The View from my Window

For you to contemplate while I'm off doing other things.

 

Preferences

Booking Through Thursday asks:

Which do you prefer? (Quick answers–we’ll do more detail at some later date)

• Reading something frivolous? Or something serious?
  Serious.  Most of the time. 
• Paperbacks? Or hardcovers?
  Paperbacks.  Easier to carry around. 
• Fiction? Or Nonfiction?
  Fiction. 
• Poetry? Or Prose?
  Prose.
• Biographies? Or Autobiographies?
  Biographies.
• History? Or Historical Fiction?
  This one is hard.  I'll say history but I do love historical fiction.
• Series? Or Stand-alones?
  Series
• Classics? Or best-sellers?
  Classics
• Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose?
  Is there no other type?  Straight forward I guess.
• Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness?
  Plots
• Long books? Or Short?
  Long
• Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated?
  I wonder when the last time I read an illustrated book was?  But I do love illustrations so I'll choose illustrated.
• Borrowed? Or Owned?
  owned
• New? Or Used?
  new - love the smell.

Ponder this

hmmm.

Young Readers don't like Romance Novel Rapists.  

Go figure.

(hat tip  Bookninja)

Poet Laureate: Kay Ryan

I've been reading The Niagara River, a book of poems by Kay Ryan, our poet laureate, in preparation for my reading group meeting on Friday. I'm ambivalent about Ryan. Her poems are short and simple and I found it easy to get through the book, but they seemed almost too simple. I was left hungry. I was also a little frustrated because, although the poems seem simple, she has a habit of throwing a final phrase into each poem that seems designed to wrap everything up but sometimes (in my view) just makes everything more ambiguous.

One of the things I do like about Ryan's poems are the unexpected internal rhymes and her use of alliteration. In terms of the subject of the poems, I liked it best when Ryan took every day sayings, which at this point are cliches, and used them as the idea from which to make a poem. For instance, here she takes the phrase "the chickens are coming home to roost" and makes this poem:

Home to Roost

The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small--
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost -- all
the same kind
at the same speed.

And here's one that uses the phrase "the elephant in the room" as its starting point:

The Elephant in the Room

It isn't so much
a complete elephant
as an elephant
sense--perhaps
pillar legs supporting
a looming mass,
beyond which it's
mostly a guess.
In any case, we
manage with relative
ease. There are just
places in the room
that we bounce off
when we come up
against; not something
we feel we have to
announce.

I like the unexpected internal rhyme between announce and bounce. I like how "elephant", "sense", "legs" and guess" have the same "e" sound in them.

The following poem, which riffs off the phrase "waiting for the other shoe to drop" is my favorite:

The Other Shoe

Oh if it were
only the other
shoe hanging
in space before
joining its mate.
If the undropped
didn't congregate
with the undropped.
But nothing can
stop the midair
collusion of the
unpaired above us
acquiring density
and weight. We
feel it accumulate.

The internal rhymes of "congregate", weight" and "accumulate" aren't obvious until you go looking for them. Like "midair" and unpaired".

I also looked for a youtube of Ryan reading some of her poems to get a better idea of how she felt and heard her poems. I discovered that I liked many of her poems better when she was reading them aloud than when I was reading them in my head. (She also seems like the kind of person that would nice to meet - not intimidating in a "poet" kind of way. ) See for yourself:

The Summer is not Infinite

A lot of people are reading Infinite Jest this summer.  Some people have even started group blogs to blog about their reading of Infinite Jest.

I find myself both uninterested in reading Infinite Jest this summer and jealous beyond belief of the people who know enough other people willing to read the same novel and blog together about it as a group.

(btw, other people are reading Villette this summer and blogging/discussing it. )

Le quatorze juillet

Couldn't let the day go by without wishing our friends across the Atlantic "Bonne fête à tous".   Or as we say in America:  Happy Bastille Day.

Here is my favorite version of the French national anthem:

Vive La France!

All Star Break

All Star Break means the summer is half over. At least it does to me. I always greet it with a mixture of sadness (the end of summer is on the horizon) and excitement (everything matters more - games and long days to be enjoyed). I don't normally pay much attention to the All Star Game itself. I never liked it because it didn't count and then, when they decided to make it count, I liked it even less. So I usually ignore it.

This year, though, the All Star Game is taking place here in my home town. So it has been hard to avoid. Lots of people are in town and everything is spruced up. No, I don't have tickets and that's ok with me. Especially since the President is throwing out the first pitch and that means security is going to be a nightmare. But I do hope all of our visitors have a great time.

The All Star Break is also usually the point in the summer when things get very busy for me, both at the office and in my personal life. So don't be surprised if I'm not around much. I expect that I'll be too busy (or too far away from my computer) to post much during the next few weeks and maybe even through the rest of the summer.