No, don’t expect the more common rabbit out of the hat this time, but marvel at that far more spectacular crocodile – and even an elephant! – b[image]
No, don’t expect the more common rabbit out of the hat this time, but marvel at that far more spectacular crocodile – and even an elephant! – being pulled out of a magic pocket: Quentin Blake’s miss Angelica Sprocket whips up umbrellas, a sink, mice, cheese and different delights from her overcoat’s plentiful pockets to offer them to the children of the neighbourhood.
Sweet and imaginative, I was pointed to this charming book by the one I love – who knew how much I would enjoy it, because he is ever amazing me and making me laugh by wearing coats which might not be as shockingly pink as Angelica Sprocket’s, but have magic pockets galore stuffed with incredible things too (books, nut bars, tote bags and mysterious things I will not name).
You don’t see any children or grandchildren around to read it with? Just plunge into it yourself for ten minutes, Angelica Sprocket will probably make you smile awhile....more
"Perhaps our existence is nothing more than an open and then closed parenthesis with a bit of unfathomable space in between?""Perhaps our existence is nothing more than an open and then closed parenthesis with a bit of unfathomable space in between?"...more
Birth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.
Birth, death, war, grief, abortion, trauma, abuse, bottled-up violence, domestic cBirth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.
Birth, death, war, grief, abortion, trauma, abuse, bottled-up violence, domestic claustrophobia. The emotional landscapes Louise Glück explores in in her 1968 debut collection are grim and desolate. Her poems evoke a dark and inhospitable world in which tension, friction, absence, loss, hopelessness define life and relationships . Raw, stern, often angry and unheimlich, Firstborn is a collection on which she herself tried to look back “with embarrassed tenderness”. Nonetheless, thinking of what I remember from reading some of her later collections (Meadowlands, Averno, Winter Recipes from the Collective), I have the impression some of those later themes, motifs (flowers, stars, mythology, the natural world) and moods are incipient in these early poems, which lean more on the use of rhyme than the later poems. Many lines of the poems didn’t disclose themselves yet when reading them for a first time. Hopefully, when continuing to read my way chronologically through her oeuvre this year, more light will shine through their opacity and further insights will grow.
Some of the poems that spoke to me most: .
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Late snow Seven years I watched the next-door Lady stroll her empty mate. One May he turned his head to see A chrysalis give forth its kleenex creature:
He’d forgotten what they were. But pleasant days she Walked him up and down. And crooned to him. He gurgled from his wheelchair, finally
Dying last Fall. I think the birds came Back too soon this year. The slugs Have been extinguished by a snow. Still, all the same,
She wasn’t young herself. It must have hurt her legs To push his weight that way. A late snow hugs The robins’ tree. I saw it come. The mama withers on her eggs.
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Cottonmouth Country
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras. And there were other signs That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us By land: among the pines An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss Reared in the polluted air. Birth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.
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Firstborn The weeks go by. I shelve them, They are all the same, like peeled soup cans… Beans sour in their pot. I watch the lone onion Floating like Ophelia, caked with grease: You listless, fidget with the spoon. What now? You miss my care? Your yard ripens To a ward of roses, like a year ago when staff nuns Wheeled me down the aisle… You couldn’t look. I saw Converted love, your son, Drooling under glass, starving... We are eating well. Today my meatman turns his trained knife On veal, your favorite. I pay with my life....more
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