Books: What are you reading today?

[Blarg]

How about a thread where we can review or chat about the books we're reading, just finished, or are about to start? A place to share what we're doing, not what we've long ago done: a log more than a resume. So come join in, write a review when you feel like it, shoot the breeze lightly or ponder burdensomely while sharing the books, authors, and thoughts you're discovering. It doesn't have to be about poetry, but if you can link your new endeavors to your poetic spirit, a bonus is always nice, right?

I'll start.
______________________________________________
Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser

In 2004, Ted Kooser was appointed as U.S. Poet Laureate. That year he also came out with the poetry collection, "Delights and Shadows." The next year he won the Pulitzer Prize for it and was reappointed Poet Laureate for a second year-long term.

I came to "Delights and Shadows" after first greatly enjoying two of Kooser's other books, "The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets" and "Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems." Both were surprises, straightforward in style yet seriously considered and artfully imaginative. They inspired me to find out what all this Pulitzer and Laureate business was about.

For me Delights and Shadows turned out to be about how naturally a lack of adornment can let a vigorous metaphoric imagination do its work. But to put things more in the plainspeak of the Iowa plains communities Kooser descends from and is said to be characteristic of, let's get away from the meta of it all: Kooser writes of quite ordinary people and moments. No gyres widen; nothing out of animus mundi slouches toward Bethlehem.

Some of those moments are slight enough -- tying a tie, a biker taking off from a stoplight -- that a poem quickly rises above its concrete particulars to embrace the pleasures of precise, transformative attention.

The Necktie

His hands fluttered like birds,
each with a fancy silk ribbon
to weave into their nest,
as he stood at the mirror
dressing for work, waving hello
to himself with both hands.
Kooser is involved here with world-creation in a way that reminds me of Wallace Stevens' insistence on the supremacy of the imagination as a tool for comprehending and bringing the world into order. Stevens conjured poetry out of men crossing a bridge or a jar on the ground (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15743), things so absent of event as to almost disappear until a focused poetic mind coaxed magic from them as if by sheer chutzpah. Kooser, too, so skillfully creates art from dust that his poems often leave me with a sense of glee at their unassuming audacity.

Delights and Shadows retains its delight in crystallizing observation into metaphor throughout the four sections it travels deeper into the realm of shadow. Family members die and eternity takes a place at the table. Memory, bouyant, slips unnoticed under the waves to drown. Yet here in this excerpt from A Washing of Hands is the boy's energy still seeping through the man:

She turned on the tap and a silver braid
unraveled over her fingers.
She cupped them, weighing that tassel,
first in one hand, then the other,
then pinched through the threads
as if searching for somethingand from That was I, a final stanza in which the narrator asserts a dark and witty refusal to be diminished:

And that was I you spotted that evening
just before dark, in a weedy cemetery
west of Staplehurst, down on one knee
as if trying to make out the name on a stone,
some lonely old man, you thought, come there
to pity himself in the reliable sadness
of grass among graves, but that was not so.
Instead I had found in its perfect web
a handsome black and yellow spider
pumping its legs to try to shake my footing
as if I were a gift, an enormous moth
that it could snare and eat. Yes, that was I.Kooser provides a pleasing mix of larger and smaller pleasures in Delights and Shadows, as well as a bit of suspense. Called "one of the best makers of metaphor alive in the country," he has built a collection of poems with so many figurative accomplishments that one begins to suspect each new line might harbor a marvel. It often will, and in language so clear and accessible its song is all the more marvelous.

______________________
P.S.: During his tenure as Poet Laureate, Kooser began a free weekly poetry column for newspapers, featuring a wide selection of modern poets. There are over 300 now at American Life in Poetry (http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/archive.html).

P.P.S.: AW's own poets Brandt (Researching Odonata (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213135)) and Steppe (Iris Unguicularis (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218215)), among others, have crafted poets about plants and animals using their names as titles. Kooser did a wonderful poem of that sort called Lobocraspis griseifusa (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/166/2#20604407), about a moth that survives by drinking from the tear ducts of sleepers.

[Blarg]

Other poetry books on my burners, back or front:

New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004, by Carl Dennis
Flying at Night, by Ted Kooser
Failure, by Philip Schultz
Chinese Classical Poetry, by David Hinton
A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver
The Art of Recklessness, by Dean Young
The Art of Description, by Mark Doty
The Art of the Poetic Line, by James Longenbach

[Perscribo]

Ferreted these out from my local library. Sweet.

Literary Terms, A Dictionary, Beckson/Ganz (http://www.amazon.com/Literary-Terms-Dictionary-Karl-Beckson/dp/0374521778)
"From abecedarius to zeugma." Crypto-crazy, I'm already playing with the first form.

A Poet's Guide to Poetry, Mary Kinzie (http://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Chicago-Writing-Editing-Publishing/dp/0226437396/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318525191&sr=1-1)
Chapter 8, The Role of Stress and Interval, is particularly enlightening--it actually makes sense!

[Blarg]

I'll be curious to see if you like either of them well enough to buy them when you're done reading them.

The second one sounds especially interesting.

[Perscribo]

I was surprised to see how few books I could find like them. I would've thought they'd to be as voluminous as diet cookbooks.

[Blarg]

If you go on Amazon and look for books on writing poetry, it's amazing. Tons and tonnes (for the Brits).

I was reading an article a while ago that said that books about writing have become quite an industry. The fellow writing the article said he had been approached to write one, as I recall, though he had no particular background in writing that sort of book. The publisher appeared to grab him more or less at random and told him they sell very well.

The writer saw how many there were out there and thought of how little of a background you apparently needed to write one, and wrote that he didn't find it interesting or rewarding on a personal level to treat writing as an industry that way. Not that he didn't want to get paid for writing, but he felt there was something exploitive going on.

It seems to me the quality of books on writing has gone up. I read some of the more famous ones long ago and often enjoyed them, but was frustrated at how little practical advice they contained. They were little more than pats on the back. The more modern Kooser one I read was very dialed in and practical, and the Mary Oliver one I've started unfortunately starts with a welter of over-poetic locutions but begins getting down to more serious business eventually. The Longenbach one is also very interesting so far. (I'm the kind of guy who often reads many books at the same time.)

[Perscribo]

The hook that got me on the Kinzie book was in her introduction. The part I've emboldened is the part I'm seeking to bone-up on. Simple stuff, really (right?). The rest is brilliant fluff that I find cozy enough to nestle into without too much intimidation. I'll offer up a final critique when I'm done (although, in comparison to the 1930s handbook I was reading, it doesn't really smell as good).

"In order to fathom poets from within, I make one assumption some may find hard to accept: Any poem is best imagined as provisional. Even if it does leap already formed and completed from the poet's imagination, that leap rises from something precarious. Most of the poetry that interests me is not closed-off, polished down, or predictable from its very first word. Even after a poem has hardened into print, it may continue to represent a risk, a chance, a surmise, or a hypothesis about itself. This quality of hypothesis and provisionality takes shape against the background of all the other poems that make a new one possible--poems by others perceived by those writers who commit themselves to reading and by readers who strive to learn what it means to write as forming a tradition of literary inheritance. In other words, I assume that most poetry is the product of experiments on the past, acts of recombining already-invented substances in such a way that they are transformed. I therefore concentrate on the frequency with which many poems confront conventions: how they stand back from themselves, turn off onto new paths, question their purpose in relation to both them and shape, even begin again. In short, my aim is to uncover the poem that is uncovering itself."

I read too many books at the same time. Which is probably why I so rarely finish them. Good language is really what keep me glued so, if they're just splatting out metrics, I'm going to get bored.

[Blarg]

I'll offer up a final critique when I'm done (although, in comparison to the 1930s handbook I was reading, it doesn't really smell as good).


LOL at judging books by smell. There's gotta be a website in that, Perscribo. I think you've sniffed out an untapped market!

"In order to fathom poets from within, I make one assumption some may find hard to accept: Any poem is best imagined as provisional. Even if it does leap already formed and completed from the poet's imagination, that leap rises from something precarious. Most of the poetry that interests me is not closed-off, polished down, or predictable from its very first word. Even after a poem has hardened into print, it may continue to represent a risk, a chance, a surmise, or a hypothesis about itself. This quality of hypothesis and provisionality takes shape against the background of all the other poems that make a new one possible--poems by others perceived by those writers who commit themselves to reading and by readers who strive to learn what it means to write as forming a tradition of literary inheritance. In other words, I assume that most poetry is the product of experiments on the past, acts of recombining already-invented substances in such a way that they are transformed. I therefore concentrate on the frequency with which many poems confront conventions: how they stand back from themselves, turn off onto new paths, question their purpose in relation to both them and shape, even begin again. In short, my aim is to uncover the poem that is uncovering itself."
This is interesting, but it sounds like she is looking for a particular type of poem or attitude in poetry. And I wonder how deeply her search for newness goes. Does it accept discovery in the spirit as well as the form? Does it accept formal novelty as sufficient?

I wonder what she considers all the possible poems, too. Recently I was reading someone saying that the poems and sensibility outside of the western experience are entirely inaccessible and, if I recall correctly, therefore meaningless to us and what we do going forward. To which I must respond with the last line of the old joke:

The Lone Ranger and Tonto are trapped in a canyon by Indians.

"It's no use!," says the Lone Ranger. "We're done for, Tonto!"To which Tonto replies,

What you mean, "we," Paleface?When I grew up, most of my friends were Asian and I was in martial arts and have made Asian philosophy a core aspect of the way I look at things ever since.

I wonder whether, when many people consider what is new or can be new, they draw from too small a subset of the universal human heritage and thus begin the attempt already hamstringed.

I read too many books at the same time. Which is probably why I so rarely finish them. Good language is really what keep me glued so, if they're just splatting out metrics, I'm going to get bored.I go in waves when it comes to finishing them. I'm usually content not to force it, since I'm usually reading for pleasure. I only feel compelled to power through when someone is making a complex argument that can't be followed easily if one leaves loose threads hanging about for long before coming back to them.

[Blarg]

Chinese Classical Poetry is really wonderful. Suits me to a T.

The book starts off with some explanations of Chinese philosophy and literary tendencies that are brilliantly concise and easy to work with. So much of Asian philosophy is presented in a vague and inconclusive manner that one would think there might be nothing to be said about it and nothing to it. That does a huge disservice. I'd point anyone to this book as a way to get a better handle on Taoism, Buddhism, and Chinese culture, whether they cared for poetry or not. This translator, David Hinton, has a real knack for both English and Chinese, to judge by the artfulness and beauty of his translations, but also for the prose he uses to put them in context. I couldn't think of a better introduction to Asian traditional culture than this book, and I've read a fair amount about China all my life.

Re the specific authors, maybe I'll get into each one a bit in this thread, here and there. So many obviously deserve a book of their own, and I've seen from Amazon that some are out there.

Everyone talks about that amiable rascal Li Po, but I think that the individual author who wowed me the most so far was Tu Fu.

[DarkenedByNight]

I picked up or should I say downloaded "The Ode Less Traveled" by Stephen Fry. Not only is it my first book on poetry, it is also my first eBook purchase. I have not read enough to judge it yet.

[Blarg]

How is it formatted? Perscribo's thread on the Kindle/Amazon says that they tend to screw up the spacing on poetry.

[DarkenedByNight]

How is it formatted? Perscribo's thread on the Kindle/Amazon says that they tend to screw up the spacing on poetry.

I have to read the thread and see what was wrong with the kindle version. I have the iBooks version. So far it seems to be formatted right.

[Blarg]

Ah, I just assumed kindle ...

[Perscribo]

it sounds like she is looking for a particular type of poem or attitude in poetry. And I wonder how deeply her search for newness goes. Does it accept discovery in the spirit as well as the form? Does it accept formal novelty as sufficient?

I think you might have something there. I struggled through half of the book (as my nominal time allowed) and chose not to renew now that it's come due. I should have read the reviews at Amazon first, because the first thing that stood out was how she chose to focus on the structured, formal designs of poetry. Even in her (admittedly, limited) sphere of western/English poets, she has severely limited her scope by leaving Pound and Williams out of her examples (two of my favorites). I was drawn to this book by the poetic style of her prose, but that same style grew increasingly hard to decipher. The promise in her introduction was not coming through on the pages and, ultimately, I did grow bored (and more than a little confused). I thought she might be able to provide me with a decent explanation as to what, exactly, makes a poem by Wordsworth so wonderful?...an explanation of the structure draws me no closer to sharing this opinion. My attempt to emulate the likes of Tintern Abbey with my own poem of observation, contemplation, and conclusion in a smattering of free verse resulted, in my opinion, in an artless mess -- with or without iambic meter.

Overall, the book was a bit more than I could chew, and I probably didn't give it the proper chance it deserves. Like one of the other reviews stated, it seemed designed more for MFAs looking to delve even deeper into techniques used by this subset of poets long-touted by academics like herself.

Of course, I might be just bitter over the fact that I couldn't understand it...as I am seemingly incapable of understanding much "classic" poetry. When I believe a poem is good, I can't always offer a good explanation, either. As much as I wish my creative force might spring from technique...it never does. Maybe a move to the east is just the sort of read I need to bring my confidence back in balance.

[Blarg]

I find it hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with Chinese Classical Poetry by Hinton, then. I've just been casually reading a few of the poems in there a day, or a poem every few days, for months now. It's a huge pleasure and very inspiring.

[Perscribo]

I find it hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with Chinese Classical Poetry by Hinton, then. I've just been casually reading a few of the poems in there a day, or a poem every few days, for months now. It's a huge pleasure and very inspiring.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out.

[Perscribo]

Very impressed by Hinton so far. After looking at his samples and all the reviews/bios I could find on the Internet (something I seem to be more heavily read in than actual works; not only because they're typically at the front of a book--and the fact that I tend to give up easily on books that I aspire to read, esp. if they fail to fascinate me), I've decided to invest in the book. (http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Chinese-Poetry-David-Hinton/dp/0374531900/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320422194&sr=8-1)

If anything, all this wonderful exposure has re-started Perscribo's engine. Ezra Pound's poetry is going to be a lifelong obsession for me, however often he turns me on and off. I'd left off an outline of his I'm working on (in public domain, this guy wrote a LOT at the turn of the century) his Chinese "translations" because 1) they weren't his poems, and 2) I don't care how good I thought his poetry was, if the guy never spoke Chinese, how in the world could these translations (losing so much already by the uphill battle that is english) be considered justified/accurate?

I know (Blarg) you didn't want to make this thread about things on [y]our resume, but this is truly relevant to other classics I'm reading now. In researching/expanding my business, I still haven't got past anything by any of my favorite poets written past 1923--there's too much there to roost on/salvage!

So, my question is: do you (or anyone else out there) have any opinion/knowledge on whether Pound's <1923 translations are worth salvaging? If you do, I'm going to add them to my working anthology (http://www.perscribo.com/backup/PoundEarlyPoems.html) (that will replace/upgrade works I'm already marketing by him--making this public domain collection as comprehensive as possible).

Chinese poetry. Great for another winter indoors. Very comforting….

[Perscribo]

Feel like I gotta check myself on this, by "salvage,"; I don't mean to imply all this stuff isn't already out there. As a matter of fact, it's all over the place. I'm attempting to bring it all together without the banners, browsers, readers, Flashplayers, iApplications...blah blah. Just reporting the facts, and making it as accessible as possible without sacrificing the medium.

[Blarg]

Didn't Pound translate that poetry from another person's translations in the first place? An Italian guy or something? I forget ... but that would make his translations distant indeed. Old Chinese is very distant even from Modern Chinese, by my understanding. Another book I read about old Chinese ghost stories went into how much of the ancient writings were done in a way far removed from ordinary language, and so regularly and densely packed with classical allusions that much of their essence and irony would be lost even on those few who were fluent in the elite language itself. So perhaps not just Pound's but almost anyone's contributions would barely scrape the surface -- and if I was right about Pound there, he is scraping just the surface of a surface someone else scraped.

I don't think it matters either way. Your collections don't seem to be put together with the aim of scrutinizing an author's reputation. It is what it is. Ditto, the poems. The main thing is they helped expose western culture to a vast and beautiful cultural tradition. The question of how well they did it is secondary. At any rate, it will be up to the readers to decide if the poems stir something up inside them or amuse them.

You will probably find it interesting to see if you wind up with some of the poems in two different translations. My guess is Hinton's will be both better and truer to their source, but that doesn't mean Pound didn't recreate the poems in an interesting way on his own, and that the comparisons won't be fun.

I wonder if you want to include his translations with his poems, though.

By the way, love the Lyle Lovett haircut in your link. Didn't Ezra Pound use to be married to Julia Roberts?

[Perscribo]

LOL, yes, Dorothy Shakspear was his Julia, I suppose. I loved the pic as soon as I saw it; very befitting for his exuberant (and not yet so very hostile) character.

I think I'll look at his translations, maybe even add them at some point, but for now am going to focus on his work, which is really what I enjoy (and suspect more readers might enjoy) most.

[Blarg]

Just got "Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies" by Anis Shinvani.

Shivani reminds me a lot of Christopher Hitchens, in that he is both fearless and gleefully game in the face of public opprobrium, but sometimes one guesses he might be straining for effect: Is Bill Clinton's dalliance with Lewinsky really the epitome of evil, or is Philip Levine really the signpost of an artistic apocalpyse? Both Shivani and Hitchens are delightfully erudite yet capable of speaking plainly. Both can reel in interesting references without leaving them in Urdu with a snicker toward the less-informed.

Here's an example of Shivani's vs. popular expectation: Philip Levine and Other Mediocrities: What it Takes to Ascend to the Poet Laureateship. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/philip-levine_b_925788.html)

I've got a couple posts truncated and altogether messed up by clumsiness in that thread -- the proof is that one of them is missing. At any rate, there is hardly anyone who won't find himself disagreeing with some of Shivani. What's interesting (to me anyway) are two things: That it is hard for anyone at all not to agree with at least some of it, and that I was saying the same thing 30 years ago to people who were looking at me like I was crazy/hopelessly out of touch.

That we're still at a place 30 years later where this looks like provocation shows how frozen our culture has become, which at least to my mind proves Shivani's points. About, err ... how frozen fiction, poetry, and criticism too have become. How comfortable, repetitive, and unambitious.

His essays are a great bit of draino shoved into one's orifices by the "Bitch, where my money?" of time. This book is a book of essays, though, and the first two are more fanciful fiction. After the first, I skipped past the very short second to get into the third: Why Is American Fiction in Its Current Dismal State? It's not that I couldn't stand another three pages of funny, insightful, playful snark; I just needed to get into some more meat first. One intro is better than two.

So I can't say much about the book just yet. Just that I am still looking forward to it so much that I'm skipping through it to the juicy bits. Will report further.

[donatos]

The collected poems of Robert Creeley. 1945-1975
The poems of St. John Of the Cross.

[jasonbwell]

Hi gang, sitting here at work... bored as all get-out.

I'd like to spend more time here with everyone as I feel a connection with poets. Call it kindred spirits or what have you!

Any who, what I'm reading currently isn't poetry-related, so maybe it belongs in another thread, but here are the 2 books i'm into right now....

The Cruel Sea - by N. Monsarrat
The Boston Strangler - by Gerald Frank

[Blarg]

The thread doesn't have to be about poetry books only.

I'm not familiar with those books, I don't think ... but I have read a little about the Boston Strangler. And I loved the Tony Curtis movie. Let us know if the books you're reading turn out to be any good.

[Perscribo]

I just finished Bukowski's Ham on Rye. Having never read any of his novels, I was a little disappointed since the jacket claimed this one to be the best of them. His writing is wonderful (I love how he sort of emulates Hemingway with his cursory style) and humorous, but the characters--including Chinaski--seemed a little out-of-step with reality. Closed-off, sort of. But, perhaps that was his point. People aren't open to empathy or even friendship if they're not really looking for it--and especially if they swear it off like the plague. I'm not sure how much of this is supposed to be based on Bukowski's real life but I was pretty disappointed when, in the end, Chinaski doesn't seem any different than his father--provoking violence against his "friends" for no apparent reason.

It was most interesting to me when, upon discovering his local library, he delivers his commentary on writers that he liked and disliked. Particularly when he says, "When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great." Although, I was disappointed when, later in the book, he states that there was "nothing left to read" there. Surely he could have gotten that helpful librarian to obtain more books to suit his interest.

There wasn't one scrap of hope anywhere in this book, and I guess that's why I didn't like it. His poetry is definitely a whole other animal.

[Blarg]

If you don't like downer books, better stay away from Journey to the End of the Night, or a lot of Vonnegut. I tend to like them, as everywhere else in our mass media but books -- and even in most books -- the message for by far the most part relentlessly cheery, even to the point of being oblivious. A little lemon and vinegar keep the sugar from being cloying.

[Perscribo]

I didn't say I didn't like downer books. I said this one didn't seem honest. Without any sugar at all it's cloyingly bitter. For one, I don't think his parents could have been that terrible. However, trying to defend this stance could be akin to battling an angry drunk.

[Blarg]

There are many parents just as bad, trust me. We were a foster family when I was a kid, and we got all their leftover kids after they abused and abandoned them. There is no limit whatever to human greed, evil, or simply neglect. Whatever can even be imagined has been done countless times. To me it's all in the telling.

[Perscribo]

Sorry...I obviously didn't mean to insinuate YOU were drunk with your opinion...maybe I don't know how to communicate it, but the complete lack of compassion of nearly all the characters (with the exception of the nurse that was helping him) seemed almost surreal--like their descriptions were coming from his head instead of what he actually experienced. Maybe "hope" is the wrong word, too. Something was missing. Most writers render at least a little bit of humanity into their characters even when they're evil. It makes their tragedy more poignant. It's probably just his style that I'm not used to. Very one-sided. It's like his stubbornness is coming through his work. I do like the writing and he definitely has his moments where the poet in him shines through. For that reason alone I'll likely read the rest of his novels. Perhaps then I can articulate this "style" of his I'm getting at a little better.

[Blarg]

I downloaded it on my kindle when it was on sale a while back. I've been looking forward to reading it, and your remarks on it actually make me want to read it more. It sounds like he didn't fail to inject passion into his story.

Sometimes I think we can be thrown for a loop due to lifelong expectations built up in the storytelling we've been allowed to see following such strict conventions. Always the happy ending, romance shoe-horned in however possible even when entirely silly, every situation with its silver linings and every character with a secret heart of gold. The truth is that some stories are just sad, and popular culture tends to protect us from that. Some characters, in real life too, really do follow stereotypes right out of a comic book. The truth is, in real life, the hero usually dies.

I find many stories inherently more interesting when they follow the true, rather than imagined, roundedness of life -- that it has all sorts of dimensions and trajectories, that the entrants continue after the winner has been declared, that many consequences last rather than being ephemeral products of the mind that are essentially no more than mere trite manifestations of willpower and attitude, including the consequences -- and people -- we shield ourselves from by thinking too little about, thus protectively narrowing our world and thereby our souls.

[Perscribo]

I might still be coming to terms with how incredibly sad it really is. I can actually see how his skin condition would put up that extra barrier so many people (afflicted with images of beautiful faces and ignorance) couldn't get past, but the fact that his own mother didn't champion him is most heartbreaking to me. An all-too-prevalent story that IS hard for readers like me to swallow. Perhaps it's too honest, and his Russian grandmother did bury all of them, lol.

[Perscribo]

Oh and it never even occurred to me how he was afflicted with all sorts of prejudice (and still more ignorance) because he was born in Germany.

[Blarg]

but the fact that his own mother didn't champion him is most heartbreaking to me. An all-too-prevalent story that IS hard for readers like me to swallow. Perhaps it's too honest, and his Russian grandmother did bury all of them, lol.

That's a very common story too. I had an abusive father, for one, and my mother didn't protect me either. I've read cops talking about even extreme cases, saying that as long as a check is coming in, a lot of families will put up with anything.

[Perscribo]

I'm very sorry to hear that. While I know in most of those situations the mother isn't able to stop the beatings--I still was hoping there would be SOME kind of exchange between Chinaski and his mother to prove, at the very least, there was affection there. I know that's probably being too hopeful, too. When women are weak like that it makes me angry, because the ripple effect is so much more severe than if she were wasting away her own life. Gracelessness can be much worse than the violence. But, you're right. It's probably all he felt needed to be written--and is probably truer than most readers with rose-colored spectacles like to believe. Definitely a book that stays on my mind long after I've read it.

[Perscribo]

The second book was a stray that I saw shelved in the wrong section of the library. I knew, when I saw the title, that I had to check it out. :D

Bukowski's Women
Vonnegut's Welcome To The Monkey House

[printingray]

I'm reading 3 books at the moment, unfortunately one of them is in audio format (does that even count as reading? In my book it does.) and two on Kindle.

[Perscribo]

I'm reading 3 books at the moment,

Care to tell us what they are? :)

[Perscribo]

Bukowski's Women

While not the most perfectly stitched together, I can't help admire this book. Hilarious in some parts. Poetic in others. In-between, it's just a dirty soap opera. One of my favorite passages is when he is reflecting on the company of another poet-friend:

"It made me feel low that I couldn't praise him without reservation. But then if you lied to a man about his talent just because he was sitting across from you, that was the most unforgivable lie of them all, because that was telling him to go on, to waste his life, finally. But many people did just that, friends and relatives mostly."

Thank goodness AbsoluteWrite is not like that. :)

I almost put the book down after his first real screw up; when he watched and did nothing as that incompetent redhead (I forget her name--as I started to forget many of their names later in the book) locked her six year old daughter into a house by herself so they could hop a plane to a reading in NY. I soon got over it. It was the mother in me striking again in a visceral and and angry way. Chinaski is no hero. All in the name of research? No way. All in the name of twisted, live-and-let-die love? I can see that.

Chinaski was lucky he ended up (settling?--never!) with a broad who pushed organic meals on him, probably prolonging his life and liver another few decades.

Will come back to the monkey house after I publish another volume of Carroll.

[kdnxdr]

I just finished reading Great Expectations.

[Blarg]

Did you like it? I really liked that one.

[kdnxdr]

You know, how do I even dare to criticize someone like Charles Dickens? I was required to read the book when I was in something like 6th or 7th grade. The only thing I remembered from that first required reading was Ms. Havisham and all her dust and cobwebs. That's pretty much it. For some reason, the book had been haunting and "calling me" to read it....I know, weird.....but I went and found a used copy and just finished it. I'm no one to say, but I found it "went on" in some areas and was boring. But, I have to say that I like reading what I call to be be "old English". It puts me in a certain frame of mind. I just wrote my first story and I'm seriously lacking in character development. Of course, Charles Dickens is extremely descriptive of his characters, so maybe it was to help me see deeper into my characters. I made the mistake of telling my story mostly through my characters dialogue and it seems all my critiques called me up for it. I like it, though. I tend to get bored with too much character descriptors, but that's me. Otherwise, it, of course is a great story and well worth reading. I'm not sorry that I did, but I did get bored in some places.

[Blarg]

I usually get bored in places. It's the overall balance that's important to me, and whether I can find any stand-out moments.

Re dialogue vs. description, too much or too little of anything can be unbalancing. I think with description, it's the type of description that matters.

Description, so to speak, is the essence of the "heist" movie and its most fun sequences. You see something really interesting happening and can't take your eyes away from the screen for a second. Description of some dullard doing approximately nothing, on the other hand -- for a long, long time -- or of irrelevant background details, begins to grate.

Same with uninteresting people talking, or people talking about uninteresting things. Look at almost any of the famous Christopher Walken appearances, though. They're all dialogue, and they're mesmerizing. They can be quite long. And they can make a movie, pretty much all by themselves.

So it's more how well it is done, than what it is, IMO.

[Blarg]

Well, I just went to a poetry workshop at the local library led by Oregon's reappointed poet laureate, Paulann Petersen. It was a lot of fun. I met some interesting people and joined a local writers group I hadn't known existed, though I've searched for one more than once. I'll be checking them out soon. Another group formed up after the workshop with the intent of giving readings, and I signed up for that.

I didn't know what would be involved, so I brought down a bunch of my poems just in case. Turns out we each crafted two poems on the spot after building up a backlog of images to draw from. Some surprisingly interesting poems were written in very short order, and there were far more people than I expected to see.

I bought one of Paulann's books as a courtesy for her leading the free workshop. She had a few out there, but what sold me on her book "A Bride of Narrow Escape" was the snippet of a review on the back that said the book engaged with the poet's issues of having her parents die. Talking to her during a break, she told me her mother had Alzheimers, and I told her about the problems my own elderly father was having and how hard it was to deal with it, including how hard it was to deal with it on the artistic level by writing poetry about it. It was a three-hour session, but there wasn't much time to talk.

I wrote a complete short poem there, and started off on another one. Paulann went from table to table seeing if anyone wanted to read, and I volunteered. I started off in a clear strong voice so people could hear (I couldn't hear half the poems being read out in whispered voices, and didn't want people to hear only bits and pieces). I ended up shaking in my boots as I got hit by a sudden bout of nervous self-consciousness. I can give a talk to employees, and used to give speeches well enough, but I have never done a reading of any "creative" work before. At least not since college creative writing classes. So I sweated blood. But there was healthy applause and someone told me they liked the poem after the session was done. All in all, despite my dreadful sudden flash of crippling, bowel-pulverizing nervousness, it was a good idea to read, because one day, who knows, it might matter that I can do it without swallowing my tongue.

All in all a fun and worthwhile experience. I look forward to reading the book. I read a postcard-sized(large postcard-sized) insert she stuck into the book for me while I was scribbling away which had another poem on it. Very nice, with a really nice end, and it made me happier I had decided to buy her book.

[ddgryphon]

The Immortal Life of Helen Lacks

[Blarg]

Is that the sequel?

[kdnxdr]

The Captive Mind
Czeslaw Milosz
Translated from the Polish 1955
Chapter One of this book, "The Pill of Murti-Bing," originally published in the Partisan Review, September-October 1951, under the title "The Happiness Pill."

[Blarg]

I read that book long ago. It seems to have become all but forgotten, but it was a great read. And I don't usually associate with the implied politics readily. I loved the bits about the political uses of art and the vicious dissection of people who traded conscience and art for security and approbation.

[kdnxdr]

I like reading stories that attempt to take the reader to a place where things are "as usual" but the 'affect of transition', which can be so subtle, is demonstrated in such a way, one realizes that it can happen anywhere to anyone, particularly regarding the loss of well being.