This was really clever and funny. Poems retelling traditional fairy tales but with a nasty twist. Gotta say, I wasn't expecting to read "slut"* in a cThis was really clever and funny. Poems retelling traditional fairy tales but with a nasty twist. Gotta say, I wasn't expecting to read "slut"* in a children's book ...more
You could get waylaid here, or slip amazed into your tangled head. You could just not come back.
Most good poetry, in my opinion, is a little bit ope
You could get waylaid here, or slip amazed into your tangled head. You could just not come back.
Most good poetry, in my opinion, is a little bit open to interpretation, but one thing is quite clear with this one: the 80-year-old Atwood had death on her mind when she put together this collection.
If that sounds morbid and depressing-- it is. While I enjoyed this book of poems very much, I felt disquieted reading them. I did not cry, but I felt almost constantly like I might. Most, if not all of them, have an air of sadness and loss. Atwood moves from the traditional human kind of death and grief, to zombies, to digging up dead Scythian women, to a dying planet, to words that are dying out of use. Like 'Dearly'.
Seemingly unrelated topics weave their way toward death, loss, and the sadness which comes with the passing of time. For example, a poem about a coconut becomes a meditation on the nature of Heaven, which is nowhere near as silly as it sounds. Atwood is nothing if not a master wordsmith, after all.
Atwood herself receives comparison to a "cold grey moon", while memories are described as "mirages", followed by:
Though over your shoulder there it is, your time laid out like a picnic in the sun, still glowing, although it’s night.
Warmth is in short supply here. Even such as love, when it does receive a mention, is described as a “demented rose-red circus tent whose half-light forgives all visuals”. I guess it's been a long year for Margaret Atwood, too. A long four years, maybe.
I'm not sure exactly when all these poems were written, though I know some have been previously published in various periodicals and anthologies. This particular collection, though, is a gathering of Atwood's words on loss and dying, on what we are leaving behind.
The world that we think we see is only our best guess.
Words like these can be expected throughout: late, gone, withering, remember me, vacancy, emptiness, candle guttering down, corpse, fading, dusk, rotting, end, obsolete, melting away, lifeless, dissolving, festering, erase, Devil, Heaven.
I liked it in that special way reserved for books that make me really miserable....more
I want him to tell me that our love shattered you. I want him to tell me that if you were alive you would have picked me eventually.
God, this book is
I want him to tell me that our love shattered you. I want him to tell me that if you were alive you would have picked me eventually.
God, this book is awful. In the sense that I had a really powerful reaction to it... so I guess it's good?
I requested Here is the Beehive from Netgalley because I have read and enjoyed a couple of Sarah Crossan books in the past. However, I wasn't totally sure about it. I read the blurb and thought it sounded like maybe it was condoning cheating. It's about a married woman grieving the loss of her lover. For a long time, Connor kept promising that they would leave their spouses for one another, but he died before that ever happened, and now Ana is left with nothing but a painful secret and grief she can't express. So she seeks out the wife she has heard so much about.
This little verse novel has a lot to say, but it isn't condoning cheating. If anything, it shows how truly destructive an affair can be, not just to the cheated on partners, but, ultimately, to the participants themselves. The relationship in this book is not healthy; it is toxic. It consumes and destroys everything it touches.
While I know Ana was in the wrong, it is hard not to feel for her. She is in such a dark mental place, full of self-doubt and in need of psychiatric help. As the reader, it was deeply discomfiting to witness her destructive behaviour, both outside and within her own mind. The situation she and Connor have created with their secret is not a sexy affair; it is a nightmare. Now she wonders: Was it ever real? Did he ever have any intention of being with her? If nobody else knows about them, did it ever really happen at all?
How can we know which days will be the turning points?
So long as we live, we gamble.
The ending felt very sudden and I can't decide if it was too abrupt or just perfect. I definitely wanted more closure, wanted to know what happened with Paul and with Rebecca, but maybe this way, this lack of neatness, is more true to life.
A horrible little book that can be read in one sitting. Warning for one instance of transphobia (portrayed negatively).
Locking you up isn’t enough for them They will try to crush your spirit until you’re nothing but—
Dust we both say together
And what does dust do, Am
Locking you up isn’t enough for them They will try to crush your spirit until you’re nothing but—
Dust we both say together
And what does dust do, Amal? What did Maya Angelou say about dust? Umi asks
It rises, I whisper
This verse novel is incredible. And devastating.
I really wish publication could be moved up for this book because, while I'm certain it's story will be no less relevant in September, it very much complements the discussions happening right now. It is a book about race and the way the judicial system and prison system in America disproportionately fails and oppresses black people. It talks racial profiling and prison abolition, but also poetry and art. Amal Shahid has been forced into all kinds of stereotypes by his white prosecutors-- thug, criminal, monster --but what he really is, is a boy and an artist.
I will pick up anything Ibi Zoboi writes and I highly recommend Pride and, especially, American Street. But when she teamed up with Yusef Salaam, one of the now-exonerated Central Park Five, I knew this book was going to be something special. The two have created a new character with Amal, but there's no doubt that his experiences have been heavily-inspired by Salaam's.
I've been seeing authors do some incredible things with verse novels lately. In the past, I've felt like verse authors have just rearranged fragments of text on the page to be quirky but, with authors like Elizabeth Acevedo and Ibi Zoboi, that seems to be changing. These poems are painfully-honest, clever, and powerful.
Maybe ideas segregate like in the days of Dr. King and no matter how many marches or Twitter hashtags or Justice for So-and-So
our mind’s eyes and our eyes’ minds see the world as they want to
Everything already illustrated in black and white
With it being such a quick read, I don't want to give too much away, but I do want to highlight a couple of standout aspects. One was the way the book talks about how Amal, the black defendant, is portrayed as a fully-grown man, who has never "laughed at Elmo on Sesame Street" or "splashed in a puddle" or "been afraid of monsters", in contrast with the white victim who is a "boy". They are the same age.
Another is that Punching the Air really explains how the prison system in America is a form of legal slavery-- it is written in the Constitution.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
That's the Thirteenth Amendment, known for being the abolition of slavery. Except it didn't abolish slavery. Slavery still exists.
A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time.
Perhaps what I love most about Clap When You Land, besides the author's obvious talent for writing moving free verse, is that it brings attention to something that so many of us forgot about or never heard about. Tragedies happen all the time. Some are noticed, when they are newsworthy and drenched in politics-- terrorism, school shootings, for example --but some are left to be grieved only by those directly affected. The rest of the world goes on as normal, not seeing the pain inflicted on the community in question.
In November 2001, flight AA587 crashed to the ground on its way to Santo Domingo, killing 265 people on a flight where 90% of the passengers were Dominican or of Dominican descent. Noting that it was not another terrorist attack, the media largely ignored it, but it was a terrible blow to the New York Dominican community.
Clap When You Land is the story of two girls - Camino and Yahaira - one in the Dominican Republic and one in New York City. They have never met, never spoken, never known about each other's existence, but when their father is killed in a plane crash on his way to visit Camino, they find each other in the midst of their grief.
Both girls have their own struggles, but Camino is especially threatened without her father to protect her. Now the local pimp, a man called El Cero, is hanging around, following her. All she wants is to escape, study premed, have a chance at something better. Then along comes Yahaira and turns her life upside down, changes everything she thought she knew about her father.
So he created a theater of his life & got lost in all the different roles he had to play.
This is another part of the book and I thought it was done really well. Part of the girls' discovery of each other is also the discovery that maybe their father wasn't quite the man they thought he was. That he was more complex, had many flaws. That even though he was a good father, he might not have been a good husband. In this, the book is something of a bildungsroman. Both girls are matured by the intensity of the loss and the discoveries made after.
It is a beautiful story that finds a lot of warmth and hope in the darkness of loss. My only complaint is that Camino and Yahaira's voices were a little too similar. I found it especially hard to distinguish the two in the beginning and had to look for other markers to remember whose chapters we were on. But it's a small complaint.
Highly recommended for those who enjoyed The Poet X and other novels in verse.
“And I think about all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.”
4½ stars. Wow, this was so good.
I recentl
“And I think about all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.”
4½ stars. Wow, this was so good.
I recently read Acevedo's With the Fire on High and I found it to be sweet and enjoyable, but I felt like a little something was held back. Like the book played it too safe and didn't really excite me. It was feel-good, and that's just fine, but if I'm being honest I'm a bit of a drama llama. 🦙
This book, though. This book is heart-wrenching and powerful. Acevedo should most definitely continue writing poetry as it seems to be where she excels, and it comes as no surprise to hear she had a background in poetry slams. Xiomara's voice felt so real, so vulnerable and painfully honest as she talks about growing up as a curvy girl in Harlem - the whispers of "cuero" follow her around even before she's even had chance to figure out her own sexuality.
The Poet X is a bildungsroman, of sorts, about a girl becoming aware of her own body and sexuality. This takes her through a complex range of emotions-- desire, shame, fear, anger, doubt, and pleasure, all rendered beautifully and effectively on the page.
Religion also plays a huge part. Xiomara clashes with her devout mother and this leads to some truly horrifying parts of the story. In fact, I think the only downside was the way this was resolved. Certain things seemed too neat for my tastes and certain people seemed to change quickly in a way that wasn't quite believable to me (view spoiler)[her mom goes from making her kneel in rice and pray to the Virgin Mary to suddenly allowing her boyfriend over? Hard to believe even with the intervention of the priest (hide spoiler)]. I was glad, though, that the author took some steps towards portraying her mother as more than some stereotypical crazy religious harpy.
{On a side note-- this type of character fascinates me: the woman who loves her god more than her children. She's appeared in everything from coming-of-age tales like this one to horror stories like Carrie. I don't understand her, but I would like to read a book from her perspective. I imagine it would take a brave author to attempt to humanize her. I wonder if it would be successful...}
This free verse, non-rhyming style of poetry is hit and miss for me. Many times I am left feeling as if I've just read chopped up prose or a selection of tumblr quotes, and I can't quite understand why they bother writing it as poetry at all. This was not one of those cases. Acevedo creates very powerful scenes and moments with this style, that I think might have been lost in a regular prose novel. The short, sharp, hard-hitting nature of the poems made each one a knife into my heart.
Interesting story about how nothing good comes from playing a role in high society; made me think of an earlier Russian Edith Wharton. I enjoyed all tInteresting story about how nothing good comes from playing a role in high society; made me think of an earlier Russian Edith Wharton. I enjoyed all the allusions to different literature and the suggestion that Eugene Onegin, as we saw him, was not even a real person, but a collection of inspirations taken from different characters and novels.
I have no original to compare it to, but I thought this translation was astounding. Possibly the best I've ever read. I'm not sure how Johnston managed to make this rhyme in English, make it beautiful, and make the language seem realistically early nineteenth century. Had I not known better, I would never have guessed this was originally written in Russian....more
“the overlap of my stories and my life is a garden courtyard, sky-strung with stars”
The first half of this book was a 4-star read for me, but the s
“the overlap of my stories and my life is a garden courtyard, sky-strung with stars”
The first half of this book was a 4-star read for me, but the second half was a full shimmering 5 stars. So it gets 4½ stars, rounded up.
It's been a long time since I read Speak, but I still recall how deeply that book affected me. In a time of #MeToo, it is easy to forget how powerful and important little books like that were for readers. Every day, survivors are finding their voices and learning how they, too, can speak up, without shame, about what happened to them. Now, twenty years later, Anderson is back with a voice that is louder, stronger, and attuned with the current era. It is still much-needed.
Her voice is wiser now, too; more mature. It speaks of twenty years of talking with survivors, sharing their pain and, most of all, listening.
The first half of this book is a memoir of Anderson's upbringing, including how she was raped at thirteen and her struggle in the aftermath. Through verse, she talks about how the toxic misogynistic environment of the 1970s set women up to say nothing, be good, be quiet, don't ask questions, definitely no questions about sex or menstruation. You can see how her experiences both within her family, and within society at large, would later silence her voice when she needed it most.
It is the second half where her writing is strongest, however. This is complete speculation, but it felt to me like the author wrote the hard-hitting poems of the second part first, and then proceeded to tell the first part of her story in verse to fit with the rest. The later poems all work as powerful standalones and read like they were written as such, but I think the first half could have been stronger as prose.
“Censorship is the child of fear the father of ignorance and the desperate weapon of fascists everywhere.”
The second half made me absolutely furious. The poems are about rape, consent and censorship, using a lot of grotesque metaphors and imagery that fit the subject matter well, but are disturbing. I think the most upsetting aspect of all was, surprisingly, the censorship; the constant barriers faced by those trying to teach kids about their bodies and sex and consent. It made me so angry to see teachers cancelling Anderson's talks, or banning her books, because she talked honestly about young girls and sex.
Kids of all genders need these talks. They are essential if we are to stop what happened to Anderson, and Speak's Melinda, from happening to others. So, read this book. And let your kids read this book, too.
“I will reveal to you a mystery, I will tell you a secret of the gods.”
There is something very humbling about reading stories written more than 4,
“I will reveal to you a mystery, I will tell you a secret of the gods.”
There is something very humbling about reading stories written more than 4,000 years ago. One of the most fascinating things about The Epic of Gilgamesh is how you can easily see the influence it has had on Homer and Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology. And I get chills just thinking about how this narrative reaches across the millennia and takes us inside the minds of people who lived so long ago.
This is one of those cases where I really wish I could read and understand the original text. The translation is a little wooden, and the rather dramatic series of events reads almost like a textbook. I should point out that, though a little dry, it's not difficult to read at all - at least not in the English translation that I read - and can be read in a single sitting if you have a couple of hours to spare.
My favourite part is, not surprisingly, the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. I definitely find myself leaning towards agreeing with the homoerotic interpretations of their relationship, and they almost certainly served as an inspiration for pairings such as Achilles and Patroclus, and Jonathan and David.
Whether they were lovers or not - and no one really knows how the Ancient Sumerians would have felt about a gay couple - the intensity of Gilgamesh's love for Enkidu, whom he loves "as a woman", is the driving force of the epic. This love leads him on a long and strange journey in the hope that he can find a way to defy death. An intriguing tale.
I saw this in the Goodreads Choice Award nominations for Best Poetry and thought I'd check it out!
It's a super quick read - thirty minutes max. - but I saw this in the Goodreads Choice Award nominations for Best Poetry and thought I'd check it out!
It's a super quick read - thirty minutes max. - but it's pretty hard-hitting without being cheesy. That's the one reason I can never get into "motivational" reads: it's almost always super cheesy, carpe diem-type stuff. Reynolds, however, doesn't truss it up. His raw and sparse poetry is to the point and unsentimental. Moments like this one are occasional centre pieces, not the foundation of the poem:
Dreamer, if you are like me, YOU JUMP ANYWAY.
Which make them more meaningful and less irksome when they do appear.
I enjoyed it. It's a sweet - but not too sweet - letter to those out there working on a dream, no matter their age or circumstances. More than a "you can do it", it is best described as a "I'm trying to do it like you're trying to do it; maybe I'm going to fail; maybe you're going to fail; let's keep trying and failing together". And I think there's something heart-warming in that.
Loading...
