In Honor of National Poetry Month: Part IV

In Honor of National Poetry Month: Part III

Since it's National Poetry Month so I thought I'd add a few posts to the good ol' blog sharing some of my favorite poems!  This time I thought I'd share a poem from a local poet (she's the Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at IU) from the collection Notarikon:

I Want To Be Your Shoebox by Catherine Bowman
 
I want to be your shoebox
I want to be your Fort Knox
I want to be your equinox


I want to be your paradox
I want to be your pair of socks
I want to be your paradise


I want to be your pack of lies
I want to be your snake eyes
I want to be your Mac with fries


I want to be your moonlit estuary
I want to be your day missing in February
I want to be your floating dock dairy


I want to be your pocket handkerchief
I want to be your mischief
I want to be your slow pitch


I want to be your fable without a moral
Under a table of black elm I want to be your Indiana morel
Casserole. Your drum roll. Your trompe l'oeil

I want to be your biscuits
I want to be your business
I want to be your beeswax


I want to be your milk money
I want to be your Texas Apiary honey
I want to be your Texas. Honey


I want to be your cheap hotel
I want to be your lipstick by Chanel
I want to be your secret passage


All written in Braille. I want to be
All the words you can't spell
I want to be your International


House of Pancakes. I want to be your reel after reel
Of rough takes. I want to be your Ouija board
I want to be your slum-lord. Hell


I want to be your made-to-order smorgasbord
I want to be your autobahn
I want to be your Audubon


I want to be your Chinese bug radical
I want to be your brand new set of radials
I want to be your old-time radio


I want to be your pro and your con
I want to be your Sunday morning ritual
(Demons be gone!) Your constitutional


Your habitual—
I want to be your Tinkertoy
Man, I want to be your best boy


I want to be your chauffeur
I want to be your chauf-
feur, your shofar, I want to be your go for

Your go far, your offer, your counter-offer
your two-by-four
I want to be your out and in door


I want to be your song: daily, nocturnal—
I want to be your nightingale
I want to be your dog's tail

In Honor of National Poetry Month: Part II

Since it's National Poetry Month so I thought I'd add a few posts to the good ol' blog sharing some of my favorite poems!  This time I thought I'd share a classic from the collection Songs of Experience:

The Tyger by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?


In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?


And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?


What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!


When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?


Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

In Honor of National Poetry Month: Part I

Y'all it's National Poetry Month so I thought I'd add a few posts to the good ol' blog sharing some of my favorite poems!  Here's my first selection from the collection Hip Logic:

Nuclear
by Terrance Hayes

How to make a nation say,       uncle
In other words:       how to rule.
We learn
there will be no clue
before it happens.       No clear
sign from the Cosmos.       A clan-
destine airplane will appear       wrapped in the lace
of a black dream. Then a flash       like an ulcer
bursting in God’s gut. Citizens who goggle & race
about the city      as the sky becomes a caul-
dron.      The bones burn clean.

Any thoughts?  I always find poetry interesting fodder for discussion.  Happy weekend!

Quickie Review: The Shadow of the Wind

I lucked out big-time when I was on vacation because I read three amazing (5 star rating) books in a row!  The last of which I already reviewed here.  Whenever I try and review books after some time has lapsed since I've finished, I tend to lose the details.  Thus, I decided to just do a quickie review post.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Goodreads Summary:
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

My Thoughts:
OMG!  Where has this book been all my life and why have I waited so gosh darn long to read it?!  The Shadow of the Wind has a little bit of everything: historic and foreign setting, mystery and intrigue, romance, and it's a gothic coming of age tale to boot!

This book had a very eerie and murky atmosphere that had me on the edge of my lawn chair.  Plus there were ghosts, masked men, and evil policeman adding more and more layers to this historical mystery.

The amazing characters - wowza! My favorites were Fermin and Daniel.  Daniel was just such a good-hearted little protagonist whereas Fermin was the more colorful and passionate character.  Sometimes I was smacking my head in empathetic agony over some of Daniel's actions but that's a typical feeling I have when reading coming-of-age stories.  Fermin stole a piece of my heart with his heroic displays of friendship.

Touching, atmospheric, and expressive...all of the books I read over my vacation were 5 star reads but The Shadow of the Wind is my personal favorite!

Towering TBR

This new segment on the blog came about because my desire to read new books vastly outstrips my ability to dwindle down my TBR list...oh, to have more free time!  Anyways, these are some new additions to the good ol' TBR:

Eon by Alison Goodman

Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell

 The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Orleans by Sherri Smith

Delia's Shadow by Jaime Lee Moyer

Gulp by Mary Roach