Author: Carolyn O

“I Love All Beauteous Things”

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Robert Bridges’s fine poem is a brief, honestly joyous celebration of the beautiful, and our urge to create something beautiful ourselves. In the second stanza, he writes: “I too will something make / and joy in the making” even if his creation proves ephemeral.

One of the pleasures of this little poem, for me, is that it reminds me of one of my favorite children’s books, Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. In the book, Miss Rumphius (as a child) is told by her grandfather that she must, over the course of her life, do something to make the world more beautiful.

Isn’t that lovely?

I’ve loved this book since I was a little girl, and when I’m feeling reflective, I remember the beautiful illustrations and ask myself if I’ve done anything lately to make the world more beautiful, and, more importantly, what I can still do.

Image courtesy of Tom Curtis/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

(I’ll let you find out for yourself what Miss Rumphius sets out to do.)

Recommended Reading: Life Class and Toby’s Room, by Pat Barker

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One of the many gifts my father has given me is sharing his lifelong interest in World War I, that brutal period in history that often disappears into its sequel’s shadow. The war was terrifying in its intensity, its stagnation, its sheer totality. And it also produced some of the finest poetry of the twentieth century before an entire generation of young poets, novelists, painters — an entire generation of young men — was wiped out.

[Which is not to say that that women didn’t suffer didn’t the war, or that there were no incredibly talented women writers and artists of the period; see my earlier post on Anna Akhmatova.]

Some other time I’ll write a post on my recommended reading on the war, but for now, let’s talk Pat Barker.

If you haven’t read Ms. Barker’s Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road), drop everything and make a run for your neighborhood bookstore. The trilogy is complex and marvelous, focusing especially on the war’s psychological effects on soldiers. Particularly masterful is the way Barker blends fact and fiction; her characters interact with historical figures like Owen, Sassoon, and Graves. Readers with STEM proclivities will appreciate her fine understanding of scientific and medical concepts.

As you might imagine, I was delighted to run across Ms. Barker’s lastest book, Toby’s Room (2012), in our local library a few weeks ago. It wasn’t until I read the jacket copy after I finished the novel that I realized that Toby’s Room is a sequel of sorts to Life Class (2007), which I promptly found and read next. I say ‘a sequel of sorts’ because the timelines in the two books overlap, as do the characters, though the focus shifts among them. I would describe the two novels as companion pieces.

Both are concerned with trauma—emotional and physical, resulting from war and from domestic life—and its relationship to art. Once again, Ms. Barker’s characters blend seamlessly into a landscape populated by very real figures. Of particular interest is the work of Henry Tonks, which I won’t say much more about in order not to spoil the plot of the books.

“bend not those morning stars from me”

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As I’ve probably mentioned, I’m on hiatus from a five-year stint in grad school. I spent most of my research time on early modern (what used to be called Renaissance, but hey, why use one word when two are available?) English literature of all sorts. I’ve steeped long enough in the brew of Shakespeare and Milton and Lanyer and Hutchinson and Donne and Marvell to become pretty snooty about what I find appealing and what I don’t.

When it comes to sonnets, Donne and Shakespeare are the masters of the form in my book, but from time to time, I page through my Renaissance—I mean, early modern—shelf and re-discover Sir Philip Sidney.

Astrophil and Stella (or Star-lover and Star, for those of us who opted out of Latin and Greek as teenagers) is a long sonnet-and-song sequence, the first in English, which traipses around between Sidney’s (or his poetic persona’s, if you prefer) interests in poetry and Lady Penelope Rich. He borrows conventions and form from Petrarch, with his own modifications, of course, and sometimes the poems are really lovely, if a tad melodramatic.

What I like about Sonnet 48 is its convoluted conceit: the speaker begs his lover not to look away from him, for her eyes simultaneously give him light and kill him: “O look, O shine, O let me die and see” (l. 8); it is only in death that he will be able to “see” her fully. And in the idiom of the time, death refers not only to death as we understand it, but also to orgasm (from the French le petit mort), so beneath the veneer of the courtly lover’s plea, we have a much earthier subtext.

Here’s Sonnet 48 from Astrophil and Stella:

Soul’s joy, bend not those morning stars from me,
Where virtue is made strong by beauty’s might,
Where love is chasteness, pain doth learn delight,
And humbleness grows one with majesty.
Whatever may ensue, O let me be
Co-partner of the riches of that sight;
Let not mine eyes be hell-driv’n from that light;
O look, O shine, O let me die and see.
For though I oft my self of them bemoan,
That through my heart their beamy darts be gone,
Whose cureless wounds even now most freshly bleed,
Yet since my death wound is already got,
Dear killer, spare not they sweet cruel shot;
A kind of grace it is to slay with speed.

Recommended Reading: The Round House, by Louise Erdrich

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The plot of Louise Erdrich’s amazing novel concerns a boy’s search for the man who attacked his mother, while his father searches for justice despite the twisted web of federal, state, and tribal laws that stands in his way.

It sounds simple, but The Round House is the work of a master-storyteller, each detail bringing daily life on the reservation into focus. Joe, the narrator, is a funny, honest companion through the often-horrifying story, and through his eyes we see all the best of late-boyhood friendships in his adventures with Cappy, Zack, and Angus, as well as the worst in men.

The raw anger and frustration that this book made me feel was balanced by admiration for Ms. Erdrich’s stunning language and deft way of shaping her characters. One of my favorite passages is Joe’s relation of the boys’ love for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The boys all want to be Worf, but admire Data immensely. (Also, the chapter names are often taken from the names of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.)

I finished reading The Round House last Wednesday, and I’m thrilled that I’ve finally had the chance to recommend it.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”

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I’ve been waiting weeks to work on this poem, with its famous final lines.

Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day,”  from her 1990 book House of Light, just sings summer, and now summer’s here (with the accompanying mid-90s temperatures here in Boston), it’s time to learn it.

I’m slowly reading the whole volume, and I can’t believe that for years I’ve missed that Ms. Oliver is perhaps the best-known and most widely read poet in this country. A native of Northeast Ohio, Ms. Oliver now resides on Cape Cod (her poems celebrate its interior marshes more than its seashore), and since I grew up in Cleveland and now live in Boston (and married a man from Cape Cod), her poems often feel homey and familiar to me. I love the intimacy of her observations, the feeling, almost, of conversation. This feeling of casual grace is remarkable, because elsewhere Ms. Oliver has written that she revises most poems forty or fifty times!

If you’d like to recommend a favorite poet, please leave a comment! Who knows how many lovely voices I’ve been missing . . .

Recommended Reading: The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin

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I’ve been waiting anxiously for the Supreme Court to issue its major rulings for this session, so I asked friends to recommend the best books about the Court. Votes were cast for The Nine and for The Brethren, and the library got The Nine in first, so here we are.

It’s a startling portrait of the justices and their major cases over the last twenty or so years, and I felt I learned quite a bit about some of the justices’ personalities and the reasoning and maneuvering behind some of the major rulings. Based on this strength alone, I recommend the book.

The book is dated, of course (published before the 2008 election), but that can’t be helped. However, I felt at times that Mr. Toobin’s portrayals of the justices shaded toward unseemly. For instance, is it necessary to say that Justice Scalia “raged”? Or to comment more than once on Justice Ginsburg’s (physical) stature? Or to call Justice Kennedy vain? Far more interesting was the revelation that several of the justices enjoy travel and are interested in the views of their international colleagues.

I didn’t care for the organization of the book, which too often was chronologically vague and disjointed. And I would have preferred a narrative with fewer overt political opinions from the author, who seemed to me, at times, to be taking on the role of interpreter of the nation’s laws for himself.

Still, it’s worth reading if you’re interested in the workings of the court.

Recommended Reading: Wool, by Hugh Howey

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Each year, our town library chooses an all-town summer reading book, and then hosts events related to the book in the fall. I love summer reading, and I love talking about books with other people, so I’ve been looking forward to checking out this summer’s book.  Two years ago the book was Rocket Boys, by Homer Hickam (a great memoir, which later became October Sky, one of my favorite movies), and last year the town read To Kill a Mockingbird.

This year, I’d never heard of the book, but only a few display copies were left out, so I asked a reference librarian about it. She said the seventy-five copies the library had ordered flew off the shelves so fast that they’d had to buy another thirty, of which only six were left the next day.

The book is Wool, by Hugh Howey. Here’s part of what Jill, a reference librarian at the WFPL, has to say about it:

Why have you probably never heard of it?  Because it was a self-published work by an unknown author. That means it was not in most libraries or bookstores, there were no print ads for it in magazines, and review attention was sparse at best.  Yet this novel managed to gather an army of loyal readers who passed it on, one copy at a time, to family, friends, and co-workers, slowly building it into a New York Times bestseller.  That all of this took place outside the confines of the traditional publishing model is testament to the direct relationship that now exists between the writer and the reader.

I was a little skeptical at first, but I liked the title, liked the idea of reading some sci-fi, and liked the heft of the paperback (I love paperbacks), so I started it that night.

Holy cow. This book is scary.

I had to force myself not to read ahead: that’s how suspenseful Wool can be. Howey’s pacing is spot-on, the short chapters enhancing the uneasiness of the frightening world he’s created. No spoilers, as usual, but praise is due to Howey for his tough, and admirable, female characters. Highly recommended, whether or not you’re a fan of sci-fi.

“under the house the stone / has its feet in deep water.”

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Yesterday, it was hot here. Eighty-five, I’d say. Cool water poured on the pavement turned instantly warm and finally, finally, it rained. The breeze was a relief, but even better was the enormous double rainbow that appeared over our town, and, it turns out, all over Boston.

The rainbows over our neighborhood last night

The rainbows over our neighborhood last night

This week, I’m working on Reginald Gibbons’s “At Noon,” a poem in which you can just feel the sweltering heat radiate away in a cool, dark room.  I especially love the image I’ve quoted in this post’s title: the house, like a child in a wading pool, cooling its heels.

Recommended Reading: Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night, by Thisbe Nissen

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Like William Adama, I am not a loaner of books. A giver of books, surely, but a loaner, no. When I hand over a book, I assume it’s gone forever, and if I really like it, I pick up a new copy for myself. This quirk is based on my own foibles: I am terrible when it comes to returning phone calls, emails, and good books.

Luckily for me, my friend Amy is a much more generous soul. When she came to visit me in the hospital (and when a friend sees you looking that bad and still gives you a hug, she’s a keeper), she brought her favorite book, Thisbe Nissen’s collection of stories Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night, to keep me company. [Amy and my neighbors Katie and Elena also performed many miraculous acts of cooking and kindness over those ten days, for which I am eternally and profoundly grateful.]

It’s simply wonderful. Every story is engaging, every character wholly realized. One story might make me laugh, and another might make me feel like my stomach had fallen to my feet. These are tales of the perilous nights and days of youth, ranging from cold midwest college towns to the Nevada desert and Manhattan’s apartment landscapes. And I’d almost forgotten the pleasure of reading short stories; like biting into a perfectly ripe pear, with the accompanying satisfaction of finishing the whole thing in one sitting.

That said, I can’t wait to read Ms. Nissen’s novels. Thanks Amy!

“Composed in a shine of laughing”

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This week I’ve been thinking about some of the opening lines to Mrs. Dalloway, one of my top-five favorite books of all time, because really, these lines are as close as prose ever comes to poetry. Specifically, I’m thinking of:

And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh, as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge!

My son turned two this weekend, and because I was in the hospital for so long, I didn’t have the energy to throw him the little party we had planned. So instead, the three of us drove to our favorite beach, and just after it opened, we found ourselves with blue, blue skies, a crisp wind off the waves, and a warm tidal pool for H to play in. What a morning, indeed.

Fortuitously, today’s poem-of-the-day email from The Poetry Foundation brought just the right poem to my inbox: Marie Ponsot’s “Between,” a short, elegant poem about and for her adult daughter. It’s so lovely, a deft meditation on both parenthood and childhood that makes me wonder what it will be like to look at my own son in twenty, thirty years. For me, this is the eleven-line poetry analogue to Mrs. Dalloway, a way of seeing the past through the lens of the present, the everyday, the home.