I don’t usually read collections of poetry, but since I’m going to be encouraging my students to read poetry, I figured I should get into the practice as well. Plus it will give me some recommendations to give them. And it doesn’t hurt to have a variety of books to review for Cannonball Read either. So far this year I’ve only read few of Wadsworth’s poems including my favorite, Evangeline and now Charles Wright’s latest poetry collection, entitled Caribou. If I’m being honest I didn’t […]
Shut up and be beautiful
This collection of short stories is some of the most intense fiction I have ever read. Dealing solely with children from abusive homes, lost women, vain women and families that are torn apart it is an ugly book to read. Several of the stories paint a realistic picture of the 1970’s Denmark in Copenhagen. Several of the stories deal with children from broken homes, tackling themes such as child molestation and country homes. Others deal with women who cheat, who are cheated on, who can’t […]
A Woman’s Life Through Poetry
When I saw a clip of Caroline Kennedy on the Colbert Report discussing a book of poetry that she’d put together, I decided I needed to read it. In her introduction, Kennedy describes the book as “an anthology of poems centered around the stages of a woman’s life.” In it, she has managed to gather a good number of poems from a vast array of sources, including: Rainer Maria Rilke, Sylvia Plath, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, the Bible, and many others. This book […]
For younger and older and not necessarily poets
“The future stands still, dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space” Franz Xaver Kappus was a young man dreaming of becoming a poet in the early 1903. A great admirer of the already accomplished poet R.M. Rilke, he wrote a letter asking for advice on how to become a poet. This book is 10 letters out of 6 years of correspondence. We read only Rilke’s answers to Mr. Kappus, but the answers are so universal and thorough that we do not need the […]
Melancholy and Infinite Sadness
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes had a bad marriage, and were probably both rather difficult people. I don’t know. I do know that I love their poetry, and reread both their work often. Hughes’ last collection, Birthday Letter, might not be his best, but it’s impossible for me to resist. As a commentary on Plath’s life and poetry, I don’t like it, because it seems to simplify and reduce her work, but as a collection of poems in its own right, I adore it. Birthday […]
You’re Incomparable Like a… Like a…
If I had to summarize my feelings for this book in one sentence, it would read something like, “This is so silly, but I love it!” In all honesty, I don’t know why I had never heard of Bo Burnham until recently, and I must say that although he is a little ridiculous and random, I find his brand of comedy to be extremely amusing. Egghead: Or, You Can’t Survive on Ideas Alone is a short book of poems with accompanying drawings by Chance Bone; the […]