Category Archives: books poetry lit

Quotidian: Erin Morgenstern on Storytelling

books poetry lit, quotidian January 30, 2015 Leave a comment

World of Books Bookstore photo

Book Piles of Magic

rt Carried Away

“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that… there are many kinds of magic, after all.”

― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Book Love: Illustrated Book Stack

art & illustration, books poetry lit January 29, 2015 Leave a comment

illustrated book stack

rt Kara Endres

Poetry: ‘The Call’ by C Dale Young

books poetry lit January 28, 2015 Leave a comment

Make sure you click through for the ending because especially in this poem..it’s the most important part.

in memoriam Cecil Young

I am addicted to words, constantly ferret them away
in anticipation. You cannot accuse me of not being prepared.
I am ready for anything. I can create an image faster than

just about anyone. And so, the crows blurring the tree line;
the sky’s light dimming and shifting; the Pacific cold and
impatient as ever: this is just the way I feel. Nothing more.

I could gussy up those crows, transform them
into something more formal, more Latinate, could use
the exact genus Corvus, but I won’t. Not today.

Like any addict, I, too, have limits. And I have written
too many elegies already. The Living have become
jealous of the amount I have written for the Dead.

So, leave the crows perched along the tree line
watching over us. Leave them be. The setting sun?
Leave it be. For God’s sake, what could be easier

in a poem about death than a setting sun? Leave it be.

read more

New Web Series Alert: “The Misselthwaite Archives” Based on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

books poetry lit January 27, 2015 Comments: 8

I. Am SO excited for this. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 book is one of the most beloved children’s books in the world, and one of my personal favorite books, so utterly magical. The first episode of this dodges the mistakes I’ve seen a lot of webseries make as far as labored explication and overly-long dialogue; it jumps refreshingly straight into the story with an outspoken, sarcastic Mary, yet also lets viewers engage with her immediately by referencing her tragic past. I expect to love this. 

Poetry: Wardship

books poetry lit January 25, 2015 Leave a comment

This poem about being a foster kid by Vilaska Nguyen at Blue Fifth Review knocked my socks off.

Twelve hundred a month isn’t worth more than the top ramen on the pantry’s bottom shelf. The Progresso is off limits. So is the Diet Coke. She dares me to even lay eyes on the Cool Ranch because that’ll be the end of me. I can drink all the water I want out of the tap. The fridge is off limits, especially the juice inside. I can get ice from the freezer but only two to three cubes per cup with the tap water. That’s all I need to know about the kitchen. Television watching is okay so long as either she or Mr. Kenneth turned it on. They also have to be sitting in the living room. Other than that, it’s off limits. There’s only one bathroom in the house which means I have to wait my turn, whatever that means. I have to empty the trash when I get home from school. That’s the bag under the kitchen sink and the one in the bathroom. I’m not allowed in their bedroom where the other trash is. My bed is in the extra room with the computer which is also off limits. If Mr. Kenneth needs to relax sometimes with computer games, I have to leave the room and wait in the living room. But if no one’s there, the television is off limits. The phone is off limits too.

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Poetry: Vibrations

books poetry lit January 24, 2015 Leave a comment

The earth has music for those
who listen. ~Santayana

Around midnight, I ask again,
“Do you hear it?” It’s not the engines
from McClellan Field, nor the purr of the frig,
more something of earth or sky, or both.
Over the Aegean, a quarter moon
and single star spangle in dawn’s first light.
A smart man once said “Heaven is today,
not yesterday and not tomorrow.”
(sorry you missed it).
I look up the Aramaic word for heaven:
Shemeya,
(light, sacred vibrations, never ending).
And when I think complete silence,
that echo again, the pulse of a million suns,
the slip of comet’s tail—
immeasurable?
I want to find heaven on earth, a glimpse
of kindness in the everyday. An Arab country
gives our students new computers
after their school was tornado damaged.

read more

Jeanine Stevens, Blue Five Notebook 

Poetry: Lilies of the Field

books poetry lit January 23, 2015 Comments: 2

When did the phenomena melt together, fused by expectation?
There are a thousand perfect poems in the fields. As a child,

I would gather samples — flowers, seeds and leaves, each one
poetic and complete, mysteries of form and wonder, pattern

and proportion. I took my own sustenance for granted, gave
no thought to need. When did my sight become constricted,

these open apertures grow narrow, restricted to seeing things
I understand, for which I have a purpose? When did the fields

become a flat expanse of un-mowed green? Look there!
In that field! I am too grown-up — I see nothing.

(from Returning to Awe, Balkan Press, 2014)

-Laura M Kaminski, The Poetry Storehouse 

Book Review: Mr. Kiss and Tell (Veronica Mars #2)

books poetry lit January 22, 2015 Leave a comment

Mr Kiss and Tell Veronica Mars2004 cult classic TV show Veronica Mars is one of the great loves of my life (it’s one of the tags used enough to actually show up in my tag cloud to the right, for the record). So of course I pre-ordered show creator Rob Thomas and co-writer Jennifer Graham’s second book in the novel series as soon as it was available, knowing that, even if I didn’t like, it, I still wanted to support the series and the world.

In Mr. Kiss and Tell, a girl has been brutally raped and assaulted, and claims that an employee at the Neptune Grand, where she spent the evening before her assault, is the perpetrator. She plans to sue the hotel, which hires Veronica to find out the truth.

The second half of this (as was the case in the first book), is much faster-paced and tighter than the first half, but only my familiarity with and love for the characters gives life to what is unfortunately rather an underwhelming, stale world. Every single plot twist and turn, except perhaps one, is predictable – the book sets up the two or three central conflicts in the first one-third and then unrolls them in exactly the way you’d expect, without deviation. One of these subplots is the institutionalized corruption and injustice of the police force, and the series wants to be a dark, gritty take on this, a reflection of 21st-century realities, but the depth of world and character-building just isn’t there. What does that structure look like, how does corruption interact with itself, what are the internal processes and motivations of those involved? The subplot is brushed on, hinted at further development, but never really delved into.

Logan takes up a scant handful of pages sprinkled through the novel, reflective of his non-prioritized role in Veronica’s life, which is faithful to the original series but is puzzling and frustrating at this point. Rob Thomas and the writers assured fans by the events of the film that Veronica is deeply in love with Logan and committed – yet one of the same things that tore them apart in the TV series is still evident, and unlike in the series, the book doesn’t show it as a flaw: Veronica’s compulsive habit of prioritizing her cases over everything in her life.

Continue reading →

Poetry: No One Goes to Paris in August

books poetry lit January 20, 2015 Leave a comment

A Montparnasse August
with view of the Cimetière. A yard of bones.

We wake to it. Close curtains to it.
Wake to its lanes. Rows of coffin-stones in varying light.

Walking here. Late with shade low, low, long.
We’re passing through, just passing through
neat aisles of gray mausoleums.

(From Paris. Send this postcard. This one.
Calm water lilies. Water lilies.
Nothing colorless.)

It’s morning. Baudelaire’s tomb.
Tree limbs casting shadow west.

This, a lot of time under a looming sky.
Nobody has time like this.
(Time to go to Le Mandarin for coffee
every day. We’re not complaining.
They bring the milk separate.
Watch the passersby on Saint-Germain.)

Nothing to ponder. This is the plight.
Pause by Pigeon in bed with his wife —
both fully dressed.

Pink flowers, pink flowers,
just beneath de Beauvoir’s name.
When she lived she lived two doors down.
Went south in August.

All of us smell of heat all the time.
We are the living. Oh dear!
There are the dead ones there.
Their thoughts more familiar, though.
Lives finished, nearly clear.
And they make it possible for us to go on living
as we do in their blue shade.

-Clarence Major’s forthcoming Selected Poems

Quotidian: C.S. Lewis

books poetry lit, quotidian January 20, 2015 Leave a comment

far better things C.S. Lewis quote
I always imagine that when Lewis’ friend Tolkein took the elves to a far green land across the sea, this is what he meant