“Sometimes the most beautiful poetry can be about simple things, like a cat, or a flower or rain. You see, poetry can come from anything with the stuff of revelation in it. Just don’t let your poems be ordinary. Now, who’s next?”*

August 12, 2014August 12, 2014 / Carolyn O / 6 Comments

O Captain! My Captain!
by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
The arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

_______________

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman: ‘O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, o me, o life?’ Answer: that you are here. That life exists, and identity. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”*

–from Dead Poets Society, script by Tom Schulman

In Brief: Recent Works in Translation

August 11, 2014August 9, 2014 / Carolyn O / 7 Comments

Sworn Virgin*
by Elvira Dones
Translated from the Italian by Clarissa Botsford

In Albania’s mountains, there’s a tradition in which it’s possible for a woman to become a man. If a family loses all its men, to blood feud or war or sickness, a woman can step forward, put on men’s clothing, and live the rest of her life as a man. If, that is, she forswears sex, marriage, and children.

Elvira Dones, an Albanian writer, explores this phenomenon (which you can read about here) in the fictional Sworn Virgin, which was originally published in Italian.

We meet Hana as she’s preparing to leave her life in Albania — and her identity as Mark — behind for a new life in America. The transition is a difficult one in many respects, reflecting the terrible challenge she faced nineteen years earlier, when she became Mark.

At the time, Albania was under oppressive Communist rule, and Hana had left her mountain home, and her beloved aunt and uncle, to study literature in Tirana. For reasons that slowly become clear as the novel progresses, Hana puts aside her hopes and her ambitions, and becomes a chain-smoking, heavy drinking shepherd in a mountain village without modern amenities. And she lives as Mark until she simply can’t anymore.

Ms. Dones has a gift for slowly opening up her characters — Hana, her family, her romantic interests, her cousins who take care of Hana in America. Hana’s decision to become Mark isn’t fully explained until the end of the novel (and for this reason I don’t recommend reading the Foreword until you’ve finished the book), and it’s depicted with care and compassion. Equally compassionate is Ms. Dones’s exploration of how Hana adjusts to becoming a woman again, to gaining her independence, learning English, and navigating American customs as a newly-arrived immigrant. Sworn Virgin is a fascinating novel, and highly recommended.

The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914*
by Béla Zombory-Moldován
Translated by Peter Zombory-Moldován

Part of a larger autobiographical work, this slim volume was found, painstakingly edited, and translated by the author’s grandson; it appears for the first time (in any language) thanks to New York Review Books Classics.

The summer of 1914 found Hungarian artist Béla Zombory-Moldován enjoying a holiday with friends. When the war broke, he was summoned for duty, leaving the holiday for home to gather supplies and bid his family and city farewell. Just a few weeks later, Zomobory-Moldován fought in one of the war’s earliest battles, in Galicia, where he and his men had to fashion dugouts in the absence of tools. He was very badly wounded, and returned to Budapest to recover from his injuries and shell-shock; he soon realized that nothing would be the same again.

The Burning of the World was eye-opening for me, presenting as it does an under-read national perspective (Hungarian) and since it recounts experiences on the Easter Front, when I (along with most readers, I suspect) am accustomed to reading memoirs of trench warfare on the Western Front. In addition, Peter Zombory-Moldován’s Introduction gives an excellent thumbnail sketch of Hungarian history and pre-war life, as well as answering the reader’s questions about his grandfather’s eventual fate.

As in many war memoirs, we see the poor decisions of superior officers that lead to senseless deaths, and the quick onset of disillusionment. The memoir has a modernist feel; the author writes in the present tense, and is focused on his own interiority as much as his surroundings. (In one section, his attempt to recover some pre-war spirit in one of his favorite haunts sounds like something from The Sun Also Rises.) Zombory-Moldovan’s descriptions are carefully constructed and highly memorable; he describes shell fire as “the sound of a watermelon being struck with a stick” (44).

The Burning of the World is essential reading for anyone with serious interest in the war, Hungarian history, or memoir. Highly recommended.

So Long, Marianne: A Love Story*
by Kari Hesthamar
Translated from the Norwegian by Helle V. Goldman

As we’ve established, I love Leonard Cohen, and I think the rest of the world should too. So Long, Marianne takes its title from one of his most famous songs; the subject of both the song and the book is Marianne Ihlen. Though Leonard Cohen features prominently in the publicity materials, this book is Marianne’s biography (she doesn’t meet Cohen until halfway through the book). Born into a middle-class family in Norway, as a young woman Marianne had a turbulent relationship with the novelist Axel Jensen, traveling with him through Europe and eventually settling on the Greek island of Hydra. The two married, but not long after Marianne gave birth to their son, Axel abandoned them. Leonard Cohen had met the Jensens before their separation and was immediately smitten with Marianne, and soon the two began a love affair that lasted throughout most of the 1960s.

Though reading about Marianne’s relationship with the self-obsessed Axel was often frustrating, I found this book to be an interesting portrait of life lived without the comforting certainties of long-term plans or even everyday routines. Marianne’s self-confidence, as it emerges after her separation and during her relationship with Leonard Cohen, is something to cheer for.

I also loved the details about life on Hydra during the 60s — the market, the local restina, even the weather. When Marianne and Axel arrived in the late 50s, it was rustic, with few foreigners living there; by the time Marianne moved away, Hydra was home to a thriving expatriate artists’ colony.

For Leonard Cohen fans, So Long Marianne features a small selection of previously unpublished material (letters, poems, photographs), and confirmation that yes, Leonard is the kind of man who treats women with kindness and respect, even at the end of a relationship. But we knew that already.

*I received copies of these books from their respective publishers for review purposes, which did not affect the content of my reviews.

Classics Club Spin # 7

August 9, 2014August 9, 2014 / Carolyn O / 8 Comments

Classics Club Spin #5 — which landed me with Great Expectations — was, to my surprise, a great success, and I liked reading The Iliad for Spin #6, so I’m throwing my hat into the ring again. Same list, just swapped in a new number 1.

Here’s my (randomly chosen) list, from my larger List o’ 51, for the Wheel of Fortune to choose from on Monday:

Homer, The Odyssey
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels
Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
James Baldwin, Another Country
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Wish me luck!

“His leaden act was done”: C. Day Lewis’s “Epitaph for an Enemy”

August 5, 2014July 26, 2014 / Carolyn O / 10 Comments

A week or two ago, Emily wrote a post about the movie adaptation of Ender’s Game (haven’t seen, never will, thanks for asking), and how, on the whole, books are generally better than their film adaptations. Then asked her readers if they could think of any movies that are better than the books they’re based on.

The one that immediately leaps to mind for me is The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Michael Mann’s loose adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel. I did not care for the novel, to say the least, though many people love it.

The movie features a gorgeous soundtrack, excellent acting (some awesome Daniel Day-Lewis strong-but-silent action), inaccurate portrayals of historic events, and scenery that’s beautiful but that doesn’t pass for upstate New York, even 250 years ago upstate New York.

It is, despite its flaws, magnificent.

This is supposed to be a poetry post, so: Emily’s question made me think of The Last of the Mohicans, which made me think of Daniel Day-Lewis, which made me think of C. Day-Lewis (the ‘C’ is for Cecil), who was Daniel’s father. And C. Day Lewis was a poet.

He was also a successful writer of detective fiction (under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake), a friend to many other notable poets of his day (including W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender), and the poet laureate of Great Britain. You can read a brief biography and highlights of his major works here.

Day-Lewis’s short but powerful “Epitaph for an Enemy” is this week’s poem of the week; let me know what you think!

If Roxane Gay is a Bad Feminist, Sign Me Up

August 4, 2014July 25, 2014 / Carolyn O / 7 Comments

The first time I saw the name Roxane Gay was on Facebook (see? It’s not altogether terrible). I’d just seen a trailer for The Help, and thought to myself: “Um, doesn’t that movie seem racist to anyone else?” A friend linked to a piece by Roxane Gay detailing her dismay over the film’s depictions of race in the 1960s south, which are, to say it in academic-speak, problematic. The essay was very, very good, and you can read it here.

Three summers later, it’s the year of Roxane Gay (or, at least that’s what I’m calling it). Her novel An Untamed State (review here) was published to critical acclaim this spring, and Bad Feminist* is available tomorrow. It’s a collection of Ms. Gay’s essays (most, if not all, previously published elsewhere), and you shouldn’t miss it.

Ms. Gay’s essays are short, intense views of a lively mind at work. They vary widely in tone, ranging from the hilarious (the world of competitive Scrabble) to the horrific (Ms. Gay’s traumatic experience of sexual assault as a girl). Her essay on rape culture, “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence,” in which she takes the New York Times to task (among others), ought to be required reading in high school (and, apparently, newsrooms).

Many of Bad Feminist‘s essays consider books, movies, and TV shows from the perspective of race or gender — Ms. Gay’s takes on The Hunger Games, Girls, and Django Unchained are a pleasure to read — showcasing Ms. Gay’s considerable prowess as a cultural critic. She is equally comfortable talking about “high” literary culture and Lifetime movies; this is the perfect book for anyone who’s a pop culture aficionado.

Here’s one of my favorite passages, on Quentin Tarantino:

But Django Unchained isn’t even really a movie about slavery. Django Unchained is a spaghetti western set during the 1800s. Slavery is a convenient, easily exploited backdrop. As with Inglorious Basterds using World War II, Tarantino once again managed to find a traumatic cultural experience of a marginalized people that has little to do with his own history, and used that cultural experience to exercise his hubris for making farcically violent, vaguely funny movies that set to right historical wrongs from a very limited, privileged position. (222)

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.

Despite what the book’s title suggests, Ms. Gay is a wonderful feminist: engaged, interested and interesting, funny, respectful of others’ differing views. My politics overlap Ms. Gay’s, but not completely; even when we fundamentally disagree, I found much to consider in her arguments. Ms. Gay doesn’t espouse one right way of being feminist, and that’s a message we could all stand to remember. Bad Feminist is a book for feminists and for those who won’t call themselves feminists; it’s a book for everybody. Highly recommended.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, which did not affect the content of my review.

Literary Wives: The World’s Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy

August 4, 2014August 3, 2014 / Carolyn O / 10 Comments

If you’re new to Literary Wives, here’s the summary: we’re an online bookclub of five to six book bloggers, and we post every other month about a different book with the word “wife” in the title. When we read these books, we have two questions in mind:

1. What does this book say about wives or the experience of being a wife?

2. In what way does this woman define “wife”—or in what way is she defined by “wife”?

This month, we’re talking about Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife, a 1999 collection of poetry. We invite you to join the discussion by commenting on our blogs (links below) or posting your own review on our Facebook page.

We also hope you’ll join us next time, on Monday, October 6, when we’ll be discussing Melanie Gideon’s Wife 22.

Dear Readers, it will come as no surprise to you that I love Carol Ann Duffy. I’ve talked about her poetry in a couple of different contexts (here and here), and she’s one of the few writers whose work I’ll buy without reading reviews or flipping through pages. Several of the poems in The World’s Wife are included in Ms. Duffy’s Selected Poems, which is how I first learned of the book.

In The World’s Wife, Ms. Duffy imagines the voices of the women close to famous historical or cultural male figures (“Mrs. Lazarus”, “Frau Freud”) or the voices of the people those male figures might have been had they been female (so, “The Kray Sisters” instead of the Kray Brothers, “Queen Kong” instead of King Kong), or the voices of women whose stories have been rendered in men’s voices (“Delilah,” “Little Red Cap”).

The poems range from a few lines to a few pages long, but all of them feature Ms. Duffy’s trademark sharp wit, incisive language, and zinging, unexpected rhymes. These poems are often funny and always thought provoking, a glorious medley of feminist social commentary in an entertaining package.

Usually, this is the part of the post in which I’d address our Literary Wives questions, but since this book presents so many women, it would be folly to write about them all. In general, though, Ms. Duffy presents a picture of wifehood that is at once one of frustration and one of power; the invisible wives of history are, in The World’s Wife, fully imbued with agency, requiring our attention. Ms. Duffy asks us to consider what it would be like to mourn and grieve for a dead partner, only to have him reappear (“Mrs. Lazarus”) or what it would be like to be terrified that your husband might accidentally turn you into gold (“Mrs. Midas”).

Sometimes Ms. Duffy’s characters supply an answer to a vexing historical quandary. In “Anne Hathaway,” Shakespeare’s wife tells us exactly why her husband in his will left her “my second best bed.” Sometimes her speakers are drawn forward into the modern era. We see wily “Mrs. Faust” making use of her husband’s bargain, and witness “Mrs. Tiresias”‘s exasperation when her gender-changing husband experiences menstruation for the first time (hint: a strongly-worded letter to “the powers that be” demanding paid menstrual leave ensues”). These are “Bad girls. Serious women.” They’re not always women you’d like to meet, but they’re fascinating creations.

If you loved The World’s Wife and are wondering which book to read next, I’m happy to recommend Ms. Duffy’s collection Feminine Gospels (2002), which you might consider a kind of follow-up to The World’s Wife. I read it recently and it was fantastic. Like The World’s Wife, the characters in the poems allow us entry into the world from a female perspective, though one much more everyday, not necessarily associated with names everyone knows. Feminine Gospels includes a long poem, “The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High” which sparkles with wit and depth and character; I don’t usually go in for non-epic long poems, but this one is just fabulous.

Please visit the other Literary Wives bloggers to get their takes on the book!

Emily at The Bookshelf of Emily J.

Cecilia at Only You

Kay at WhatMeRead

Lynn at Smoke and Mirrors

(Ariel at One Little Library will be posting sometime in the next couple weeks)

(Audra at Unabridged Chick is on hiatus)

The Queen of the Tearling: We Have a Verdict

July 31, 2014July 25, 2014 / Carolyn O / 14 Comments

Erika Johansen’s debut novel The Queen of the Tearling* is the subject of a massive marketing and publicity campaign: promotion in major media outlets, publicity at Comic Con, movie rights already sold, the works. The book itself is gorgeous; it even has one of those convenient red ribbon bookmarks built in.

It received a starred review in Booklist and a so-so review in Publisher’s Weekly, and yet it’s the July Indie Next pick. If you’re going by Goodreads reviews, though, and let’s say for a moment that we are, The Queen of the Tearling is polarizing, eliciting both rage and raves from its reviewers. So where do I fall?

Solidly in the middle, Dear Readers.

The Queen of the Tearling has been compared to Harry Potter, Game of Thrones**, and The Hunger Games. It doesn’t match these series by any metric: writing quality, character development, world-building. Nonetheless, it’s a promising enough debut that I’d happily sit down with the next installment (it’s the first in a trilogy, or so I hear).

Like The Hunger Games, The Queen of the Tearling is set in a dystopian future world. Like the Harry Potter series, magic exists in its world. Like Game of Thrones, it’s a particularly violent and nasty world, especially for women and children. (Sigh. As usual.)

It’s been some hundreds of years since a cataclysmic event caused humans to attempt “The Crossing,” which resulted in new kingdom formation. The Tearling is an utopian experiment gone wrong, a country mired in feudalism where memories of advanced technology (and books) are fading. Its next-door neighbor is Mortmesne (yes, just go ahead and think of it as Mordor), powerful, flesh-hungry, and ruled by an ageless and brutal sorceress called the Red Queen.

Kelsea Raleigh, the daughter of the last queen of the Tearling, has just turned nineteen, and intends to come out of hiding and claim her throne. Before she can become Queen of the Tearling, however, she must evade a band of thieves, a society of assassins, the most evil fictional bureaucrat ever, and her uncle (the regent), who’s hell-bent on murdering her before she can set foot in her castle (Or after. Whatever works). Members of the Queen’s guard, led by the fearsome and enigmatic Mace, will do their best to protect Kelsea. And because this is a fantasy novel, we all know that getting the crown isn’t going to be the hardest part of our intrepid heroine’s ordeal.

Ms. Johansen has clearly done her reading; she nods explicitly to Tolkien and Rowling, and the epigraphs that precede each chapter are straight out of Dune. (The Mace bears a strong resemblance to Gurney Halleck, too.) The adults-keeping-secrets-from-powerful-adolescents trope harkens back to Ender’s Game.

Kelsea (which, sorry, is a name I cannot stand) has some Katniss-like qualities: she says what she means, she’s incredibly intelligent, she cares deeply about those less fortunate and weaker than herself. She’s impulsive and often angry; she’s got depth. On the whole, I liked her.

Ms. Johansen’s emphasis on her physical appearance, however, is troubling. Kelsea is repeatedly called, by the narrator, other characters, and herself, plain (with a soupçon of fat-shaming too, oh joy). Being plain in and of itself is not a problem (in fact, please, writers, give us more diverse-looking female characters!); physically attractive women do not have a monopoly on valor, kindness, loyalty, wisdom, or any other virtue (see: Eyre, Jane; Lewis’s Orual), and it’s refreshing to read a heroine who isn’t take-off-her-glasses-and-she’s-hot faux-plain, just plain-plain. The problem is that Kelsea is dismayed with her appearance, and she thinks about it often enough that it becomes distracting and takes away from the narrative.

Also, memo to Emma Watson (who’s apparently attached to the film in the works): Girl, this is not your character. Please let an unknown actress take this one and sweep us off our feet.

Ms. Johansen’s writing is solid, but not deftly inventive (Rowling) or stately (Tolkien) or fast-paced (Collins). The novel needs simultaneously more detail and more editing to trim it down. It’s a 434-page book that should be about 350, I think. A couple of plot threads — Kelsea’s eventual love interest, who I presume will become obvious in Book 2, for example — are a bit too easy to tease out, and some feel unnecessarily held back. However, there’s enough material here — enigmas about Kelsea’s parentage, a bunch of Very Bad People, questions about the nature of the event that required The Crossing (pretty sure I have it figured out, but not positive), the fate of the country — to keep a reader entertained. I’d certainly read the next book.

A note about the intended audience: Kelsea’s age, the use of magic, and the comparisons to powerhouse series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games might have you considering picking this one up for your preteen or young teenage nephew or niece. Don’t.

The Queen of the Tearling is definitely not YA, and while it doesn’t reach Game of Thrones-level gore, it is violent and disturbing, especially, as I said, with regard to women and children (worse than The Hunger Games, I’d say); it’s an emotionally difficult read in several sections. I’d steer teens younger than 16 or 17 away from this one, or at least suggest you read it first before you put it in front of anyone younger.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, which did not affect the content of my review.

** I’ve read two chapters of the first Game of Thrones book, and seen three or four episodes of the show. It’s not for me (at least, it’s not for me until the whole series is published), but I freely admit that the man can write.

An American in Burgundy, Part Deux: Maximillian Potter’s Shadows in the Vineyard

July 30, 2014July 22, 2014 / Carolyn O / 7 Comments

The subtitle of Maximillian Potter’s Shadows in the Vineyard* is “The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World’s Greatest Wine,” which conjures up images of ski-masked men in dark cellars lacing bottles of wine with cyanide or arsenic.

The truth is somewhat different; a more accurate subtitle would have focused on the vineyard and the vines that produce one of the world’s most expensive and highly-regarded wines. While no cyanide appears in Shadows in the Vineyard, two vines in the Domaine de la Romanée Conti vineyard were indeed poisoned, and the man who did it threatened to poison more. These events were the subject of a Vanity Fair article penned by Mr. Potter, which was then expanded into this book.

The book as it stands is less about the crime than about the history of the vineyard and its tangled web of owners and winemakers; Mr. Potter in particular focuses on Aubert de Villane, the Domaine’s current proprietor, a serious, kindly, humble man who clearly cherishes his vineyard and its wines. (I started to think of him as “the grape-whisperer” as I read Shadows in the Vineyard.)

Earlier this summer I reviewed Ray Walker’s The Road to Burgundy, which is one man’s tale of leaving it all for the love of terroir. Shadows in the Vineyard is more invested in territory, in how this famous vineyard came to be, in the forces that shaped both winemakers and winemaking.

The organization of the book leaves much to be desired; Mr. Potter attempts to build tension and flesh out a short true-crime story by coming back to the poisoning plot time and again even as he digresses into other subjects (history, the wine market, tensions among the DRC’s owners, etc.). A better strategy, I think, would have been to frame the poisoning plot as just one of the many challenges the vineyard has surmounted over hundreds of years, and using it to bookend his study of Aubert de Villane and his vineyard.

Still, there’s much to learn, and if you’re a wine connoisseur, you won’t want to miss this book given its focus on vineyards and the history of burgundy wine (especially the Domaine’s). For the rest of us mere mortals, who will probably never taste a wine valued at thousands of dollars a bottle (really: check out this Sotheby’s auction listing), Shadows in the Vineyard offers carefully drawn portraits of Monsieur de Villane (though I rather wish the author would not purport to know exactly what the man was thinking at such-and-such a moment), his family, and even the vine-poisoner.

Mr. Potter, and many others, consider the best kind of wine to be a consumable work of art, a da Vinci painting, say, in a glass; what would drive a person to deface that kind of beauty? If you’re interested in the question, you might like Shadows in the Vineyard.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes, which did not affect the content of my review.

Rosemary and Reading Glasses

Reads Worth Remembering

Author: Carolyn O

Recommended Reading: Land of Love and Drowning, by Tiphanie Yanique

“Sometimes the most beautiful poetry can be about simple things, like a cat, or a flower or rain. You see, poetry can come from anything with the stuff of revelation in it. Just don’t let your poems be ordinary. Now, who’s next?”*

In Brief: Recent Works in Translation

Classics Club Spin # 7

Recommended Reading: Malcolm Brooks’s Painted Horses

“His leaden act was done”: C. Day Lewis’s “Epitaph for an Enemy”

If Roxane Gay is a Bad Feminist, Sign Me Up

Literary Wives: The World’s Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy

The Queen of the Tearling: We Have a Verdict

An American in Burgundy, Part Deux: Maximillian Potter’s Shadows in the Vineyard