Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude 

by Ross Gay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This collection of poetry was darker and more complex than the title had led me to expect. These verses find the beautiful in the darkness of life in a way that is both beautiful and real. The poet is talking to the reader from within the poems in a way that I had not come across before (though I don't read enough poetry to know if it is actually unique).

I swore when I got into this poem I would convert
this sorrow into some kind of honey with the little musics

I can sometimes make with these scribbled artifacts
of our desolation. I can't even make a metaphor

of my reflection upside down and barely visible
in the spoon. I wish one single thing made sense.

To which I say: Oh get over yourself.
That's not the point.

     --from "spoon"

My favorites in this collection were "burial" and "ode to the puritan in me". Gay has published two previous collections of verse which I look forward to reading.

Nonfiction and Poetry 2022

One of my reading plans for 2022 was to read 25 works of nonfiction and 4 books of poetry." More would be fine, but I want to get to at least this many works of nonfiction in a variety of genres (essays, history, biography). I did well with a similar goal last year, in part because I kept a list so I will do the same this year using this post. 

I am not counting the poetry books toward the nonfiction count, but plan to track both here. If I blog about a specific book once I finish it I will link to the post. I am also doing the Nonfiction Reader Challenge and will note the categories (where applicable) each book fits into on this list. 

Nonfiction titles read:

1. Italy: A Short History by Harry Hearder (January)
2. Blowing the Bloody Doors Off by Michael Caine (January) NRC- celebrity
3. Canada by Mike Myers (January) NRC-celebrity/wildcard
4. A Voice from the Attic by Robertson Davies (January)
5. Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (February)
6. How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where you Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milman (February)
7. Readers' Advisory Guide to Historical Fiction by Jennifer Baker (February)
8. The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman (February)
9. Living with a Dead Language by Ann Patty (March) NRC-language
10. Ikegai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia Puigcerver and Francesc Miralles (March)
11. Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books by Michael Dirda (March)
12. Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction by Neal Wyatt (April)
13. One Half of Robertson Davies by Robertson Davies (April)
14. Women Writers at Work by the Paris Review (April)
15. Blizzard of Glass by Sally M. Walker (April)
16. Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott (May)
17. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (May)
18. Readers' Advisory Service in the Public Library by Joyce Saricks (May)
19. The Power of Ritual: How to Create Meaning and Connection in Everything You Do by Casper ter Kuile (May)
20. Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee (June)
21. The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (June) NRC - popular science
22. No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy (June)
23. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (June)
24. Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? by Marion Meade (June)
25. Ninety Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown (July) NRC-social history/wildcard
26. The Power of Regret by Daniel H. Pink (July) NRC-published in 2022
27. Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood (July)
28. The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Blends by Megan McArdle (July)
29. Your Best Year Ever by Michael Hyatt (July)
30. The Lazy Genius Kitchen by Kendra Adachi (August)
31. Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime edited by H.R.F. Keating (Sept.)
32. The One-page Financial Plan by Carl Richards (Sept.)
33. Living a Charmed Life by Victoria Moran (Sept.)
34. The Mindful Day by Laurie J. Cameron (Oct.)
35. Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life by Lyndall Gordon (Oct.)
36. The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi (Oct.) NRC-related to a podcast
37. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman (Oct.)
38. Midlife: A Philosphical Guide by Kieran Setiya (Oct.)
39. A Libertarian Walks into a Bear by Matthew Hongolz-Hetling (Nov.) NRC-animal related
40. If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore (Nov.)
41. Biography: Fiction, Fact, and Form by Ira B. Nadel (Nov.)
42. Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkamp (Nov.)
43. The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars (Dec.)
44. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (Dec.)
45. Python Programming by Cal Baron (Dec.)

Poetry books read:

1. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay (October)

Book Pairing

Week 2: (November 8-12) – Book Pairing  with Katie at Doing Dewey: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story. 

One of my favorite book pairing experiences has been to read the biography of a poet while reading along with the story in their complete works. If this idea appeals to you here are some possible pairings that I have read:

Jane Kenyon: A Literary Life by John H. Timmerman and Collected Poems by Jane Kenyon (I read her work as I read this biography, but I had to do it with her various books as the collected poems hadn't been published yet.)

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford and Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

And here are a couple biographies from my TBR list with poetry collections I have read:

Robert Frost: A Life by Jay Parini and The Poetry of Robert Frost

Carl Sandburg: A Biography by Penelope Niven and The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg 

Dearly

Dearly: New Poems 

by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This slim volume is a mixture of poems about large concerns (the environment mostly) and personal, intimate moments. Some of the poems are about love and loss (not surprising given the 2019 death of Graeme Gibson) and are very sad. 

Atwood is a skilled writer and her poems show that as much as her novels do. There were a few lines that really struck me:

• "...and the parents who had not yet abandoned us to take their chances in the ground." (from"Winter Vacations")
• "First taste of sheer ambrosia! Though mixed with ash and the shards of destruction as Heaven always is, if you read the texts closely." (from "Coconut")

The poems that resonated most for me were "Salt" which questions the advice not to look back; "Carving the Jacks" which uses language to play with the reader's expectations as something we all know is described; "Sad Utensils" mourning the loss of words from our speech; and the title poem "Dearly"which beautifully captures the impossibility of describing the past to someone who wasn't there. 

I am counting this toward the Canadian Book Challenge. 

Nonfiction & Poetry 2021

One of my reading plans for 2021 was to read 10 works of nonfiction and "some poetry." More would be fine, but I want to get to at least 10 works of nonfiction in a variety of genres (essays, history, biography). Past experience tells me that I am much more likely to do this if I have a place where I am keeping track. This post will be that place.  I am not counting the poetry books toward the nonfiction count, but plan to track both here. If I blog about a specific book once I finish it I will link to the post. If not (which is likely) I will link to the title on Goodreads.

Nonfiction titles read:
1. Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively (January)
2. Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (January)
3. Brooklyn: The Once and Future City by Thomas Campanella (January)
4. Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold (February)
5. Under the Big Top: A Season with the Circus by Bruce Feiler (April)
6. Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done by Charlie Gilkey (April)
7. The Nature of Biography by Robert Gittings (May)
8. Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan (finished in May, began in January)
9. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (May)
10. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland (June)
11. The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair (finished in June, began in March)
12. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale (June)
13. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood (June)
14. An Invitation to Self-Care by Tracey Cleantis (June)
15. Group by Christie Tate (June)
16. Nudge by Richard H. Thayler (July)
17. Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Ward (July)
18. The White Mountain by Dan Szczesny (July)
19. Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli (July)
20. On Writing Well by William Zinsser (August)
21. The Best Year of Your Life by Debbie Ford (August)
22. The Secret Life of the Savoy and the D'Oyly Carte Family by Olivia Williams (September)
23. The Self-Care Solution by Jennifer Ashton (September)
24. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (September)
25. An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis (September)
26. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (September)
27. Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide by Caroline Adams Miller and Michael B. Frisch (October)
28. Atomic Habits by James Clear (October)
29. The Ultimate Guide to Frugal Living by Daisy Luther (October)
30. We are Our Mothers' Daughters by Cokie Roberts (finished in October, began in May)
31. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (October)
32. The Power of Writing it Down by Allison Fallon (November)
33. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (November)
34. Midnight Chicken and Other Recipes Worth Living For by Ella Risbridger (November)
35. Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes (November)
36. How to Write a Mystery edited by Lee Child (November)
37. Thinking About History by Sarah Maza (November)
38. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff (November)
39. The Comfort Book by Matt Haig (November)
40. The Self-care Handbook by Gill Hasson
41. Writing at the Kitchen Table by Artemis Cooper (November)
42. Stitches by Anne Lamott (December)
43. Hans Christian Andersen by Rumer Godden (December)
44. The Making of Home by Judith Flanders (December)
45. Help, Thanks, Wow by Anne Lamott (December)

Poetry books read:

1. Dearly by Margaret Atwood (January)
2. Blue Horses by Mary Oliver (June)

Hypnotize a Tiger

Hypnotize a Tiger: Poems About Just About Everything
by Calef Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This collection of poems by Vancouver, British Columbia resident Calef Brown is total nonsense. It is, however, fun nonsense. The illustrations for each poem are 2-color compositions of fun little details and big bold graphics. Running along the bottom of the pages are additional single color illustrations that offer punny asides and commentary on the poems. I liked the very first poem, "Sir Parrot" the best and also liked "Catsup Cats" which has an excellent rhythm. The section of "wordsmashes" was disappointing. Brown starts it off with a reference to portmanteau words, but then just smooshes words together that aren't actually portmanteaus anyone uses. Overall a fun collection sure to appeal to kids of any age who like silly poems.
I am counting this toward the Canadian Book Challenge.

How to Read Poetry Like a Professor

How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse by Thomas C. Foster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like to read poetry, but if you didn't I think this would be an excellent step toward fixing that problem. Foster is solid in his information, but casual in his approach and very aware of the objections that may arise in his reader as he explains the mechanics of poetry. It is covering the same material I learned in college from Perrine's Sound and Sense, but is shorter and less academic. I also found it funny (could just be me though).

"We need to be clear here that Old English doesn't mean Shakespeare (Early Modern English) and it doesn't even mean Chaucer (Middle English). Nope, we're talking about Anglo-Saxon before the Norman conquest brought a lot of French elements and made the language sound less like gargling." (p. 58)

I am adding another of Foster's books, How to Read Novels Like a Professor, to my TBR list as well as 2 books from his bibliography: Mary Oliver's Poetry Handbook and Preoccupations: Selected Prose by Seamus Heaney.

I am counting this book toward the 2018 Nonfiction Reading Challenge.

Posting a Poem #2

Mount Kearsarge by Donald Hall. I really like the sound of this poem and the irony of it.
Back in 2009 the NH Center for the Book did a series of posts featuring poems by NH authors. This was one of the featured poems.

Posting a Poem #1

"Modern Declaration" is a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay that I have always liked. It was the poem recently on The Writers Almanac which inspired me to go hunt it up again.
In the first of what I plan as an occasional series of posts linking to poems I come across in the wild I am sharing this one.  In the interest of proper copyright behavior I won't be posting the poems, just links to them in places that I have reason to think obtained the rights to post them.

Found Poem Challenge

One of today's Bout of Books activities is the Found Poem Challenge at Pen in Her Hand.

1. Choose a book. I chose The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins from my to-be-read pile.
2. Choose a number between 1 and 10. I chose 9.
3. Open your book to a random page and count down your number of lines and over your number of words. Write that word down. Repeat this process until you have 14 words. The 9th word on the 9th line of my randomly chosen pages were Spearman, looked, can't, life, wretched, the, done, might, took, than, missing, on, well, her.
4.  Delete 2 words (Spearman and than were my deletes) and add 2 words (should, vision)
5. Arrange your words into a poem.

The life looked on:

Can't, might, should, missing, done.

Well, her wretched vision took.

Notes on Crafting a Life

Crafting a Life in Essay, Story, Poem
by Donald Morison Murray

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book and it had a few really great phrases in it. Murray has a wonderful way of putting things. 

"I am happiest when I am rubbing two words together to produce an unexpected insight, when i feel the sentence turn under my hand, the paragraph shrink or rise until it breaks in two, the narrative flow toward rapids I can hear but do not yet see." (p.5) 

The phrase "rubbing two words together" is so evocative. It really gets the point across that the writer is working to create something.

"I plan and outline, note and predraft in my daybook, in which I paste pages printed out from my computer that I may want to edit, quotes from writers, pictures, poems, whatever helps in the conversation i carry on with myself about what and how I write. I call it a daybook because when I call it a journal I begin to write pompous blather." (p. 20)

The way that he uses this spiral 8x10 notebook (he was on his 92nd one when he wrote this book) seems really useful as does the notion that a writer is conversing with himself (or herself). I also love the self-awareness!

"I once sat in a workshop with short-story writer Becky Rule, both a magnificent writer and an extraordinary teacher of writing. She is coauthor with Susan Wheeler of Creating the Story. Rule demonstrated how, as soon as she wrote the first sentence, strict rules were established  for a particular story. Her first sentence, a typical Becky Rule beginning, was: 'When I mention small potatoes, I am certainly not referring to my opponent's manly parts.'" (p. 98) 

Murray is absolutely right about the magnificence of Becky Rule, and now I have another book for my ever-growing-to-be-read list. Murray's book also includes an extensive annotated bibliography of titles from his "library of craft" which has yet more books I may want to read. This quote is part of a larger discussion about the beginning line of a work setting its parameters which I hadn't thought about before but which seems very clear from his examples. From Rule's one sentence 8 different facts are established that will guide the rest of the story.

Finally, what may be the best quote about poetry I have ever come across: "Poetry is the bouillion cube of literature; meaning is compressed so that it will boil up in the reader's mind when it is read." (p. 101)


This book was a Book of the Week feature on my "work" blog earlier this year.

Review: Evidence that We are Decended from Chairs

Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs by Andrew Merton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a marvelous collection of poems. They are funny, and sad, and true. Some are surreal ("In the Year of the Platypus," for example); some deal with mental illness ("Bipolar" is a striking description of the condition); and several weave family into history in a way that is both strait forward and profound ("Smoke" and "May 12, 1944" both do this). Some of the poems, "White Baby" in particular, are a complete story in a page of verse. In "Why I Left the Poetry Reading Early" Merton says "Soon it took all my resolve / to keep from shouting 'Bravo' / after nearly every line;" I find myself having the same trouble.

Lilacs

The lilacs are blooming outside my dining room window which always makes me think of this poem:

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman : The Poetry Foundation

It was written about the death of President Lincoln and is unusual for Whitman in that it rhymes.

On a related note we have: Whereof the Gift Is Small by Maxine W. Kumin : Poetry Magazine

Kumin is a wonderful poet and a New Hampshire person 

And: Last Spring by Gottfried Benn : Poetry Magazine

Which was new to me. I love the ending. 

3 Poems on a Theme

I think Sunday is suited to reading a bit of poetry. The poets.org site has a feature I really like where you can connect from one poem to another by theme. Today's theme is happiness.

Let's begin our Afternoon on a Hill,
then consider Kenyon's

"... clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night." 

then conclude with Rivard and  

"warm white light refracted through a tumbler of peat-smoked scotch—
a scorcher of a day at cooling end"