an undergraduate journalism class, and proposed to my girlfriend . . .

Name Tagging (Photography) by Martha Cooper (Thailand 1963–65) Mark Batty Publisher $12.95 96 pages July 2010 • Under the Same Moon by Kelli M. Donley (Cameroon 2000) Donley Books $16.00 356 pages May 2010 • The Henderson Memories (Peace Corps novel) by Doug Ingold (Brazil 1964-66) Wolfenden Publishing $14.95 Kindle Edition, $9.75 379 pages 2010 • Lyndon B. Johnson [The American Presidents Series] by Charles Peters (PC/Staff 1961-65) Times Books $23.00 224 pages June 2010 • Becker’s Farm by William V. Timmons (Niger 1965-67) CreateSpace (BookSurge) $18.99 326 pages June 2009 • The Man in the Black and White Dress by William V. Timmons (Niger 1965-67) CreateSpace (BookSurge) $15.99 338 pages 2009 • The Trojan Pony by William Timmons (Niger 1965-67) CreateSpace (BookSurge) $ 14.95 223 pages 2009 • Never Push An Elephant by William Timmons (Niger 1965-67) CreateSpace (BookSurge) $ 15.95 310 pages 2009 To order any of the . . .