Judith Fitzgerald also came forth with Walkin' Wounded, which included a cycle of baseball poems and "Habit of Blues," a prose poem meditating on the fate of a novelist, the late Juan Butler.
Those who read last year's Man Booker shortlist tended to agree that the poor judges, much mocked, actually did well to highlight Patrick deWitt's previously untipped novel The Sisters Brothers, a violent, strange, melancholy western in blue-ribbon prose.
Three new novels have appeared in 2000: "Ravelstein," Saul Bellow's fictional memoir about the death of Allan Bloom, his high-living friend at the University of Chicago; "The Human Stain," Philip Roth's tale of a professor ruined by his use of the word "spook"; and "Blue Angel," Francine Prose's novel about a professor undone by his student's sexual harassment plot and novel.
Of the five finalists three were women, with Ms. Sontag being joined by Ms. Prose for "Blue Angel" (HarperCollins) and by Joyce Carol Oates for "Blonde" (Ecco Press/ HarperCollins).
Other fiction finalists are Charles Baxter, for "The Feast of Love" (Pantheon Books); Alan Lightman, for "The Diagnosis" (Pantheon); and Francine Prose, for "Blue Angel" (HarperCollins).
Leroi's prose is as blue-white bright as an Aegean sky reflected from a whitewashed wall.
Fig. 4 Pitch contours of the auditory stimuli used in training modes Prose (red) and Rhyme (blue).
"And the stars said, 'We will twinkle and sprinkle sweet dreams down to you.' " Kate Feiffer's straightforward prose and clever, humorous story speak to Everybaby, and Jules Feiffer's jangly-limbed, blue-eyed boy, illustrated in pen-and-ink with washes of blue watercolor, is adorability incarnate.
His prose is brisk and cheerful as the blue-red-gold-etc. of the famous eBay logo, and considerably less grating.
But at Edson Cemetery, Ginsberg recited not from Kerouac's prose but from poetry out of Mexico City Blues, including "54th Chorus" — invoking specters, fatigue, mortality, Mexico, and John Steinbeck's boxcar America, while he and Dylan contemplated Kerouac's headstone.
