Chapbook-sized, 15 poems strong. Well, maybe not strong, but it clearly did some push-ups. The type deal where no single poem sings, start to finish, Chapbook-sized, 15 poems strong. Well, maybe not strong, but it clearly did some push-ups. The type deal where no single poem sings, start to finish, but certain lines hit the high notes clear and true....more
One good thing about being a Christmas Eve family is that you get a lot of reading done on Christmas Day. In between phone calls. Of people wishing yoOne good thing about being a Christmas Eve family is that you get a lot of reading done on Christmas Day. In between phone calls. Of people wishing you a Merry Christmas, at least half of them in isolation because they've been exposed to SOMEone in the past five days with Covid.
Sic semper Ho, ho, ho. Enter stage left Co, co co.
I'll remember Do-Over for rather inconsequential things. First and foremost, being read over the second pandemic Christmas. Second, its generous variety. It contains sprawling poems that use white space like an Island-of-Misfit toy, acrostic poems, prose poems, a 10-page narrative, free verse work, very short and very long poems. Something for everyone.
One theme that stands out is death. And spirits you can visit (or who can visit you). Which reminds one that Christmas USED to be associated with spooky tales, the most familiar remnant being Chuck Dickens' A Christmas Carol, where bad guys live goodily ever after.
I can't say I was wowed by Ossip's work, but it was "interesting" and "different," two words that are "big tent" because they say so many things at once, some of them conflicting. Also, I'm not star rating this because it gets confusing when I can't tell if it's the poet or the reader (me) who is all over the place. Pick a constellation, any constellation. Or star gaze for yourself.
For a taste of Ossip's work, I'll give you the first five of 20 stanzas in her poem "What Is Death." If you want it all, simply Duck Duck Go the words "What Is Death At Length" (At Length being the name of the magazine I've never heard of).
What is Death (partial) by Kathleen Ossip
1.
In Hartsdale, home of America’s first canine pet cemetery and the world’s first Carvel ice cream store, once home to
the Weckquaesgeeks, sub-tribe of the Algonquins, whose name means “place of the bark kettle,” which kettle appears on the town
seal today, one of the few communities surrounding New York City that still has two working farms, both on
2.
Secor Road, not far from Homewood Road, where a window cleaner drips clorox onto her house–she
dies, not at all like Lazarus. A house full of beloved objects, a house where no dinner party
ends without whipped cream. When death comes it’s big and tastes like the beach. The contractor tells her he can’t fix the stain.
3.
Death is something you can add to every day. The drool spot. Neglect of hair nails teeth.
In the living room: antique marble collection, antique rattle collection, antique postcard collection, antique rosewood piano, Chinese rug in gold and green, stack of
books by friends and family, photographs of friends and family, papier mâché mask made by her daughter in fourth grade, something you can add to every day.
4.
In Hartsdale, there’s a stone in the wheeling snow. Which is the nearest thing to wisdom. Spirit, like an arrow, speeds up when it nears the target.
Her spirit, whisked to the corner, where the audience left it. Death
a will dissolves. A jump past the dread of severance. No new purchases now.
5.
My first time in Hartsdale, I thought, “This is the nicest house I’ve ever seen.” The audience quits the spirit,
a door, a wing, a billow, or a slight peeling. In Hartsdale, there are wood and smelting materials to make nails.
There are hammers and saws and electricity to run them. There is the Lone Guard who still stands, arms to the side.......more
This is a tough one to judge, as it offers some pretty good poems and lines, on the one hand, and some pretty alarmingly self-indulgent stuff on the oThis is a tough one to judge, as it offers some pretty good poems and lines, on the one hand, and some pretty alarmingly self-indulgent stuff on the other hand. It's biggest claim to fame would be the title poem, "Love," a list poem sprawling out across 10 pages. Supposedly Alex continues to add to it on Twitter, but what would I know? I am Twitter- (and Facebook-) free.
Criticizing a poet for being "self-indulgent" is dicey business when you consider that a lot of 1st-person POV poems could be classified as such. I'll try to draw the line by putting it this way: If you write about yourself, but it reminds your readers of THEMselves, it's not self-indulgent. But if a reader reads your poem and keeps thinking, "Man, this guy is really wrapped up in himself," it's not good, whether it's vain or neurotic or whatever. When that happens, the reader is more aware of the writer than of the writer's words and how they relate to him- or herself.
"Love" was chosen by Tracy K. Smith as for the yearly Best Poems Anthology. I'll offer it's opening, as a for example:
I love you early in the morning and it’s difficult to love you.
I love the January sky and knowing it will change although unlike us.
I love watching people read.
I love photo booths.
I love midnight.
I love writing letters and this is my letter. To the world that never wrote to me.
I love snow and briefly.
I love the first minutes in a warm room after stepping out of the cold.
I love my twenties and want them back every day.
I love time.
I love people.
I love people and my time away from them the most.
I love the part of my desk that’s darkened by my elbows.
I love feeling nothing but relief during the chorus of a song.
I love space.
I love every planet.
I love the big unknowns but need to know who called or wrote, who’s coming—if they want the same things I do, if they want much less.
I love not loving Valentine’s Day.
I love how February is the shortest month.
I love that Barack Obama was president.
I love the quick, charged time between two people smoking a cigarette outside a bar.
I love everyone on Friday night.
I love New York City.
I love New York City a lot.
I love that day in childhood when I thought I was someone else.
I love wondering how animals perceive our daily failures.
I love the lines in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when Brick’s father says “Life is important. There’s nothing else to hold onto.”
I love Brick.
I love that we can fail at love and continue to live.
I love writing this and not knowing what I’ll love next.
I love looking at paintings and being reminded I am alive.
I love Turner’s paintings and the sublime.
I love the coming of spring even in the most withholding March.
I love skipping anything casual—“hi, how are you, it’s been forever”—and getting straight to the center of pain. Or happiness.
I love opening a window in a room.
I love the feeling of possibility by the end of the first cup of coffee.
I love hearing anyone listen to Nina Simone...
And so the readers think, "I love that, too!" or "That's interesting!" It works better than a series of poems where Alex dwells on his penchant for crying in public. Now we're in a niche group, I guess. Maybe a niche called Alex Dimitrov.
For instance, take the petulance of "For the Critics":
No, you never got me. No, I don't think that you ever did. When I walk into a bodega and buy cigarettes and ice cream, blueberries and Diet Coke, all so I can cry with real enthusiasm and with feeling, just as soon as I can make it home -- that's called performance art. That's performance art, you fucks.
I dunno. Kind of self-created Teflon for anyone daring to call your stuff solipsistic and childish, no? And I'm not sure how a reader could identify -- even a reader who writes and has felt the sting of criticism (read: every writer out there).
Or this, from the middle of "A True Account of Talking to the Moon at Fire Island" (a take on Frank O'Hara's poem of the same title, inserting "Sun" for "Moon"):
"...This was the moon! Talking to me. Flirting even! The moon was proving every single grant organization wrong, the total of grants I've received in my entire life being zero..."
I could say, "Who cares whether you've been granted a grant or not. Is that poetry?" Or I could say, "Cry me a river. I'm reading a collection of yours accepted and published by Copper Canyon Press, one of the premier poetry publishers in the country. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"
But I'll say neither. Instead, I'll focus on the enjoyable drift of pages called "Love" and a few other good turns, too. Alex Dimitrov is a talented poet. He just gets in his own way now and then. There are worse problems. ...more
Some people read plague slash pandemic slash biological warfare books during Covid just because. And some people don't read plague slash pandemic slasSome people read plague slash pandemic slash biological warfare books during Covid just because. And some people don't read plague slash pandemic slash biological books during Covid just because.
I belong to neither group, really. This one just so happens. And I just so happen to like Camus, though I must say it wasn't exactly ho-ho-ho timing reading it into the week before Christmas. Especially the second Christmas to be rained upon by Covid. In a big way. When there was brief hope the Greek letters might all go away.
Anyway, Camus' book offers similarities and differences to the front page of our newspapers. His plague is Black Death Redux complete with buboes (you'll remember them from school) and an opening act featuring rats. So that's different. And really, it seems the plague bedevils only a town in Algeria here. So it's close the gates so no one gets out and no one gets in. Read it and weep your Wuhan tears, then. And if you try to get out of Dodge, you get shot. Though I don't think there are more guns than people. That's a plague of another sort.
Still, a lot rings depressingly familiar. The reactions of people, chiefly. Depression, anger, resistance, cooperation, selfishness, empathy. Strangely, no masks or even Medieval bird beaks. How the good doctor/narrator makes so many house calls and survives is beyond me. All in the name of narration, I guess.
Some people manage to profit off of this plague. Prices go haywire, as disease puts the "in" to "inflation." People are separated, at least. Quarantine. And those who manage to flee, even illegally, Decameron-like (there's no telling if there are funny tales or not, though... as I said, it's the doctor's tale here...no Pardoner's in sight).
Camus inserts some philosophical and political flourishes, too. That's why there's a priest in the book. A priest with a sermon that doctors happen to have time to listen to. And a character who gives us a nice harangue against capital punishment, complete with the tidbit that firing squads stand two steps from their victims and fire at the heart, creating a hole for the ages (where the criminal, guilty or not, will spend a long time now).
Existential? I'll say. Men forging their own codes against a disease that will not quit. One that plays no favorites. One that can be random and fickle. One that is personified for full effect.
So edifying, yes. And keeps Camus high in my estimation. But grew a bit tough to finish, maybe because of me. Or the times. Or the un-holiday season. That I can't say. But it passes, and this Covid-19 (20, 21...), too, shall pass. Our only duty is to see it does before we do by doing as men and women do in this book -- fighting it together for the sake of all....more
I first met Mark Jarman's poetry in Rattle Magazine's poem-a-day emails. Liked him, sought out this book via inter-library loan, and learned more abouI first met Mark Jarman's poetry in Rattle Magazine's poem-a-day emails. Liked him, sought out this book via inter-library loan, and learned more about him. Chiefly, that he writes a lot of good stuff.
The only drawback is, the deeper you go into his career, the more he writes about Christianity. It's not overwhelming, though, and it's not like I oppose the topic -- I write about Christian symbols and throw around Christian allusions in my own poetry (how can you NOT after being brought up in the religion?). At times, he just goes deeper than I ever would, is all.
Still, he's a 4-star poet who you should know if you've never heard of him. And if you're interested in both poetry AND Christianity -- Kismet!
Below, from his book Questions for Ecclesiastes (great title!) is a representative poem. Generally I don't care for long poems and find narrative poems tricky in that they struggle between telling a story and meeting poetic obligations. This, I think, hits the sweet spot between the horns of that dilemma. See if you agree:
Ground Swell
Is nothing real but when I was fifteen, Going on sixteen, like a corny song? I see myself so clearly then, and painfully— Knees bleeding through my usher's uniform Behind the candy counter in the theater After a morning's surfing; paddling frantically To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me, Trundle me clumsily along the beach floor's Gravel and sand; my knees aching with salt. Is that all I have to write about? You write about the life that's vividest. And if that is your own, that is your subject. And if the years before and after sixteen Are colorless as salt and taste like sand— Return to those remembered chilly mornings, The light spreading like a great skin on the water, And the blue water scalloped with wind-ridges, And—what was it exactly?—that slow waiting When, to invigorate yourself, you peed Inside your bathing suit and felt the warmth Crawl all around your hips and thighs, And the first set rolled in and the water level Rose in expectancy, and the sun struck The water surface like a brassy palm, Flat and gonglike, and the wave face formed. Yes. But that was a summer so removed In time, so specially peculiar to my life, Why would I want to write about it again? There was a day or two when, paddling out, An older boy who had just graduated And grown a great blonde moustache, like a walrus, Skimmed past me like a smooth machine on the water, And said my name. I was so much younger, To be identified by one like him— The easy deference of a kind of god Who also went to church where I did—made me Reconsider my worth. I had been noticed. He soon was a small figure crossing waves, The shawling crest surrounding him with spray, Whiter than gull feathers. He had said my name Without scorn, just with a bit of surprise To notice me among those trying the big waves Of the morning break. His name is carved now On the black wall in Washington, the frozen wave That grievers cross to find a name or names. I knew him as I say I knew him, then, Which wasn't very well. My father preached His funeral. He came home in a bag That may have mixed in pieces of his squad. Yes, I can write about a lot of things Besides the summer that I turned sixteen. But that's my ground swell. I must start Where things began to happen and I knew it....more
A pithy collection of short (around 10 pages) religious and mostly philosophical musings centered around the theme of consolation. Of those I knew: JoA pithy collection of short (around 10 pages) religious and mostly philosophical musings centered around the theme of consolation. Of those I knew: Job, Paul (of Epistles fame), Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Boethius, El Greco, Montaigne, Hume, Marx, Lincoln, Mahler, Akhmatova, Primo Levi, Camus, and Haclav Havel. And those I didn't: Condorcet, Max Weber, Radnóti, and Cicely Saunders. Max Weber coined the term "Protestant work ethic," which I know well, being a product of one-time Calvinist New England.
If brief overviews are your thing, this neat little survey course of a book offers some relevant info and occasional new tidbits about people you know and love (like, in my case, Marcus Aurelius, Michel de Montaigne, and Abe Lincoln). Toward the end, as we hit more modern times in this chronologically-ordered collection, Ignatieff gets to insert himself a bit, too, with thoughts on the pandemic and on society's return to some bad habits from the 30s and 40's (the heyday of lies, racism, anti-immigration, purposely forgetting history, etc.). And though he doesn't mention Trump, he does mention Trump's master:
For example: "The last survivors of the Holocaust and Stalin's terror are dying, and what they endured is passing from memory into the contested domain of history, and from there, in the still more contested terrain of opinion. More and more people actually think they have a choice about whether to believe these things happened. The ruler of contemporary Russia, whose father worked for Stalin's killers, has made nostalgia for Stalin the official ideology of his regime. He has said the destruction of the Soviet empire was the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. Poor (Anna) Akhmatova -- one can only be glad that she died not knowing how faithless her heirs would be."
Reading the Camus chapter also kindled my desire to reread the read-long-ago book, The Plague. I love it when one book leads to another, like the shin bone leads to the ankle bone.
Quick, instructive, and rather light for deep material....more
If you've got serious health issues, breathing exercises may help in a small way, but they're not about to cure you. But what if you have nagging healIf you've got serious health issues, breathing exercises may help in a small way, but they're not about to cure you. But what if you have nagging health issues, the kind allopathic medicine can't really cure and really doesn't have time to dig into? In that case, breathing exercises might offer surprising relief.
Credit India, China, and Nepal of long ago. Hindus and Buddhists, chiefly. You know. The guys who practically stop their lungs from breathing or their hearts from beating or their skin from freezing even though they're "OM-ing" in the great outdoors, mid-winter.
But what about your lay-breather? You, me, the mail carrier? In that case, maybe slowing, speeding, holding (to the point of discomfort), or expanding your lung capacity might bring results. All it takes is... practice.
James Nestor has done a lot of practicing. For this book, he offered himself up for most every modern-day doctor, guru, and holy man alive -- all folks building on ancient knowledge and, in many cases, finding modern clues as to why the breathing techniques work. This, then, is the story of his journey.
Could it be your journey? And which breathing technique suits your problem best? I wasn't always clear on that, and descriptions of breathing techniques are no replacement for videos (better) and actual coaching with an expert (best).
Safe to say, though, that we all generally suck (see what I did there?) at the autonomic process of breathing. We should shut our mouths for starters. Always. Even exercising. And, if we don't have sleep apnea but do snore (check with your loved one or your dog), you might keep your unconscious self honest by trying "sleep tape" (it's on Amazon) over your mouth each night.
You see, the evolution of our heads has worked for us and against us. On the plus side, our skulls have made more room for our brains, even though you wouldn't know it reading exploits of your fellow men in the newspaper (many in positions of power). It's also evolved to make more room for the tongue and talking eloquently.
Big tongues don't help your breathing though. Nor does the continually shrinking mouth space overall. We overbreathe like we overeat. Sucking wind on the rapid, shallow breaths we've gotten used to. Often, unbeknownst to ourselves, sporadically holding our breaths.
Ideally, you see, your inhales should be 5.5 seconds followed by exhales of 5.5 seconds (5 or 6 are both acceptable). Try it, though, and you may find yourself breathless in quick order, like you need to "catch up" on your oxygen (pant, pant, shirt, shirt).
Speaking of big-letter O, did you know that CO2 is equally important to your well-being? (So if you feel like a plant sometimes, there's a scientific reason.) Sucking oxygen on the sidelines isn't really doing much for athletes, but hey, if THEY think so, let 'em mask up and gulp their wonder drug....
Ultimately, if you're too busy to think about your breathing, don't bother reading this. But if you're not too busy to think about it for, say, 10-20 minutes a day (practice!), give it a gander.
Or, as a shortcut because you care not about the details, you can take a tour of some of the breathing videos and excellent Q&A video interviews with pulmonary experts on Nestor's website by simply going to
This little book had all kinds of warning signals: 1. Author fresh off of a Nobel Prize for Literature (2020)
2. Top of the line publisher (Farrar, StraThis little book had all kinds of warning signals: 1. Author fresh off of a Nobel Prize for Literature (2020)
2. Top of the line publisher (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), hardcover, but only 42 pages long (er, short)
3. Money to be made before the fanfare begins to fare poorly, so let's rush this baby to press before Christmas.
4. Only 15 poems total, making it a chapbook in full poetry collection's clothing.
5. Poet + Name Recognition = a math equation seldom seen.
Despite the blaring sound and spinning red lights, though, I came out the other end (the journey was brief), ran back to START, and journeyed through a second time for enjoyment purposes.
Will wonders never cease. Sometimes books surprise even the cynical.
While the early poems, written in sections and a few pages long, read like fairy tales set in the Black Forest (Hansel, anybody? How about Gretel?), the book's cover and title signal we're far away from that. China, people. Han Shan-like.
These narrative poems don't seem terribly "poetic" so much as succinct (admittedly, being chary with words is in and of itself deemed "poetic") and read like prose paragraphs divvied up into lines and stanzas. I say that because some readers will "minus" you for such.
And the overriding theme is capital-D Death, anyway. Oh, wait. He doesn't do small-case d, does He? Whatever. Our umlauted author (and, for the sake of success and sales and being taken seriously, I'd like to buy an umlaut, Pat, for mine own poetic success... Ken Cräft) is "of an age" beginning to better see the dark at the end of the tunnel.
Most of the middle and end poems (can something this short have a "middle" and an "end") are pithy wonders with neat finishes. In some, the poem's speaker addresses her sister, apparently a comrade in arms (the embracing arms of old age). Here, though, the speaker focuses on Mom and long life:
Night Thoughts
Long ago I was born. There is no one alive anymore who remembers me as a baby. Was I a good baby? A bad? Except in my head that debate is now silenced forever. What constitutes a bad baby, I wondered. Colic, my mother said, which meant it cried a lot. What harm could there be in that? How hard it was to be alive, no wonder they all died. And how small I must have been, suspended in my mother, being patted by her approvingly. What a shame I became verbal, with no connection to that memory. My mother's love! All too soon I emerged my true self, robust but sour, like an alarm clock.
Inside Joke #1: "What a shame I became verbal." This from a poet of Nobel proportions and blaring alarms accompanying her new book. Inside Joke #2: If I submitted this poem to a critique group or a professor, I would have been called to task for the beginner's mistake of the line break (L4) after an orphaned indefinite pronoun ("A"). Nobel winners, fully alarmed, can do so with impunity, proving once again that the "rules" and the "experts" in poetry are full of ... oh, wait, this is a "family site"... let's go with "full of themselves," shall we?
Here's another for your amusement:
A Sentence
Everything has ended, I said. What makes you say so, my sister asked. Because, I said, if it has not ended, it will end soon which comes to the same thing. And if that is the case, there is no point in beginning so much as a sentence. But it is not the same, my sister said, this ending soon. There is a question left. It is a foolish question, I answered.
Again. Short and sweet. Almost anecdotal. Almost like a koan, with the speaker/master addressing her sister/student. Wry, too. Informed by long life and short remaining days. And again, the "no point in beginning / so much as a sentence" a bit of a writer's joke on herself.
Finally, I leave you with "Autumn," a favorite image for the twilight of life. Notice how these little stanzas are haiku-like in nature, fitting the book's topic, title, and themes. It's one of my favorites in this alarming book.
Autumn
The part of life devoted to contemplation was at odds with the part committed to action.
*
Fall was approaching. But I remember it was always approaching once school ended.
*
Life, my sister said, is like a torch passed now from the body to the mind. Sadly, she went on, the mind is not there to receive it.
*
The sun was setting. Ah, the torch, she said. It has gone out, I believe. Our best hope is that it's flickering, fort/da, fort/da, like little Ernst throwing his toy over the side of his crib and then pulling it back. It's too bad, she said, there are no children here. We could learn from them, as Freud did.
*
We would sometimes sit on benches outside the dining room. The smell of leaves burning.
Old people and fire, she said. Not a good thing They burn their houses down.
*
How heavy my mind is, filled with the past. Is there enough room for the world to penetrate? It must go somewhere, it cannot simply sit on the surface--
*
Stars gleaming over the water. The leaves piled, waiting to be lit.
*
Insight, my sister said. Now it is here. But hard to see in the darkness.
You must find your footing before you put your weight on it.
Take those last two lines as advice for the remainders of the day, friends. And say it again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow......more
"Books were banned, facts were banned, poets were banned, ideas were banned. It was an empire of lies. The lies -- the assault on language -- were the"Books were banned, facts were banned, poets were banned, ideas were banned. It was an empire of lies. The lies -- the assault on language -- were the necessary foundation for all the other assaults."
"The first victim of war is truth, goes the old saying, and a perpetual war against truth undergirds all authoritarianisms from the domestic to the global. After all, authoritarianism is itself, like eugenics, a kind of elitism premised on the idea that power should be distributed unequally."
Above all else, this book is about an author and authoritarianism. Its release this year couldn't be more appropriate, given the rise or enduring nature of authoritarians in Russia, China, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Turkey, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc. If any author is associated with anti-authoritarian sentiments, it is George Orwell (Eric Blair), whose name has become an overworked adjective, even, since 2016 and thanks to Jan. 6th, in the United States.
Speaking of the United States, this book ostensibly about Orwell and roses (he planted a garden, which became a metaphor for his love of the simple life, of our existence here as opposed to some afterlife, of his belief that privacy and truth and facts and language all meant something), also devotes a lot of attention to the simple act of lying. We consider it a child's fault that is best unlearned, but it is the preferred weapon of authoritarians who are far, far away from their childhoods.
"As withheld information, a lie is a sort of shield for the liar; as falsity it is a sword. It matters whether or not people believe the lies, but unbelievable lies wielded by those with power do their own damage. To be forced to live with the lies of the powerful is to be forced to live with your own lack of power over the narrative, which in the end can mean lack of power over anything at all. Authoritarians see truth and fact and history as a rival system they must defeat."
Proof positive that George Orwell, were he alive today, would be all over elected officials who are so-called defenders of the U.S. Constitution yet are busy rewriting the history of Jan. 6, 2021. In the vanguard, of course, is Trump, a man Solnit sees little point in mentioning until the final pages because a.) it's painfully obvious and b.) many writers have done so before her. And so she focuses on the likes of Joseph Stalin (a lemon guy vs. a rose guy), the Chinese government, and all other notorious controllers of past and present.
Words matter, as does propaganda. Thus Nineteen Eighty-Four and its exposé of the authoritarian playbook. Thus the warning bells sounding around us when we see the likes of Tucker Carlson and his Fox cronies on our television sets. Like the Soviets' ironically-named Pravda (Truth) of old, they are symptomatic of these 1930's-like times -- a time only helped by the pressures of the pandemic, of countries run by gangs and thugs using nationalism to make political hay over migrants seeking a better life, of a world quickly melting, burning, and drowning in its own climactic atrocities made in the name of power and greed.
In short, there could be no better time for lies and those who use it to gain and then retain power.
Though it is not a biography, the book offers readers a lot of information on George Orwell, his life, his politics, and his literary precepts. You will also learn a lot about roses, of all things. Solnit herself visits Columbia, where so many of the West's flowers come from in conditions not unlike the sweat shops feeding our hunger for cheap clothing.
In typical Solnit fashion, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone, and one essay's subject leads to another. But still, perhaps more than her other works, she remains rather disciplined here. Orwell. Orwellian. Truth. Lies. Even Silicon Valley. She refers to Internet giants and social networks (Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as another "superpower" gathering, controlling, and selectively distributing information (some facts, many lies) for profit -- all to a degree that authoritarian governments can only dream of and, in fact, seek to replicate for their own purposes.
More irony, isn't it? China blocking an episode of The Simpsons because it is unflattering to the ruling regime there. China and Russia seeking to control parts of the Internet because it rivals and can even surpass or contradict their own agendas. Thus we get an Internet that giveth and taketh away, depending on the country and its circumstances.
No wonder Orwell just wanted to grow a garden and go fishing. Alas, his conscience wouldn't let him. He had to write Nineteen Eighty-Four and many other books and essays as a warning. The only question now is, will he be heeded by the masses, or must they learn the hard way like their mid-Twentieth century predecessors?
As Orwell is mostly known for a book, I'd say the odds are stacked against him and in favor of much easier to assimilate and mimic sound bites, misinformation, Internet echo chambers, and lies from politicians who love TV for its friendliness to and facility for liars....more
I've read two other Kevin Young collections, Book of Hours: Poems and Brown: Poems. Here's an unexpected advantage to using Goodreads: Looking back onI've read two other Kevin Young collections, Book of Hours: Poems and Brown: Poems. Here's an unexpected advantage to using Goodreads: Looking back on past reviews, you see trends.
Examples? In one I complained about the profusion of extremely short lines (usually 3-5 words). In other I noted a section of the book that was exclusively short-lined tercets.
Ah. Two observations that feed THIS review. Except for one, single-stanza'd list poem, this entire new collection of Young's is the poetry of tercets, occasionally with a single-lined finish. In all cases, too, the middle line is indented two tabs.
Young knows what he likes and likes what he knows, so for that he goes. Lots of random (not formal) rhyming and slant rhyming too. But again, no designs.
The trouble? The constant diet of same old, same old leavened his work with monotony. Not a great thing. Some enjoyable poems here, to be sure, but a lot of take-it-or-leave-it as well.
Beautiful artwork on the cover. Hardback, as you'd expect from a veteran hand who happens to be a professor and the poetry editor at The New Yorker (raises hand to ask where he finds time in a day).
Here's a poem I enjoyed in the collection that appeared in The Orion (note: you'll have to imagine the middle-lined indentations on second lines of the tercets as GR is not HTML friendly, except for a few limited tricks like "roll over" and, at times, "play dead"):
Egrets Kevin Young
Some say beauty may be the egret in the field
who follows after the cows sensing slaughter—
but I believe the soul is neither air nor water, not
this winged thing nor the cattle who moan
to make themselves known. Instead, the horses
standing almost fifteen hands high— like regret they come
most the time when called. Hungry, the greys eat
from your palm, tender-toothed— their surprising
plum-dark tongues flashing quick & rough as a match—
Cute start, with the dramatis personae led by Russian names, last characters being VARIOUS AMERICAN VILLAGERS.
We're in the Hudson Valley, escaping NYCCute start, with the dramatis personae led by Russian names, last characters being VARIOUS AMERICAN VILLAGERS.
We're in the Hudson Valley, escaping NYC at the advent of Covid. Sasha Senderovsky, writer whose better days are behind him, has purchased a country dacha (so to speak) that includes bungalows, little cabins that could.
Could house dramatis personae, that is -- two Korean-Americans, one Indian American, and a tough little Southern gal. Oh. And a mysterious actor somehow involved in negotiations around Sasha's TV screenplay.
Oddly, it works in a light entertainment kind of way. You get caught up in the personalities, the pastoral quaintness, the how-will-this-one-match-up-with-that-one of it all. Sasha and his wife Masha's kid, Natasha (I kid you not), is both adopted and eccentric -- the source of humor at times and of more common sense than the adults provide at other times.
There are references to Chekhov, specifically Uncle Vanya, but Chekhov this ain't. This is amusing fare with typical American (despite the Korean/Indian/Russian angles) obsessions -- sex, booze, and money.
It is also self-consciously designed to be the first important pandemic novel. This means people wear masks, wash down every object touched (remember?), act hyper about contact.
As if. Contact will have its way and Covid fatigue, which could bring down the Roman Empire, will have its way as well. To varying degrees, guards are let down.
Alas, around 70 pp. before the book's end, everything stalls. It is as if Shteyngart has used up all his chits early. It gets claustrophobic, repetitive, and at times boring. It also, bizarrely, indulges in way too much flashback at the wrong time -- almost as if the background info, usually tolerated up front in a book, got lost and started to explain itself at the end.
In summary, the "Wonder what will happen next?" element winds up on life support. I regret to say it doesn't quite make it to the finish line. This baby limps home. This promise ultimately reneges.
Not bad, as contemporary novels go, but not a must-read by any means. Nor does it say anything meaningful about Covid. The pandemic is just "out there," kind of like it is for us outside our windows right now -- one big unentertaining presence outstaying its welcome....more
If you like Huck Finn, you might like this Tim Winton outing. Might.
I'm in the vanguard of Huck's fan club, but was only OK with this book. Like Huck,If you like Huck Finn, you might like this Tim Winton outing. Might.
I'm in the vanguard of Huck's fan club, but was only OK with this book. Like Huck, it starts out with a kid escaping a drunken father, only now we're in Australia's Outback (pass the bloomin' onion) instead of on the Mississippi.
You get used to the heavy dialect quickly, chiefly with Australian slanguage and the pronoun "Me" as subjects of sentences (reminding one of Ireland). It's slow going out of the gate, though, taking nearly 100 pages of bushwhacking before our hero, Jaxie Clackton, comes in contact with another human during his flight.
The contact is a man with a mystery. An Irishman named Fintan MacGillis. Having two characters instead of one (think Huck & the older Jim) creates greater narrative interest. It is here that the book finally takes traction.
That said, though the ending reached high to make a greater point about the neglected, lonely, and unloved boy, the trappings of the finale seemed a bit "off" for some reason, leading me to give this a 3.5 out of 5.
You might like it, then, if you're into survival stories, coming-of-age stories, and, well, Australia. I preferred the first Winton I read, however: Breath....more
The 2020 winner of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Chapbook contest, Bright Glint Gone offers a collection of poems that revel in wordplay, meThe 2020 winner of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Chapbook contest, Bright Glint Gone offers a collection of poems that revel in wordplay, metaphor, and personification. But you might not notice that so much because you're too caught up in the voice of a young woman navigating the world of life and death, love and sadness, wistfulness and wisdom.
For example, the poem "Truism" seems scripted by the 2020 presidential election. It should be taped to the well-used mirror of a certain Orange Creature in Maro Lago for daily reflection (he could have someone read it to him):
Truisms
A lie, no matter how many times we tell it, is not truth. A lie repeated is a secondhand lie. A lie a million people believe is a popular lie. A lie we forget is a lie is a delusion. A lie someone powerful wishes were true is a well-funded lie, not a well-founded truth. We can't vote a lie true. We can't overturn the truth. The truth does not require our support to be true. It can hold itself up. It stands tall before us even now, even as we refuse to see it.
Langlois shows her all-too human side often in these works. "Sleepless" tells the always unique yet always familiar story of love gone wrong and lovers being the last to accept those wrongs. It also gives the chapbook its title. Listen in:
Sleepless
He is a fistful of gravel thrown at my bedroom window--a blinding lamp left burning on the nightstand,
a hand that keeps dragging me back from the threshold of sleep only to dissolve the moment
my senses are crisp enough to distinguish between a wish and his skin against mine.
I know the sting of his name will eventually fade, but now it leaves me tender as a bruise,
and here it is, that trickle of forgiveness--a grayed rope I shouldn't reach for, but do.
My friends roll their eyes, his name a lie they've grown tired of, a poorly told story. Still, it fevers my tongue,
a glowing coal I keep dropping into conversations to watch the ripples spread as it sinks into the past-- its bright glint already gone.
Finally, Langlois is willing to "break" certain unwritten rules in poetry, like Thou Shalt Not Write about Dead Pets. It's a cliché trap if ever there was one, which marks her bravery all the more as she writes this elegy for a lost best friend:
Elegy for a Dog
The creature I loved has been unmade. Every part of her, down to her whiskers, vanished from the planet.
I miss her song--the way she'd point her muzzle at the ceiling, turn her black lips into an O, and pour a moan through it.
Today I learned all the things I can do while howling. I can stand up or lie down. I can rock back and forth on my haunches, tip my head back and empty my throat.
Still, the open grave in my chest holds her body and wishes itself a cradle. The last time I put my hands on her belly I felt it swell with a grief about to be born, her body a honeycomb filled with rot --all that sweetness wasted.
I think of the words I tried to teacher her: sit, lie down, sing, stay, stay, stay, stay.
All in all, a dense and rich collection worthy of reading, then rereading because you want to stay....more
Every once in a while, I need a little "history repeats itself" by reading some history. Hey, better me repeating history than our fraught times, I fiEvery once in a while, I need a little "history repeats itself" by reading some history. Hey, better me repeating history than our fraught times, I figure.
Often I'll dive into known entities so I can learn more about them -- like when I read about the Founding Fathers (who are now "Foundering" Fathers if they have spirits and if they're watching our country as it heads toward a Niagara-like Fascist Falls consumed by the white water of gerrymandering and voter suppression). But sometimes I choose history that, no matter WHEN it went down, is news to me.
Danish Expedition? 1761 to 1767? And where on earth is "Arabia Felix" (translates to "Happy Arabia")? The simple answer to the latter is Yemen, at the bottom of the Arabian peninsula.
To the rest, you only need know this. In the 18th century, Denmark was a player. We tend to associate ships and explorers with France and Spain and, of course, Jolly Olde, but hey, the Danes were in the mix, too, in this case thanks to the purse strings of Frederick V. (On a side note, the Danes also were complicit when it came to Europe's role in the West Indian slave trade.)
On the bright side, though, this was the Age of Enlightenment. Science was all the rage. Countries competed with each other to discover not only new things but to glean new knowledge about old things -- especially if those things tied in with ancient history and Biblical times.
Science? Revered?
Knowledge? Praised above all else?
Truth? An actual "thing"?
Yes, my friends. Such times once existed. Pre-24 hour cable. Pre-propaganda channels masquerading as "cable news." Pre-Facebook and Pre-Twitter and Pre-Pick-a-Social-Network-ANY-Social Network.
The original five going on this journey were not all Danes. Two were, two were German, and one was a Swede. On the roll call, they were listed under the categories of "Philologus," "Physicus and Botanicus," "Mathematicus and Astronomus", "Medicus and Physicus," and "artist and engraver."
They were to translate new texts, crack old languages, take samples of exotic plant-life and fish and whatever else could be sent back, AND answer a huge list of questions sent along by scientists who were not lucky enough (or UNlucky enough) to go on this trip.
The troubles with this expedition were many, but therein lies the impetus for reading. First, egos. Second, personalities. Throw in a dash of nationalism. How about the competitive spirit? Can I interest you in some small-mindedness? You wouldn't expect "cliques" to form in a group so small, but you need only recall your school days to reassure yourself that, YES, division is not just a thing in math class.
And that was just the group. From the outside we get the usual culprits. Weather. Disease. Climate. Add human nature as seen in the people they meet along the way in Turkey and Egypt and Yemen (to name but a few spots). Enter, stage left, superstition. Enter, stage right, religion.
The hero of the bunch is the least assuming -- Carsten Niebuhr, the math and astronomy man whose astrolabe mapped out areas never reliably mapped before. He also foreshadows Lawrence of Arabia when he "disappears" from European radar by becoming an Arab named Abdullah. It's a lot easier to get work done when the natives don't much notice you. (Kind of like being an old person like me!)
But what's most interesting is the role of Chance. It rules over all. On any given day we could get up and leave home in our car at just the wrong time such that we meet up with another motorist whom Fate has chosen to collide with us.
And then there are the "deep breath" close calls. The times when Fate smiles on us. The times when we are Chance's darlings. Dodging bullets. Using up "cat lives."
All this works as much for expeditions as it does for individuals, for what is an expedition but a group of individuals who sometimes go down or meet success as a group and other times do the same due to personal decisions?
As the early portion of the book is all preparation and commentary on the group being assembled, it's a slow start. Once the ship sails, though, the reading does, too. And Hansen is anything but a dry chronicler. At times witty and wise, at times descriptive and perceptive, he quickly assures readers that they are in good hands.
Plus, the cover is pretty. And colorful. And expeditious.
Recommended for history buffs and fans of (shout it loud and proud!) science....more
Six degrees of separation. Books play the game too. Specifically the books you read, which seem to know each other or relate to each other in unexpectSix degrees of separation. Books play the game too. Specifically the books you read, which seem to know each other or relate to each other in unexpected ways or at least to have seen each other once in the subway (each peeking at the other’s cover, trying not to judge or feel jealous).
WIth apologies to Kevin Bacon, I thought of that while reading Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. The first Mishima I read, Spring Snow, was done while bedridden for a week with the flu (the only time I can recall getting the flu -- by that, I mean the more innocent version from more innocent times).
The time and place made that book memorable. This one, too, won’t be easily forgotten. Based on a real-life event in 1950 Japan, it takes a deep dive into the psychology of a twisted teenager who stutters and whose best “friend” is another twisted teenager who has club feet. Roll this Dostoevskian gunpowder with the structure and strictures of Zen Buddhism. Lay it at the feet of a temple that is hundreds of years old -- the titular Golden Pavilion which, thanks to Mishima’s facility with description, looms as the largest character of all -- and you get a compelling train wreck in the making (or in “slow motion,” thanks to the page-turning).
Which brings me back to connections. A while back I read a book (Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping) about modern-day writing workshops in college settings. Seems remote to Mishima, I admit, but the author, Matthew Salesses, argued that our literary tastes are often uninformed prejudices of a provincial sort. One example he provided? Coincidences.
Guilty as charged, I admit to feeling the old annoyance to coincidences while reading this. Again and again, the anti-hero (sorry, but I’m on Team Pavilion) sees characters from afar, only to bump into them again close-up later in the narrative. One of Salesses' points was that, in Eastern traditions, coincidence is not a weakness, it is a tradition. Meanwhile, the Western reader is working himself up about suspensions of disbelief (a meal laid on the table by Aristotle, later hosted by Coleridge and many others). Said reader complains that too much coincidence throws the game board off a book's table, ruining everything.
And so it was that I told myself to relax and take a deep breath, leaning in to this connection, seeing this supposed weakness as a strength, as an example of a Japanese writer being quintessentially Japanese.
Then there was the scene where our protagonist meets a rather delightful prostitute. I kept thinking of another lost youth, Holden Caulfield, and his experience with a young hooker named Sunny (I think her name was). I kept wondering if Salinger had called Mishima up (Holden always wanted to phone authors he liked), or at least if J.D. had read Mishima’s book. Stands to reason, considering Salinger’s well-documented fascination with Buddhism.
The third connection came when I kept thinking of all the Buddhist-related books I’ve read. Consider Thich Nhat Hanh's massive output, for instance. Buddhism in such a pure light. The religion that isn’t a religion (really). The gentleness, passiveness, peacefulness.
All of these books were like paper ships tossing on the high seas of Mishima’s disruptive narrative. Violence toward a kitten as a koan of consequence. A Buddhist Superior who likes his liquor and loves his ladies. A protagonist who is an acolyte of Doom.
But really, what won me over more than anything was the descriptive writing that brought the temple and the pond around it and the shadows within it to life. It kept shifting. It kept looming even when out of sight. It kept messing with the protagonist's head in all the right ways, like a psychologist trying to salvage something from the Prince of Nothingness -- or of nihilism, a word that kept coming to mind, leading Kevin Bacon to whisper something about Bazarov in Ivan Turgenev's Fathers & Sons. (Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.)
And in the end, a special irony, wherein Mishima uses something as inconsequential as a cigarette close up -- foreshadowed, coincidentally, in an earlier incident where a student sneaks a smoke in the distance -- to make a simply profound (profoundly simple?) statement about the protagonist.
That part reminded me not of other books, but of modern headlines in newspapers. Agents of destruction who forgive themselves for the deeds they've done. The cult of Self that doesn’t seem to recognize itself. You know. The thing Buddhists warn us about but, in this case, that goes unheeded.
In the end, my closed Western mind, crying for justice, was a bit uncomfortable and unsatisfied, but the opening, yet young Eastern mind was sated. Or at least learning to be sated, thanks to degrees of separation. Separation from its own literary background, upbringing, and prejudices....more
Seafaring books bring out the Robert Louis Stevenson in me.
No, not the writer part of RLS. The reader one. The kid who's sick in bed (see Child's GarSeafaring books bring out the Robert Louis Stevenson in me.
No, not the writer part of RLS. The reader one. The kid who's sick in bed (see Child's Garden of Verses) reading tales of derring-do (and don't), of Conradian typhoons at sea, and of Bounty-ful mutinies.
All here, in one of those books best picked up when you're in the reading doldrums and need a page-turning "pick me up" to set you right.
That's the good news. The bad news? It's unlikely to be found in your local library (or the interlibrary loan network, for that matter) as it is written by the Norwegian Jens Bjorneboe. In 1974, yet (it reads like it was written in 1874 -- a feat unto itself).
As for the title, a bit of a misnomer. OK, yeah. There's a chapter or two with sharks (including one particularly shiny one called "Mr. Wonderful") circling the boat, but really they play a bit part. This is at heart an adventure book. And a psychological one. And a social commentary one.
Why? Because it's the turn of the 20th century and a few of the ship's hands can read. Read Karl Marx, that is, and if there's one thing a British bark run by strict British military rules (a caste system of sorts) doesn't need, it's people preaching Marx on the main.
Really, though, it's the narrator that clinches it. Ex-teacher Peder Jensen is 33 (same age as Christ at his time of death, I noticed) is second mate and first narrator. He's surrounded by some interesting characters, especially among the officers.
An interesting crew, too, including one sailor whose brother was killed on another ship by this ship (the Neptune's) present captain. And a cannibal (shades of Queequeg!). And a holy man or two. And a Chinese cook who packs cooking knives and a killer knife.
Trouble Bruin, as they say of hungry bears!
Jensen, though an atheist, is a humanist first and foremost, a caring man, a well-read man who plays violin, and a thinker. His head is with the officers but his heart is with the crew. Too bad the crew would have his heart if they could (for lunch, as they are fed much less, both in quantity and quality, than the officers).
He is also the "doctor" (or one who knows enough to play one) tasked with mending one man after another as fights break out among the crew's gangs. This doesn't win him any sympathy, mind you, but it brings interesting contrasts to the fore having a man tend to some of his sworn enemies.
As with any mutiny on the high seas book, you'll want to know what's going down (other than the ship, I mean). You WILL have to be a seawolf, though. Only one woman aboard -- the captain's wife -- and hers is a bit part. Other than that, it's Y chromosomes at each other's throats, a mishmash of testosterone from a crew that'd make the U.N. proud.
Another interesting angle? Though it's 1899/1900, Jensen talks at length about Neptune, God of the Sea -- his bloodlines, temperament, appearance. Neptune even makes a cameo in one of Jensen's dreams (hint to Hollywood: He's not muscular but rather ordinary looking, covered with seaweed and mussels as bling). In short, Jensen loves the ship by the god's name, but has little use for the god himself. Or the sea, for that matter. He fears it, even as he embraces a life on it.
This is Bjorneboe's last book, they say (he died two years later). Probably I'll read up on him, learn more about him, and maybe even read more of his books.
Why is it that so many older works by Black authors read "just like today"? Maybe because the topic is often violence and racism and injustice. WelcomWhy is it that so many older works by Black authors read "just like today"? Maybe because the topic is often violence and racism and injustice. Welcome to America, where you can count on the wrong Groundhog Days to keep repeating.
Exhibit A is June Jordan's Passion, a collection of poems written between 1977 and 1980. A glance at a few titles says it all: "Letter to the Local Police," "Poem About Police Violence," "Poem About South African Women," "Rape Is Not a Poem," "Poem About My Rights," "The Song of Sojourner Truth."
If, like Viet Thanh Nguyen, you think poets and writers are obligated to write political work, this is your poet. Clearly Jordan sees the pen as a call to arms, a means of calling out injustice. But she's more than a current events or Black and feminist writer. As seen in the poem below, she could wield a sense of humor and an appreciation for the natural world, too.
Evidently Looking at the Moon Requires a Clean Place to Stand
The forest dwindling narrow and irregular to darken out the starlight on the ground where needle shadows signify the moon a harsh a horizontal blank that lays the land implicit to the movement of your body is the moon
You'd think I was lying to you if I described precisely how implicit to the feeling of your lips are luminous announcements of more mystery than Arizona more than just the imperturbable convictions of the cow
headfirst into a philosophy and
so sexy chewing up the grass
Nicole Sealey wrote the introduction to the return of this book, which includes a nonfiction piece called "For the Sake of a People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us." By that Jordan means you and me. Regular folk like good old Walt. People obliged to speak out no matter what their lot in life....more
This is one of those YA books that more adults than "YA's" will embrace. Why? Not much on plot, the lifeblood of popular YA fare. It's aces on writingThis is one of those YA books that more adults than "YA's" will embrace. Why? Not much on plot, the lifeblood of popular YA fare. It's aces on writing style and characterization, though, and it's what they call "sweet" in that the characters are so nice you want to believe they exist. And although it walks the property line of Hallmark Channel Lit., it never quite crosses it, for which we are grateful.
Let's start with a positive. As a writer, Zentner's all in with imagery. Here's a sampling of his writing style:
"I lie back on the sun-warm log. There are days when your heart is so filled with this world's beauty, it feels like holding too much of something in your hand. Days that taste like wild honey. This is one of them.
"When you grow up with ugliness and corruption, you surrender to beauty whenever and wherever you find it. You let it save you, if only for the time it take for a snowflake to melt on your tongue or for the sun to sink below the horizon to a wildfire of clouds. No matter what else might be troubling your mind."
And this:
"She rejoins us, her russet hair damp on her shoulders like autumn leaves stuck to a window after rain, smelling like fake Granny Smith apples and Ivory soap...
"It begins sprinkling, the muted notes sounding like someone trying to slowly and secretly open a plastic bag in a room full of sleeping people. The air grows dense with the shimmering perfume of rain, dewy honey suckle, and mown grass."
Bogs a bit in the middle and the ending's predictable, but still, did I mention how sweet and all-American these kids are? You'll want to adopt them -- and their poetry teacher practically does (I guess you can get away with this in private schools, but have my doubts).
Speaking of, the protagonist, an east Tennessee kid named Cash (yes, yes -- after Johnny) who doesn't know he's in love with his best friend, the scientifically brilliant Delaney, becomes a poet himself along the long and winding way. Props to Zentner for giving air-starved poetry some life, then! And for letting the twosome go to a private school in Connecticut without any Connecticut stereotypes. (Zentner's only mess-up is referring to a "New England accent," as if such a single thing exists.)
Anyhoo, long time no YA. It's good to get one in among all the other books....more
Sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but if we were to nominate a living, breathing possibilReady to try these words on for size?
Famous contemporary poet.
Sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but if we were to nominate a living, breathing possibility, Billy Collins might very well be your man.
The former United States Poet Laureate is poetry royalty (though DNA tests are not allowed in Poetry World). Sir Billy of Collins, I like to call him -- the author of more than one collection I’ve deemed inspiring.
Which is why I approached his recent 2020 release with some trepidation. For writers, fame is a double-edged sword. (Not that I wouldn’t fall on such a sword were it offered me!)
Expectations become the albatross. Does Collins meet them?
My verdict is a decided “somewhat.” At times his new poems read less like poetry and more like fireside chats or even (God save us) bad Dad jokes (wait… do we even need “bad” in that expression?).
There’s a lot of bourgeoisie to these poems, for one. Stories of a financially-comfortable, cosmopolitan traveler writing dispatches from Italy, Ireland, and lake-side cottages in Ontario. There’s even a seven-stanza poem called “Massage,” an ode to that luxury few but the well-to-do can afford (tip required) with any regularity. Stanza four is a two-lined clunker landing with these words: “While the right leg is being rubbed/the left leg is thinking I’m next.” (Dads reading this are allowed a chuckle.)
Stanza five is an improvement, if only for an interesting aside shared with the reader:
When I muttered sorry for dozing off, she said no worries. She only minded the crying, which more people do than you would think when they are touched.
I ask you: How sad is that?
Collins finds greatest success in the material that presently occupies him--mortality. The collection includes works with titles like “Walking My Seventy-Five-Year-Old Dog,” “Life Expectancy,” “She’s Gone,” “Cremation,” “My Funeral,” “Anniversary” (in this case, of a death), and “On the Deaths of Friends,” which includes this opening:
Either they just die or they get sick and die of the sickness or they get sick, recover, then die of something else, or they get sick, appear to recover, then die of the same thing, the sickness coming back to take another bite out of you in the forest of your final hours.
Aside from the pronoun jump from "they" to "you," this stanza, holds up thanks to its truths self-evident and ends on a solid note with the alliterative mix, “in the forest of your final hours.” It turns something scary (death) into something rather beautiful (hey, at least there's nice scenery!).
Even the poem “Vivace!” which sounds lively as hell (if Hell were in Italy and, according to Dante, it is), ends on a somber note with the line “for death is the magnetic north of poetry.” Hot, damn. I could have used this as one of the inscriptions in my new book Reincarnation & Other Stimulants (end gratuitous plug of my book in the middle of reviewing someone else's book).
Overall, some vintage Collins here, diluted heavily by the weighty elixir of expectations -- the type thing famous poets not only get away with but get paid for. If you’re seeking the likes of “The Lanyard,” “On Turning Ten,” and “Only Child,” -- poems about childhood that are Collins métier, you’ll likely be disappointed.
Yes, he has one here called “My Father’s Office, John Street, New York City, 1953,” which starts off wonderfully but it eventually gets lost while overthinking its landing. Overall, then, it’s the mortality poems doing the lion’s share of propping up Billy by his reputation.
Read for that purpose if no other, then. There’s no reason to abandon Sir Billy of Collins, even if his armor isn’t exactly as shiny as it once was. You think getting old, traveling from Ireland to Italy, and getting weekly massages is easy?
It is equal parts amazing and sad that an essay on race is as relevant in 2021 as it was in 1963. One interesting tidbit: Baldwin mentions how Bobby KIt is equal parts amazing and sad that an essay on race is as relevant in 2021 as it was in 1963. One interesting tidbit: Baldwin mentions how Bobby Kennedy said a black man could be president in 40 years. Turns out, Kennedy was only four years off. What he could not have anticipated, however, was the backlash it caused, bringing us He Who Must Not Be Named (the Autocrat of the breakfast and every other table, who wants to dine on democracy -- permanently)....more
Loading...
