magpie's shiny things

Paying Attention

There are things in the woods.

20160622-06220534 — One of a Pair of Coyotes That Call Our Woods Home

Paying attention is one of the fundamental tasks of being human being. Paying attention to what’s around us is a survival skill. Paying attention keeps us from being eaten by lions, helps us to find nuts and berries, and keeps track of our mates. But it is more, it is also one of the ways in which we indicate what things are important to us. It signals what we value and what we feel responsible for, even as paying attention changes our relationship with those things.
Lately I’ve been thinking about a particularly local sort of paying attention. The attention that I focus on the bit of the Earth that I feel particularly responsible for, the small ground of 20 acres of forest and pasture, the house and the business that make up Black Dog Farm. On any day there are sheep to feed and water, eggs to collect from under broody hens, dogs to be exercised and trained. Meals must be prepared, jobs attended to, and the buildings maintained. All of these things and more must be carefully and mindfully attended to lest a sick sheep or a client’s deadline escape our notice. Continue reading “Paying Attention”

The Books of October

There are not many books of October. It’s having been eaten alive (as was my brain) by the events surrounding Jim’s knee replacement.

Books that I read:

A House of My Own — Sandra Cisneros (2015)

I read this in bits while waiting around in the hospital and in the first few days after we got home. It was a good choice. Most of these pieces are the prefaces (to her own and other books), lectures, and other small publications that she has amassed over the years. Many of them touch on the questions of what is home and how do we build one and what does mean to have or not to have a home. Home is considered as a physical space, as well as a set of emotional connections, and the intellectual foundation of our work.
In one piece she is remembering and mourning the lovely home of a friend in Sarajevo. It’s a diatribe against war in the form of a touching memory of and nostalgia for a friendship and the place that evokes that friendship. Others are meditations on various authors and artists that have been important to her work and its development. And some are straight biography.
* With a couple of misses this collection is worth taking some time to dip into. *

The House on Mango Street — Sandra Cisneros (1991)

Cisneros’ first and most famous book. I read it when it was published but I haven’t seen it in years. It was mentioned to me by a fellow poet as being an example of multiple prose poetry/narrative/short-short story bits wrapped up to make a novel. A plan that could profitably be used by some of my own work. So this began as a study, but I had forgotten how heart-felt the book is. It is a book of adolescence, a time that features so many choices and twists and turns of personality. Cisneros manages to locate in each character and vignette the elements that are common to all of us.
* transgressive at publication, still insightful *

The Nix — Nathan Hill (2016)

A monster of a book — running more than 600 pages in print. There are so many plot threads that it’s as if the author thought he’d never get another chance to tell a story and so he told all the stories in one book. It starts with the protagonist mother abandoning the family. The lesson that Faye leaves Samuel with as she departs his life at the age of 11 is that the things that you love the most will hurt you the most.
Sadly, I found the adult Samuel who narrates the book, (a stalled writer and failed college professor with a computer gaming problem) dull as hell. Even the reappearance of his mother doesn’t make Samuel interesting. The story that he tells of his adolescence and first love, a perfect picture of how broken people infect other people, is affecting. And the story of his mother’s early life, the secret that she keeps and then leaves Samuel and his father for is likewise engaging.
But I can’t bring myself to say that I love the whole thing. I would have loved many parts of it as a much shorter stories or a series of novellas or something that didn’t sprawl all over the place with a protagonist that I just couldn’t quite sympathize with.
Several reviewers have called the book satirical. Well, maybe there are a couple of bits are meant to be satire. The plagiarizing student whose scheming plagues Samuel and eventually leads to his firing might be satirical but it’s not clever enough for me to give a damn.
In the end I can only say — if you have patience you should read The Nix for Faye’s story and the relationship between Samuel and his childhood friend Bishop (twin brother to Samuel’s first love Bethany who remains his ideal and gets a messy part later in the novel) If you’re not feeling patient wait perhaps for Mr. Hill’s second novel which likely won’t be quite so packed with every damned thing that he could think of.
* all this and the kitchen sink *

The Books of September

September — the end of summer — and still busy like summer. A handful of books read but nothing in the audio book list. I bought a lot of music this month.

The books I read:

Dogsbody — Diana Wynne Jones (1975/2012)

A pleasant young readers book. Not nearly as simplistic as some of the stuff being churned out today. You’ll have to do some thinking to follow along. It also helps if you know a little about dogs. The dogs here are very doggie, even if the dog at the center of the story is actually a star that’s been sentenced to live a dog’s life on earth until he manages a seemingly impossible task. The child at the center, Kathleen, is a young Irish girl billeted unhappily with her uncle’s family somewhere in middle(class) England. No one is happy about the situation. Kathleen’s rescue of a near drowned puppy only makes the situation worse.
This is one book that manages to violate my number rule one about dogs in books (thou shalt not kill the dog) without making me want to throw it across the room. Yes, I just spoiled it for you. Except that the dog doesn’t really “die”, he… well it’s complicated. Though I have to admit that Kathleen’s reaction at the end of the story is a little hard to comprehend. I think it’s just a slight weakness in the writing that makes Kathleen’s reaction seem so blank.
Really though, if you need a little something to kill off an afternoon of couch slouching while slightly ill you couldn’t do better than Dogsbody. (Or almost any Diane Wynn Jones book.)
* All dogs are stars fallen to Earth *

The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, A Wedding in St. Roch, The Big Box Store, The Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All — C. D. Wright (2016)

Wherein one of the most influential poets of the 20th century and beyond lays out her theory of poetry in a series of prose poems and fragments that examine not only her own work and that of her collaborations but also the work of a handful of poets who influenced her. For a woman who died so suddenly it seems prescient that she would have written a last book that so much serves to indicate the way for future readers and scholars to consider her work. If you are concerned with the poets mentioned or the act of making poetry it’s a worthwhile read. The Questionnaire of January that ends the work will provide you with a lifetime’s worth of inquiries onto the ways and means of making poetry. It also the longest title of any book that I have read. (That does not include titles that use a colon to make two separate titles appear as one. Which I consider cheating in the truest sense.)
* Wright’s Ars Poetica *

The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish — Linda Przybyszewski (2014)

What can I say… it’s a history, mostly, of the Home Economics movement and the powerful influence it had in early 20th century America seen through the lenses of a handful of women who taught, wrote, and lectured about the art dressing well on a reasonable budget. Here is where I have to admit that I am an absolute sucker for old Home Ec pamphlets and such. (Did you know that there is an entire digitized library of them?) This book is about the women who created them. And I would have loved it for a historical survey. If the author had left it at that. But it feels as if half the book is taken up with her histrionics of the “modern women are shameless and ill-dressed” type. Yeah, I know — I have some pretty dire opinions on the matter myself, but I’m not writing a history of the women who wrote about and influenced the lives of millions of middle and lower class women in the first half of the 20th century.
I’m glad I read the book, it’s right up in there in one of my favorite guilty pleasures but I’d have liked it a good deal more if it had stuck to its stated topic. If you’re a fan of all things dress and dressmaking you’ll enjoy it. If you looking for history you’ll find the author’s constant insertion of herself and her opinions unbearably unprofessional.
* Yeah, I’m old enough to have made that apron in Home Ec *

13 Clocks — James Thurber (Marc Simont — Illustrator) (original 1950)

I like Thurber. There I said it. I like the man with the funny dog cartoons and a lot more. This little gem of a fairy tale is either a fairy tale or a satire of a fairy tale or some lovely combination of the two, containing as it does an enchanted princess, a brave prince, and evil duke, and something that might be a fairy tale troll, or the weirdest fairy god mother ever. Whatever it is we are assured that it is the only one of its kind. Full of lovely mumblety-pumbelty language that begs to be read out loud.
* Fairy Tales never go out of style *

Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither — Sarah Baum (2015)

Two books with dogs in them in one month. That’s just not something that should happen. Two books with dogs in them that I actually liked (well maybe not “liked” but appreciated) in one month is a miracle of some sort. I can’t say I liked this book. Liked would imply that it was a pleasant light-hearted read. This isn’t. It is anything but happy and light-hearted; it’s a dense, beautiful, lyric, tragic thing. In all the meanings of tragic. The protagonist has a tragic flaw that will guide and perhaps ruin his life. So does the dog. It’s odd to think of a dog as a tragic hero. But this one is. Perhaps through no fault of his own.
The writing is lyrical. In the mode of poetry. In fact she uses a number of poetic devices. There are many melodically composed sentences, varying line length, alliteration. I even found pleasing examples of slant rhyme. There is also a great appreciation of the natural world filtered through malaise — is that the word that I want? The protagonist is some how very damaged and that damage colors his interactions with the world in a fearful and awed way. His relationship with the natural world is something that he’s build himself. No one taught him about the birds and the plants that he so admires and that seem to bring him into touch with the only flow of time that he encounters. All the rest of his life is a long, dull, fear-tinged now.

* A challenging book to read but rewarding in so may ways *

The Books of August

August was mostly a craft book month. Poetry being the craft of the moment.

Books I read:

How to Read a Poem and Fall In Love with Poetry — Edward Hirsch (1999)

I’m not sure that this book will make anyone who isn’t already crushing on poetry fall in love. But if you are crushing on poetry but don’t quite understand what it’s going on about you might find some help here. One of the things that I like about poetry is once you’ve read a poem and been amused, affected, bemused, overwrought, bowled over, humbled, or puzzled by it you can go back and start to take it apart and glory in the small details of how it’s put together.
The book is 60% discussion of poetry as literature using specific poems and poets to show how poems work. There are a lot of familiar authors, both historic and modern and a handful of new (to me) ones. Hirsch knows a lot about poetry from Poland after the second world war; it’s fascinating stuff and I found a couple of new poets to enjoy.
The other 40% of the book is made up of a glossary and a long list of very diverse poets.
This book does a decent job of explaining some of that machinery — though that’s not the focus. You kind of learn it by accident. It is prone to falling down into the trap of MFA/EnglishLit Major gibberish. e.g. “Desnos’s verbal eroticism creates an aura of enchantment, a speech beyond speech, a prophetic language, and his strongly surrealist technique creates an access through the page to the back of the brain, to the unconscious mind.” (p104)
I wouldn’t usually buy something I feel ambivalent about in paper but the glossary is extensive enough that it might make it worthwhile.
* for those with a poetry crush *

Invisible Cities — Italo Calvino (1974)

Yes, again. I’m still taking this machine apart and being blown away by its intricacy and fineness every time I go back to it. It’s become a totem item to be read and reread.
* perfect little machines of meaning *

Dig and Fiesta Hotel — Lynn Emanuel (1994)

Poetry. There are a couple of things here that blow the top of my head off. (In that very Dickensonian way.) Frying trout while Drunk and The Dig in particular are finely crafted observations of a life made up of tangled relationships.
* poems about a life lived in the midst of subtle and not so subtle chaos *

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry — Fredrik Backman (2013)

Another from the fellow who wrote A Man Called Ove. In much the same vein. Life changing events overtake the heroine — Elsa. Her grandmother is her only ally in a world that hasn’t much use for preternaturally mature nearly 8 year-old girls. In fact her grandmother is her super-hero. A flawed, cranky, anti-establishment super-hero but a super-hero by any measure. When her grandmother dies Elsa is left with the task of delivering a series of letters in which her grandmother begs the forgiveness of various people she believes that she wronged. Elsa discovers the unspoken connections between the people who populate her life and the house where she lives. I don’t usually like books with children as the protagonists but in this case Elsa is so appealingly misfit and her grandmother, who haunts the book long after her death, is exactly the sort of complicated character who I enjoy playing along with. Also, there is a monster. I love a good monster.
* charming in the very best sense *

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry — Jane Hirshfield (1997)

A weirdly effective combination of literary criticism, maker’s handbook, and buddhist treatise.
There are nine “craft talks” here. Essays prepared for audiences of poets, students, and others concerned with the art of poetry. Many of the essays rely on her work as a co-translator of Japanese poetry to illustrate her insights into the role of the poet and of poetry in creating a shared world. It’s all a bit heavy on the mindfulness but she has useful things to say to the working poet. The essays on the dualities of Inward and Outward facing work and of Shadow and Light (roughly heaven and hell without the capital letters) and all of the poses in-between are especially effective. There is also an essay on the originality and the creative process that nicely sums up what I think is pretty common knowledge for those actually doing creative work but might help put some concepts into to words for those only beginning to explore that side of work.
* a balance of the scholarly and the practical *

Incarnadine: Poems — Mary Szybist (2013)

A National Book Award winner that Amazon has been trying to get me to buy for two years. I don’t take Amazon’s poetry suggestions seriously and didn’t buy this until it was recommended by a poet who taste I trust. Stupid me. Some of these are incandescent. Some are intriguing new forms (there’s a sunburst of rayed out lines and a diagrammed sentence) and few are pedestrian. Much of content is an examination of the question of faith and of the divine meeting the mortal/physical. In several poems the Virgin Mary is dragged into the twenty-first century and allowed to express both her faithfulness and her hesitations.
* how can I convince anyone to read poetry when I write such lousy reviews of it? *

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Non-fiction — Neal Gaiman (2016)

A collection of speeches, book introductions, and brief essays on a variety of topics close to Gaiman’s heart. Makes good bedtime reading. Gaiman’s hobby horses reappear in several of these pieces. His love of comics and his contention that there are no bad books for children are on display in at least four speeches. His introductions to classic science fiction will prompt you to search out some of the writers that are unjustly forgotten. And a few that are imo justly forgotten — but there’s no accounting for taste. But introductions to books can make dry reading if you’re not in the market for the book. In addition to comics, prose books (science fiction and otherwise) he takes on film and music. His excellent reporting from the Syrian refugee camp is included.
* a little patience for repetitions will get you to the gems *

Listened to:

I listened to the beginning of Austin’s Sense and Sensibility but I wasn’t paying careful enough attention and will have to restart it. In August there were not many chances to sit and listen as I did very little sewing this month.

Upcoming:

I’m in the middle of a handful more books of poetry and poetry criticism. I’ve also started Diane Wynn Jones Dogsbody on the recommendation of Mr. Gaiman, even though I generally avoid books with dogs as protagonists.

P.S. The cover images link to Amazon. If you buy the book using the link I get a (tiny) pay back for writing these reviews.

It’s Still a Big Damn Country

Recently I was looking for this picture of an artfully rusted steam engine that I took during a cross-country trip in 2009.

not restorable — Portion of the Engines for the Wake Robin.

Rather than dig through the many thousands of photographs on the back-up server, I searched through the series of blog entries titled It’s a Big Dam Country that I wrote while on that road trip. When I began that trip I was running very hard, and very fast, and very much away. I was running from myself and my itching demons. I was running on professional advice. I was making no progress while standing in the middle of the smoking crater that I had made of my life. My therapist — against all the rules of therapy — actually suggested that I go ahead and run for a while, to see what it felt like to move again. So I did. I packed up my little blue car with a handful of road snacks, my special pillow, and every scrap of camera gear that I owned, then set out on the finest fool’s errand I could conjure: To attend the graduation party of my oldest niece two weeks hence in the city of Pittsburgh and along the way to take as many pictures of as many dams as I could find. Continue reading “It’s Still a Big Damn Country”