Read in November 2013

1. Three Russian Women Poets: Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, Bella Akhmadulina, ed. and trans. by Mary Maddock

I shared the poem "Winter" from this anthology. A melancholy and very lovely collection.

2. Queer Theory: An Introduction, by Annamarie Jagose

Picked up in a used bookstore, persevered through for intellectual curiosity's sake.

Anna Akhmatova ate the metaphorical tangerine

"'Who can refuse to live his own life?' Akhmatova once remarked in answer to some expression of sympathy. Her refusal not to live her life made of her one of those few people who have given dignity and meaning to our terrible century, and through whom and for whom it will be remembered.

...

Pushkin was the closest of the friends she did not meet even once in her life. He helped her to survive the 1920s and 30s, the first of Akhmatova's long periods of isolation and persecution. Dante, too, was close. And there were friends whom she could meet, including Mandelstam and Pasternak, whose unbreakable integrity supported her own. But no-one could have helped, through thirty years of persecution, war, and persecution, if she had not herself been one of the rare incorruptible spirits.

Her incorruptibility as a person is closely linked to her most fundamental characteristic as a poet: fidelity to things as they are, to 'the clear, familiar, material world'....In all her life's work, her fusion with ordinary unbetrayable existence is so complete that only the word 'modest' can express it truthfully. When she tells us (In 1940), 'But I warn you,/I am living for the last time', the words unconsciously define her greatness: her total allegiance to the life she was in...Her poetry seems...to be a transparent medium through which life streams."

– D.M. Thomas

I read ninety-nine books in 2009

The best:

Girl Culture, by Lauren Greenfield

Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta

Selected Poems, by Anna Akhmatova, trans. D.M. Thomas

Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, ed. Miriam Schneir

The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh

A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, by Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes

Women, by Annie Leibovitz

Read in March

1. I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven, by Naomi Shihab Nye

2. The Shadow of the Bear, by Regina Doman

3. Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, by Guy Delisle

4. Feed, by M.T. Anderson

5. North of Beautiful, by Justina Chen Headley

6. Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne

7. Sorcerers & Secretaries, volume 1, by Amy Kim Ganter
8. Poems, by Anna Akhmatova
9. Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer, by Laini Taylor

The best:

Shenzhen, a graphic novel, lives up to my standards for Guy Delisle: smart, funny, interesting (other countries! hurray!), and sensitive to the absurdities of cross-cultural living.

Feed gets a mention because it is so thought-provoking, which is not to say the writing is bad. A dystopic young adult novel that makes some extremely interesting speculations about the future of language, social media, and information technology — things that I'm guessing are important to most people reading this.

North of Beautiful is a young adult novel about family, travel, art — about finding the things that are beautiful about oneself and this enormous world, and making your life what you want it to be. So enjoyable and uplifting, but not in a phony or annoying way.

Poems, a collection of Anna Akhmatova's poetry, is stunning. I love her unusual imagery, her quiet but clear voice, her strange stories. I had never read anything of hers before this volume, but I'd count her among my favorite poets now. I posted a poem from this book a while ago.

Bedtime

My hands chase my cat awake
and out of my blankets.
I curl up in the grumpy warm space she leaves,
keep vigil with a volume of Akhmatova
over Monday's birth.

There is no saint with my name

I am so taken with Anna Akhmatova's poetry, with her dreamy yet striking imagery, and her wistful, occasionally ironic tone. The way the narrator of this poem sees is such magic to me — the idea that a day could be so blessed because it belongs to a loved one's namesake.

8 November 1913
The sun fills my room,
Yellow dust drifts aslant.
I wake up and remember:
This is your saint's day.

That's why even the snow
Outside my window is warm,
Why I, sleepless, have slept
Like a communicant.

-Anna Akhmatova
trans. by D.M. Thomas

Poetry Friday round-up at Big A little a

Incidentally, what do you think of the words "authoress" and "poetess"?

Wild [city] child happinesses

Things that are making me happy:

Driving. Normally I never drive, because I love to bike and walk and San Francisco has an excellent public trans system, but lately I've been driving more often to get to a town down the peninsula. And I must say: tearing along a freeway overlooking the ocean, singing along with a favorite CD at the top of my lungs with all the windows down — that's good stuff.

Bare sandy feet on smooth pavement

Filling my bag with seabird feathers at the beach and planning to make some sort of wild child decoration for my hair out of them

Looking forward to hearing about Frederick the garden elf's journeys, and to hosting him during his sojourn in my city

The book of Anna Akhmatova's poetry that providence sent me yesterday at the library

Two big slouchy sweaters from the men's section of my favorite thrift store