Today was one of those fugged up days when you sit around and go through your Abe.com and Amazon.com shopping carts, prune them (“save for later”), go back and forth between the sites looking for the best prices, and buy a shite load of stuff, some of which costs all of $0.01 (shipping: $3.99). That’s what it’s like to be a poet–and a poet researching the writing of Los Angeles is bound to get some good deals!

So this is what I bought today, just FYI (content for this blog rarely comes from deep insights from the author, but from the capriciousness of his actions):

L.A. Exile: A Guide To Los Angeles Writing 1932-1998
Evan Calbi, Paul Vangelisti, editors

Place as Purpose: Poetry from the Western States
Martha Ronk, Paul Vangelisti, editors

Last Words
Guy Bennett

Alphabets: 1986-1996
Paul Vangelisti

Lee Sr. Falls to the Floor
Leland Hickman

Fine Printing: The Los Angeles Tradition
Ward Ritchie

Mavericks: Nine Independent Publishers
Richard Peabody

Geographies
Robert Crosson

Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond
Peter Selz

Abandoned Latitudes: New Writing by Three Los Angeles Poets
John Thomas, Robert Crosson, Paul Vangelisti

Stand Up Poetry: The Anthology
Charles Harper Webb

La Medusa
Vanessa Place

Musical Metropolis: Los Angeles and the Creation of a Music Culture, 1880-1940
Kenneth Marcus

Grand Passion: The Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond
Charles Harper Webb

North America Book Of Verse, Volume Three
C. F. MacIntyre

The Garden Prospect: Selected Poems
Peter Yates

Specimen 73 : a catalog of poets for the season 1973-74
Paul Vangelisti

Footnotes & Headlines: a Play-Pray Book
Sister Corita

Nevertheless
John Thomas

Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances
Barbara Kruger

Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry
Michelle T. Clinton, Sesshu Foster, Naomi Quinonez

Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics
Daniel Hurewitz

Selected Fiction/ Collected Later Poems/ Selected Criticism and Essays
James Boyer May

This last one, a boxed set, is far and away the most expensive, but the books are really beautiful, and I don’t think more than 100 copies were created. I’ll have to write some serious criticism about May to bring the price up!

Most of these are books that 1) I couldn’t get in the UCLA library, 2) were so cheap that, even if I could find copies, I just wanted one, 3) were selling for a lot less than it appeared they were worth based on competing prices, or 4) in my twisted mind were just so cool I wanted one for myself.