Saturday, March 03, 2007
Astoria, Malena Morling
At first I wasn't crazy about this book, but on a second read I like it a lot more. It's still an all-time favorite or anything, but there is some beautiful stuff here, and we're not quite as different as I thought, Malena and I. In fact she's of Norwegian heritage or something like that, and everyone says I'm Scandanavian. So we're practically sisters there.
Disaffections, Cesare Pavese
Let me first say what a joy it is to sit down with this book and look at Pavese's poems in Italian. I read the English on the right side and then follow through the Italian on the other side. While my translation skills are not at all great, I do recognize a lot of the words and find myself trying to figure out the grammatical forms. Sigh. I miss speaking Italian. I'll have to study again. Or just run away. Ok, back to the poetry...
When I picked this up I was looking for "unrequited love" poems, because that's what he writes always, apparently, and I've written a few myself lately. His love poems are different though, because they're in third person and he doesn't put himself in in an obvious way...
KB says my Cinque Terre poem is so Pavese, so that's what I'm looking for as I read on...
When I picked this up I was looking for "unrequited love" poems, because that's what he writes always, apparently, and I've written a few myself lately. His love poems are different though, because they're in third person and he doesn't put himself in in an obvious way...
KB says my Cinque Terre poem is so Pavese, so that's what I'm looking for as I read on...
Fast Lanes, Jayne Anne Phillips (Fiction)
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS MAKES ME WANT TO VOMIT WORDS. That's the only way to define it, really. And that's a good thing, a very good thing. Haven't you ever wanted to vomit words, just have them all spill out of you, dirty, so fast that you can't control what's happening? That's what I want most days. Drew Perry, how could you go and give a dangerous book like this to a poet child like me? It's just too beautiful. And haunting. And every character I create in my mind now, in hopes of writing (gasp!) a story is Rayme. I cannot escape Rayme. She makes me want to lose my mind. I already love jars; I am halfway there, I guess. Also the story "Bluegill" plays a huge part in the vomit-factor. Yes, OF COURSE. I'll a stream-of-whateverness piece in which a woman speaks to the baby in her womb?! JAP will. And it will be Bluegill and it will be amazing and it will make me sick.
But, as beautiful as DP's verbal love-making to Jayne was in class, I will keep mine to a minimum. Read this book, no matter what genre you write. I can see shades of it in the sort of half real, half fantasy landscape in which I am writing for 413 right now. And I have to say that I think "Counting" is mostly brilliant. Is it legally a story? I don't know. But as someone who writes mostly poetry, this is how I see stories in my mind. Little flashes of words. Maybe that's how everyone sees stories? But no one writes them that way usually. I suppose that's kind of what happened with my poem, "Silver Season." When I first sat down with the images I thought it might be a story, but then certain sentences just started to ally themselves with others, no more than 2 or 3 together, and poof, it was a poem, as always. And yet it is a story in a way. And certainly the "widest" poem I've written. I'm feeling the wide poem right now. Feeling it wide.
So I've avoided typing out long paragraphs from the book thus far, but I'll just close with the opening lines of Rayme:
"In our student days we were all in need of fortune tellers. No one was sure what was happening in the outside world and no one thought about it much. We had no televisions and we bought no newspapers. Communal life seemed a continual dance in which everyone changed partners, a patient attempt at domesticity by children taking turns being parents. We were adrift but we were together...
...This story could be about any one of those people, but it is about Rayme and comes to no conclusions."
But, as beautiful as DP's verbal love-making to Jayne was in class, I will keep mine to a minimum. Read this book, no matter what genre you write. I can see shades of it in the sort of half real, half fantasy landscape in which I am writing for 413 right now. And I have to say that I think "Counting" is mostly brilliant. Is it legally a story? I don't know. But as someone who writes mostly poetry, this is how I see stories in my mind. Little flashes of words. Maybe that's how everyone sees stories? But no one writes them that way usually. I suppose that's kind of what happened with my poem, "Silver Season." When I first sat down with the images I thought it might be a story, but then certain sentences just started to ally themselves with others, no more than 2 or 3 together, and poof, it was a poem, as always. And yet it is a story in a way. And certainly the "widest" poem I've written. I'm feeling the wide poem right now. Feeling it wide.
So I've avoided typing out long paragraphs from the book thus far, but I'll just close with the opening lines of Rayme:
"In our student days we were all in need of fortune tellers. No one was sure what was happening in the outside world and no one thought about it much. We had no televisions and we bought no newspapers. Communal life seemed a continual dance in which everyone changed partners, a patient attempt at domesticity by children taking turns being parents. We were adrift but we were together...
...This story could be about any one of those people, but it is about Rayme and comes to no conclusions."
Open House, Beth Ann Fennelly
I've really enjoyed most of this book. Mostly, I've just been in love with "Come to Krakow." I'm such a sucker for last-one-of-the-book poems, but let's be honest, they're always so good. I love the voice of this poem. I actually wrote both of my longer non-fiction pieces last fall in this voice. Weird. It's that gentle command, call to action type of thing. "Come with me. Come with me there...." There's something very grand about that voice. It's great for an opening or closing poem, I think. One of my favorite parts is the second stanza, when holding hot bread recalls a memory of holding frozen bird by Lake Michigan. "Let things come to life in our hands." I love that line.
The end is great as well: "We stop to purchase / directions with our handful of dear words. The cider / seller will not tell, gives us instead a steaming amber mug / to share. "Drink, drink." I pirouette around a fountain. / You toss in your watch. When it stops its tick, / you'll make a wish. I'll save for you the last, good sip."
The poem has a nice regular form to it: 4 wide stanzas of 9 lines each. She likes to take up most of the page with her poems. I think this book is partly why I've gotten on the wider poem kick. It probably has more to do with the time I spent studying and writing non-fiction in Italy. It just put me in a prosey mood. Not that I've written any prose since, just that I'm feeling a bit of freedom with the longer line lately. I like the weight of it.
"I would like to go back..."
The end is great as well: "We stop to purchase / directions with our handful of dear words. The cider / seller will not tell, gives us instead a steaming amber mug / to share. "Drink, drink." I pirouette around a fountain. / You toss in your watch. When it stops its tick, / you'll make a wish. I'll save for you the last, good sip."
The poem has a nice regular form to it: 4 wide stanzas of 9 lines each. She likes to take up most of the page with her poems. I think this book is partly why I've gotten on the wider poem kick. It probably has more to do with the time I spent studying and writing non-fiction in Italy. It just put me in a prosey mood. Not that I've written any prose since, just that I'm feeling a bit of freedom with the longer line lately. I like the weight of it.
"I would like to go back..."
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