Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

{Note: Kelly at Big A, little a has the Poetry Friday round-up here this week} . . .

I just finished reading Catherine Reef’s E.E. Cummings: A Poet’s Life (Clarion Books; December 2006; library copy). I’m a big ‘ol E.E.* fan, but I was surprised at how little I knew of his life. Reef does a fine job of not only bringing this unconventional, provocative poet’s life to the reader (from his birth in Cambridge in 1894 to his death in 1962 at his beloved Joy Farm in New Hampshire at the age of sixty-seven) in an engaging prose, but she weaves into the biography many details about and a respect and appreciation for his poetry. The book is meticulously-documented with Reef’s source notes as well.

Beginning with his early life in Cambridge, Reef provides a detailed description of the city during the late 19th century when Cummings was a wee child (having been the firstborn and christened Edward after his father, but using his middle name, Estlin), Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: Vivian at HipWriterMama is on top of things and already rounding-up the Poetry Friday entries for today. Here’s the link} . . .

A little Sylvia Plath seemed the natural choice for today, after Jules’s review of Your Own, Sylvia by Stephanie Hemphill.

Sometimes I feel compelled to defend poor Sylvia against those who think of her as the patron poet of semi-suicidal goth girls. I mean, okay… yeah, she is. But I think people tend to get hung up on Plath’s life story and forget what an awesome poet she really was. It’s easy to do – her bio works as a parable for a lot of motifs: the angsty misunderstood girl who couldn’t live up to her own expectations, much less everyone else’s; the talented artist who sacrificed her own ambitions to support her husband and raise his children, only to lose him to another woman; the poster child for the questionable diagnoses and barbaric treatments of mid-century psychiatry… But really, if you can get past all the prefab persona and just look at her body of work, you’ll find some seriously good poems. Her images come at you like kidney punches, one after the other; and they’re rendered in so precise a meter it’s as though she painstakingly pared away any excess syllables with an X-acto knife.

Here’s an example. It’s one of her later poems, “Balloons,” from her posthumous collection Ariel.

Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,
Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk

Invisible air drifts,
Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow cathead, blue fish—
Such queer moons we live with…

See? “Oval soul-animals” – simple and perfect. And not the least bit angsty. Read the rest here. And also check out this nifty site for an English class at Stanford, with links to most of her poems in either chronological or alphabetical order. Go on, you know you want to… go get your Plath on!

Oh, fine… you can light a candle or two, if it’ll help set the mood.

My black nail polish? Oh, geez, I think it’s over in that box of makeup I only use for Halloween… um, yeah, go ahead.

A Cure CD? No. Well… maybe Head on the Door… I mean, NO, I’m sorry, no. Just read the poems already.

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is being handled here by the honorable Ms. Herold at Big A, little a} . . .

Don’t you just love illustrator Margaret Chodos-Irvine? I do. She just gets better and better with each book, too.

Her newest illustrated title, Only You, just came out (April ’07; Harcourt Children’s Books; my source: library copy), and it’s my Poetry Friday entry for today, because it’s a lyrical, rhymed picture book text about parental love, written by Robin Cruise (who also authored last year’s Little Mamá Forgets, reviewed here by Yours Truly). As Booklist put it so well, “There’s no shortage of lyrical books that recount the way parents feel about their children. This one has the advantage of illustrations by Chodos-Irvine.”

As for the rhyming text, it’s lilting and comforting, as an effective bed-time story should be (it doesn’t set out to be a bed-timer, but the book shows all the ways a parent and child show love for one another, thus making it a great, soothing, quiet way to end a child’s day). This could also be one of those bestsellers that gets passed around from parent to new parent, what with the very subject’s built-in sentimentality. Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up can be found here at a wrung sponge} . . .

So, I seem to be going through a bit of a flux-phase. Over the past few months I’ve finished my MLS, my husband has gotten a job that necessitates a move to a whole other state, I’ve become an aunt… Maybe that’s why lately I’ve been really thinking about who I am vs. who I want to be, what I do vs. what I wish I were doing, etc. Not quite mid-life crisis, but… close.

Hence, this poem has a lot of meaning for me right now:

“I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone” by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Annemarie S. Kidder).

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

Man, I just love Rilke. I wish I read German so I could really actually read Rilke. Maybe that’s one of the things I should try to do next…

Read the rest of the poem here.

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is over here at Big A, little a} . . .

Trees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . .
is yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . .
Not when their cooling shade . . . has yet to comfort . . .

…from A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
by Nikki Giovanni

Like everyone, I was stunned and horrified by the massacre at Virginia Tech on Monday. Like many, I have a friend who teaches there, and spent part of the day worrying, checking the VT website and the news, back and forth, waiting for them to release names of victims… until he got out of lockdown and answered his email. Thankfully, he did answer, and he is okay.

MotherReader spoke very eloquently about the tragedy on her blog. So did Paul. I don’t think it’s my place to say anything here, and even if I did I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s sick and it’s sad and it shouldn’t have happened, these things just shouldn’t happen, ever, to anyone.

But I ran across this today on the Poetry Foundation website, and thought it was worth sharing. It’s Nikki Giovanni, who you probably know teaches at VT, speaking at their convocation on Tuesday.

{Addendum to post: We realize that at least one of our regular readers is deaf; we apologize for the lack of text here re Giovanni’s speech. Perhaps the Poetry Foundation or Virginia Tech itself will have the text printed somewhere. If anyone needs us to look for that, we’re happy to do so. Also, a portion of Giovanni’s speech is printed at A Wrung Sponge’s Poetry Friday entry for today. Thanks} . . .

{Addendum #2: Here is the transcript at Virginia Tech’s site; thanks to Marcie at World of Words for the link!} . . .

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is here at Big A, little a} . . .

I’m still grooving on my new nephew. So I’m sharing a poem about how a baby can totally change your center of gravity: Only Child by D. Nurkse. Here’s an excerpt.

Always we passed the seesaw
on the way to the swings
but tonight I remember
the principle of the lever,
I sit the child at one end,
I sit near the center,
the fulcrum, at once she has power
to lift me off the earth
and keep me suspended
by her tiny weight, she laughing,
I stunned at the power of the formula.

Read the rest here.

And because I really, truly can’t help myself, here’s another picture of Miles:

Did you know they even MADE jeans this small???

And those little feet! In little striped tube socks, even!

Can you stand it???  Can you stand the cuteness???

I mean, I can’t. Every new picture I get is like an actual, serious, physical pain, a paroxysm of cuteness.

Please tell me when I start to get annoying.

Not that it will stop me. But tell me. Please?

Okay, thanks.

And thanks for indulging me.

You can go read the poem now.

{Note: This week’s Poetry Friday round-up is here at Chicken Spaghetti} . . .

Yes, why o why, you wonder, would I want to be insufferably overachieving by including five poetry-related items in my Poetry Friday post today? Because, frankly, we’ve been working so hard on interviews here at 7-Imp (which we love, don’t get me wrong) that, as a result, I feel like I’m behind on reviewing books and poetry. So, I’m going to catch up a bit in this post — but try my best to keep it as short as possible. Here goes:

1. Comics and Poetry Sittin’ in a Tree . . .

   I’ve always enjoyed The Poetry Foundation’s site, but a blogger friend recently steered me towards it again as we were discussing the children’s section of the site. And, while exploring, I found the new Poem as Comic Strip series. Check out this excerpt from the series:

   Heightened language—one possible or partial definition of poetry—isn’t the first thing one associates with comics. Yet comic book artists take into account the way words appear on the page to a degree poets will find familiar. How many lines should accompany each image? How high should the dialogue balloon float? The ratio of printed words to blank space plays a role in whether a poem or strip succeeds.

   Read the rest of this entry �

Yup, I know it’s not Poetry Friday, but I can’t wait. Not to mention that — just like I should not restrict myself to telling you about a book with a Native American character or by a Native American author on only a day nestled within American Indian Heritage Month — I’d like to tell you about poetry any ‘ol time I’m inspired. Poetry Friday is a beautiful thing, but here’s to poetry any day of the week. Here’s to poetry 24/7.

Eisha and I have copies of Nina Lindsay’s first published book of poetry, Today’s Special Dish: Poems (published by Sixteen Rivers Press; publication date: April 2007), thanks to the poet herself. And I know that Eisha’s just now getting back into town and has a lot to catch up on and such, so I hope she won’t hate me for going ahead without her to tell you how lovely Lindsay’s anthology is. I’m sure Eisha will want to add some commentary later; I have a feeling she’ll really like this, too.

If you’re a children’s librarian, you’ve likely heard of Lindsay before. She’s the children’s librarian in Oakland, California, who runs the successful Bay Area Mock Newbery discussions (here’s the site, though — as you’ll see — this past January marked her last blog post there, at least for now: “I am one of those wallflowers who will suddenly barge into a discussion, cutting people off, and then leave when I get tired and go face a wall somewhere and let my mind happily wander with itself. This does not a blogger make,” she amusingly wrote). She is also the Chair for the Newbery Award Selection Committee for 2008.

Lindsay’s free verse in this anthology is a real treat, if you’ll excuse the bad pun. Lindsay has the observational prowess of some of my favorite poets; as Alison Luterman puts it well, “{t}hese poems say to me that daily life, when attended to, is full of unsought treasures.” Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: The Poetry Friday round-up is here at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy} . . .

Penguins, penguins everywhere . . . Ain’t it the truth? They’ve made their way down the red carpet recently, so to speak — and more than once, too. (Mind you, I haven’t even seen these movies yet, but even those living under rocks know that penguins are all the rage) . . . When it comes to children’s lit, the penguin craze holds true as well: Last year we had Sebastian Meschenmoser’s Learning to Fly and Jean-Luc Fromental’s and Joelle Jolivet’s 365 Penguins, to name just a couple — not to mention 2005’s And Tango Makes Three (by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson with illustrations by Henry Cole), which still gets attention for all the wrong reasons.

So, along has come Bob Barner (probably best known for 1996’s Dem Bones) to bring us (via Chronicle Books; February 2007; my source: review copy) Penguins, Penguins, Everywhere! And, though penguins seem to be The Hip Animal of the Moment, one gets the sense that Barner is not just jumping on the pop-culture bandwagon here; after all, he’s highlighted other creatures in our crowded world at other times in his long career (he’s written and illustrated over twenty-five titles), such as 1999’s Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is being handled here by Kelly at
Big A, little a} . . .

So, one of the books I’m currently reading is The Solace of Leaving Early (Doubleday; 2002). At the risk of sounding like we here at 7-Imp are All Haven Kimmel All the Time (which wouldn’t be a bad way to be), I am reading it because I’ve always wanted to (yes, Eisha handled the questions about her novels when we interviewed her, since I had read the memoirs but am just now getting to the fiction — hey, when I tried last, I had a newborn. And, let me just tell you that writing this good deserves the kind of attention you can’t give when you have a tiny, needy, hungry human demanding your attention) . . . Where was I? O yes, not to mention we just might be getting an advanced copy of Haven’s upcoming novel, which is part of a trilogy which includes Solace. Needless to say probably, Solace is rockin’ my world, people.

And a few things that I have read thus far in this novel have brought to mind two of my favorite poems I’d like to share with you on this Poetry Friday. Here’s how it goes — First, I read the following in this engrossing novel of Haven’s: Read the rest of this entry �