Poet of the Day #2

Naomi Shihab Nye gets today's honor by virtue of the fact that she has written this totally amazing poem using only things she overheard her son say when he was two and three years old. Here 'tis:

One Boy Told Me

Music lives inside my legs.
It's coming out when I talk.

I'm going to send my valentines
To people you don't even know.

Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.

Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
When they swing. I hate that.

Look at those 2 o's with a smash in the middle—
That spells goodbye.

Don't ever say “purpose” again,
Let's throw that word out.

Don't talk big to me.
I'm carrying my box of faces.
If I want to change faces I will.

Yesterday faded
But tomorrow's in BOLD FACE.

When I grow up my old names
Will live in the house
Where we live now.
I'll come and visit them.

Only one of my eyes is tired.
The other eye and my body aren't.

Is it true that all metal was liquid first?
Does that mean if we bought our car earlier
They could have served it
In a cup?

There's a stopper in my arm
That's not going to let me grow any bigger.
I'll be like this always, small.

And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you
In real life walking in my mind.

I'll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
Full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92
Instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash
For the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?

From now on I'll only drink white milk
On January 26.

What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen
Inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don't love you—
Isn't that happiness?

Quote of the Day #20

"Poetry should be passionate and outrageous and political and most of all revolutionary.''
-Gerald Stern

I think Stern's poem below stays true to this ideal:

My Sister's Funeral

Since there was no mother for the peach tree we did it
all alone, which made the two of us closer
though closeness brought its loneliness, and it would
have been better I think sometimes to be sterile
from the start just to avoid the pain
which in my life this far has lasted seventy
years for I am in love with a skeleton
on whose small bones a dress hung for a while,
on whose small skull a bit of curly hair
was strung, and what is dust I still don’t know
since there was no mother to turn to then and ask
what else was she wearing, did she have on shoes,
and were the two trees from Georgia, and was it
true somebody said the other peach
should have died instead of her; and I could
imagine the nose going first though forty years later
the trees were still there and not as big as you’d think;
and it was my cousin Red with the flabby lips
who said it, he had red eyes, a red monstrosity,
a flabby body, half the house was filled with
male cousins, they were born in rooms a
short distance from the rats, I can’t remember
which ones had the accents nor what his
Hebrew name was, nor his English.

Poet of the Day #1

Brian Turner, who published a book called Here, Bullet about his experience as a soldier in Iraq. Check out his reading on YouTube here:



Also, there's a good interview with him on NPR.

Song of the Day #5

I wish these lyrics felt like a history lesson about how close the country came to disaster during the darkness of the Bush years, but given what we're faced with today (largely, I would argue, as a result of the Bush presidency), the bleakness presented here is all too much a part of the present. Obama, in my view, is doing the necessary job of containing the fire so more damage isn't immediately done. But it's still burning.

Ruins of the Realm
By James McMurtry

Standin' in the middle of a Roman street
Marble dust all over my feet
Bearded masses at the gates
Dancin' in the ruins while it's not too late

Drivin' a Rolls through old Bombay
Rickshaw driver's in my way
Well he'd better move over and he'd better move fast
Dancin' in the ruins of a golden past
Dancin' in the ruins of the Raj
Queen and country's noble cause

Standin' on banks of the river Seine
I ain't got tuppence to my name
Stand my ground and I cast my net
Dancin' in the ruins where the sun don't set
Dancin' in the ruins of the Crown
Enfield rifles keepin' us down

I got a thirty-ought-six and a premium load
In a shotgun shack on a two lane road
Smack in the middle of the bible belt
Dancin' in the ruins all by myself

We got the National Guard with the bayonets
We got the ten commandments on the State House steps
We shalt not steal and we shalt not kill
Dancin' in the ruins of our own free will
Dancin' in the ruins of the South
Confederate flag taped over my mouth

We thank thee lord for all we got
While the multi-nationals call the shots
So scrape them hides and clean that slate
Dancin' in the ruins of the nation-state

We'll fight 'em in the land, we'll fight 'em in the air
Little cowboy says we got to fight 'em over there
You ain't seen nothing like it since Saigon fell
Dancin' in the ruins 'cause we might as well
Dancin' in the ruins of the realm
A fool and a mad man at the helm
Dancin' in the ruins of the Reich
Down in the bunker on a hunger strike

One Day, Two Odd Coincidences

This morning, as I was driving down Storrow Drive, listening to Planxty's Arthur McBride, with vocals by Andy Irvine, what did I see before me but a tow truck with a hand-lettered sign of the garage owner's last name, Irvine.

Later, while listening to talk radio, I was also reading about Bolivia's president Evo Morales and his hunger strike. The conservative talker was babbling about leftist regimes and mentioned Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

Under the Banner of Heaven

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Like the mangled remains of a car wreck, Jon Krakauer's investigation of the murder of a mother and her baby by fundamentalist Mormons is magnetically hypnotizing. One is appalled and horrified by the carnage, but the author's ability to get inside the mind of a killer echoes conversations Capote and Mailer had decades ago with equally hideous men—and this book is every bit as engrossing as those earlier works.

In the process of shining a light on the mind of Dan Lafferty, one of the two Utah brothers convicted of murdering their sister-in-law and her child in 1984, Krakauer also illuminates the fanatical religious thinking that led to these savage acts. The fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is actually comprised of several sects of Mormons who adhere to a strict interpretation of the prophet Joseph Smith's teachings. Most American readers will be familiar with the FLDS' controversial embrace of polygamy—and that is one of the main points of divergence from the mainstream Mormon Church, but Krakauer's research shows to what comically absurd lengths "plural marriage" has led to:

"As his sixth wife, Debbie became a stepmother to Blackmore's thirty-one kids, most of whom were older than she was. And because he happened to be the father of Debbie's own stepmother, Mem, she unwittingly became a stepmother to her stepmother, and thus a stepgrandmother to herself."

Sadly, what may get lost in our eye-rolling derision is how tragic this can be, particularly for girls unlucky enough to have been born into an FLDS life:

"Before she vanished, Ruth Stubbs was living in the Phoenix home of her aunt Pennie Peterson, who ran away from Colorado City herself at the age of fourteen, when the prophet commanded her to become the fifth wife of a forty-eight-year-old man. Sixteen years later, Peterson remains very bitter about the UEP's polygamous culture. 'Polygamists say they are being attacked because of their religion,' she told the Salt Lake Tribune, 'but where in the Constitution does it say that it's OK to molest and impregnate young girls?'"

Ultimately, it's this cruelty in the name of God that the book highlights so effectively, and how formerly functional members of society such as Dan Lafferty can be reduced to barbarity by their quest to live in accordance with what they perceive to be a divine plan. In these times of widespread religious violence, Under the Banner of Heaven is a cautionary tale about the dangers of dogmatism. Even those of us who are spiritually unaffiliated would be wise to heed its warnings.

View all my reviews.

Dreams From My Father

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
On the bright side, the current U.S. president has come a ong way as a writer since he was merely known as Barack Obama, Esquire.

Unfortunately, that also means his first book, the much-lauded Dreams From My Father, is a disappointment. having been moved to tears by Obama's speeches on the campaign trail and afterward, I expected this memoir—the story of Obama's struggle to come to terms with his absent father's legacy—to touch me in similar ways. but as Obama admits in his 2004 preface, written 10 years after the book was first published, given the chance to write it again, he would have cut more.

At first, I thought this was just false modesty, but Dreams could have been half as long (it runs 442 pages) without losing anything essential. The main problem is that while Obama has a fascinating story to tell, of growing up a mixed-race man and discovering the father he met just once, the book reads like a soap opera filled with family squabbles and the small-minded conflict one encounters at work. Some of that is relevant to what makes Obama's life story compelling, but the bulk of it just feels like the unedited pages of a journal.

It's a pity, too, because clearly Obama has something important to tell us—about our rigid racial attitudes and how we might make sense of a deceased parent's mistakes—but extracting those lessons from amidst all of the unnecessary detail included here is much more trying that it ought to be.

It seems President Obama has learned a lot about writing these past 15 years, acquired great speechwriters, or maybe is just an exceptional orator. Whatever the reason, I sit up and take notice when he speaks, but could scarcely pay attention while reading Dreams From My Father.

View all my reviews.

Website of the Day #1

earthalbum.com

From their blurb: earth album is a simpler, slicker Flickr mash-up that allows you to explore some of the most stunning photos in the world courtesy of Google maps and Flickr. To begin your journey, just click somewhere on the map, e.g. "India". Note-- since the top Flickr images are used, the images change every few weeks; bookmark this site and check back for a different experience in a month!

A few of the awesome images I found there: