Fun Friday: Shakespeare's Tragedies — Everybody Dies

Poetry Wednesday: Poetry (Original Version)

Last week, we read a very compact poem Marianne Moore pared down from a longer poem of hers by the same name. As promised, here is the longer version. Which do you prefer?

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and

school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

by Marianne Moore

Personally, I prefer the shorter one. This one always felt like Marianne Moore was trying too hard to make a point. However, she was singular in capturing an image with words. Here are a few more from Poem Hunter: do they help solidify your opinion?

Review: The Round House

Secrets are central to The Round House, the latest  novel by Louise Erdrich. Haunting, revealing, educational and profound, Erdrich creates a world on the "rez" where the consequences for actions last generations.

It's not a book I normally would have chosen to read; Native American Indian fiction can be both an amazing experience and a depressing morality tale. However, this story transcended any categorization I or any other readers may want to pin on it.

Secrets play an important role in this book. Secrets are not all clandestine, residing unspoken in the open in a close-knit community. Other are as obscured as the people who keep them. All are revealed to a reliable, likable teenage boy who must decide what to do with the information he receives.

Joe, also known by a rather comical and bizarrely loving nickname, is an incredible narrator. At once 13 years old and a wizened adult, he tells a story that's in present time as much as flashback and flash-forward.

His family suffers a terrible atrocity (which, in the real world, is sadly common for Native American Indians). As his mother recovers, Joe has to learn about the adult world, which is just as confusing — if not more so — than the world of adolescents in which he had been living.

Joe is at once a participant and a witness, showing life on his reservation as he interacts with family, friends, strangers and enemies alike. He discovers the secrets of his people through the mutterings of Mooshum, the mysteries of recovery through a confrontation with Father Travis, the complexities of families that are both the same and wildly different from his own from Linda, the mysterious world of sex from Grandma Ignatius. So much of what he discovers is a secret, private, behind closed doors.

His narration is trustworthy and flawless. He watches with a keen eye and reports with an unflinching bravery his own foibles and those of the world around him. He introduces us to the inner workings of a man-child, sharing his own secrets and how they relate to the people around him.

Erdrich's characters are amazingly rich and full. If I had to choose a best friend, it would be Cappy. I would want an ally like Sonja, a fair but conflicted father like the judge, a teacher like Mooshum. Even characters that are not central to the story are constructed with a keen eye toward authenticity and an ability to avoid the cliché. Joe's story is multi-faceted and ever-shifting, told in relation to others and as an individual.

The reservation itself is a character. I perceived it as flat, hot and dusty, a place that is at once safe as well as the site of deception, violence, weakness and oppression. Often I wonder why people live where they do; Joe never leaves doubt about why he is where he is, the reservation that provides and contains.

Read this book. Stick with it, no matter how treacherous the path. You'll be wizened, relieved and yet sad as you turn the final page, it's that good.

Fun Friday: Modern Classics on a Modern Classic

Courtesy Cinema Bums

Poetry Wednesday: Poetry

Poetry

I, too, dislike it.
***Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
***it, after all, a place for the genuine.

by Marianne Moore

This is one published version of this poem — the version she preferred. How did it begin its published life? Read the other published version here next week!

Summer Is on the Horizon: Are You Ready to Read?

Okay, readers, it's coming up on one of the best times of the year: summer reading. Yes, that lazy, hazy, crazy time when you sit in the sun and sweat to words — well, whatever words on the page become to you when you read.

Let's do this together.

Declare your intention to read! Choose at least a few of your books before summer begins and let the rest of us know what's on your menu. I'll do the same. E-mail me your list and we'll share.

Then comes the fun part: read.
Read for fun.
Read for relaxation.
Read for edification.
Read just because you can.

At the end of the summer, we'll compare notes: how many did you get to on your list? How many new titles made their way into your hands?

The reader who consumed the most books wins a new-to-them book from a selection of titles.

Now, let's be fair: War and Peace counts for two books, agreed? If you think a book deserves extra weight, say so. Thin tomes — well, let's decide that on the weight of your list.

The reading period will be Memorial Day through the end of summer. This year, let's choose Friday, May 24 through Sunday, September 22. Send me your list any time you're ready. I'll publish mine by the end of May (and we can compare how many books from last year's list are contenders again this year!).

Get your reading caps on, grab your sunblock and iced tea and prepare to read!

Fun Friday: The Best Weapons