One of my poems is up – as a podcast and a “readable” poem – at qarrtsiluni today, for their “Health Issue:” “Advice From the Robot Scientist’s Daughter.”
And, it’s congrats in order for the girls today! January O’Neil, Nin Andrews, and Allison Benis White all had their books nominated for the Foreward’s Book of the Year Award in Poetry! Nice!
Are you worried that your poetry is boring? If so, read this post from Martha Silano!
Books (and a movie) to recommend
I just finished Allison Benis White’s Self-Portrait with Crayon, a wonderful book (my mini-review of it will appear in the next Crab Creek Review) of crystalline prose poems that present a puzzle and a glimpse of how loss and art work together. The thing I’ll say here that I didn’t get to say in my review: this is a great book for people who are looking at 1. how to build and organize a manuscript, because her organization is meticulous and very clever and 2. how to write about personal tragedies through the lens of art (kind of ekphrasis of the soul.)
The other book I’m recommending is a Young Adult book called When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. It’s a book the author said was inspired by L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which was all I needed to hear to read it, and it involves a young girl coming of age in 1970’s New York City and time travel. It’s not as good as A Wrinkle in Time, but it’s the kind of smart, emotionally engaging book I wish had been around when I was a kid. Issues of class and race are addressed, as well as the confusing transition between childhood and adulthood. The best time travel book L’Engle wrote, in my opinion, was not A Wrinkle in Time, but A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third in her trilogy.
The movie I saw was an independent film called Haiku Tunnel, about an aspiring, depressed novelist working as a temp in a law firm. The writer/actor/director is charming and funny, and a lot of the scenes reminded me of the Kafka-esque cheer of showing up to work as a temp and how work can actually help writers stay connected to the world. At least, that’s what I think it was about. It was a fun movie of the genre “movies about writers.” I wish more of these movies were about women writers, but there you go. Maybe I’ll become a famous screenwriter writing the exciting life of a poet. Probably not.
Merry Holidays Everyone! My Christmas shopping is finished, the tree is up and decorated, and tomorrow I’m buying a tiny ham (well, tiny is relative – only four pounds!) for Christmas dinner. I am wishing you all a lot of writing time under the tree. Speaking of which…
Thanks Mary for your “three poems before the end of the year” challenge. I’ve now written four! I don’t think I would have done that without the challenge.
I also checkout out a boatload of books from the library. One was Gluck’s new book, A Village Life. I loved it. I thought, while it contained her usual themes “Autumn, Loss, Death, Etc…” (that’s an inside joke for you Gluck fans) it was more romantic and loose than her books have been in some time. The outer landscape of the village mimics the inner landscape of the writer. In particular, her poems about young love seemed touching and nostalgic. Some of the poems seem intensely personal – particularly ” Walking at Night” as she talks about her body being invisible in the summer night as she ages and “At the River” in which she talks about her father drinking wine “with his friend the Holy Ghost.” (Coincidentally, I was listening to Sarah McLachlan’s cover of the “The River” at the time) Liked it a lot.
Still thinking about whether or not I enjoyed The Magicians by Lev Grossman, kind of a Holden-Caulfield-goes-to-Hogwarts-and-then-Narnia novel. I think I would have enjoyed it more without the main character – A “Bright Lights Big City” style ennui-filled narrator. Are contemporary authors not allowed to write characters who are engaged with the world anymore? I had the same problem with The Corrections.
I also got a book of essays by Michael Chabon. And reading Allison Benis White’s Self Portrait with Crayon, which I like a lot so far.
I think there is a connection between reading for fun and writing. Can I get some funding for that study?
