I am not an ardent lover of poetry. In fact, by and large I find it all too easy to simply forget about this, as Wordsworth described it, spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Yet, every year as the snow melts and the plants, animals, and even humans that have slipped into
dormancy begin to arise and sing, so too does my soul and that is when I find myself
searching out this expressive genre. Perhaps that is why every spring I so look forward to the month of April designated as National Poetry month.
However, likely due to my status as an infrequent reader, without fail I find myself struggling year after year to know where to turn. And that is why this April, I was utterly elated to discover "The Hungry Ear" a collection of poems focused on, related to, and in praise of food and drink edited by Kevin Young.
I first picked up this collection simply because I was intrigued. Food and poetry? Where do these two seemingly disparate things meet I wondered? My intrigue was quickly quenched as even from a brief first reading, it is apparent that food and poetry not only meet again and again but are indeed, seemingly made for each other. As Young states in his introduction to the collection "food and poetry each insist that we put our own twists and ingredients
in the mix: we make each dish, like a good poem, our own. With any luck,
the result is both surprising and satisfying, exactly what we wanted,
perhaps without even knowing it."
And this collection is most definitely surprising and satisfying. Organized first seasonally and then further broken down by activities that occur within each season, wonderful selections such as Ruth Stone's "Pokeberries" and Billy Collins "Osso Bucco" are found underneath categories like First Harvet and Meat and Potatoes. Those though, are just two of the many categories and poems and there are certainly oh-so-many more. To be sure, this thick collection, like a good meal, presents a vast array of tastes to be savored bit by bit. Fortunately for me, April is just getting started and who knows, perhaps this year my poetry diet will last just like the "Hungry Ear."
Like everyone else, I enjoy books full of action, books portraying astounding characters, books that take me to a foreign place, books that fill me with suspense, and books that put me in situations I will never actually find myself in. However, the books that frequently strike me most deeply do none of these things. Instead, many of the tales that stick to my ribs and leave me full long after I have finished them, portray life as it is lived by the most of us; a process of experiencing, navigating, and learning from both small horrors and more importantly, small wonders. "In Zanesville", a 1970s coming-of-age tale by Jo Ann Beard is precisely one of those books.
A 2012 Alex Award winner, an award given to books that appeal strongly to both teens and adults, "In Zanesville" is indeed so much about the average life, that the main character is never given a name. She could be me, or she could be you. But who she really is, is a watcher and a follower making it through her 14th year of life, the ninth grade, an alcoholic father, and a mother on the edge of meltdown by doing what many of us did during our teenage years. She hangs out with her best friend known as Flea, she babysits, she spys on the neighbors and at the center of this novel, she experiences life's constant but humble wonders and horrors.
These wonders and horrors include discovering boys as well as how wrong one can be; suddenly realizing that marching band is for dorks and quitting right at the start of a parade; getting noticed by the popular crowd and nearly losing one's best friend because of it; and being overjoyed to see your father because his depressive drinking made you worry about suicide.
Yet perhaps the greatest wonder of all, is Beard's ability to make every character full, utterly believable, and true. This is accomplished by a pitch perfect tone, a dry sense of humor, and by the author spending time developing every character readers come in contact with. It is a remarkable feat and it is this as well as Beard's celebration of life as most of us know it, that sets "In Zanesville" apart.
Call it a twist of fate or more likely, call it simple coincidence, but not half way through my last read, Bruce Catton's history of Michigan, our state Library released the 2013 List of Notable Michigan Books. This annual list presents a fantastic mix of adult and children's fiction and nonfiction written by Michigan authors or set in our wonderful state. And in yet another... twist of coincidence we'll call it, it just so happened that one of the listed books that most intrigued me, Benjamin Busch's "Dust to Dust," was currently displayed on our new nonfiction shelf. So I grabbed it. Then devoured it.
And indeed, "Dust to Dust" is a book for devouring, digesting, and breaking down to its elements. For that is precisely what Busch does. His memoir does not simply present the recollections of a life lived according to the strictures of time but instead, bends and blurs a life of memories around a series of elements of his own - arms, metal, water, soil, bone, stone, blood, and ash. Busch uses these constituent particles to tie together his memories but also to get at the core of life and more specifically, the impermanence of life.
For instance, in discussing his childhood in upstate New York, a location and temporal period that a large portion of the book is focused on, he details at one point, his attempt to overpower nature and a river by building a stone damn across it only to eventually watch his days work wash away.
Impermanence, power, and of course nearly all of his elements including dust, blood, and ash are key players in what is another central role in Busch's life and book, that of a Marine serving two tours in Iraq. Much like Busch's childhood that was spent alone digging and building forts in the woods, his adult Marine life finds him doing the same as the ideal soldier yet still isolated and now, wondering what it is all about.
Finally, after his tours and then years spent reprising his combatant role as an actor on shows such as the Wire, Busch brings his family to Michigan and it is here we come to both Busch's final waypoint and our reason for its inclusion on the Michigan Notable Book List. As a current resident of the state, Busch ends his book spending his time cleaning up the detritus from an old farm in the heart of lower Michigan as well as cleaning out the same from his now dead parent's home.
If all of this sounds a tad depressing, it is. Busch's book is truly a pensive rumination on a life slowly returning to its very make-up. But, like many great warrior poets before, Busch spins a story that is as much elegy as memoir and it is this poetic elevation of the basics and decay of life that is "Dust to Dust's" greatest strength.
Having read nary a word of Michigan history since the required 5th grade study of our great state (well, perhaps I am exaggerating just a tad), I decided it was high time I stepped over to the fantastic Michigan section of the Library to bone up. Yet as I stared at our long and quite overly stuffed Michigan shelf, the myriad spines began to look and feel a bit overwhelming. So I did what any wise reader would do and asked a librarian for help.
Specifically I was looking for a history that did not get bogged down in dates and details, an overview if you will and as a lover of literature, I wanted it to read like a story as well. Within a mere ten seconds of my query, I had the late Bruce Catton's "Michigan: A History" in my hand. Now I was a trifle skeptical at first as the book is a mere 196 pages and has an awful photo on the cover to boot but, knowing that it was penned by a fellow Petsokey-ite who had also happened to win the Pulitzer Prize, I cracked the cover anyways. And I was instantly hooked.
Just as I had hoped for, "Michigan: A History" does not dawdle too greatly on the details but instead traces the state's overarching themes and it does so in style. Catton is both a romantic and a great writer and these traits lead to a history that reads a bit like a ballet that utilizes one specific melody to tie together diverse movements. By this I mean that Catton, rather than simply describing the inhabitants and industry of each of the state's periods instead, posits the notion that the history of our state, and indeed our nation is based on a cycle of wholesale exploitation of apparently boundless resources, the inevitable let down when the resource of the time dries up, and the ingenuity that springs forth.
It is with this refrain that Catton is able to tie together the fur trade, logging, mining, the railroads, and the auto industry as well as all of the other economic, social, political, and environmental twists and turns of our beloved home. It is the cycle of boom and bust Catton claims, that ties us together as people and ties us to this state.
Altogether it is a fantastic and sometimes fanciful take on this wonderful place and it is for that very reason, that this was the perfect history for me.
The dawn of 2013 marked the twelfth consecutive year that our nation has been involved in violent conflict with another country. That is terribly depressing.
Even more depressing though, is the fact that like an endless monologue, this continuing violence has sometimes for me, I will admit, occasionally slipped into meaninglessness. And as terrible as violence of this magnitude is, that is not okay. Thus when something comes along and jars me out of the reverie that is everyday life and reminds me that there are those that have not, are not, nor never will enjoy such reverie again, I am thankful if always a little shaken. Kevin Powers book "The Yellow Birds" was exactly one of those things.
A veteran of the Iraq war, Power's "The Yellow Birds" has evoked a lot of praise and rightly so. The book tells the story of Pvt. Bartle, 21 years old, a true soldier, well trained and numb to the horrors he must accomplish. But it is also the story of Murph, a sensitive 18 year-old that Bartle has promised to keep alive, a promise that is broken. This death and death in general is not the focus of "The Yellow Birds" though. Instead, it is how Murph's death comes to be and how meaningless and meaningful death can be, that the story revolves around.
Yet the route to understanding is anything but straight as Powers jumps in time and place from the past to present, from Iraq to Virginia to Germany to New Jersey, and from deserts to deserted buildings to rooftops to dreamscapes to places we, as readers, do not want to go. And while this narrative style of pulling together fractured pieces sounds frustrating, it isn't. Instead, not only does it oh-so-perfectly match both the state of war and the state of our narrators head, but it serves to make the reader an active participant in both a story and a war that we might otherwise shy away from. All told, "The Yellow Birds" is a necessary jarring but is a jolt that is both lyrical and tragic like a
nightmare that is so vivid it is at once haunting and beautiful.
It begins with a slow shimmer, a quiet build akin to an orchestra tuning up in which hints of the whole subtly make themselves known. That subtlety though, lasts a mere ten seconds before the funky fusion, or what might best be described an an ethnic musical party kicks in. This is the Debo Band and they are certainly not the authors of any sort of book.
They are of course, musicians and their excellent self titled album is one of the first pieces of music I have checked out of our CD collection. Call it a fortuitous occurrence or the benefits of a quickly scan-able collection, but howsoever you describe my rather random selection of this album, the one adjective phrase that must be applied is great grooves.
Based out of Boston but primarily drawing on traditional and modern Ethiopian music, the Debo Band is a highly eclectic group of 12 different musicians that pull together a disparate mix of jazz, funk, folk, brassy swing, Celtic melodies, klezmer, and most importantly, Ethiopian influences. Led by Danny Mekonnen, an ethnomusicologist born in Sudan but raised in the U.S. as well as French raised Ethiopian Bruck Tesfaye who sings in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, the Debo Band in a mere 11 tracks, somehow manages to make the exotic sounds of a place far away sound not just accessible, but fantastic.
While strong original songwriting combined with unique reprisals of a broad range of traditional Ethiopian songs is a major reason for this success, it is the seamless and adventurous blend of so many different styles and instruments that makes the Debo Band's self titled album a great listen. In the first four songs alone the audience is exposed to psychedelic guitar riffs, sweaty nightclub speed percussion, an accordion solo, tinny horns, the deep pounding of a sousaphone, the unique riff of an electric violin, and the whispered croon of a great voice. Oh, and the album is only just getting started.
Like my former smaller and younger self, I am still a tremendous fan of picture books that are full of whimsy, beautiful illustrations, and fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants rapscallions. Thus, also like the younger me, I still adore Beatrix Potter's tales of Peter Rabbit. You can imagine my excitement then, when a few months back, I heard that the actress Emma Thompson would be authoring a modern addition to this series entitled "The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit." Now, with said addition in hand, or rather in both hands as it is far larger than the palm sized originals, I can proclaim my enthusiasm thoroughly fulfilled.
Written some 80 years after the last entry in the fantastic original series, Thompson's tale begins with a droopy eared Peter Rabbit squeezing under Mr. McGregor's garden gate to "steal a lettuce" in an attempt to cheer himself. Once in the garden, Peter's nature gets the better of him when, tempted by the smell of onions wafting out of a interesting basket, he climbs in, gobbles the "excellent sandwiches of cheese and pickle" found within and promptly falls asleep.
With the set-up now complete, the tale truly begins as the napping Peter is whisked off to Scotland where he meets a massive black rabbit in a kilt, dines on a giant Radish, and becomes involved in a Scottish game of strength involving heaving the same giant radish among other adventures. Sound like a marvelously fun caper? It is.
Yet the appeal of "The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit" does not emanate simply from a fun story. While I am sure Emma Thompson's prominence was a major reason for her authorial choice, her panache, cheekiness, dry-wit, and ability to invoke a Potter-esque
Victorian voice give this modern adaptation much of its life. Top that off with, yes, the further addition of Eleanor Taylor's charming illustrations and you have a divine book perfect for the young and young at heart.
All of that being said though, while "The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit" is most certainly a fun and wonderful addition to the Potter canon, it's focus is indeed fun as it does stray away from the depth of lesson and reality that some of the works in the original series brought forth. However, with a final sentence that hints at the possibility of further, further adventures, this sort of depth may very well come.
