Read in July 2011

1. Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems, by Diane di Prima
Wild and thought-provoking, a strange simultaneity of squalor and loveliness.

2. The Water Tower, by Gary Crew
WHOA strange and freaky-deaky story in a unique picture book layout. It took me several read-throughs to decide what I thought it was about/what had happened. The plot is enigmatic and quiet, but very creepy.

3. Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho
I thought from the beginning that I would really like this book, but I found it tiresome. It questions our ideas of sanity/insanity in a very cliché way; it has this gimmicky and unsurprising little twist at the end; also, the turning point in the character's inner journey is this absurd exhibitionist masturbation scene. Oh, and that quasi-inspiring IMAGINE IF YOU HAD ONLY A WEEK TO LIVE, HOW WOULD YOU LIVE? premise. Blah. It reads like an early draft.

4. Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl
Quirky and poetic. See it on stage if you ever get the chance. I saw it in February at my college and it kind of devastated me.

5. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carroll
I don't know how to appreciate this, or Alice. Not saying there's nothing to appreciate about them; I just, ah, have no idea.

6. The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970, by Adrienne Rich

7. Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006, by Adrienne Rich

8. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, by William Styron
This was quite dark, and it could be very triggering to people with depressive tendencies.  For some reason it was just what I needed, though — a reminder that when I'm facing depression, it is real and serious and urgent, and something that a lot of other humans are encountering too. This is a cliché but I mean it: if you haven't experienced depression, reading this book is the closest you can come to understanding what it is like. I recommend it for that reason.

9. Three Guineas, by Virginia Woolf
She is so freaking smart. It felt like work to read this, but the text is its own reward. Sharp sharp sharp, sarcastic, stimulating. Nonfiction: musings on capitalism (wage labor), war, and the place of women in her society, especially middle-class women in Western societies.

10. Traveling Light: Poems, by Linda Pastan
Have a taste for yourself, here.

Uncertainties

This reminds me of a Japanese poem I can't quite remember, which we read in elementary school with our poetry teacher. A woman missing her lover, a line about her own hair or the night. Two years ago in NaPoWriMo I wrote, "I am so happy today that I dialed your number certain you would answer." That same sense of contagion, that joy makes more joy more possible, and the same with sorrow, I suppose — there's something intuitive about it.

The moon

has been missing
for nearly a week; and
you haven't called.

There may be
no connection,
but darkness

is contagious
and blood brother
to silence.

– Linda Pastan
in Traveling Light