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The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 12+ hrs.
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The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand, narrated by Erin Bennett, is a rich person’s vacation but what anchors this weekend in reality is the relationships between these different women in Hollis Shaw’s life and the fractured relationship Shaw has with her daughter, Caroline. A tragic event widens the cracks in Hollis’ “Insta-worthy” life.

In the midst of her sadness, Hollis comes across a rejuvenating idea — the five-star weekend — in which you invite one friend from each of your “significant” stages of life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife. She invites her childhood friend and “sister” Tatum, her elitist college friend Dru-Ann, Brooke who went through pregnancy and childbirth with Hollis in her thirties, and Gigi who Hollis has met online through her website as they connect over tragedy.

Tragedy has a way of amplifying what is wrong in a family. Hilderbrand’s novel also reminds us that what we see of people’s lives online — social media, websites, etc. — is only a snapshot of happiest moments but not the reality of their whole lives. Hollis Shaw’s picture-perfect Nantucket/Bostonian life is no where near perfect, but neither are many of her other friends’ lives — lives she has done little to keep up with.

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand is a far deeper story than its dressings of high-end dinners, exclusive reservations, and sailing trips make it seem. These women are stronger because of their bonds, even if the have some wear and cracks. It’s the ability to overcome the slights and miscommunications of the past that ensure these women will be stronger into the future.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Remembering 9/11

(Photo credit: Lerone Pieters on Unsplash)

Sept. 11, 2001, was a journalist’s nightmare. Working in an office and waiting on copyedits from a client in New York City that day was not only surreal, but also devastating. Realizing that people you may have never met in person but worked with daily were no longer at the other end of your emails was horrifying.

I will never forget all of those colleagues lost. I will never forget the sadness. But I also remind myself that we cannot let hate win. We can pull together and let love guide us in recovery and moving forward together.

Take a moment today for silence and remembrance.

Mailbox Monday #747

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Emma, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell, borrowed from the library for the 12 books, 12 friends reading challenge. It will be my last book for the challenge.

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing.

He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, a member of Parliament―and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year-old girl without her father’s consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children, and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.

In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell embarks on a fleet-footed act of evangelism, showing us the many sides of Donne’s extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words, and his tempestuous Elizabethan times―unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living.

What did you receive?

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Source: Borrowed
Hardcover, 352 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto is just what you would expect it to be, especially given that fantastic cover. Vera Wong gets up at 4 a.m. every morning to start her day with texts to her adult son, Tilly, and to have her brisk walk before opening her “world famous” teahouse for business in San Francisco’s Chinatown. There are only two things wrong, she has just one customer, and the sign above the teahouse might just be misrepresenting the establishment as “Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse.” Her son, Tilbert, is less than pleased by this, but since she has few customers, he believes the likelihood that his mother will be sued by the real Vera Wang are small to none.

One morning, Vera finds a dead body in her teahouse, and because the police don’t provide her with the respect she believes she is due and don’t seem concerned with the murder, she takes it upon herself to investigate — complete with her little notebook of suspects.

“Vera’s murder investigation is going so well that she wonders why more people don’t just decide to leave their boring desk jobs and go into detective work. She’s started daydreaming of having the huge VERA WANG’S WORLD-FAMOUS TEAHOUSE sign taken down and replace with VERA WANG: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.” (pg. 85)

Her son, Tilly, is a lawyer, but since he rarely keeps in touch, he’s mostly unaware of Vera’s investigation, until of course she starts asking him some very specific hypothetical questions about evidence tampering. Along the way, she begins offering advice to all kinds of potential suspects in the Marshall Chen murder. Sana, Riki, Oliver, Julia, and Emma begin to circle in Vera’s orbit as the search for the killer continues, even as Officer Gray insists that Vera stay out of it.

Like Sutanto’s other books, you are in for a wild ride with some crazy antics. But you will love Vera Wong — she’s a mother/grandmother in search of purpose and with this group, she has a lot of work to do, including solving a murder. I highly recommend Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. If you read Aunties, you will love this one.

RATING: Cinquain

Other Reviews:

About the Author:

Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. She is currently living back in Jakarta on the same street as her parents and about seven hundred meddlesome aunties. When she’s not tearing out her hair over her latest WIP, she spends her time baking and playing FPS games. Oh, and also being a mom to her two kids.

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

Source: Borrowed
Hardcover, 352 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum was our August book club pick at work, and even though I had to miss the meeting for another meeting, I’m so glad I read this one. Deya is a high-school student in Brooklyn, N.Y., and her traditional Arab family from Palestine has her meeting with suitors before graduation, despite her hopes for a college education. To preserve their culture in which women are the silent backbone of the family, young women are married to men in their teens to have children and raise the next generation. Like her mother, Isra, Deya is expected to marry someone she barely knows and to start a family.

“A woman is no man,” is an oft repeated refrain from Deya’s grandmother. Told in alternating chapters by Isra and Deya, the narrative is threaded with the past of the grandmother, Fareeda, who also married young but was fortunate enough to flee Palestine after being evacuated to a refugee camp. Her strength is in her faith, but she also is the backbone of her family and the driving force behind their move to America. While both Deya and Isra see the move to America as a gateway to freedom and more opportunities, Fareeda sees it as something that must be guarded against because it will destroy their Arab culture. However, it is clear that Fareeda’s and Isra’s view of their culture stems from similarly abusive relationships with their fathers, and now husbands.

“…yet something about them seemed so American. What was it? Deya thought it was they way they spoke — their voices loud, or at least louder than hers. It was the way they stood confidently on the train, not apologizing for taking up the space.” (pg. 107)

The tension in this book is broken wide open by a family secret. For her entire life, Deya has been told her parents died in a car accident, but the truth will set them free in many ways, allowing a granddaughter and grandmother to bond, a daughter to understand her deceased mother better, and a daughter to have hope that her own hard-line mother may change.

Peeling back these layers chapter by chapter will slow the pace, but Rum’s narrative is this way to demonstrate the repetitive cultural oppression these women experience every day. As a modern reader outside the Palestinian culture, it will seem repetitive and unnecessary, but I would argue it is with purpose that Rum adopts this slower progression. We need to feel that pressure, that weight of oppression and constant restriction to understand how hard it would be to break free from it even as an American immigrant.

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum is an emotional roller coast, and it will have readers shouting at these women to take advantage of their freedom and run away. But when you leave all that you know, it leaves you bare to the harsh realities of being alone in an unfamiliar world. Which is better? Sticking with the devil you know, or striking out into the unknown? Rum has created a multi-layered story that looks at the oppressive nature of the Arab community and religious expectations and the lure of freedom with consequences.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a Masters of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Composition and teaches undergraduate courses in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. Etaf also runs the Instagram account @booksandbeans.

Mailbox Monday #746

Today is Labor Day in the United States. I hope you have time off from work, as it should be, and get in some reading time.

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Emma, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, narrated by Joseph Balderrama, purchased from Audible for my next book club pick at work.

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans – though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition”. Now, eating human meat – “special meat” – is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost – and what might still be saved.

What did you receive?

Guest Post: Being Intentional About the Objects in Your Story by Thushanthi Ponweera

Today, I have a guest post from Thushanthi Ponweera about her story I am Kavi, a novel-in-verse. Please check out what this book is about and stay for the guest post about being intentional.

Synopsis of the book:

In 1998’s Colombo, the Sri Lankan Civil War is raging, but everyday life must go on. At Kavi’s school, her friends talk about the Backstreet Boys, Shahrukh Khan, Leo & Kate… and who died—or didn’t—in the latest bombing. But Kavi is afraid of something even scarier than war. She fears that if her friends discover her secret—that she is not who she is pretending to be—they’ll stop talking to her. In an effort to fit in with her wealthy, glittering, and self-assured new classmates, Kavi begins telling lies, trading her old life—where she’s a poor girl whose mother has chosen a new husband over her daughter—for a new one, where she’s rich, loved, and wanted. But how long can you pretend to be someone else?

Doesn’t this sound fantastic? Please welcome Thushanthi Ponweera:

I first learned about being intentional about the objects and elements you write about in your story from Linda Sue Park at an online webinar. It was a new concept to me. I had already heard about not using too many secondary characters and about evaluating how much of a “main” character a main character is, but had I thought about all the background stuff? No. But after learning this nugget of wisdom, I started to think about it.

The basic idea is that everything you introduce to the reader has to have a purpose. I started combing through my draft of I Am Kavi with this in mind. The very first lines are about Jasmine flowers.

The Jasmine flowers glow incandescent
as they always do
eagerly looking for my outstretched hands.

So now I knew I had to weave in Jasmine flowers throughout the story. I started looking for places I could insert them in a meaningful way. At the beginning of the book Kavi is at home in the village of Anuradhapura. Plucking Jasmine flowers is the first thing she does each morning so that she can place them at the little altar of Lord Buddha in her house whom she worships daily. About one third into the story, she moves to Colombo and is obviously homesick. Yes!

Here was another place I could mention Jasmine, which had now become an important part of her life back home.

My nose is lonely.
It misses the sweet scent of Jasmine.

Of course, as she gets drawn into city life and is distracted by all the changes, her life back home – and with it the Jasmine flowers — is forgotten. It’s not till she’s back there in the last quarter of the book that I’m able to mention Jasmine again. This hopefully works as a signal to the reader and brings to life Kavi’s home and village setting. That was my intention!

The Jasmine blooms dot the darkness,
bright white on inky black,
their scent stronger than ever.

I’ve used other elements this way in the book too: the statue of Lord Buddha, a Kohomba tree, a bus, the temple, the full moon. When you are reading my book –and I really hope you do — keep an eye out for these and see if the repeated appearances help create stronger images and emotions. If it does, then I’ve been successful. And perhaps it will convince you to try it out in your next draft!

Thank you, Thushanthi Ponweera, for sharing these writing tips with us.

About the Author:

Thushanthi Ponweera is an author and poet from Sri Lanka. Before daring to follow her dream of being published, she was a marketing specialist and entrepreneur. Her writing reflects the frustration she feels at the inequality and injustice she sees around her and the deep love she has for her island home. Thushanthi recently moved to Qatar with her husband and two children. I Am Kavi is her first novel.

Mailbox Monday #745

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Emma, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto from the library.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.

Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.

What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?

The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell for my birthday from my mom.

On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend.

One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite place for long walks and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, “DIG HERE.”

Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?

“Utterly gripping with richly drawn, hugely compelling characters, this is a first-class thriller with heart” (Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author) that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

What did you receive?

What Follows by H.R. Webster

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 70 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

What Follows by H.R. Webster is a debut collection of poems that shed light on the darkness and the scars left in the wake of turbulence. The opening poem, “What Follows,” sets the tone immediately: “Every house I’ve ever lived in was filled with snakes./” and “The snakes I live with now leave/quieter marks.” (pg. 3)

These poems try to make sense of the darkness in the world, the men who catcall at every woman and the boys that love the danger of the flips and tumbles of the skate park. What follows that darkness, what’s left behind? Shame? Heartbreak? Desire? It’s not the harm or the dark emotions but the glimmer of light that remains, the hope of beauty and satisfaction. “Look at the stain/in the diamond. It’s not the thing itself,/but what’s left of the light that was swallowed./” (“Occlusion”, pg. 36)

What Follows by H.R. Webster explores the space in between the before and after trauma, reminding us that there is some light in the darkness. Her poems use language that doesn’t focus directly on the trauma. The poems state what the trauma isn’t, outlining the pain with pain that is easier to understand. Readers will learn so much in these poems, through the poet’s dark humor and explorations of deep desires and lashing out. It’s a deeply human collection that reflects on our darkest thoughts and feelings — many of which we bury deep.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Poet:

H.R. Webster has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her work has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, 32Poems, Muzzle, and Ecotone.

The Unempty Spaces Between by Louis Efron

Source: the poet
Paperback, 62 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

The Unempty Spaces Between by Louis Efron, which is on tour with Poetic Book Tours, is a debut poetry collection that brings readers on a journey of exploration in the natural world to find not empty spaces that must be filled, but spaces that have hidden treasures. In the opening poem, “Beautiful Trees,” readers are shown the dead branches and passed fruit and leaves that have yet to fall, but as the narrator takes us into the earth, we are shown how the rain seeps down and the roots have dug deep and continue to do so. It’s a living being beneath the surface of the earth and it is beautiful.

One of my favorite poems in the collection is “Empty Attics,” in which dusty items sit and wait in the dark forgotten places. Imagine all those souvenirs bought and hidden away, tarnishing in the darkness. “our treasures/memories unlit/by such neglected bulbs/still failing to see ourselves/illuminated/as dust settles again/on the balconies of our mind/” (pg.25) Here we see attics filled with trinkets and memory, but they are rarely accessed. Does this mean we are unknown? Are we in darkness even about ourselves? Efron is showing us the introspection he himself is engaged in through his poems, and on this journey with him, we are exploring the identities of ourselves.

Another poem that will capture the storyteller and listener in all of us is “Rooms Without Nightlights” as Efron takes us inside the dark bedrooms of our past and the fairytales we know by heart. He sheds light on the shadows that scared us from sleeping and kept us on edge in our basements. He asks us to leave those “ruffled sheets/to tend to their own ghosts” but also to be wary of the “inviting masks/fooled only by our children/framed on forbidden trading cards/in palmed devices.” Vigilance can be a tricky skill.

The Unempty Spaces Between by Louis Efron allows readers to fall into the cracks and explore the emotions of our childish nightmares against the backdrop of more adult concerns. In many ways, we are looking for ourselves in that darkness and seeking the truth of it before the door of finality closes on us. What is in those spaces between?

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Louis Efron is a poet and writer who has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, POETiCA REViEW, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Literary Yard, New Reader Magazine and over 100 other national and global publications. He is also the author of five books, including The Unempty Spaces Between, How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love; Purpose Meets Execution; Beyond the Ink; as well as the children’s book What Kind of Bee Can I Be?

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 272 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, is my 11th book for the 12 books recommended by 12 friends reading challenge, is a novel written with Greek mythology at its base, particularly the labyrinth and its connection to madness or mental health. In Clarke’s novel, Piranesi is given his name by the Other, the only other living person in the House, which is packed with giant statues and a maze of halls — some of which are flooded or partially flooded. From time to time, the main character is visited by birds and he fishes in certain halls for food when the tides are high. He’s a recordkeeper, tracking what’s in each hall and the tides. The Other, however, seems to have access to real-world supplies and knowledge, but relies on Piranesi to map the House for him as he continues his search for the secret knowledge.

This is a mysterious tale with slow reveals, and while clues are dropped along the way, readers may find they, too, are duped by the labyrinth. Who are these mysterious people and how do they have knowledge of the real world if they have only ever lived in the House. What is the point of all this record keeping and traipsing back and forth if there are only two people alive here? Why can they not simply live in one place together and be a society unto themselves? It is clear the relationship is not reciprocal and is lopsided in the power dynamic from the beginning.

The start of this book left a lot to be desired. It was a slow narrative that left me bored initially. I wasn’t interested in the characters for about 40 pages. However, once I got past that point, I started noticing some kernels of how this world was not necessarily real but an amalgamation of things from the real world and that it was not a post-apocalyptic world like I initially thought. Piranesi is the main protagonist and because he doesn’t initially have all of the information needed to unravel this House and its mysteries, neither does the reader. This can be tiresome, but ultimately, the novel revealed itself through a series of events and the dynamic with the Other was more intriguing and less sterile.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a book that can try your patience and it was not a beach read, which is what I was looking for last week. However, it was interesting to unravel the secrets of the labyrinth. It was more satisfying than I thought at the beginning. I’d recommend this for readers who like to think outside the box and who like mysteries where you are unraveling them with the protagonist.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959. A nomadic childhood was spent in towns in Northern England and Scotland. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and has worked in various areas of non-fiction publishing, including Gordon Fraser and Quarto. In 1990, she left London and went to Turin to teach English to stressed-out executives of the Fiat motor company. The following year she taught English in Bilbao.

She returned to England in 1992 and spent the rest of that year in County Durham, in a house that looked out over the North Sea. There she began working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, the novelist and reviewer Colin Greenland.

Guest Post: Heal Your Spirit with Poetry (and a Cup of Coffee) in 30 Seconds by Xueyan

Welcome to today’s guest post from Xueyan, author of the poetry collection Time Peels All to Original White.

Book Synopsis:

Xueyan, the young poet who explores the infinite will in her own free soul, forcefully expresses her original and powerful vision in ways that reinvent traditional concepts of spirituality and common culture.

With modern settings and contemporary language, topics include the sacred and eternal, the nature of God, the existence of evil, the brutality of capitalism, the loneliness of existence, the ecstasy of intimacy, and the ubiquitous reach of love.

The collection’s 139 concise and deeply spiritual poems lay bare humanity’s most jarring mysteries and contradictions, exposing their raw essence with startling simplicity in ways that transcend borders, cultures, races, and beliefs.

Please welcome Xueyan today as she shares with us the healing power of poetry:

A good poem is like a nice cup of coffee: the liquid may stay on your taste buds for a short time, but it can refresh your spirit for a long time. As a poet who enjoys writing sharp lines, I think reading poetry and drinking coffee together is a perfect combination of spiritual and physical pleasures.

There is a classic question that is asked throughout the ages and still there is no single answer to which everyone agrees: Is life beautiful?

Is life beautiful? Looking around the world, there is chaos, there is cruelty, there is crying. However, I still believe life is beautiful because I believe in the cleansing power of the heart. Even if you inhale hate and gloom, if you have a clean heart, you will exhale love and light.

In my own way, I’d love to offer 3 hacks for experiencing life’s healing beauty.

Let your imagination release hidden possibilities and care for overlooked things

As a poet, I enjoy depicting the elements of the universe in my own way, instead of searching for scientific explanations through those complex formulas filling science books as thick as bricks.

How to depict fog? Scientists probably would cite a list of data about water and temperature and the chemistry between them, but I would depict fog in a mysterious way.

Fog

Woods longing for water

Dewy dreams twine slumberland

How to depict the night sky? I am not fully aware of the theories of Galileo and Bruno and their illustrious successors. When I was a kid, for my breakfast, my mother would drop a yummy poached egg over hot tomato noodles. I enjoyed that dish so much, I decided to compare the night sky to a yummy egg.

Night Sky Is a Dark Egg

Yolk is shining

Whites are floating

Moon and cloud

The navel is probably the most overlooked part of our bodies; we care about our hair and our nails, we dye them with different colors. Nobody cares about the poor navel, regardless of the global truth that the umbilical cord nourished us when we were in our mother’s womb. As a poet, I want to sing an ode to the navel.

Soul and Star

Stars shoot into our bodies and become souls

Navels are meteorite craters

Embrace dark memories and transcend them into poetry

How can we know light without experiencing darkness? Do I have dark memories? If the phrase “dark memories” refers to suffering from war or famine, then I should feel lucky and say I don’t have dark memories. But if the phrase “dark memories” refers to sorrows which evoke tears, then I can share a little story of mine.

When I was a kid, I walked to primary school every day and, on the way, there was a small garbage station. One day after school, as I was walking past the garbage station as usual, I heard plaintive-like yelping emanating from a paper box lying just outside the station. I was attracted by the cream-in-milk doggie sounds and I wanted to take a look. I approached the box and discovered a little yellow puppy huddling inside. Feeling pity for this poor thing, I decided to carry it home and take care of it. With my mother’s permission, I put a blanket on the balcony to settle the puppy and fed it some bread and milk. I still vividly recall how its furry little head brushed against my palm and how happy it was when it rolled on the blanket.

I named this puppy 金子 (JinZi), meaning Little Gold; even though I picked it from a trash station, to me it was as precious as gold. The next morning, I fed it more food, then went to school as usual. While in class, I thought about JinZi and I planned to take her to the park on the weekend to stroll. After school, I went to supermarket to buy some bacon for the puppy; the money I spent on bacon was the money I had saved to buy books.

I hurried home only to discover that JinZi, my little puppy, was gone. My mother told me that my father sent JinZi away because he was worried that the puppy would bite and bark. I cried, begging my father to tell me where he had sent JinZi, but my father refused to answer me. From then on, every time I passed by the garbage station, I would stop for a while, hoping the little yellow puppy, my JinZi, would be there waiting for me…

Even though, since then, so much time has flashed by, whenever I think about this poor little lovely creature… my heart still sinks, I grow a little sad. Here is a poem of mine which I think expresses the “bitter beauty” of dark memories… I embrace my dark memories and transcend them into poetry…

My Eyes Are Big Yet Small

Though my eyes can hold infinity

They cannot hold your tears

Awaken your inner poet by breathing with a clean heart

Is it easy to write poetry? If the only poems that can qualify as poetry are those as long as Shakespeare’s or Goethe’s, then I think such a judgment would limit the vitality of poetry.

I once wrote that “Poetry is the breath of the heart”; if your heart is as clear as crystal, then the words that your heart exhales are poetry…

For example, when I wrote my poem Angel, I imagined the dim reflection of the profile of an angel shining on a moonlight crystal…Rose blossoms with tearful yearning for pure love as starlight feathers fall from heaven…

Angel

Your sigh

Makes the moon rises

My poem is short, but if the hearts of readers are touched by it, then I think it is good poetry. In my opinion, good poetry should be like a lightning sword of the highest purity diamond.

To experience life’s healing beauty and to express it in the form of poetry is like breathing with a crystal-clear heart and letting words of love and light exhale from your heart as simply as watching wine overflowing from the holy cup when it is full…

Thank you, Xueyan, for sharing your poems and your insight.

About the Poet:

Xueyan lives in China. Her poems have been published in Ginosko Literary Journal and the Bangalore Review.