Welcome to my misguided attempt to read more poetry! I'm trying to become a person that reads poetry (So I can be both lyrical and insightful). When rWelcome to my misguided attempt to read more poetry! I'm trying to become a person that reads poetry (So I can be both lyrical and insightful). When reflecting on last year I realized that I didn't seek out any poetry. I want to be a well-rounded reader. Here's to remedying that.
This collection also helps me achieve other goals of mine including: A) Read more by Margaret Atwood & B) become more (insufferable) fun at parties. I'm reminded of Catherine Morland from Northanger Abbey; she spent valuable time memorizing poems, quotes from literature, minuscule moralisms and proverbs, just in the event she may be able to dispense that wisdom at the opportune time. I admire that.
This review will be divided into sections.
Note: Dearly is dedicated to Atwoods late partner. It is incredibly forlorn, loss seeps through the pages. Dearly is a lament. It is intimate, and raw. I wonder if this was therapeutic for Atwood?
Collection I
Late Poems: Sets the tone for the collection, melancholy in the softest way. Is that what this collection is? soft, melancholic eventualities and the past knocking at our door? If this is what the collection has in store for me, I'm okay with sitting with sadness.
Whatever it was has happened: the battle, the sunny day, the moonlit slipping into lust, the farewell kiss. The poem washes ashore like flotsam.
Ghost Cat: This poem is corrosive. I felt like it bled into me. It's obvious memory is a theme with this collection: here the focus is on the loss of memory, the passage of time. This poem made me uncomfortable, it is so effective at displaying how lonely dementia is – to those that suffer and those that experience it from loved ones. The poems also really quirky and clever, and that combined with the subject matter is unsettling.
Then up the stairs she'd come, moth-footed, owl-eyed, wailing like a tiny, fuzzy steam train: Ar-woo! Ar-woo! So witless and erased. O, who?
And when I go that way, grow fur, start howling, scratch at your airwaves: no matter who I claim I am, or how I love you, turn the key. Bar the window....more
Salem’s Lot opens at the close, and from the very beginning King instills a morbid anticipation in his readers as we are left to ponder what went wronSalem’s Lot opens at the close, and from the very beginning King instills a morbid anticipation in his readers as we are left to ponder what went wrong in the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot. We start by knowing two things: One, a man and a boy survive and two, most everyone else dies. This doesn't diminish the suspense, if anything this knowledge had me biting my nails wondering who would get bit next.
CHARACTERS
Ben is the main protagonist, despite other perspectives being utilized at times when necessary. SK loves to write authors, and he's done it again here. causing Ben to fall into both the "Surrogate Author" category and the "Everyman " category. So it's no surprise he finds his "Everywoman" in Susan Norton.
Barlow & Straker are the main antagonist. This story begins with both Ben & Barlow's almost simultaneous return to Salem's Lot. Barlow is a fantastic villain. These are our "Big Bads", and it is no coincidence that Barlow & Straker sounds similar to Bram Stoker, cause we've got a case of the vamps on our hands.
Susan's purpose is basically to open up Ben's heart, only to cause him to later crush his own by staking hers. She also falls in to the lovely horror trope of going after the monster ALONE for NO GOOD REASON. It doesn't end well.
Mark Petrie is our wonder kid. He is arguably the most interesting of the vamp fighters.
Matt Burke: Basically Van Helsing
Father Callahan: LOVE a good fall from grace, so thanks Father! Here's to hoping for a redemption arc in the Dark Towers series.
Jimmy Cody: Poor town Doc who was meant to be eaten by rats, but SK's editor thought it was "too dark" so instead he is impaled by knives after falling down some nonexistent stairs. Poor dude was always fated to die.
There is a plethora of side characters who both die and are turned into the UNDEAD. Some of these were not fun for me to read (Dud, you were def a dud). Others had some of the most horrifying moments in the novels 600+ pages (Royal Snow, Mike Ryerson, I'm looking at ya'll).
THOUGHTS
This is King’s second novel, (and my fifth this year) and the themes present in Salem’s are executed on a more grand scale in later works. The town of Salem’s Lot is alive and it is dead. It is as much of a main character in this sense as Ben Mears, Mark Petrie, Susan Norton & Matt Burke are. King expands upon this idea of an all knowing town in IT, and in a way this feels like his first stab at writing a really messed up, preternaturally evil town monster.
I enjoyed this novel immensely, but felt that the ending seemed out of place. Ben & Mark chose to stay to destroy Barlow, succeed, and then just peace out and leave the minor vamps to chill for a few months? This seemed out of character and anticlimactic.
Score: 4.0
Connections to the Kingverse: <-Rachel drives past Jerusalem’s Lot in Pet Sematary -Father Callahan makes an appearance in the Dark Towers series (Wolves of Calla) -King was going to write a sequel, but decided that the Dark Towers tie in was a sequel in its own way -Father Callahan’s Mr. Flip seems reminiscent of Pennywise in IT, as well as the monster in Tad Trenton’s closet in Cujo -Mark Petrie appears to originate Bill’s famous words “he thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghosts” (IT) -Hubie Marsten’s wife’s sister (wow what a mouthful) appears to have the shining. She senses the exact moment and cause of her sisters death miles away. (The shining) -two short stories in Night Shift reference the Lot: “Jerusalem’s Lot” & “One for the road”
Other relevant literary influences for further study & reference - Dracula by Bram Stoker (n e e d to get around to this soon) -The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens ...more
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