Selected Poems - Wendell Berry

Berry is a fine poet who reminds me of Wallace Stegner. He writes about nature, the passage of time, and the meaning of death. His later poems nearly all include a theme related to dying which he likes to describe a natural part of living and a natural and fearless passage.

The poetry most often uses nature as a theme. Berry likes to call the reader to observe a bird in a tree. Some of his poems rail against modern society, greed, and war. They can serve as a quiet meditation bringing calm to world moving faster and faster away from finding simple pleasures in rain or soil.


In a time that breaks
in cutting pieces all around,
when men, voiceless
against thing-ridden men,
set themselves on fire, it seems
too difficult and rare
to think of the life of a man
grown whole in the world,
at peace and in place.
But having thought of it
I am beyond the time
I might have sold my hands
or sold my voice and mind
to the arguments of power
that go blind against
what they would destroy.

The Blackwater Lightship - Colm Toibin

Complex family relationships are portrayed in simple and moving prose by Toibin. Taking place in Ireland in the early 1990s, the book examines three generations in a family shaken by deaths. There is a lot going on in this book and yet it seems to flow smoothly with a gentle style of writing.

With a superb use of dialogue, we learn to see the human side of hardened people and understand complicated situations. Like most families, nothing is as simple at may first appear for the characters in this book. Six people are drawn together where they unravel much about themselves and intimate relationships.

Imaginings and resonances and pain and small longings and prejudices. They meant nothing against the resolute hardness of the sea. They meant less than the marl and the mud and the dry clay of the cliff that were eaten away by the weather, washed away by the sea. It was not just that they would fade: they hardly existed, they did not matter, they would have no impact on this cold dawn, this deserted remote seascape where the water shone in the early light and shocked her with its sullen beauty. It might have been better, she felt, if there had never been people, if this turning of the world, and the glistening sea, and the morning breeze happened without witnesses, without anyone feeling, or remembering, or dying, or trying to love.

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

This book has a great premise-- a travelling circus struggling during the depression. Throw in an innocent young man with circus people, including a beautiful woman, lots of action and the book has great potential.

Unfortunately, this book fails to reach its potential. The author states that she spent 4 months, wait she actually said 4 and 1/2 months, researching material. It is too bad that the old circus photos are far more interesting and descriptive than her writing. The characters are flat and cliched. We never learn enough about our hero to really get behind him. The reader learns nothing about the woman he falls in love other than the fact she is pretty.

The book takes the form of an old man looking back at a period in his youth. The short chapters with the aged hero mostly reflect on life in nursing homes. I felt this mostly distracted from the main circus story.

I know this book is loved by many, but is not an example of good writing or story-telling. It is more like something you would find serialized in Reader's Digest.

Midnight Salvage - Adrienne Rich

Rich is a masterful poet who is adventurous and bold in this collection. Her intelligent use of words, turned in creative phrases, make you wonder "How does she do it?"

I tend to judge poetry by how often I stop to read a line or stanza over again because it has surprised me, amazed me, or gave me pleasure. Rich does all of that in this book. The poems are stark and challenging often depicting scenes of war or inhumanity. Like all good poetry, they elevate the use of words to art.

From the poem "Rusted Legacy"

Imagine a city where nothing's

forgiven your deed adheres

to you like a scar, a tatoo but almost everything's

forgotten deer flattened leaping a highway for foot

the precise reason for the shaving of the confused girl's head

the small boy's punishing of frogs

--a city memory-starved but intent on retributions

Imagine the architecture the governance

the men and the women in power

--tell me if it is not true you still

live in that city.

The Discovery of Time - Stuart McCready (editor)

The story of how the human race has learned, with ever more astonishing precision, to record, compare, and think about measured units of time- an aspect of our experience that seems otherwise indefinable.

This book offers interesting chapters written by a variety of authors on the history of our understanding of time. It covers the earliest concepts of humans trying to define and understand the passage of time to modern theories. It contains lots of great pictures and illustrations that add greatly to the text. I found myself frequently staring at a picture of stonehenge or a sundial and pondering time.

The book is uneven with various authors composing chapters. It also moves too often into academic discussions that seem too detailed for a general interest book. One chapter brought up the importance of using time to calculate longitude. A great book on that discovery is Dava Sobel's Longitude.

Severance - Robert Olen Butler

After careful study and due deliberation it is my opinion the head remains conscious for one minute and a half after decapitation. - Dr. Dassy D’Estaing, 1883

By reading this book, I have answered the question "How can you go wrong reading the work of a Pulitzer Prize winner?" This book didn't work for me. The premise of the book might be a good exercise for a creative writing class, but as a novel it was only mildy engaging.

There are 61 instances of people, or in a few cases animals, which are decapitated either intentionally or accidentally. The author assumes that in the 90 seconds it takes for the brain to shut down, up to 240 words could have been formed. He then writes exactly 240 words in each instance which read like short prose poems.

The book has interesting groupings of individuals, such as several following the French Revolution. The author chooses an interesting aspect of the individual and the time period to reflect upon. While the writing has its moments with intriguing last thoughts, it remains gruesome and lacking in any over-riding theme. Still, it is a quick read and if you want to imagine what goes on in someone's mind after being decapitated, give it a try. I was surprised that the last thoughts were reflective instead of being filled with anger, pain, or shock.