The Shadow Girls, by Henning Mankell

This novel is not like others I've read by Mankell. It is not a crime novel, at least not in the usual sense, and does not feature a policeman named Wallander as the main character. Instead, the main character is a Swedish poet, Jesper Humlin. Humlin is, as the story sets out, not a very sympathetic character. He is, for one thing, overly concerned with the state of his tan.

Humlin's life is not without its problems: he has a troubled relationship with his own mother, a girlfriend who wants him to have a child with her without delay--he's not so enthusiastic, a publisher who doesn't listen to his protests when the publisher tells him that he will next be writing a crime novel (ha, ha, Mankell), and a stock broker who has cheerfully guided him into bankruptcy.

Into Humlin's life, in a semi-comic series of accidents, come three young girls, refugees who are illegally in Sweden. As Humlin learns their stories, and begins spending time trying to help them write, the novel takes on a new direction. In the end, things are different.

A review in The Telegraph,

Saturday, by Ian McEwan

The entire plot of this novel takes place on a Saturday in February 2003. Neurosurgeon Henry Perowne wakes up early and has a very full day. In the course of this day he sees every member of his family, including his elderly (demented) mother and drunken poet father-in-law. In addition to the reunion, Perowne faces a serious and dangerous confrontation.

I was glad to find that this book was not like the last McEwan I read, which had a trick ending. Saturday was a thoroughly good read, with a great plot and plenty to think about. There is much debate in the book about the wisdom or folly of invading Iraq, and speculation about what the outcomes of such action--or, indeed, the outcomes of inaction--might be.

There is an issue toward the end that I don't want to be too specific about as it would spoil the book for another reader, but I do think there's an unrealistic representation of the professional behavior of a surgeon here. I doubt that the event described near the end of the story would or could have taken place in a British hospital, but I suppose I could be wrong.

McEwan includes an interesting American, Jay Strong, who has come to London to work as an anesthetist, thereby reducing his salary by a great deal, because he loves (1) socialized medicine, and (2) a British woman.

A Guardian / Observer review.

To Read; 25 March 2013

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes (began reading on 13 Dec 2013)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos.

All That Is, by Janes Salter

Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City
by Robin Nagle  [Barnes and Noble Link]

Poets to read: Weldon Kees, Kathleen Rooney

Cynthia Huntington

Nikky Finney

Sara Miller:

I wish I could keep my thoughts in order

and my ducks in a row.

I wish I could keep my ducks in a thought

or my thoughts in a duck...

“Countermeasures,” by Sara Miller

Short stories: Carol Shields

Mary Roach 

I suppose that's enough for now.

18 April 2013 

On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths, by Lucia Perillo

Poetry. Copper Canyon Press. 978-1-55659-397-0

I have seldom read a book of poetry from cover to cover in less than 2 days, but I plowed through these. What pleasure. I read about Lucia Perillo in a copy of The Nation magazine and thought she sounded good. She is.

From "My Father Kept the TV On:"

while the books lay open, scattered facedown
like turtles sunning, the jackets hunched, with a little
hump in the hunch from the trough of the spine...

If I'm going to choose my nostalgia, it is a no-brainer
that I'm going to side with books, with the days
before the lithium-ion battery, but after
Philip Roth and John le Carré were born books not too
highbrow or too low, but sometimes thick
and overdue. Books the fathers read to escape us...

*****

All of Us, by Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver's collected poems, maybe all of them, are in this volume.

*****

Delights and Shadows, by Ted Kooser

I first encountered Ted Kooser when someone on a poetry forum mentioned his name and a book called The Poetry Home Repair Manual. In that book, Kooser, one-time Poet Laureate of the United States of America, gives plenty of plain advice to aspiring poets, including an admonition not to take too much advice. One important principle of the Manual is that poetry is communication. Kooser teaches that the poet's job is to reach directly into the reader's "heart," to touch her or him in a way that nothing else can.

Delights and Shadows is a book of poems that brings the reader into Kooser's world, and connects her or him in such a way that, although the location is unmistakably the flat, agrarian Great Plains, and the people are his neighbors and relatives, there is no difference: Kooser connects as a human being who has worked, loved, hated, won, and lost. He has been young, and is growing old. He has lived around people of great wisdom, and people of low intelligence; great hearts, and seemingly no heart at all.

From "Creamed Corn:"

"...these Jamaicans were different.
They kept to themselves, in loose clusters,
and knives flashed from the shadows
when they picked their teeth or scraped
Iowa from under their pale, perfect nails...

...Word got around
that out of pure spite and meanness,
sometimes they peed in the creamed corn
...Years later,
wherever we've gone, whatever we've come to,
our ignorance spoils the creamed corn."

*****

Available Light, by Marge Piercy

I've mentioned my discovery of Marge Piercy elsewhere. "Available Light" is a collection of poems that I have found to be eminently readable, entertaining, and just what I want from such a work. Piercy's personality (or at least the one she wishes to project) comes through loud and clear. She is a feminist, in love with her husband (Ira Wood), and a Jew.

*****





Poetry Foundation entry: Marge Piercy

So Quiet the Earth, by David Lee

I discovered David Lee's poetry on the Internet, which, for me, is how it often happens. I read as many of his poems as I could find online, excited and delighted by their rough reality, the dialogue, the non-traditional language and subject matter. Irreverence from a hog-farmer/preacher.

"Amanda Strayhorn, Reverend's Wife," was the first one I found. I told a friend of mine that it was the longest poem I'd ever read without being threatened by a teacher. In addition, it's probably the longest poem I've ever read without stopping--a poem I couldn't put down, a page-turner. This tale of a pompous preacher whose wife became famous for the articles she wrote about their sex life and how that all played out in their lives and those of their neighbors is funny, thought-provoking, masterful, beautiful, and perfect. There are probably some more adjectives I could add, but after all, verbs are more effective. "Amanda Strayhorn" simply skewered me.

Some excerpts:

...they were a typical unhappily married couple
with five obstreperous children whose birthdays
were as much a mystery to the Reverend
as Greek, dishwashing, or putting the toilet lid down... 

...he could take off his glasses before engaging
the bedroom and proceed to enjoy the wonders
of conjugal delight through deprivation of sight
which would intensify the inner light of spiritual union
and thereby expand his prowess to the Lord’s great approval... 

...every Saturday afternoon after he worked himself
into an erotic frenzy writing sermons on Satanic temptation
of Baptist youth into the fires of hell through visions
of sexual degradation upon which he expounded with vigor...

This poem led me to read "Nighthunting with John," a poem about "...hunting / hogfeed with John / up and down the black alleys / splitting a case of Lucky..."

I also read "The Chain Letter," an excellent fable about luck, the futility of anger, and superstition, among other things.

I searched my library to see what David Lee I could find. They had only one volume, a book published in 2004, So Quietly the Earth. As I sniffed around in it, I was initially disappointed. It looked to me like Mr. Lee had deserted the wondrous narrative forms I'd been enjoying. Quietly is a kind of ode to the Southwestern United States, it would seem. The poems that I have read so far celebrate the millions of years of geology, the pushing-up of mountains, the ancient seas that once covered what is now desert.

As I continue to read this book, I find that I really like these. Lee has the kind of connection to nature that seems to come to us old men. Furthermore, his voice is not missing or changed--it surfaces quite recognizably--he is in the presence of unspeakable grandeur and must himself be quiet, and let the Earth write his lines.

Through the pages runs a series of short poems entitled "While Walking," plus a number. For example:

While Walking (V)

Luke 18:16

Do you think the rocks are listening to us?
I don't know. Do rocks hear?
The ones that are alive do.

One of the poems that caused me to reconsider my abovementioned disappointment is "Ode Beneath a Hummingbird Feeder." This poem has little to do with geology, but reveals a reverence for hummingbirds that at least equals my own. Here's the final stanza:

Oh, arrogant little warrior
if I had a naked weapon
I could brandish like yours
I, too, would suffer
no foolish rival suitors
sipping at my ruby fount. 

Recent reads

Union Atlantic, by Adam Haslett
Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke
Hella Nation, by Evan Wright
That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo
Home Poetry Repair Manual, by Ted Kooser
Valentines, by Ted Kooser
Essential Pleasures, anthology ed. Robert Pinsky
Delights and Shadows, by Ted Kooser

this big fake world, by Ada Limón

this big fake world, a story in verse. Ada Limón
66 pages. Pearl Editions, Long Beach, California. 2007.

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this before. The story is as complicated as any novel, but conveyed in the terse, precise language of poetry. I know this concept isn't new, it's probably just the first time that I've read anything so contemporary, accessible, so readable done this way.

In fake world we have Our Hero, a man who feels at odds with life. We are introduced to him in "On a Lunch Break Our Hero Accidentally Leaves the Office:"

"...the traffic lights kept turning
green and green again.
He began to complain to them
about being rushed, always
getting the "go ahead..."

and

"when he returned to the conference
all the men in suits looked
like barbed wire."

The second poem is entitled "There is a Woman at the Hardware Store," and later on we meet Our Hero's wife in a poem entitled "His Wife Was Not Something He Could Hang on the Tree:"

"... He knew she was
angry, but had given up on talking, her mouth
turned down like a fish's mouth awaiting
the hook..."

Our hero has a friend named Lewis, who writes letters to Ronald Reagan.

In this little book of just about fifty poems, we can follow these four lives as they change and interact, and understand the feelings of these somehow familiar people. We are given a rich and detailed story, laced with whimsy (as any love story must be), and told with great skill.

This is a wonderful work, and one that I shall continue to enjoy. Ms. Limón is a poet of great promise, and I look forward to reading more of her work. I have another collection of her poems, Lucky Wreck, which I'm reading, and hope to write about here soon.

Two poems by Ada Limón may be read in the 19 December 2008 edition of InDigest, a web publication.

I found her books at Amazon.com:

this big fake world

Lucky Wreck