On My Nightstand: the Minimalist Edition

Reader, there are nightstands and then there are nightstands. There are nightstands that can hold towering stacks of books and temporary pharmacies, and then there is my new nightstand at the Casita, which requires strategic positioning to accommodate any books.

And as I pondered my postage-stamp-sized nightstand last night, I realized it has been forever since I've said what was on it. So today, let me tell you briefly what I've been reading:

In FICTION:

(not pictured) Private Life by Jane Smiley. For those of you who read A Thousand Acres when you were too young and naive to expect its unfolding plot line, and therefore were scarred for life (who, me?), never fear. Private Life is nothing like it. Set primarily in Vallejo, California, during the years after the Civil War through the run-up to World War II, this is a story of a marriage, its exterior vs. its interior, the effects of eccentricity, and how private lives and the public world can shape one another. Exquisite characters. Read it.

(not pictured) The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King. This was a birthday gift from my brother and sister-in-law, the first in a series of "novel(s) of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes." I always find it interesting to read stories in which well-known literary characters are borrowed from their original author and put into a new set of stories. I liked this one quite a bit -- good plot, interesting characters. You can't go wrong here, especially if you like a good series.

Burning Your Boats: The Complete Short Stories by Angela Carter. I flipped right to the section containing "The Bloody Chamber" and other stories. "The Bloody Chamber" is a well-known feminist reinterpretation of the Bluebeard story (other tales in this volume are reinterpretations of other Old Tales; I am a sucker for such reinterpretations every time). Gothic, spooky, unflinching, and crafted in beautiful prose, these stories will have you thinking about courtship anxieties, forbidden spaces, true love, deceiving appearances, and the like. Perfect if you like to be spooked before sleeping (which I do, because I have a hunch that being spooked before sleeping plants poem-seeds, not to mention wacky dreams).


In NON-FICTION:

(not pictured) Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads: Dealing with Difficult Parents in Your Child's Life by Rosalind Wiseman. Rosalind Wiseman is the author of the well-known book on female peer relations, Queen Bees and Wannabes. This book caught my eye in the children's room at our public library. I'm not sure the subtitle quite does it justice. I rarely read parenting how-to books, but I found this book immensely helpful for two reasons: (1) it verified for me my sense that peer pressure begins earlier now than it once did, and documented the culture of achievement (I would say over-achievement) that seems to have its claws into my generation of parents (some call it "helicopter" parenting), and (2) it suggested real strategies for helping your children and your family opt out of the achievement-at-all-costs mode of being. I'm sure one of the reasons I liked it is that it validated many of my beliefs, e.g., 8 year olds don't need cell phones, sophomores shouldn't be taking five AP classes, and playing traveling soccer by age 5 does not predestine your child for greatness in this life. A real dose of common sense, thank you Ms. Wiseman, you are wise indeed.


In POETRY:

Reader, yesterday I almost expired because...... I had ..... no new poems .... to read. Very jittery, I was. Veeeeerrrrrry jittery. And then, O thank you Beneficent Goddess of Just-in-Time, the letter-carrier delivered issue 10 of Cave Wall and Alison Stine's WAIT.

But first, let me tell you about Nina Lindsay's Today's Special Dish, which I read and studied last week: Grit and beauty in the same poem, nay, in the same line. Finger-lickin' descriptions of food and the ceremonies we build around it. Fresh and luminous angles of light. Stories of the sublime in the day-to-day. Treat yourself, Reader, it's delectable.

As for Cave Wall, last night, as usual, I was not the mom watching flag football from the sidelines cheering every time my child touched the ball. Last night, I was not the mom on the playground refereeing games for the younger siblings of the flag-footballers. As usual, I was the mom sitting off in the distance with her nose in a book (I happen to like this approach -- I get to read, and my children don't have to be under the microscope). And I was rewarded with lines like this:

"... All month the clouds / are long bones descending, or / feathers, sister, falling // into rock where their names / and dates are trapped / like the first birds in ancient silt. ..."

--from Sally Rosen Kindred's "Feathers, Sister, Falling"

Lovely, lovely, and I can't wait to read more of Cave Wall this week. As a bonus, the artwork in this issue is enchanted and enchanting.

Reader, you will have to wait for WAIT by Alison Stine since I haven't cracked it open yet. But let me entice you with some jacket text: "In a small town under a spell, a child bride prays for the sheriff's gun. ... Part fairy tale, and part gothic ballad WAIT spans a single year: the year before a young woman's marriage."

So, there you have my little book report. What have you been reading lately? Let me know in comments if you like.

And now in other news: a few drafts have been stacking up here and there. I'll be revising some today. I am very happy to have some poet-time today.

Stay tuned for:
~ more on Today's Special Dish
~The Poet Expands Her Use of Technology
~Titles, or, What On Earth Is the Name of This Poem? for Readers and Writers, and,
~In Which She Lashes Herself to the Mast and Resists the Siren Song of the PTA

Happy day, Reader!

On My Nightstand

You mean besides Raising Your Spirited Child?
You mean besides How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk?
You mean besides Setting Limits With Your Strong-Willed Child?

Why yes, in fact, I do have a few other books on my nightstand.  I have three books of poetry I've been reading, enjoying, and learning from.

But first, a disclaimer: I started writing this post last week when I was in the middle of a stresspile (this is a technical term I learned from Gerry; from what I can tell, it means too much stress all at the same time).  So if this post is jumpy and disjointed, all I can say is I was jumpy and disjointed.  Part two of the disclaimer is that I am never sure I am getting a book of poetry "right" -- what I present here are my impressions and interpretations of the book based on careful reading.  But as I always tell people who ask me what my poetry background is: I am just a hack trying to learn everything I can.  These are great books -- read them yourself to know for sure.

**

The first is Sandy Longhorn's Blood Almanac.  Sandy blogs at Myself The Only Kangaroo Among the Beauty, and shares the ups, downs, and in-betweens of the writing life there.  In Blood Almanac, she writes beautifully of the prairie landscape she grew up amidst, and the landscape of a soul becoming itself.  The landscape of both is by turns beautiful and desolate, as in the poem "Lover Say Prairie" which begins:

"Say prairie and mean an underground sea
watering the roots of tall grasses that sway
like the thin bodies of girls dressed in sackcloth."

then moves on to a "stunning silence" and "the lone woman / in her house made of dirt and sod, the one / window."  At the end of the poem, we have no great comfort or happy ending, only a "hazy, indistinct joining" between two bodies living out life on this prairie-sea.

The second section of the book is a series of poems called "Momentary Constellations: 12 Self-Portraits" each titled with the name of a month.  I especially love "May," which tells of a child throwing herself into water and being hauled out repeatedly, until at last the child "abandoned / the language of fish for the sound / of things that could be drowned."  For me, this poem (like others in the collection) speaks of the other-ness we sometimes feel even in the midst of family and community, or other familiar surroundings literal or figurative.

There is also plenty of plain-old-beautiful nature poetry in this book, as a poet who knows and loves a landscape lavishes her words and attention on the natural world: "the blue jays feed // in the fence-row under the shelter of neglected / brush, small tufts of porcelain blue revealed, // a frenzy of feather and seed and beak, / of hunger and need and the given feast." (from "The Brightening Hour")

Buy Blood Almanac here, and here's a bonus: if you need a poem to help get you through this long winter here is Sandy's poem "March Afternoon."

**

Next on the pile is Traci Brimhall's Rookery.  Reader, this book is part story, part book of spells.  You are just as apt to find crickets, and ants, and mice grinding their teeth as you are to find angels and saints making themselves known in daily life.  The book is in three sections, each starting with a poem drawn from three definitions for the word rookery.  The first section, "Colony of rooks," deals in betrayal and grief.  Rife with aubades, the poems of this section entangle humans and animals as if to point out we are not so very much different, as in "Concerning Cuttlefish and Ugolino":

"You knew that an animal, in its wildness,
          would chew through its tendons, snap
its own bones.  There are parts of ourselves


we can learn to live without."

The second section goes back to "a breeding place" and contains vivid poems of childhood and memory, where love and desire and danger are often close neighbors.  The third is "a crowded tenement house" where the poet works in the space of being in the world -- in the here and now, and in notable events from history such as the Triangle Shirt Factory fire:  "Women link hands, say goodbye // in six languages and fill their skirts with eighty feet / of air."

Throughout the book the diction often feels prayer-like and incantatory. Ultimately the poet presents us with a world that is imperfect and sometimes even brutal, but beautiful -- a world we don't want to leave too soon.  I think we all know this world, but if you want to see it through a new lens buy Rookery here.  And if you want to get the Ugolino reference from the poem quoted above, click here and scroll down to  "Ugolino in Dante's Inferno."

**

And last we have Jennifer Richter's Threshold.  I am just about stunned into silence on this one because it captures -- beautifully and accurately -- the experience of illness and motherhood and the sad, stark intersection of the two.  Because of my own experience of chronic illness, this book often had me crying quiet tears, and closing the cover for a few days at a time until I felt settled enough to read more.

There is the family portrait drawn by the child, in which "you all come close to holding / hands, though the fingers of your family never touch; you're in the middle of all this reaching." (from the title poem, "Threshold").

There is the mother standing behind glass seeing, and being seen, through the lens of illness:

"Sometimes a flash of wings will crash into your glass then slump, shitting 
and shivering, staring, standing, now opening its mouth, its throat.  The 
silence streaming out: a sound its loves aren't meant to hear.  They'd hurt.
You won't ever tell.  This will happen to you again."

(from "Recovery 2: Turn Away Your Eyes and It'll Fly").

There is the whale-watching trip, mother and son:  "You turn, your / son is watching you.  Has been watching all along you realize." Then later, as the poem ends:

                                                                                                         "Out there a mother
whale and her son begin their long swim north today.  You know it will
be slow, this mother leading her new life.  You'll tell him everything.  Why
now? your son will ask and you'll say Now the mother's strong enough."

(from "Recovery 6: The Last Word").

I am just wowed by the clarity and restraint this poet has as she approaches a difficult subject.  I'm intrigued by her use of the second-person "you" in her illness poems.  My sense is that it gives the reader enough distance from the subject character (the "you") of the poem so that it doesn't feel too close or confessional, but also helps us see ourselves in that same "you."  A sense of 'this could be you,' so to speak.

There are many other poems, too, not just of illness but of family, neighborhood, students and travel.  It is a wonderful book, and you can buy Threshold here and read it for yourself.  Many thanks to Drew who introduced me to this poet.

**

In closing, I feel I must say, as I have said many times before on this blog:  Yay, poetry!

On My Nightstand

Here's what I've been reading lately:

The First Four Books of Poems by Louise Gluck
(includes Firstborn, The House on the Marshland, Descending Figure and The Triumph of Achilles)
I picked this up when the boys and I were at the bookstore last week (you didn't think I could enter a bookstore and not buy something, did you?).  I am always so torn between buying the books of up and coming, lesser-known poets -- wanting to support them and their work -- and buying books by poets who are already canonized, like Louise Gluck is.  This time, I went for learning more about the work of an important American poet who has won just about every prize, including the Pulitzer (for Wild Iris), and was Poet Laureate for 2003-2004.

These are her earliest poems, which, she says in a preface to the volume, she views with "an attitude of embarrassed tenderness."  When you read Louise Gluck's poems, you can readily believe that her father was the inventor of the X-acto Knife (so it says on her Wikipedia page).  She is the X-acto Knife of poets, with her precise and cutting language and images.  She shies away from nothing.

I'm just in the middle of my first, quick read-through, but here's an excerpt from a poem I love (being, as I am, a sucker for re-tellings), "Gretel in Darkness":

No one remembers.  Even you my brother, 
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you.  I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln --


Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone?  Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel,
we are there still and it is real, real,
that black forest and the fire in earnest.

I'm looking forward to reading more.



Seeing Things poems by Seamus Heaney
I first read this several years ago, when I wasn't as skilled at finding my way around the room of the poem.  It's nice to read it again and have a better sense of what's going on and what the poet is trying to do, although Heaney's work is full of classical and other references and you want to have the Britannica (or at least Google) nearby while you're reading.  I love all of his tool references and invented words, often a hyphenation of two existing words, like "word-hoard" and "love-drink"(the latter referring to a mountain stream).  This book contains a beautiful series of sonnets in domestic/family settings, Glanmore Revisited, full of slant rhyme, wordplay, and vivid insights and descriptions.  But my favorite poem in the collection is a meditation on second-time parenthood, A Pillowed Head (oops I forgot to say when I first posted this that this is an excerpt):

The trauma, entering on it
With full consent of the will.
(The first time, dismayed and arrayed


In your cut-off white cotton gown,
You were more bride than earth-mother
Up on the stirrup-rigged bed,


Who were self-possessed now
To the point of a walk on the pier
Before you checked in.)


The Grimm Reader translated and edited by Maria Tatar
This is a collection of many of the Grimm Brothers' Children's Stories and Household Tales.  I love all the old stories -- sacred texts and fairy tales and creation myths and the like.  These are not your Disney-fied fairy tales, but the real deal, wherein Cinderella's step-sisters have their eyes pecked out by doves as punishment for their transgressions, and Hansel and Gretel escape only by means of roasting the witch, and hear her screams through the oven door.  Did you know that scholars have identified 345 variants of Cinderella?  It makes me want to write a poem: "Cinderella, the 346th Variant."


(and way down on the bottom of the stack is) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
I'm finished with it now, but I keep it there in the same spirit as keeping a photo of a dear, old friend nearby.  It comforts me.

As February and many more weeks of cold and wintry weather yawn out in front of us, I've been trying to focus on the good things about winter (here I pause to thank my Grandma and my mom for passing down their rose-colored glasses).  One good thing about winter is there's plenty of good reading weather.  Happy reading to you, and thanks to all of you who sent a list or a memory of your favorite read-together book(s) last week.

On My Nightstand: December Edition

Reader,

I am ensconced in my bedroom at my Saturday writing desk, which is a card table (weekdays I write at my real desk before anyone's awake, but on Saturdays I need to be Behind A Door if I want to get anything done).  Snow is falling, blowing, drifting -- we are supposed to get 9 to 16 inches yet today.  It seems like a perfect day for reading and writing.

And speaking of reading, here's what I've been reading since my last Nightstand post:

In poetry:

The Body Mutinies by Lucia Perillo
I bought this because I knew this poet has lived with a chronic and debilitating illness (MS), and wanted to see how she treated illness in her poetry.  I believe this is her first collection of poems, although she has had several since, including Inseminating the Elephant which won the Pulitzer.  These poems were hard for me.  Many are long, and I admit I don't have a lot of patience for long poems.  There's a little voice in my head that says "For heaven's sake, if you can't say it in one page, write prose!"  I consider this to be a defect of the reader, not the writer, and yet my bias did keep me from enjoying this collection as much as I enjoyed:

Loon Cry by Fleda Brown
Fleda Brown's family has summered in the same area of Northern Michigan that my family of origin calls home since 1918 (we are Johnny-come-latelys in comparison).  Loon Cry is a collection of her Michigan poems, which she put together as a fund raiser for a local watershed council.  Several of the poems are from her Reunion collection which I wrote about here, but they have found a beautiful new home in Loon Cry.  I love the arc of this collection, which for me weaves a story of family, place, and the self navigating the waters of family and place.  I'm impressed with Brown's startling metaphors, and her way of taking surprising turns from everyday scenes and subjects.  Here's an excerpt from what may be my favorite poem in the collection, "Letter Home":

"Grass River is a snake on the tongue.
You, love, a thousand miles down
the map, many turns.  Meanwhile,
I am plunging ahead here through
forget-me-nots, marsh marigolds,
Joe Pye weed, and underneath,
the bright fur of mosses,
moss over moss, tangled, unspoken,
this great green marsh bleeding
everywhere."

I must also mention Half Wild by Mary Rose O'Reilley, which won the Walt Whitman award in 2005.  We've been reading selected poems from this collection in my Monday group, and I am wild for Half Wild.  I've resisted buying it until after a certain holiday comes and goes, but this is top on my list for 2011.  Her poems are small, quiet, and penetrating.  Many are set in the natural world, which she uses to bring us to insight and spiritual truth.  I can't say much about the arc of the collection as a whole, since I've only read bits.  From "We Keep Asking the Prairie":

"Hawks circle,
abandoned to updraft,
river birch gather to practice jumps.

As if we all come here to fall
and take off again,
tumblers in love."

Abandoned to updraft!  Tumblers in love!  Sigh......


And on to other genres:

I've Heard the Vultures Singing:  Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature by Lucia Perillo, and Driving With Dvorak:  Essays on Memory and Identity by Fleda Brown.  Both are collections of personal essays.  It was interesting to read the essay collections alongside the poetry collections and to hear the echoes of the poet voice in the essays, and vice versa.  I enjoyed both collections.  They were well-written and brave.  By that I guess I mean both authors took on tender, difficult subjects and invited us (readers) into them.

Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, with Stephen Hopp and Camille Kingsolver.  This is a story of the Kingsolver-Hopp family's quest to eat only locally-available food for one year.  They grow much of their food themselves, and procure the rest from nearby farmers/suppliers.  One thing I appreciate about the book is that the writing is clear and authoritative without being preachy.  In fact, the more I read, the more I wished this woman was my neighbor because I think she'd be really fun to talk to.  She almost lost me, though, when about two-thirds of the way into the book there had been no sibling arguments, complaints about sweet potatoes, ornery child-garden-weeders, or raised voices.  Then, blessedly, she devotes a few pages to the realities of family life amidst the local foods quest, and I can believe in her again.  The book really made me think about what food is: fuel for the body.  And also about the wisdom in the food ways of the past:  eat food (not chemicals, fillers, flavors), eat it while it's fresh, prepare it together, preserve what you can't use now for scarcer times, tread lightly on the earth in your growing and consuming of food.


In other news:
I think it's safe now to (at least temporarily) retire the fever-reducer and tympanic thermometer that are also on my nightstand.  Amen.

On My Nightstand

Well, it has been a while since I've done one of these what-I've-been-reading posts.  That's because for some reason they take a long time to write.  I'm going to try to be quick about this, folks.  Before I begin, special thanks to my dear friend Ana D., who sent me three of the books on this list on one of the Best Mail Days of my life.  Here we go:

In poetry, late summer found me with:

Fidelity by Grace Paley, a book she completed just before her death in 2007.  Her poems are wise and funny (often both in the same poem), and she has a voice all her own.  To me, the poems feel "quiet on the page" -- not clomping around in a big, loud, fast voice -- but just there to say what needs saying.  I like her sparse use of punctuation, and want to study more how she paces a poem without it, instead using line breaks and spaces within a line.

Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee.  Rockstar younger poet (at least, that's how I think of him).  His poems are spiritual and deep without being impossible to enter.  He works a lot around the themes of memory and inheritance in this book.  As a writer, I was interested in the use of dialogue in a few of his poems.  As a reader, I didn't always know where he was going in a given poem, but the beautiful language kept me interested.  How about these awesome lines from "The Shortcut Home": In my sister's story/God can't find us/in any of His coat pockets. 

Over the last month or so I've been reading:

Emily Dickinson's complete poems.  Good old Emily.  I remember being 13 and poring over her poems in what the first book of poetry I ever owned, a gift from my mom and dad (her Selected Poems and Letters).   I've been drawn back many times over the years, and I'm drawn back now; every line seems to have something to say all over again.  As Deborah, the leader of the writing group I've joined, said yesterday, "This is your autumn to read Emily Dickinson again.  You will remember this autumn because you were reading Emily."  She's right, and I love marking time, marking my life, with books.

And, in what may seem like a coincidence but really isn't, Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room by Kelli Russell Agodon.  Kelli blogs at Book of Kells.  This is her third book of poems, for which she won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize.  I love the fun she seems to have with words and wordplay, and also that she can be playful and joyful without turning away from life's sadnesses and dark moments.

In other genres, I recently read two really bad novels that I regret wasting precious hours of my life on.  So that you can avoid them I will tell you what they are:  Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult (predictable plot) and The Third Child by Marge Piercy (flat characters, predictable plot, and many strange anachronisms, like current-day college students "playing records" in their dorm room!?  Was there an editor??).

But, can we talk about Olive Kitteridge?  This collection of stories by Elizabeth Strout knocked my socks off, mostly because of the complex, unlovable and yet lovable, and utterly effective main character, Olive.  This is one of those books that not only is masterfully written, but also made me happy to be alive (yay, literature!).  Reading it has made me more forgiving of myself and others; for, if I can love Olive, warts and all, I can love anyone.  As a writer, I paid close attention to how the stories were connected -- not too tight, and not too loose.  Definitely worth your time.

Also just finished Lives Like Loaded Guns:  Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds (okay, okay, a little bit obsessed).  It's a new book by Lyndall Gordon, so I was thrilled to see it on the shelf at the library.  Usually you have to do your time on the wait list to get anything new at our library, so I lucked out.  This is an interesting historical and literary look at Miss Emily and her family, and provides some new perspectives on the characterization of her as a "recluse."  I liked it, but found the arc of the family story to be overall sad.

And just to keep the mama saw sharp, I'm reading Your Nine Year Old and Your Seven Year Old by Louise Bates Ames.  These are no nonsense guides to stages of physical, social, intellectual and emotional growth in children.  They really let you know what to expect, and what kids are actually capable of, at a given age or stage.  I'll never forget Dr. Bates Ames' advice from Your Three Year Old:  "The Mother of a three year old would do well to hire a babysitter as often as she possibly can."  Do I hear an 'Amen' out there?  (By the way, these books were written a few decades ago, so every now and then will have a reference or comment that dates them, but they are rooted in child development research and are not gimmicky in the least).

And that's what I'm reading these days.  What's on your nightstand?

On My Nightstand (And on the floor next to my nightstand...

... and on my dresser, and in the basket next to my dresser, and on my desk, and on the cedar chest.  I just know the bookshelf fairy is going to visit my house someday).

Here's what I've been reading this summer:

Poems by:

Fleda Brown.  Her collection Reunion has a stunning series of prose poems about a loved one's brain tumor and subsequent treatment.  I also love "For My Daughter's Fortieth Birthday", which begins with an epigraph about how particles that were once connected will, even if separated, act as if they are still connected.  The poem goes on to paint a scene with the mother in one place thinking about her daughter, about time and memory; and the daughter across the country running carpool with her kids.  It ends with these lines:

I'm walking the lake road in Michigan, watching
leaves turn and burn in the eye of Time.


How dear it is to me, the way it holds you in its sun-
dazzled arms as you round a curve and brake
at the sign, squinting your dozen little wrinkles.

I'm totally jealous of my mom who is hosting her Ladies' Literary Club meeting in September; Fleda Brown will be there to read and talk poetry.  In my mom's own house!

Kelli Agodon Russell's Small Knots.  She blogs at Book of Kells and has a new book coming out in the fall.  I'm learning from the way she writes about illness.  The poem "Routine Checkup" foreshadows her breast cancer diagnosis and ends with this haunting stanza:  Maybe if it weren't October,/and letters arrived without that stamp -- / the line-drawn woman in the corner/reaching her hand skyward,/whispering, it might be you.  I'm pretty sure she means this stamp.  That last line keeps playing over in my head, as I remember waiting, time after time, for a diagnosis of my own illness.

Beth Ann Fennelly's Open House is, as Robert Hass says in jacket text, "An immensely lively performance."  Fennelly is a fellow Notre Dame grad who now teaches at the University of Mississippi.  Her poems are brave and honest.  This book is definitely not an easy read, but it's rewarding if you put the time in.  I love these line from her poem "Poem Not To Be Read At Your Wedding":  Well, Carmen, I would rather/give you your third set of steak knives/than tell you what I know.

Kristen Naca's collection Bird Eating Bird.  I've just begun reading this one, and I'm really interested in her use of language -- both Spanish and English -- and her examination of how our language, our native tongue, becomes our lens unto the world.

Sylvia Plath's Ariel: The Restored Edition.  Long story here.  Just before her suicide in 1963, Plath had compiled a manuscript that was close to final.  Perhaps it was final in her mind; we'll never know.  After her death, her husband, the writer Ted Hughes (from who she had recently separated due, in part, to his affair with a family friend), edited the manuscript and had it published.  Some fault him for rearranging her order and excluding some of the poems she had in the ms.  Others argue that he was only applying his best editorial judgment as any writer would have wanted him to do.  It's interesting to read these poems, which are wild and stunning, in the state and order Sylvia Plath had left them at the time of her death.  I don't always understand them, but they seem to launch me into a good space for my own writing.  And I appreciate her description of a group of the Ariel poems she read on the BBC:  "These new poems of mine have one thing in common.  They were all written at about four in the morning -- that still, blue, almost eternal hour before cockcrow, before the baby's cry, before the glassy music of the milkman, settling his bottles."  I don't have a milkman or even a baby anymore, but I sure do know that 4 o'clock poem-writing hour.

I've also been working my way through Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem: A Guide to Writing Poetry by Wendy Bishop.  This is one element of my earnest attempt to learn more about the craft of poetry without going to graduate school (at least for now).  I'm trying to read this book as I used to read in my scholar days:  once for the gist, twice to take notes (I have always learned best by writing things down).  Reader, let me tell you I no longer have the stamina I had back then.  It has taken me two weeks just to get through the first read of the intro and chapter one, and the second read (with notes) through page 10.  But I am plugging away.

In other genres:

I recently finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  First novel, New York Times bestseller - wow!  It's a wonderful story about a group of Mississippi women -- some who choose to Follow The Rules, and some who choose not to -- just as the civil rights movement took hold.  I find myself missing the characters and wondering how they're doing these days.... a sure sign of a good read.  I'm also thinking of marketing some WWMD bracelets:  What Would Minny Do? (if you want to know why, read the book).  Thanks to my friend MKM for lending me her copy (I was #517 on the library waiting list).

Last night I wrapped up Telling:  A Memoir of Rape and Recovery by Patricia Weaver Francisco.  This is a beautifully written memoir about the author's long, slow journey to recovery after a man broke into her apartment raped her (BTW, I just had to edit that last sentence because the first version I wrote said "after she was raped."  Notice the passive voice: she was raped?  It lets the rapist off the hook, doesn't it?)  It's a book that gives me a nudge toward writing about my life after illness -- not that I would compare chronic illness with the experience of rape (not in a million years!), but I can imagine writing a book like this.  One that traces the journey; that looks through lenses of memory, family, landscape, and literature; that tells an honest but redeeming story about loss and eventual restoration, or at least a new, more livable, normal.

And, lest I rest too much on my mama laurels, I have pulled Discipline For Life:  Getting It Right With Children by Madelyn Swift back off the shelf.  There are only three parenting books I've ever found useful, and this is one of them.  It's all about long-term goals, rather than short-term you-better-do-what-I-say-right-now-dammit!  Her watch words are:  "You do it, you own it."  And she's a proponent of giving choices to children, and of logical, related consequences.  To wit, "You can stop riding your tricycle into the wall and ride it around the driveway.  Or you can choose to keep riding it into the wall and then I'll have to put it away for the day."  As with any parenting strategy, it's much easier on the page than in real life (please, would someone tell me the logical consequence for refusing to drink one's milk for the 77,589th time!?), but it's a philosophy I can buy into, unlike those promoted in all of the Raise A Perfect Child in Three Easy Steps books that are out there.

Up next:

MacBook Pro Portable Genius by Brad Miser, because I'm pretty sure I'm only using about 1% of the functionality of this gorgeous machine on which I write.  The River Wife a novel by Jonis Agee, because everybody needs a good story to escape into.  And for poems, Jane Kenyon's Collected.

Happy summer reading to all of you.

Wordless Wednesday: In Which There Are Not Enough Bookshelves

It's Happening Again

The stack on my nightstand is in a vertiginous climb. I do actually wonder if it could topple over and hit me in the head in the middle of the night. Every time this happens I think to myself I should really find a better way to store the books I'm reading; but in keeping with my strategy for Organizing On a Budget--which is: Don't Do It-- I never do find a better way. I just let the pile grow, and when it gets too tall I move it to the floor next to my bed. Sorry, no photo of that. But please do note the lovely pumpkin and tissue paper decoration put on my bedpost by AJ -- "So your bed can be Fancy, Mom!" Just what I wanted...... a Fancy bed..... complete with jack-o-lanterns and tissue paper.....but, I digress.

My purpose here today is to fill you in on what I've been reading lately. So here goes:

1. The Shtetl, Joachim Neugroschel, ed. This is a book of Jewish legends, folktales, and other stories that came out of Jewish shtetl life and traditions of Eastern Europe. The shtetl way of life is all but gone because of the Holocaust, but the literature remains. Many are tales from the Tsene Rene, or women's bible, an adaptation of the Pentateuch written in Yiddish. There are tales of the prophet Elijah, scriptural interpretations of the Creation, and short stories centered on various elements of Jewish life. The stories are interesting, wise, and often funny. I'm enjoying them so far.

2. The Odyssey by Homer. This is the classic tale of Odysseus' epic return journey from the Trojan wars to his homeland of Ithaca. I had the good fortune of taking an entire class devoted to The Odyssey as a sophomore in college. Sadly, I remember almost nothing of what I learned in that class (I could kick myself now), but I still enjoying reading and re-reading this tale. Full disclosure: I harbor a strong suspicion that Odysseus could've made it home a lot more quickly if he'd made it a priority. But then again, I'm always trying to convince Husband to come home from the office in time for dinner, too.

3. Open Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996 by Seamus Heaney. Seamus Heaney is one of those rock-star poets whose name is familiar to at least a few people outside the poetry world. A native of Ireland, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. There's a very strong connection to the Northern Irish landscape in his work, and the political struggles (referred to in Ireland as "The Troubles") and Irish history are a strong themes for him. But he also writes beautifully, hauntingly, of love; here's one of my favorites:

Wedding Day

I am afraid.
Sound has stopped in the day
And the images reel over
And over. Why all those tears,

The wild grief on his face
Outside the taxi? The sap
Of mourning rises
In our waving guests.

You sing behind the tall cake
Like a deserted bride
Who persists, demented
And goes through the ritual.

When I went to the Gents
There was a skewered heart
And a legend of love. Let me
Sleep on your breast to the airport.


4. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. This is the story of a Mexican-American boy who begins to write his life story after a visit to an underwater cave shows him the wonders of hidden things. His story is an epic one, like our friend Odysseus', and he survives a difficult childhood, then becomes involved in the lives of famous artists and revolutionaries. The jacket text says: "Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach --the lacuna-- between truth and public presumption." A lacuna, by the way, is "a gap or missing portion" (OED). I started The Lacuna a couple weeks ago when my friend, The Poet A.O.D., offered to lend it to me (the waiting list at the library was hundreds long), and I'm enjoying it. But not so much that I couldn't put it down to read a couple of other books I'd been waiting for, also at the library. I am looking forward to getting back to it, because I trust Barbara Kingsolver to tell a really good story. Her book The Poisonwood Bible is one of my all-time favorites.

5. Two Journals - one meant to record family happenings, which is mostly empty; and one given to me by AJ for Christmas, which is completely empty. For AJ, everything is imbued with meaning. This journal he gave me has to be really special in order to live up to his expectations for it. I feel all this pressure to do something really special with it. So far, no great ideas, although I am considering keeping a reading journal in it, with a list of titles, passages I particularly liked, and maybe a short reflection on each book.

6. Willow Room, Green Door: Selected Poems by Deborah Keenan. Deborah Keenan is a local poet here in the South of the River metro area. She has been writing and teaching around here for many years, and I am taking a class from her starting in March. "This class is for poets who wish to work seriously together at their craft," says the course description. Sounds kinda.... well, serious. So, I thought it would be wise to read some of her work before taking a class from her. Truth: I haven't started it yet, but it's there waiting for me. It will be read by the Ides of March.

7. Moment by Moment by Jerry Braza. A book sent to me by my good friend Susan, which discusses the concept of mindfulness and strategies for living mindfully (e.g., breathing techniques). I'm glad to have this book. Living mindfully -- that is, living in the moment you are in, now -- doesn't come easily to me, and here's why: I'm constantly thinking about what I have to pull out of the freezer for tomorrow's dinner. Or about the check I have to send to school for the after-school clubs this month. Or how I can't forget to text my favorite high-schooler to come and clear the driveway. Or how I also can't forget to wash AJ's green and gold shirt so he can wear it to school of Friday for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. You know, the little details of life. They get in the way of my Mindfulness. Which, of course, is exactly the point of this book: learning to live mindfully amidst the many demands of real life. Gonna keep this one nearby for a while.

8. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. I find it hard to believe that I have never read this book, at least not that I can remember (And yes, I have had the experience of reading an entire book and then realizing in the last chapter that I'd already read that book. There was a time in my life when I would not have been able to conceive of forgetting that I had read a book. That time is past.). Most of you probably know that this book is an excerpted diary of a young Dutch and Jewish girl who, with her family and some others, hid from the Nazis in an annex of the building where her father ran their family business. They were eventually discovered, and none survived but Otto Frank (the father), who eventually published his daughter's diary. The Dutch title of the book is Het Achterhuis, meaning "the house behind." An interesting metaphor for the life they all lived in a house hidden behind a bookcase. At any rate, I checked this out of the library in order to read it before the PBS screening of The Diary of Anne Frank in April.

9. Persuasion by Jane Austen. Speaking of PBS, I am also reading Persuasion in advance of the Masterpiece version of this Jane Austen story, which airs on February 14 (gonna have to hurry and finish this one). So far, I'm through the part where Louisa falls and injures herself in Lyme, and Capt. Wentworth and Anne rush back to Uppercross to deliver the news to Louisa's parents. Oh, the suspense! What will bring Capt. Wentworth and Anne together again after all these years? "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope." Thus writes Capt. Wentworth to Anne in Chapter 20. I confess, I'm a sucker for romance.

10. My little blue book for catching snatches of poems that drift into my consciousness in the middle of the night. The latest entry: "holoalphabetic sents - like the quick brown fox." My cryptic scrawl for exploring the idea of a poem made up of pangrams or holoalphabetic sentences, which are phrases or sentences that employ all the letters in the English alphabet. Not sure I could ever really come up with a poem of pangrams, but hey, those middle of the night ideas can be kind of crazy.

11. Selected Poems by Denise Levertov. I confess, I have a hard time buying just one book at a time, especially when Amazon keeps going on and on about FREE Super Saver Shipping! So, when I bought the Deborah Keenan book, I also bought Denise Levertov because of these beautiful Denise Levertov words my friend, Ms. W-K, sent to me last week:

"Let me walk through the fields of paper
touching with my wand
dry stems and stunted
butterflies...."

I have also recently read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, and Too Much Happiness, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro. They were both great reads. Happy reading, everyone, and let me know what's on your nightstand (and what's decorating your bedpost) these days.

What I'm Reading

In my never-ending quest to keep my books contained, the books are winning. They are strewn about the house, pile after pile. I've given up on the on-my-nightstand framework, at least for now. Instead, I'll just fill you in on what I've been reading these days. All of these books are likely to be available at your local library or bookstore, except the Jim Moore poems which might be more available near South of the River than elsewhere.

But first, a disclaimer: I've been working on this post on and off for a week, sneaking away from my family responsibilities for three minutes at a time. So if it seems choppy and inarticulate, don't hold it against me -- I'm just a mom trying to write this week!

1. The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil

This book traces the development of the English language, from a tribal tongue confined to Northwest Europe, to a worldwide language spoken by hundreds of millions of people. The book is a companion to the nine-part BBC series chronicling the same story. Being a word-lover, the topic is fascinating to me. If you're a Word Person (you know who you are), I would recommend it, although it feels like a book that might be nice to pick up once in a while and read at a leisurely pace, rather than to try to have to push through in time to return in to the library by its due date (which is what I'm doing).

2. Lightning At Dinner: Poems by Jim Moore

Jim Moore is a local poet, fairly well-known, I think, in our little literary scene around here. This is his sixth book of poems, and the first of his work that I've read. Unlike some other poetry collections I have read recently, I wouldn't say these poems address a specific theme or idea. Instead they touch on various elements of life: death of a loved one, growing older, cultural differences, war, natural beauty, and existential pondering. There are a couple of dog poems as well, for all you dog lovers out there. One of my favorite in the collection is "At Night We Read Aloud The Aeneid." Here's an excerpt:

Each night, the boat of our voices
carries us toward our dreams
on the dissolving tide of a world
both strange and bloody. A world
in which love does not matter,
though our love makes of it
a place we can bear to live.

3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid is bent on world domination." Thus says Time Magazine. The way The Bean devoured it, I am not in a position to doubt this. After watching him become so absorbed, and hearing him shriek in laughter every few pages, I just had to see what all the fuss was about (well....... ok...... I confess, I read it to see if I thought it was "appropriate," the word all kids hate).

Basically, this book is about a kid who spends his summer derailing his mother's attempts to engage him in activities she deems constructive (reading clubs, summer jobs, trips to the water park); except that he is totally innocent in his derailment of her plans -- he doesn't try to do it, he's just self-absorbed and would rather be shut in his room playing video games all summer. It dawned on me that the reason kids love these books is that Greg says exactly what most kids are thinking. For example: "Every time I have a friend (birthday) party, Mom invites HER friends' kids, so I end up with a bunch of people at my party I barely even know. And those kids don't buy the gifts, their MOMS do. So even if you get something like a video game, it's not a video game you'd actually want to play. (Illus: Froggy and Ruff Learn About Sharing video game)." I guess you could call it escapist literature for kids. And, I guess I can live with it.

4. The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester

This is the story of the making of the revered OED (Oxford English Dictionary). The OED is the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language, and each entry includes pronunciations, definitions, etymologies, and quotations (in my dream world, I would own the whole 20-volume set; in my real life I am saving up for the compact edition with reading glass). The project to develop the OED began in 1858 and took seventy years to complete. Although it's an interesting book on an interesting topic, it's not spellbinding (is that too much to ask -- to be spellbound by every book I read?).

5. Songs Without Words by Anne Packer

Have you read The Dive From Claussen's Pier, Anne Packer's first novel? If yes, then you can skip this one. Life-altering medical emergency? Check. Relationship on the rocks? Check. Creatively-inclined main character who has a breakdown? Check. Mentally ill mother? Check. Unsatisfying resolution? Check.

It wasn't terrible, but it felt so similar to her first book that I was disappointed in it, and wish I would've spent my precious time reading something else. Also, I kept waiting for the great big beautiful metaphor to come into play: you know, Songs Without Words? The series of piano pieces by Mendelssohn? I thought the title of the book came from the Mendelssohn music, but either I missed it in a sleepy-eyed daze, or the grand link between the two works with the same title never came. (Note to self: always google the title you plan to use for a book).

6. Medieval Myths, Norma Lorre Goodrich, ed.

This is a collection of myths from medieval times, including Beowulf, Tristan and Isolde, and El Cid. I always love the oldest stories, and I have a hunch (or perhaps a superstition) that if I read them at night they will make poems grow while I'm asleep. So I've been making my way through these for bedtime reading.

7. Migration: New and Selected Poems by W.S. Merwin

I picked this up because one time, a long time ago, someone told me I should read W. S. Merwin because our writing styles are similar: incantatory, with little punctuation. I've been picking through it (the reading equivalent to picking at your food), and, well, the thing is I do use punctuation, a lot more than this guy does! I think you have to work a little harder to read poems when there are no cues, other than line breaks, for pacing; indeed, the lines move right along in Merwin's work, which can be exhilarating, but not easy. I think I should have tried a slimmer volume of his poems for starters; the new and selected feels like too much to digest without knowing more of his work and feeling already familiar with it. That being said, there are some really good poems in the collection. Here are some excerpts from "Thanks":

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

....

with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out of us like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is


8. The Book of Ruth from the Old Testament

You know this one: "Wither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy god my God." It's the Old Testament story of Ruth, a young Moabite widow, who goes with her mother-in-law, Naomi back to Naomi's home of Bethlehem to try to start a new life. As a Moabitess, Ruth would be considered an outsider (pagan, unclean, and any number of other less-than-complimentary adjectives) in Bethlehem, but she goes anyway, and eventually is rewarded for her fidelity to Naomi.

I am a little bit obsessed by the Book of Ruth right now. Or, at the very least, intrigued. I've been reading various translations of it a few times a week for the last few weeks, and letting the story and the words sink in. I have a strong sense that there are lots of untold stories between the lines of the text. Maybe I will try to write a few of them someday.

9. Beowulf retold by Nicky Raven, illustrated by John Howe

The boys saw the cover illustration on the Medieval Myths book (above), and so we got to talking about Beowulf. They decided we should go immediately to the library and check out a children's version of the story, which we did. This version is very well done with beautiful language and vivid illustrations. So vivid, in fact, that the illustration of Grendel's mother completely freaked out The Bean, to the point where he was afraid to go outside by himself for a couple of days. Meanwhile, AJ marveled at the drawings: "Hey, let me look at that picture again. Yeah, that's awesome!" Both of them loved the story.

10. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd

Picked this one up at the school book fair. Amidst all the Dora, Clifford, Spongebob, and Ben 10 books, I found this little gem. It is a series of dramatic monologues written from the perspective of various children in a medieval village--"varlets, vermin, simpletons, saints" says the jacket text--from the Lord of the Manor's son, to the crippled daughter of the blacksmith. Throughout the book there are also short background pieces on various aspects of medieval life, e.g., pilgrimage, the three-field system, towns and the freedom they offered. The author is a school librarian who wrote the pieces for her students to perform. I thought I was buying the book mostly for me, but the kids have really enjoyed it, too. As a writer, I think the author did a great job of creating distinctive voices and characters in each short sketch.

11. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman

Okay, truth: I am not actually reading this book. I started reading it, but when I came to the part about how cooking vegetarian is not just about coming up with meatless entrees, it's about a whole new way of cooking and a whole new way about thinking of food, I closed the book, dragged myself down the hall to my bedroom, and crept under the covers, where I plan to stay until I can afford hire a personal chef to convert us to vegetarianism. So, basically, if you need me, that's where I'll be.

On My Nightstand

It takes a while for the pile to change, but this week I realized that it was almost all new stuff since my last "On My Nightstand" post. So, here we go:

Family Journal - A few months ago, I had a bee in my bonnet to start a family journal. I keep a personal journal that sometimes captures the day to day life of our family, but more often captures dreams, frustrations, and deep thoughts. I thought it might be fun to have a record of our family life. So, I bought a journal from Levenger and started writing in it from time to time (lately it has been less and less frequent). It is full of nothing much: "Today we went to the library" or "Read creation myths for bedtime book."

The Kitchen Detective by Christopher Kimball - Those of you who know Cook's Illustrated magazine will recognize Mr. Kimball as the magazine's editor. I was over at my friend S's house, reading her copy of Cook's, and mentioned how much I've always enjoyed Christopher Kimball's writing in the magazine. Oh, she said, then you should read this, and handed me the book. It is fully of meticulously researched recipes (and methods, and tips) for home-cooked meals that actually seem doable (example: his recipe for homemade chicken stock takes about 20 minutes, instead of all day). I have enjoyed reading it so far. But, being the good-enough mother that I am who has mostly scraped together leftovers and almost-meals for the last week, I have not actually tried any of the recipes yet.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare - My high school English teacher always called Shakespeare "Billy Boy." Now I can't see or hear a Shakespeare title without thinking "Billy Boy." Anyway, I figured midsummer is a good time to revisit this one, as long as I also have the....

...Cliffs Notes to A Midsummer Night's Dream nearby. No, I still cannot get through Shakespeare without assistance. What I usually do, working section by section, is to read the Cliffs Notes first, then move on to the actual text. By the way, I recently discovered that Cliffs Notes are now available online for free; but I find I work better from words on the page, and so prefer the old-fashioned paper versions.

My journal - as always.

A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve - I have enjoyed many of Anita Shreve's novels, especially The Last Time They Met and Fortune's Rocks, so I thought I'd try a more recent one. So far, I am not crazy about this one, but I'll probably finish it anyway.

The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton - It seems almost a cliche to like Anne Sexton, but I really do love her work. I also love the foreword written by Ms. Sexton's friend and colleague, poet Maxine Kumin. Whether or not you like Anne Sexton's poetry, which many have criticized for being too confessional, I think her use of language, form, and rhyme is almost always fresh, interesting, and unexpected (this may be truest for her earlier work; less true for her later work). Regardless, I find that when my own writing needs some freshening, studying Anne Sexton's work seems to help. So, after several years of checking it out of the library a few times a year, last week I splurged and bought my very own copy! It's very exciting to finally own it.

We Were In Auschwitz by 6643 (Janusz Nel Siedlecki), 75817 (Krystyn Olszewski) and 119198 (Tadeusz Borowski) - Well. This book is extremely gripping, as I'm sure you can easily imagine. It was copyrighted in 1946. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945, so these three individuals wasted no time in writing about their harrowing experiences inside the prison camp. Makes me feel kind of wimpy for having a hard time writing on my experience of chronic illness. I am always just astounded by the fact that SIX MILLION or more people lost their lives in the ethnic cleansing orchestrated by Hitler.

Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau - An old stand-by for me. Comfort reading. Not sure why.

My little blue book used for catching little scraps of poems in the middle of the night.

Also:

A framed prayer card of Our Lady of Sorrows
A photo of My Sweetie
Cuticle cream that smells like lemon and beeswax
Foot cream - because, how old am I anyway? My feet look terrible.

On My Nighstand

Here’s what’s on my nightstand right now:

The Little Black Book: Six-minute reflections on the Weekly Gospels of Lent 2009
The Little Books were created by The Rev. Ken Untener (1937-2004), a bishop from the Diocese of Saginaw. A friend from our parish has made it his own personal mission to distribute Little Books to others. Each year during Lent, Advent, and Easter, a Little Book appears as if from nowhere, on my doorstep, or is passed to me through a chain of friends.

With a Little Book on your nightstand, you can take part in the ancient practice of lectio divina. Lectio divina is a way of praying the scriptures by reading a short passage each day (usually a progression through one book of scripture) slowly and carefully, and meditating on the words; then paying attention to the words, images, or ideas that capture your imagination. There is one Little Book each year for the seasons of Advent (blue cover), Lent (black cover) and Easter (white cover). If you want to know more about Little Books, visit www.littlebooks.org.

I don’t know about you, but I am waiting for the Not So Little Book for Ordinary Time (green cover).


Sappho
Sappho was an ancient greek lyric poet born between 630 and 612 BCE. She is one of the first, if not the first, women poets whose work is extant; most of work exists in the form of fragments of manuscripts. Look at one here.

Sappho’s work is all full of love, longing, passion, and (famously) jealousy. Here are a couple of my favorite Sappho passages:

From Fragment 16:
Some say mounted warriors, some a fleet of
Ships, and some say foot-soldiers are the finest
Sight upon the black earth, but I believe it’s
Who you desire.

From Fragment 102:
Sweetest mother, I cannot work the loom -
Slender Aprodite fills me with longing for a boy.

(Ooh - she’s got it bad, wouldn’t you say?)

Blue notebook
This I purchased at the White Sale (sale on all paper and notebooks) at Wet Paint. That’s my kind of White Sale. Keep your sheets and towels - give me paper!

I keep it by my bedside so that I don’t lose little snatches of poems that come to me in that boundary-crossing time between sleeping and waking. Here’s an example of what’s inside:


















And in case you're wondering: Yes, making poetry *is* like making sausage.

Partakers of the Divine Nature by Archimandrite Christoforos Stavropoulos, translated by the Rev. Dr. Stanley Harakas
This book explores the concept of theosis, “the union of the human with the divine (p.18),” also referred to as deification. This concept, while also embraced in the Roman tradition, is particularly important in Orthodox Christianity. I have to admit that this book is not an easy read. I usually get about two sentences into a paragraph and throw in the towel. Maybe with time I will get through it. Otherwise, I guess I will just have to stay here in the human realm, beating my breast and gnashing my teeth.


100 Poems from the Chinese translated by Kenneth Rexroth
A collection of work by ancient Chinese poets who wrote between about 700 CE and 1200 CE. One of my favorite things about this collection is the easy come/easy go approach of the translator: “I make no claim for the book as a piece of Oriental scholarship. Just some poems.”

Here’s an excerpt from one of my favorites by the poetess Li Ch’ing Chao:

From “Autumn Evening Beside the Lake”:

The herons and seagulls sleep
On the sand with their
Heads tucked away, as though
They did not wish to see
The men who pass by on the river.


Iowa Review
A literary journal published at the University of Iowa. This issue contains a wonderful series of poems on the Annunciation; also an article exploring the judgements we make about parents whose children are found wandering the streets at 3 a.m. (I have lain awake many nights praying that a certain one of my children would never do this, even though he figured out the locks at age 18 months).

The Alchemy of Illness by Kat Duff.
Subtitle: “A woman explores the transforming - and, paradoxically healing - experience of being ill.”

This has been sitting on my nightstand staring at me. I stare back. Apparently, not only is it difficult for me to write about illness; it’s also hard for me to read about it.


My Journal
I use the Infinity Journal by Levenger. It has a leather cover, with refillable inserts available lined or unlined. Mine now also features “cover art” by Sister.  Available at www.levenger.com (the journal, not the cover art).


The History of God by Karen Armstrong
This is a re-read of a book that I think should be required reading for everyone who claims one of the three monotheistic religions. This book traces the development of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism from antiquity to modern times. It is striking to examine the similarities amongst these religions; and for that matter, to understand the interplay of the monotheistic faiths with paganism. Armstrong raises the issue of theology of election (the idea of a chosen people) vs. a religion of tolerance and compassion. She guides us through Church history looking both at the development of sacred texts, and at the social and political influences on the development of Church doctrine and practice. Armstrong also examines how people's conception of God has changed throughout history so that the idea of God could continue to "work" in each new age.

This is a thought-provoking exploration of how we leave our human fingerprints all over our concept of God, and what that means for history (think the Crusades, the Inquisition, or even the influence of religion on American electoral politics in recent years).

The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter
Robert Alter has made it his life’s work to render the Hebrew scriptures in English more faithfully than previous translators have done. In Alter’s translations of what is known to us as the Pentateuch, gone are the flowery renderings of the King James, and the salvific foreshadowings found in most (all?) English translations of the holy book (ancient Israelites had no concept of an afterlife, let alone of salvation or eternal life).

An example taken from Genesis 1:1-2:

The KJV has,

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light...”

Alter’s translation:

When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.”

It really is a treat to read these foundational stories in the direct, concrete, and vivid language used by Alter. He manages to make them beautiful in English despite his primary focus on faithful translation of the Hebrew. I also recommend his translation of the book of Psalms.



Well, it has now taken me longer to write this post than it used to take me to write a five-page paper back in my grad school days.  I'm going to go take a nap now.  What's on your nightstand?