Poems for the Living

I first discovered the poetry of Billy Collins during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate in the mid-90s.  What I admire about his poetry is its accessibility.  He finds meaning, inspiration, depth in simple, everyday moments and objects.

Collins’s latest book is Horoscopes for the Dead.  As the title suggests, his frequent subject in this collection is death—and the brevity of our lives.  But that doesn’t mean that the poetry is morose.  Rather, it is contemplative, meditative.  A few of my favorite pieces from Horoscopes for the Dead, one on the art of writing and one on the sense of loss:

REVISION

When I finally pulled onto the shoulder
of a long country road

after driving a few hundred miles
without sopping or even blinking,

I sat there long enough to count
twenty-four cows in a wide, sloping pasture.

Nothing about the scene asked to be changed,
things being just what they were,

and there was even a green hill
looming solidly in the background.

Still, I felt the urge
to find a pencil and edit one of them out,

that swaybacked one standing
in the shade in a far corner of the field.

I was too young then to see
that she was staring into the great mystery

just as intently as her sisters,
her gorgeous, brown and white, philosophic sisters.

AFTER I HEARD YOU WERE GONE

I sat for a while on a bench in the park.
It was raining lightly but this was not a movie
even though a couple hurried by,
the girl holding his jacket over her head,
and the chess players were gathering up their pieces
and fanning out into the streets.

No, this was something different.
I could have sworn the large oak trees
had just appeared there overnight.
And that pigeon looked as if
it had once been a playing card
that a magician had transformed with the flick of a scarf.

 

A Book You Need to Catch

Sarah Vowell is one of my favorite authors.  I started reading her work several years ago when I saw her on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.  She was on the show to promote her new book, a collection of essays called Take the Cannoli.  I loved her sense of humor, and I think that I ordered her book the next day.  In reading Take the Cannoli, I felt that I had found a kindred spirit.

Since then, I’ve read every new book from Vowell—The Partly Cloudy Patriot (another collection of essays), Assassination Vacation (a travelogue/history lesson on the first three presidential assassinations in the United States), and The Wordy Shipmates (a look at the Puritan founders of New England).  I’ve enjoyed them all, but Take the Cannoli is probably still my favorite.

Vowell’s latest outing, Unfamiliar Fishes, is in the vein of The Wordy Shipmates—more history and less personal reflection.  (I know that some readers found The Wordy Shipmates a little too wordy, and others missed Vowell’s trademark voice and wit in that book.  Those criticisms may have some merit, but that shouldn’t scare readers away from this new book.)

Unfamiliar Fishes is a history of Hawaii from the early 1800s, when New England missionaries first landed on the islands, through 1898, when the United States annexed Hawaii.  It is the story of the native Hawaiian culture, of the last monarchs of the independent Hawaiian nation, of the influence (both good and bad) of the white missionaries, of the eventual shift in U.S. interest from the spiritual to the political, of the overthrow of Hawaii’s last queen by white settlers, and of the legally questionable annexation of the fiftieth state.  Vowell blends plenty of research and scholarly reading with her own visits to important sites (often with her eight-year-old nephew in tow), interviews with experts, and conversations with Hawaiian citizens.

This book is fascinating!  I would guess that most Americans know fairly little about the history and culture of the Hawaiian islands, and this book provides a wealth of information.  At the same time, it is an engrossing read.  I read the entire book in two days—it is just that interesting!

If you’re a Sarah Vowell fan, this is another great book.  And if you’re a history fan, this is one to add to your reading list.

 

Listen to the Boss

If you are a woman and you bought this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated workplace, here they are.  No pigtails, no tube tops.  Cry sparingly.  (Some people say “Never let them see you cry.”  I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry.  It terrifies everyone.)

Perhaps you’re a parent and you bought this book to learn how to raise an achievement-oriented, drug-free, adult virgin.  You’ll find that, too.  The essential ingredients, I can tell you up front, are a strong father figure, bad skin, and a child-sized colonial-lady outfit.

Maybe you bought this book because you love Sarah Palin and you want to find reasons to hate me.  We’ve got that!  I use all kinds of elitist words like “impervious” and “torpor,” and I think gay people are just as good at watching their kids play hockey as straight people.

Maybe it’s seventy years in the future and you found this book in a stack of junk being used to block the entrance to an abandoned Starbucks that is now a feeding station for alien militia.  If that’s the case, I have some questions for you.  Such as:  “Did we really ruin the environment as much as we thought?” and “Is Glee still a thing?”

These few paragraphs, from the introduction to Tina Fey’s Bossypants, are probably enough for you to decide whether or not you will like this book.  I was laughing so hard that my sides ached, and I couldn’t wait to see what followed.  (Of course, as a fan of Fey’s work on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, I wasn’t surprised.)

This collection of essays comically chronicles some of Fey’s childhood experiences (a trip with cousins where she first becomes aware of the standards of feminine beauty, her father’s strong but loving presence, her experiences at summer drama camp), her early days as a performer (a downer of a job as a YMCA desk clerk so that she can afford improv classes, road trips with the touring company of Chicago’s famed Second City), her days at Saturday Night Live (an awkward interview with Lorne Michaels, the difference between male and female comedians, her friendship with Amy Poehler), the challenges of 30 Rock, her weeks of impersonating Sarah Palin, and the struggle of working mothers everywhere.

Bossypants is not a memoir (as some reviews erroneously claim).  It is a collection of personal essays—and a very funny one at that!  It is also an examination of the working woman at the start of the twenty-first century.  And it is a book filled with the unmistakable voice of its author.

 

Just Okay

Just Kids, the winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction, is Patti Smith’s account of her early life in New York City with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.  She recalls their first meeting, their romantic relationship, their days of dull and desperate jobs, their neighbors in the famed Chelsea Hotel, their brushes with other musicians and artists (including Andy Warhol), and their eventual success.

Just Kids is a gritty slice of NYC in the late 60s and early 70s, a window into the struggles of two young artists, an elegy for Mapplethorpe.  Unfortunately, it suffers from its less-than-poetic style and from Smith’s tendency to wander down long tunnels of name-dropping.  I suspect that a lot of Smith’s fans will enjoy this book, but—after the National Book Award and the strong reviews—it was less than I expected.

 

When Life Gives You Lemons…

LaVaughn is surrounded by poverty.  Her father, an innocent bystander, was killed in an act of gang violence.  But her mother has high expectations for LaVaughn.  From the time she was in fifth grade, LaVaughn has dreamed of going to college—her way out of the life around her.

But to make it to college, LaVaughn needs to earn some money.  When she discovers a notice for a babysitter on the school bulletin board, she meets Jolly, a seventeen-year-old with two young children.  While Jolly works nights to support herself, LaVaughn watches toddler Jeremy and baby Jilly, and she quickly grows close to the two children.  But when Jolly loses her job and can no longer afford to pay LaVaughn, the relationship between the two girls becomes more complicated.

Make Lemonade, Virginia Euwer Wolff’s short novel in verse, is certain to appeal to young female readers.

 

CSI: 1920

The Poisoner’s Handboook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is another book about science (not always my favorite subject) that recently caught my attention.  It’s CSI: 1920.

The text follows New York City’s first professional medical examiner and his chief chemist as they study poison, murder, and alcohol (which was extremely dangerous to drinkers’ health during the time of Prohibition).  Each chapter revolves around one key poison, a nice structural idea that doesn’t quite pan out—each chapter really wanders through the chemical composition of the poison, multiple cases of murder or accidental death (which aren’t always connected to the key poison of the chapter), advances made in the medical examiner’s office over the course of a year or two, and the effects of Prohibition.

I definitely found some chapters of this book more interesting and cohesive than others, and I didn’t have a problem setting this book down at the end of each chapter.  Still, I did learn some new scientific information (which is never bad), and I know that I’ll probably recommend this book to a few specific readers.