Photo: Tim Roberts

Sarah—Of Fragments and Lines, by Julie Carr, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2010, 74 pages, $16.00 paper. Selected for the National Poetry Series by Eileen Myles.

Exhaustion Fragment

White curtains hang ceiling to floor

                                     motionless    To

         feel one's face as

                 white curtains hanging ceiling to—

Let's begin by zooming in on this small poem, shortest in the book. How strange and striking to image "exhaustion" by introjecting these limp curtains into the writer's/reader's body, to make an image by 'feeling one's face'. Striking, also, the abrupt ending. On one level the ending says, "Etc.—(I'm too exhausted to repeat myself)." And on another, it hangs the words abruptly into silence, makes what we could call a characteristic post-Language poetic gesture.

Which precisely locates Julie Carr as a young, twenty-first century innovative poet, one of our most creative and energetic. read more

50 Berkeley 50
by Victoria Nelson

So: a hot fall day in Berkeley, the year is 2011, I'm walking up Telegraph Avenue past the shell of Cody's Books, then the old apartment building I lived in the summer after graduation that is going to burn down a few months from now, the down-at-heel cheap clothing outlets, a single Paleolithic head shop, the bagel franchise and the street tables full of junky jewelry, bumper stickers, garish tie-dyed thermal underwear, and suddenly it's September 1961 read more

Firefly Under the Tongue: Three Mexican Poets in Translation
by John Oliver Simon

A powerful generation of Mexican poets who grew up under the august shadow of Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, were challenged by the immense intelligence of the old poet, nourished by the system of becas, grants and fellowships that Paz created, and all more or less found a critical distance in which to develop their own voice, is now becoming available in English translation. read more

The 31st Annual Northern California Book Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, June 10, 2012, at Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 1:00 p.m. more info

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FRED CODY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT in COMMUNITY & LITERATURE
Michael Pollan, author, journalist, food activist & cultural critic

NCBR RECOGNITION AWARD
Everything Is Its Own Reward, An All Over Coffee Collection,
Paul Madonna, City Lights

2012 NCBA Nominees
FICTION
Sequoia Gardens, Ernest J. Finney, Southern Methodist University Press
A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion, Ron Hansen, Scribner
Turn of Mind, Alice LaPlante, Atlantic Monthly Press
Lola, California, Edie Meidav, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
We the Animals, Justin Torres, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

CREATIVE NONFICTION
A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, Eavan Boland, W. W. Norton
Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife, Philip L. Fradkin, University of California Press
The Left Coast: California on the Edge, Philip L. Fradkin, photos by Alex L. Fradkin, University of California Press
Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions, Sandra M. Gilbert, W.W. Norton
Maya Roads: One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest, Mary Jo McConahay, Chicago Review Press

GENERAL NONFICTION
Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, Barry Eichengreen, Oxford University Press
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Shah, Abbas Milani, Palgrave Macmillan
Natural History of San Francisco Bay, California Natural History Guides, Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen M. Wong, University of California Press
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942, Ian W. Toll, W. W. Norton

POETRY
Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Wings Press
Come, Thief, Jane Hirshfield, Alfred A. Knopf
Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey, Marsh Hawk Press
When I Was a Poet, David Meltzer, City Lights
Thread, Michael Palmer, New Directions

TRANSLATION
Fiction
The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, translated by Anne O. Fisher, Northwestern
Tyrant Memory, Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver, New Directions
Poetry
After Many Autumns: A Collection of Chinese Buddhist Literature, editors John Gill and Susan Tidwell, translated by John Balcom, Buddha's Light Publishing
The Changing Room, by Zhai Yongming, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, Zephyr Press
My Naked Brain: Selected Poems of Leopoldo María Panero, translated by Arturo Mantecón, Swan Scythe Press

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Young Adult
Instructions for a Broken Heart, Kim Culbertson, Sourcebooks
Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler, illustrations by Maira Kalman, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Clean, Amy Reed, Simon Pulse
Younger Readers
Seabird in the Forest, Joan Dunning, Boyd Mills Press
A Dazzling Display of Dogs, Betsy Franco, illustrations by Michael Wertz, Tricycle Press
Far from Shore: Chronicles of an Open Ocean Voyage, Sophie Webb, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children