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Persuasion by Jane Austen

May 7, 2014 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 236 pages
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Persuasion by Jane Austen (on Kobo) is her final, full manuscript, and it is one of the most mature of her works. Anne Elliot is the heroine of this novel, but often in the beginning of the novel she is in the background as an observer, as she is talked about or looked over by even her own father and older sister. She is 27, unmarried, and by all appearances, a wallflower, who loves to read. Through the influence of Lady Russell, a friend of her deceased mother, Anne broke off an engagement with Frederick Wentworth because the match was imprudent as he was not yet established in a career and was not of the same social standing as the Elliots. Lead by her friendship with Lady Russell and a sense of duty to her family, Anne broke the engagement and suffered for more than eight years, though she did have other prospects. Austen seems to remind us that when love is true and deep, it can cut us just as deeply when things end poorly, but it also can continue to live inside of us, even when all hope is lost.

“A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own); there could be nothing in them now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem.”  (page 7)

The contrasts set forth by Austen in this novel between the Musgroves and the Elliots is almost as wide as the Grand Canyon, and yet, Anne finds herself easily swept into either family — adaptable to any situation — but she seems to feel the most comfort when surrounded by the jubilant Musgroves.  Her adventures with her younger sister, Mary, and the Musgroves bring Anne a stroke of not only luck but happiness when she is reunited, if only in proximity, to Captain Wentworth.  Although she spends a great deal of time making excuses to be absent from gatherings where she knows he will be present, she eventually has little choice but to be in his company, finding that it is not as horrible as she imagined.

“Doubtless it was so; and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered, or not for the worse.  She had already acknowledged it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of her as he would.” (page 57)

Austen’s tale of a second chance at love is more about the anxiety that can plague new love and acquaintances, but also the reunited lovers who misunderstood one another’s motivations in their youth.  There are missteps to be sure, as Wentworth unwittingly finds himself engaged to another without explicitly making his intention to be so known and Anne is led to believe that Mr. Elliot has his eye set on her.  These characters are more mature in their motivations, while there are still some who are a bit ridiculous — from her father’s obsession with status and how handsome he still is to Mary’s constant complaining and hypocritical behavior — most of the characters are mature enough to know their own desires and to seize opportunities when they are presented.  Persuasion by Jane Austen is a fine novel, less about Anne’s initial persuasion away from Wentworth and more of her persuading herself that he still loves her and that hope lives.

About the Author:

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature.

9th book for 2014 European Reading Challenge; (Set in England)

 

 

 

 

14th book for 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: 2014 European Reading Challenge, 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, challenges, classic fiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, purchased, Read in 2014, reviews Tagged With: ,

Incendiary Girls By Kodi Scheer

May 6, 2014 by

Source: Little A/New Harvest and TLC Book Tours
Paperback, 192 pages
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Incendiary Girls: Stories by Kodi Scheer (on Kobo) mixes dark humor — really dark humor — with scientific and anatomical knowledge that makes some of these stories even more creepy.  Like the title suggests, a spark is lit in each of these stories that leads these protagonists to re-examine their lives, relationships, and their perceptions of reality.  From a woman whose Muslim boyfriend turns into a camel to a mother who believes her daughter’s horse is her own mother reincarnated, Scheer expects her readers to be open-minded and willing to think outside the box.  While she explores the notion that the body betrays us, she also sneaks in some sly sympathy and humor at our own inevitable fates, which could be missed upon first reading.

“‘Pose for me,’ you say.  Not that he’s moving much anyway.  Pull out a sketch pad and charcoal, then sit across from him.  Forming the shapes first, the underlying structure, is difficult.  This body is unfamiliar. A cylinder, no, an oval for the main part.  Then there is the question of the hump.  Should you add a half sphere on top?

The sketch looks like a cross between a horse and a llama.” (page 70 from “When a Camel Breaks Your Heart”)

Readers will never forget these stories, like the peeling back of skin to reveal muscles in “Gross Anatomy.” But there is more here than the detailed images that will be etched forever in the mind; Scheer raises questions about identity, genetics, family secrets and more.  When tragedy strikes, people spend an inordinate amount of time making things as good as they can for their own children while burying the hurt of the past, and there are those that prepare for the worst before it even strikes through a series innocuous habits and rituals.

Incendiary Girls: Stories by Kodi Scheer is a small, powerful collection of short stories that hits like a sucker punch in the gut, leaving readers questioning their own emotions and world views.  Like the surgeon cutting along the skin to reveal the muscles below, Scheer sheds light on the disembodiment of humanity by war and science amid the absurdity of our conventional lives.  Unsettling, inventive, grotesque, but ever thought-provoking in her use of magical realism.  Something readers are unlikely to forget by a young, female Kafka that even Gregor Samsa should fear.

About the Author:

Kodi Scheer teaches writing at the University of Michigan.  For her work as a writer-in-residence at the Comprehensive Cancer Center, she was awarded the Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service.  Her stories have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Iowa review, and other publications.

 

23rd book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews, short stories, tlc book tours Tagged With: , ,

Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison Volume 1

May 2, 2014 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 214 pages
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Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison Volume 1 is a collection of poems, scribbled notes, photos, and a self-interview from Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors.  Like he music produced by Morrison and his band mates, his poetry has a hallucinatory quality.  Foremost a poet who unexpectedly found himself as a lead singer, lyrics of The Doors are in these poems, or vice versa depending on which he wrote first.  Fans of the band will enjoy looking at Los Angeles through Morrison’s eyes in these poems, with several referring to the city as LAmerica.  The seedy sides of L.A. are not glossed over, nor are his nomadic days with his family.  While much of his poetry is psychedelic in nature, dark, and offensive at times about carnal desires, there also is a reverence paid to the military, particularly military veterans, which could be influenced by the fact that his father was a military veteran.  However, like most artists, when compared to one another, the poems often contradict one another, as if the poet is working out some internal struggle of ideas.

“An interview also gives you the chance to try and eliminate all of those space fillers … you should try to be explicit, accurate, to the point … no bullshit.  The interview form has antecedents in the confession box, debating and cross-examination.  Once you say something, you can’t really retract it.  It’s too late.  It’s a very existential moment.” (page 1 — Self-Interview)

There are moments where the poems are lucid and easy to follow, but there are other times when the poems are confusing and make little sense to the reader without some reference point in the literature (i.e. William Blake or Nietzsche) or other knowledge Morrison picked up in his reading and living.  Despite the notes in the back that suggest Morrison often wrote many drafts of his poems (though the editors had a problem with chronology of those unnumbered and undated drafts), many of these poems feel unfinished and unpolished.

Selections from a few untitled poems:

"Men who go out on ships
To escape sin & the mire of cities
watch the placenta of evening stars
from the deck, on their backs
& cross the equator
& perform rituals to exhume the dead" (page 25)

LAmerica

"Androgynous, liquid, happy
Heavy
Facile & vapid
Weighted w/words
Mortgaged soul
Wandering preachers, & Delta Tramps" (page 87)

"Airport.
Messenger in the form of a soldier.
Green wool. He stood there,
off the plane.
A new truth, too horrible to bear.
There was no record of it
anywhere in the ancient signs
or symbols." (page 89)

"Actors must make us think
they're real
Our friends must not
make us think we're acting

They are, though, in slow
Time" (page 117)

As I Look Back

As I look back
over my life
I am struck by post
cards
Ruined Snap shots
faded posters
Of a time, I can't recall (page 201)

Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison Volume 1 is an existential journey of a poet, artist, and musician.  Fans of the band will love this collection, those that want an experience and look at the 1970s in Los Angeles will also love this collection.  Those looking for poetry that wows or connects with them may find it harder to connect with, especially since the poetry is a bit cryptic in purpose.

About the Poet:

Jim Morrison was an American singer-songwriter and poet, best remembered as the lead singer of Los Angeles rock band The Doors.

Book 14 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

 

22nd book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, Dive Into Poetry 2014, Events, Harper Collins, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Publishers/Publicists, purchased, Read in 2014, reviews Tagged With: , ,

For Such a Time by Kate Breslin

May 1, 2014 by

Source: Bethany House and TLC Book Tours
Paperback, 432 pages
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For Such a Time by Kate Breslin is a WWII novel set in 1944 Czechoslovakia at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, a Jew work camp where many died from malnutrition, disease, or beatings, that acted as a stopgap for some Jews before reaching Auschwitz.  A miracle saves the life of Hadassah Benjamin from a Nazi firing squad, but the once blue-eyed, blonde finds herself in the middle of a hornet’s nest and forced to live under the assumed name of Stella Muller.  With her shorn locks, she ends up wearing a red wig and is given luxurious clothes, a warm bed, and food as SS-Kommandant Colonel Aric von Schmidt’s secretary.  With biblical quotes of Esther’s story, the parallels are unmistakeable between Stella’s struggles and that of Esther, with even Stella’s uncle bearing the same name as Esther’s cousin, Mordecai.  While the short quotes before each chapter are not strictly necessary to the story, it does offer some basis for the story Breslin is telling and for the strict moral grounds that Stella attempts to adhere to.  As a Jew who feels abandoned by God, it is interesting that she would turn to the bible and the tales a school friend of hers once told her, but her ability to connect with the bible demonstrates the transcendence that good morality can have no matter what religion, especially when she forces herself to break with Jewish traditions in order to remain concealed.

“Stella forced herself to look in the mirror.  Hadassah Benjamin, a Mischling, half Jew, bursting with a young woman’s exuberance, had ceased to exist.  In her place stood Stella Muller, subdued Austrian bookkeeper and suitable stock for the Third Reich.  A frail disguise comprised of no more than a scrap of official-looking paper, a red wig, and beneath her bruises the inherent fair features of a Dutch grandmother.”  (page 49-50)

Aric von Schmidt is the real enigma in this novel — a Nazi that does not hesitate to follow orders, but who still feels affection for Jews in his household.  He’s a man broken by WWI — literally, emotionally, and physically — and although he begins to see the devastation around him, of which he has played a significant part, it is hard for him to reconnect with his humanity without seeing how it would hamper his duties and possibly result in his own death or punishment.  Although he softens with Stella’s guidance, he’s still torn inside as he struggles to balance what he knows is right and what his orders are under the government he serves.

As the war nears its end and the final solution is called for by the Reich, the pressure is on for Stella, her uncle, and young boy named Joseph.  Breslin has crafted a poignant novel about the end of a war that had everyone concerned about their own safety, even the Nazi officers carrying out horrific orders.  She manages to humanize some of these monsters, and while we are not expected to completely forgive these men, it is clear that their decisions were based on their own demons and inabilities to sacrifice themselves for the good of others — a strength that few can muster in times of crisis when saving their own skin is a viable option.  For Such a Time by Kate Breslin is a stunning debut and would make a great book club selection given the moral issues and the emotional impact of the decisions these characters face.

About the Author:

A Florida girl who migrated to the Pacific Northwest, Kate Breslin was a bookseller for many years. Author of several travel articles, award-winning poet, and RWA Golden Heart finalist, Kate now writes inspiring stories about the healing power of God’s love. For Such a Time is her first book. She lives with her husband and cat in Seattle, WA.

Connect with Kate on her website and on Facebook.

10th book (WWII) for the 2014 War Challenge With a Twist.

 

 

 

 

8th book for 2014 European Reading Challenge; It is set in Czechoslovakia.

 

 

 

 

 

13th book for 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

21st book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

Filed Under: 2014 European Reading Challenge, 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, 2014 War Challenge With a Twist, challenges, historical fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: , ,

When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon

April 30, 2014 by

Source: TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins
Hardcover, 368 pages
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When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon melds the island tranquility of Greece’s Erikousa with the Greek Gods and Goddesses and whispering of the Cypress, creating a modern-day mythology.  Daphne is a modern woman, her heart heavy with the loss of her first husband and her struggles as a single mother rising to the top in New York City’s restaurant scene.  She comes back to her island home to have a traditional Greek wedding, despite her fiance Stephen’s misgivings about constrained traditions, and to reconnect with her Yia-yia (grandmother).

“In hushed, reverent tones, Yia-yia insisted that the cypresses had their own secret language that traveled between the trees on the gentle morning breeze and quieted down again as the afternoon stillness set in.”  (page 4-5 ARC)

The juxtaposition between Daphne’s American life of being always on the go and struggling to make time even for her daughter is clear once she returns to the island.  It is not that as a child life was so much more care-free (though it was), but life on the island is slower and more connected to family and tradition than it is in the business world and career-focused life Daphne was building for herself.  Evie, her daughter, was named for her great-grandmother, but she’s never met her or been to the island until now.  Corporon’s focus on Daphne brings together the family story as it shifts between her childhood, her time in America, and the present time with the wedding planning.  Tensions are increased as a mysterious man, Yianni, begins making assumptions about her and seems too close to her grandmother.  A WWII mystery is revealed and Daphne sees the error of her judgments and realizes that she may have more in common with this mystery man than she first expected.

When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon has it all — well-drawn characters, mythology and tradition, love and loss, and the power of family.  An emotional, heartfelt novel about the traditions and cultures that make us who we are and the dangers of committing halfway or only looking at the surface.

Photo credit Dia Dipasupil

About the Author:

Yvette Manessis Corporon is an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and author. She is currently a senior producer with the syndicated entertainment news show Extra. In addition to her Emmy Award, Yvette has received a Silurian Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the New York City Comptroller and City Council’s Award for Greek Heritage and Culture. She is married to award-winning photojournalist David Corporon. They have two children and live in New York.

Find out more about Yvette at her website, follow her on Twitter, and connect with her on Facebook.

 

 

7th book for 2014 European Reading Challenge; It is set in Greece.

 

 

 

20th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

12th book for 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

9th book (WWII) for the 2014 War Challenge With a Twist.

 

 

Filed Under: 2014 European Reading Challenge, 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, 2014 War Challenge With a Twist, ARC, challenges, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2014, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

The Eight Stages of Translation by Robert Bly

April 29, 2014 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 107 pages
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The Eight Stages of Translation by Robert Bly is a slim how-to manual for amateur translators or those just beginning to dip their toes into poetry translation.  He breaks down the process into eight stages, which he illustrates using a René Maria Rilke poem, XXI.  He translates the poem in several drafts from the German into American English.  The eight stages he talks about and provides examples for through his drafts are:

  1. Setting down the literal translation
  2. Get a handle on the concepts and beliefs presented in the original poem; abandon the poem if the translator does not feel a connection with them.
  3. Rewrite the literal translation to ensure the meanings of the poem are not lost.
  4. Translate the latest draft into spoken English, using phrases that have been heard in natural conversation.
  5. Examine the translation in terms of tone to ensure that it carries over from the original (whether happy, sad, etc.)
  6. Listen to the original for sound and carry those same sounds over to the translation, such as the use of open vowel sounds.
  7. Speak with a native speaker to go over the translation to ensure meanings and tone are maintained.
  8. The final stage is completing the translation with all of the advice given and paying close attention to the original poem’s rhythm and rhymes (which are often less about end rhymes than internal rhymes).

The thought process through which Bly guides the reader through translation can be easily understood in the example given and the drafts presented, but even for those with no interest in translating poems themselves, the book includes some breathtaking translations done by Bly himself.  Although I am not fluent in any language, other than English, reading translations is always a peek inside another culture and world.  These translations are no different.  Bly has taken great care with them, and it shows.  Read The Eight Stages of Translation by Robert Bly not for the how-to, but for the poetry.

About the Poet:

Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His most commercially successful book to date was Iron John: A Book About Men (1990),[1] a key text of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which spent 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list.[2] He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.

 

Book 13 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

 

19th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

Filed Under: challenges, Dive Into Poetry 2014, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, purchased, Read in 2014, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Walking Home: A Poet’s Journey by Simon Armitage

April 23, 2014 by

Source: Liveright, W.W. Norton
Paperback, 285 pages
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Walking Home: A Poet’s Journey by Simon Armitage is part memoir and part travelogue, and the path he chooses to walk — while contrary to what is outlined in the guidebooks for the Pennine Way in England and part of Scotland — is literally a walk home for him.  He begins in Kirk Yethom, Scotland, and ends more or less in Edale, England, which is in the Peak District.  As a poet, readers may expect a deeper analysis of the journey or the travails he experiences, but as Armitage is nearly constantly accompanied by strangers, friends, fellow poets, and even his family, he has little time to contemplate more than the scant passerby or the physical obstacles in his path.  Much of the travelogue is focused on Armitage re-orienting himself by map or landscape or simply following someone who has offered to guide him over a particular leg of the 267 miles.  The first poem included in the book doesn’t come until he has pass nearly a third of the way through the trail — whether that is when inspiration hit him to write a poem during the journey or whether it was written afterward about that section of the trail is unclear.

“Prose fills a space, like a liquid poured in from the top, but poetry occupies it, arrays itself in formation, sets up camp and refuses to budge.  It is a dissenting and willful art form, and most of its practitioners are signed-up members of the awkward squad.” (page 5)

Armitage has help in coordinating his journey, which includes readings held at the end of each leg either in an inn, a home, a bar, or other venues, and he passes a sock about the room for collections, which he uses to fund his continued journey along the way.  He says that he sets out on the journey to get “out there,” rather than write about far-off places from his desk chair.  In a way, he sees it as a way to “clear his head.”  The path does not seem to clear his head so much as clutter it with more concerns and worries about himself and the physical health of others.

There is a point early on in which he gains a “regular” pace of walking and he feels as though he’s reached his stride, but he’s clearly not reached the most arduous parts of the journey.  Those parts of the journey clearly weigh on his psyche, as does his part of the journey when he is lost in the mist.  He nearly loses his sense of identity, but he continues onward.  Perhaps this is the crux of the prose, that poets lose themselves in the journey and that loss of self can be frightening unless the poet can plod forward.

Walking Home: A Poet’s Journey by Simon Armitage is a journey at the arm of a poet who does not find himself all that interesting and cannot seem to understand the reason why anyone would volunteer to go on the journey with him or even come to listen to him read his poems.  The one interesting moment in the memoir where he talks of spare rooms as the keepers of “family lore” and “memory vaults,” is grossly under-explored, as he seems to want to keep out of the private moments of the people who open their homes to him.  While the landscape is varied and the hardships he faces could be a cautionary tale against these kinds of treks, the journey does not live up to reader’s expectations about what a poet would write about, experience, or explore.

About the Poet:

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in the village of Marsden and lives in West Yorkshire. He is a graduate of Portsmouth University, where he studied Geography. As a post-graduate student at Manchester University his MA thesis concerned the effects of television violence on young offenders. Until 1994 he worked as Probation Officer in Greater Manchester.

His first full-length collection of poems, Zoom!, was published in 1989 by Bloodaxe Books. Further collections are Xanadu (1992, Bloodaxe Books), Kid (1992, Faber & Faber), Book of Matches (1993, Faber & Faber), The Dead Sea Poems (1995, Faber & Faber), Moon Country (with Glyn Maxwell, 1996, Faber & Faber), CloudCuckooLand (1997 Faber and Faber), Killing Time (1999 Faber & Faber), Selected Poems (2001, Faber & Faber), Travelling Songs (2002, Faber & Faber), The Universal Home Doctor (2002, Faber & Faber), Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006, Faber & Faber, Knopf 2008), and Seeing Stars (2010, Faber & Faber, Knopf 2011).

Armitage’s 2012 nonfiction book Walking Home, an account of his troubadour journey along the Pennine Way, was a Sunday Times best-seller for over a month and is shortlisted for the 2012 Portico Prize.

Book 12 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

6th book for 2014 European Reading Challenge; this memoir/travelogue takes place in England and Scotland.

 

 

18th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

 

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

Filed Under: 2014 European Reading Challenge, challenges, Dive Into Poetry 2014, Events, memoir, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

The Late Parade by Adam Fitzgerald

April 17, 2014 by

Source: Liveright, W.W. Norton
Hardcover, 112 pages
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The Late Parade by Adam Fitzgerald strikes a confusing pose upon first glance with its oftentimes odd image pairings and obscured references, but at its heart, there is a deep melancholy and longing in these poems.  There are moments that slip through the reader’s fingers as they slip through the narrator’s fingers, leaving both with a sense of loss.  We’ve come late to the parade and are sad for it.

From "Mid-Harbor" (page 66)

"All such gestures may be inventions of nostalgia,
ways of edging a tea-saucer future forward,
poised perilously on a gilded table's brink.

We glance at ourselves with plaster cables strung
over cheeks, snoozing the forest's alarm, turning
to a charmed gouache with oblivious sentiment."

Fitzgerald deftly melds pop culture with classic reading, cuing it up with a fantastic and unbelievable world of clouds, “buttered air,” and “dental waters.”  Like the poem “Two Worlds at Once” suggests, Fitzgerald is asking the reader to straddle reality and fantasy to enjoy the happiness of moments in love even if they have already passed us by or never came about in the first place — it is their existence and possibility that are the most poignant.

Filled with lush imagery that confuses and contradicts, readers minds will become full, at times overtaxed, but poems that force readers to expand their minds and contemplate every chosen word are those that engage us the most.  The Late Parade by Adam Fitzgerald is a debut collection not soon forgotten.

17th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

 

Book 11 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

Filed Under: challenges, Dive Into Poetry 2014, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Nefertiti in the Flak Tower by Clive James

April 16, 2014 by

Source: Liveright
Hardcover, 96 pages
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Nefertiti in the Flak Tower by Clive James is a collection of rhyming and metered poems that relies heavily on history, particularly that of WWII, to make connections about the resiliency of human kind in the face of horrifying adversity.  The title poem, Nefertiti in the Flak Tower, does use the history of the Nefertiti bust as a German treasure that was moved and protected in a Flak Tower during WWII, towers that were built to protect cities like Berlin from air raids with guns and shelter citizens.  Beyond the historically based poems, there are poems about the life of a writer and his friends and how even these glamorous lives of signing books can become mundane, but there are those moments that make even the most thankless jobs worthwhile.

From "Grief Has Its Time" (page 81)

"Free of such burdens, I pursue my course
Supposing myself blessed with the light touch,
A blithesome ease my principal resource.
Sometimes on stage I even say as much,

Or did, till one night in the signing queue
An ancient lady touched my wrist and said
I'd made her smile the way he used to do
When hearts were won by how a young man read

Aloud, and decent girls were led astray
By sweet speech. "Can you put his name with mine?
Before the war, before he went away,
We used to read together." Last in line

She had all my attention, so I wrote"

James comes across as both romantic and removed.  The rhyming poems can linger in the mind when the emotion is clear and connects with the reader, but there are other occasions when the rhymes seem forced and throw off the rhythm of the poem, creating a disconnect between the reader and the subject.  Nefertiti in the Flak Tower by Clive James is a mix of some really great poems that will leave a lasting impression and those that fall a little flat on first and second reading.

Book 10 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

 

16th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

Filed Under: challenges, Dive Into Poetry 2014, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Any Anxious Body by Chrissy Kolaya

April 15, 2014 by

Source: the poet, Chrissy Kolaya
Paperback, 96 pages
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Any Anxious Body by Chrissy Kolaya does not have the most eye-catching cover, but what’s inside will knock your socks off!  Beginning with what readers may see as someone who lived through the Great Depression when saving everything counted toward survival, Kolaya uses early memories and events overheard to not only connect generation to generation, but to weave a thread through each struggle and moment of unease and concern that each moment is fleeting.  Humans are in a perpetually anxious state, sometimes without knowing it, because our lives are finite and each moment has a beginning and end — often ending before we’re ready to deal with it.

From “Fired” (page 17)

His friend —
the one married just out of high school,
runs his eyes over you,
smoothing the skin over your bones.

Kolaya — using notes from a great grandmother who no longer can verbally communicate and a letter from her daughter — has a visceral sense of not only the human body and its reactions to touch, but also the emotional connections between family and lovers. Her verses are fresh and evoke a response from her readers immediately. While there is a sense of contemplation about life events and family connections, the poems also never forget to remind readers that too much thinking can prevent life from happening.

From “Polarity” (page 15)

She wants to talk about how it will work
and I think:
I will move toward you in a moment or two,
and you should do the same.

Any Anxious Body by Chrissy Kolaya has created a reflective collection of poems, a collection that requires the reader to listen to the voices, to the moments, to the memories, but more importantly to open themselves up to the experience.  Each poem’s voice changes perspective, providing readers with the fullest view of living as possible, and sometimes those perspectives can leave you squirming.

About the Author:

Chrissy Kolaya is a poet and fiction writer. Her short fiction has been included in the anthologies New Sudden Fiction (Norton) and Fiction on a Stick (Milkweed Editions). Her poems and fiction have appeared in a number of literary journals.

She has received a Norman Mailer Writers Colony summer scholarship, an Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies fellowship, a Loft Mentor Series Award in Poetry, and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Lake Region Arts Council, and the University of Minnesota. She teaches writing at the University of Minnesota Morris. Check out her blog and her Facebook page.

15th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

Book 9 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

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Ode to Childhood: Poetry to Celebrate the Child edited by Samuel Carr

April 10, 2014 by

Source: Sterling Children’s Books
Hardcover, 96 pages
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Ode to Childhood: Poetry to Celebrate the Child by Samuel Carr is a collection of poems from a variety of poets about children, parenthood, and their own childhoods, and no collection about children would be complete without William Blake, who has four poems included.  Blake is a poet that spoke about the innocence of childhood in a great many poems, which can be found in his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.  His childlike lines and voice evoke the childlike quality readers will immediately reference in their own experiences, but his poems also speak of a duality in childhood between desire and the more enlightened search for knowledge.  He demonstrates that children learn from the reactions and action of others in “Infant Sorrow,” learning that smiles get reactions that wailing did not.

Longfellow image

Reprinted with permission from Ode to Childhood © 2014 Batsford, distributed by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Photography by TFL from the London Transport Museum collection.

While each poem in the collection is about children or childhood, they are by turns nostalgic for a childhood lost, a celebration of innocence and play, and a homage to the joys that children bring to parents, others, and themselves.  Many of these poems are from classic poets and could be harder to comprehend upon first reading because of the difference in modern language, but the gist of the poems can be easily discerned from the overall atmosphere in the poems.

From “The Schoolboy” by William Blake (page 76)

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

The rhymes and rhythms of these poems could be read aloud almost like lullabies, but there are deeper meanings and stories that are told.  Coupled with the vibrant drawings that pop when readers turn the page, nostalgia for a by-gone era can take over —  remember scampering through those hills, playing follow-the-leader, or just chasing other kids around.  Ode to Childhood: Poetry to Celebrate the Child by Samuel Carr is not just a celebration of childhood or innocence, but a celebration of life.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO WIN ODE TO CHILDHOOD edited by Samuel Carr, tell me a childhood memory in the comments. You must have a U.S. mailing address to enter. Giveaway ends April 15, 2014, at 11:59 PM EST

Book 8 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

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Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad, illustrated by Benny Andrews

April 9, 2014 by

Source: Sterling Children’s Books
Hardcover, 48 pages
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Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad, illustrated by Benny Andrews for ages 8+, is a collection of poems that won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award in 2007.  Hughes’ poems grew from a love of Whitman and a desire to express the joys of Black culture through verse and in an unapologetic way — and many of his poems are steeped in the urban experience from New York’s Harlem to Washington, D.C.  where is poem “Big Buddy” has become an anthem for the Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

Hughes’ introduction is long, and well it should be given his influence and his numerous works, but there is enough in here to conduct an entire lesson about American culture in the 1920s and beyond.  Like in the other books of this series, there are accompanying illustrations and explanations of what the poet thought or where the inspiration came from, and more importantly, dialects, unusual terms, and geographic locations are explained in the footnotes at the bottom of the page.

From “I, Too” (page 22)

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

The beauty of Hughes’ poems is the ways in which he illustrates not only the beauty of his people, but that of America with his people in it.  Infusing poems with a musicality of jazz or blues evokes an even greater emotional response when read aloud.  Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes edited by David Roessel and Arnold Rampersad, illustrated by Benny Andrews, is poignant, fun, and full of history.  Poems that are less about the darker side of life and more about the joys that we find within it.

Also in the series:


IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO WIN POETRY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE PRIZE PACK, name a favorite poet or poem in the comments. You must have a U.S. mailing address to enter. Giveaway ends April 15, 2014, at 11:59 PM EST

Book 7 for the Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge 2014.

 

 

For today’s 2014 National Poetry Month: Reach for the Horizon tour stop, click the image below:

Filed Under: challenges, Dive Into Poetry 2014, Events, giveaway, national poetry month, poetry, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , , ,