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I got hooked on Jungian psychology and mythopoesis as an undergraduate in the late 1960s, a preference that made me an unresponsive graduate student of structuralism. A concept such as “the eternal return” is invalidated when signs and mythic stories aren’t granted enduring archetypal and transpersonal significance.

Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son by Paul Dickson (Bloomsbury)
Off Speed: Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception by Terry McDermott (Pantheon)
Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel (Doubleday)

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In “Dream Song 14,” John Berryman not only exposed his boredom but patched in his world’s disapproval of such languishing:

"Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.   
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,   
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy   
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored   
means you have no

The conclusion of Hari Kunzru’s White Tears leaves the reader shaken by the long habits of racism in America and the misappropriation of culture. But the beginning is all about sound. “Every sound wave has a physiological effect, every vibration,” says Seth, the narrator. “I once heard a field recording of a woman singing, sitting on a porch.

Welcome back to “Poets Recommend,” the Seawall’s semi-annual poetry feature. This season, nine poets write briefly on some of their favorite recently published titles. This multi-poet/title feature is posted here in April and November. Scroll down to read. The commentary includes:

Lisa Russ Spaar

on Watchful by Molly Bendall (Omnidawn Publishing)

Zhao Zhenkai was 17 years old when Mao’s Cultural Revolution occurred in 1966. At his high school, he was among those who forced his teachers to wear incriminating placards around their necks, and who ridiculed, kicked and punched them through a gauntlet in the schoolyard. He had become one of the Red Guards.