Wordwork|play

Book Review: Something About the Blues: an unlikely collection of poetry, by Al Young

(Published Jan. 28, 2008 in BC Magazine)

The poetry in Something About the Blues is beautiful, captivating, painful, powerful, sometimes soothing, and often thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

There is something about the blues that grabs hold of you and moves you, physically and emotionally, that transports you to places past, present and imagined, something that taps into the deepest elemental parts of you to soothe and sometimes heal. It's easy to lose yourself in the blues. Its history runs deep and its influence on other forms has been enormous. The blues, Al Young writes in the introduction to Something About the Blues: an unlikely collection of poetry, is "[b]eaded and threaded throughout America's musical mosaic." But the blues, like poetry, is difficult to describe, define, confine. "[T]he blues," he writes, "will always be dramatically unpredictable, sometimes torturous and sometimes pleasurable," and "[e]ver resistant to classroom analysis," for the blues dwells largely "in a feral state; blues truth is wild and menacing."

Something About the Blues is blues poetry. Though I've often listened to and lost myself in the blues, and have immersed myself in various kinds of poetry, I must confess that I was largely ignorant of the blues in poetic form until I had the good fortune to read this collection. The first to popularize blues poetry was Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, and best "known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties" (learn more about Hughes at Poets.org). It is fitting, then, that Young opens his collection of blues poetry with Hughes' beautiful and haunting poem, "The Weary Blues." This poem, read by Hughes himself, also opens the accompanying CD. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the spirit of blues poetry and sets the mood perfectly.

Al Young, born in 1939 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was raised first in Mississippi and then in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan from 1957-1960, co-editing Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he settled in Berkeley, where he held a number of odd jobs--folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor--before graduating with a degree in Spanish from U.C. Berkeley. He has taught creative writing and literature at various universities, has received numerous honours, including, inter alia, Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction. Young has written a number of poetry collections, several novels, three musicals, and numerous screenplays. He was appointed Poet Laureate of California in 2005 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Everything in Something About the Blues is to some extent a meditation on the blues. This collection attempts to say something about the blues -- its origins, history, themes, essence and power. Whether through dedications, tributes, or other mention, many jazz and blues greats make it into this powerful collection -- Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Lester "Pres" Young, Marian McPartland, Ella Fitzgerald, Lead Belly, Vernon Alley, Harry Connick, Jr., Lena Horn, the James Cotton Band, Gene Ammons, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Clifford Brown, Billie Holiday, John "Dizzy" Birks Gillespie, Malcolm X, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, James P. Johnson, Langston Hughes, and James Brown. Some poems allude to and play with poetry from the Western "white" Canon, while others address, more specifically, issues of racism and systemic discrimination, of exoticization, othering and hybridity, as well as of terrorism and environmental racism. Some of these topics go well beyond the traditional themes of the blues. And then some poems are of a more playful nature, more earthy and sensual.

The poetry in this collection, like the blues, is raw and elemental. It rarely indulges in complex symbols, extended metaphors, or florid language. It is less constrained by meter and rhyme, but characterized by the liberal use of alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme, enjambment, repetition, and rhythm. It's language is, on the whole, clear, direct, hard-hitting.

There is one poem, just a little into the book, that captures so much of the often contradictory nature of the blues. "The Blues Don't Change" addresses the blues directly:

And I was born with you, wasn't I, Blues?
Wombed with you, wounded, reared and forwarded
from address to address, stamped, stomped
and returned to sender by nobody else but you,
Blue Rider, writing me off every chance you
got, you mean old grudgefulhearted, table
turning demon, you, you sexy soulsucking gem.

The blues is a contradictory character, both wombing and wounding you. You bear its stamp, yet also feel stomped on, moved from place to place, returned to sender, and written off by the blues. The blues stings where you can't scratch and moves you "from frying/pan to skillet" just as it moves you to wiggle your body, juggle your limbs, loosen that goose, up your voice, open your pores, and roll your hips and lips.

The blues is characterized as a grudgefulhearted (neat word), table turning demon who is also -- here begins another wonderful twist -- a sexy soulsucking gem, a "[b]lue diamond in the rough" who "can't be outfoxed don't care how they cut/and smuggle and shine you on." And, in a note to students and theorists, the blues is "too dumb and stubborn and necessary/to let them turn you into what you ain't/with color or theory or powder or paint." You can never, the poem suggests, fully capture or contain the blues. And it is its contradictory, shape-shifting nature that allows the blues to stay forever fresh and current.

The impossibility of capturing the blues completely is also addressed in "Detroit 1958." "Only parts of the pain of living/may be captured in a poem or/tale or song or in the image seen," goes the first stanza. In the blues, as in life, "[s]adness is the theme of existence;/joy its variations." The blues merely imitates the pain of life, but, in another apparent contradiction, it is, "as the man sings,/'The bitter note makes the song so sweet."

There is plenty of bitterness in Young's poetry, though it is not consumed by it. And sometimes that bitterness also comes out in poems alluding to and playing with poems from the Western canon. "The Lovesong of O.O.Gabugah" is a good example, an obvious allusion to T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a lengthy, meandering, metaphorically dense poem about an aging, indecisive, isolated urban man walking along foggy half-deserted streets on his way to what sounds like a high society party in order to woo a particular woman. But he doesn't dare. His indecisiveness and insecurity are the focus of the poem, and the reader--aren't we lucky--gets to accompany Prufrock and listen in on his inner dialogue.

Though parts of Elliot's poem suggest a somewhat tongue-in-cheek nature, Young's "The Lovesong of O.O. Gabugah" lies in sharp contrast. The tone, right from the start, reflects a rougher context, a very different reality. Instead of "Let us go then, you and I," we get "Time to split now, you & me." The narrator of Young's poem, presumably a black male, also takes his reader along on a walk through an urban landscape, "past alleyways & neon signs/& people waitin in movie lines." But he has no time for lengthy reflection, comparing himself to this or that dramatic figure, to Hamlet, or even Polonius the Fool, or wrapping his emotional insecurities in fancy, drawn-out metaphors. He is physically in danger. If he so much as stops too long near the people waiting in movie lines, he fears getting zapped. What we witness here is something much more grim -- "[t]he snowy line. . . whooshed up the chimney clean, burnt out a nose,/& sniffin all there was to know about July,/just blew its ownself out, forget the rose." Our guide here is not on his way to a high society party where well-dressed ladies discuss Michelangelo. He is headed to a place where he can forget his misery by blowing himself out with cocaine.

One piece in this collection, more short story than poem, addresses a form of oppression and source of misery one wouldn't necessarily expect in a blues collection. "Silent Parrot Blues" discusses environmental racism, a fairly new and academic concept that links racism, a common theme in the blues, to the environment, an uncommon one. It is prefaced by a quote from Myrla Baldanado, Statement Coordinator: People's Task Force for Base Clean Up, that explains what environmental racism is -- forcing people of colour "to bear the brunt of the nation's pollution problem." The story begins with Young encountering a listless, raggedy, broken parrot kept in a dark supply closet by a building superintendent. As he walks back to his apartment, arms full of laundry and disturbed, he meets his intellectually curious hallway neighbor, Briscoe, a veteran of the American War in Vietnam.

Through the conversation with the well-read and socially-aware though rough around the edges Briscoe, a good amount of ground is covered on the topic of environmental racism. Briscoe wants him to take his parrot story straight to the mayor and city council, because, as he puts it, "white people don't like that shit. They hate it -- mistreating birds and animals. . . They won't stand for it. . . . In fact, they're prepared to make your ass extinct in a minute before they'll let anybody fuck with a timber wolf." Young goes on to talk about Romanticism and its role in creating an industrial and post-Industrial society in which humans are seen as separate, apart from, and above nature. He then links that kind of thinking back to the "English romantics -- Shelley, Byron, Keats, Thomas Gray, Samuel Coleridge, and William Blake, among others -- [who] did their part to exoticize nature." He goes on to mention Thoreau, and not very flatteringly either, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and the poetry of Poe and Whitman. Their kind of thinking has led to the dumping of all manner of dangerous waste, as Briscoe points out, "where black people and Mexicans and Indians live." While people of colour, more than anyone else, bear the brunt of the world's pollution problem, Young does point out that poor whites are also affected.

By including environmental racism in this collection, as well as, in "Your Basic Black Poet," cultural hybridity, Young updates the blues. If the subject matter, the inspiration that often gives rise to and feeds the blues is the highs, though more often the lows, of people oppressed, then these topics belong in the blues of an increasingly complex and globalised society.

In Something About the Blues," Al Young, as the title suggests, says something about the blues. In his "Statement on Poetics" at the end of the collection, Young says that "[a]fter 60 years of listening, I still feel as though I can't get started; as though I have so little to say about jazz and the roles all music continue to play in that curtainless sun-room in the mansion of my life, where thinking and telling take bloom." Though a force as elemental and dynamic as the blues can never be entirely captured and contained, Young does manage to say a great deal about the blues in this collection, and the spirit of the blues certainly moves within and through it. The inclusion of a CD with various live readings brings the poetry even closer, making it come to life. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the CD is not always consistent--the volume and clarity change from reading to reading, which is a bit disconcerting. It may be because they were recorded at different venues, without sufficient audio post-processing. And perhaps this is only a problem on the advance copy. Overall, the more time is spent with Something About the Blues, the more emerges that is beautiful, captivating, painful, powerful, sometimes soothing, and often thought-provoking. This collection of blues poetry comes highly recommended.

The Life of a Creative Offering: Independent and yet Dependent

I was doing some research on Ecotecture (word-blend of ecology and architecture) and came across the following quote from Picasso that can be equally well applied to literature--to poetry, short stories, and novels.

A picture is not thought out and settled before hand. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing the changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it.

Picasso from a 1935 interview with Christian Zervos. (found at Ecotecture Canada)

A work of fiction is the same way. No matter how much thought and effort a writer may have put into a story-- perhaps growing it out of, and around, an overarching concept or leitmotif, forming and refining characters, laying out plot elements, and then revising, refining, focusing, clarifying, culling, and polishing--to bring it to life, as soon as it is published and out of the author's hands, out of the author's control, it begins a life of its own. It is an independent, living creature. As long as it has a reader, it is alive. But it grows and changes.

People change from childhood into adulthood, and continue to change and grow and be modified by the impact of life experience. People change when they cross national, cultural, religious, linguistic and political borders, even if certain core elements remain relatively fixed. And so it is also with the work of fiction. Even if unchanged in a literal sense, an ancient Arabic, Greek, Indian, Persian, or Roman story, an Old English or Norse poem, or for that matter a Victorian, or even modernist novel, is a different creature now. It no longer means what it did in its own time and place. It has a life of its own, but is utterly dependent upon the reader. The author gives it birth, but it is the reader alone who keeps it alive, the reader alone who nurtures it, changes it, and sometimes revives it.

Time, Money & Medieval Literature: A New Translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation

As mentioned in the lead-in to a recent post, "Texts in Translation: Kalima and Translation into Arabic," I have more than a passing interest in, and fascination with, medieval literature, as also with translation. But because I am overburdened with student debt, still, I have neither the time nor money to pursue this interest in earnest. Certainly not by way of another university degree--my three have nearly buried me in debt. But on to the matter of this post.

I came across a review of a new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the "Sunday Book Review" of the New York Times a few days ago--"A Stranger in Camelot." Though I prefer to read such texts in the original, in this case Middle English, I do understand the need for modern English translations that render the text intelligible to readers who struggle overmuch with older forms of English. Many, perhaps most, high school and university students today struggle even with Shakespearean English, so one cannot really expect them to tackle even earlier stuff.

I haven't read this translation yet, though I hope to do so in the near future. Apparently Armitage presents the Middle English original in a parallel text, much like Seamus Heaney did in Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, a copy of which I have and treasure in my personal library. When a new translation reproduces, as nearly as possible, the spirit and cadence of the original text, it is a joy to read and gives the modern reader a feel for the original. Especially important, as pointed out by Edward Hirsch, is an adequate reproduction of alliteration, the poetic device of choice in early English writing. I, personally, much prefer alliteration and assonance to rhyme as a poetic constraint.

The linguistically adventurous can read the new translation, then work their way through the original. Fun, fun, fun!

Talking About Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read Without Having Read It

A few days ago I came across Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read via my feed subscription to the complete review's Literary Saloon. This book just begs to be talked/written about without having read it. So, suspending my usual practice, here I go.

My gut reaction, when I first saw the title, was rather negative. But as usual, the negative first impression was followed by curiosity. When something disturbs me, I like to dig in and find out for myself what argument is being made and what lies behind it. As readers of Wordwork|play would quickly find out, it is a matter of principle for me to read a book, particularly a book about which I am going to speak or write, with the exception of some reference materials (dictionaries, thesauri, etc.), from front to back, including the preface, introduction, postscript, appendices and addenda. Behind this principle is the idea that a cursory or incomplete reading can easily result in things being taken out of context, leading to incorrect assumptions, reactions, and conclusions.

The complete review provides not only its own review of the book, but also a good overview of other reviewers' reactions. Most seem to think the book has some valid points and is presented well. Some seem to agree with his general argument, some disagree, though they find it entertaining, while others feel the argument makes more or less sense depending on the culture (esp. its relationship to reading and literature) to which it is applied.

Not having read the book, my reaction is probably closest to that of Anthony Daniels of the New Criterion:

His book is a vindication of ignorance. It is, however, extremely amusing and clever -- though I must add that I use the word "clever" at least partially in its English sense, that is to say meretriciously and ostentatiously intelligent rather than deeply so; it is more a search for applause than truth. (...) It is not easy to guess how far the author is being tongue-in-cheek. Nevertheless, there is a serious point behind the book, and it is wrong.

But then I'm basing my reaction on an incomplete context.

Now if someone would like to send me a free copy of the book--I don't feel like actually spending money on it at this time--I'll read it for myself and form a more sound and studied opinion. Who knows, I may read something that will modify my reaction. I do agree on one point he is said to make in the book--just because we haven't read a book does not mean we can't begin discussion of the ideas contained therein. But judgment of the book and its arguments have to be suspended until it has been read in its entirety.

Hankering After Good Literary Fiction Titles for Review

I've gotten into a non-fiction groove for quite some time now, not because I wanted to review more non-fiction than fiction, but rather because I've seen very few fiction titles offered through blogcritics of interest to me. While I haven't done a thorough analysis of blogcritics' offerings, it seems to me that there is much more, in terms of books, in non-fiction, while the bulk of fiction is genre-based.

Non-fiction reviewing is great, don't get me wrong. I've read and have written on some very interesting books lately, and there are, if you'll glance at the 'Upcoming Reviews' module in the sidebar, some very interesting and informative books coming up in the next month or so. As for genre fiction, though I acknowledge its place, it's not really my thing.

I have been in contact with Sourcebooks and am awaiting some poetry collections--"Poetry Speaks Expanded" and "Something About the Blues." I am looking forward to those, but I am also hankering after some really good literary fiction. I've been eying the books short-listed for the Giller, Governor General's, and Man Booker Prizes.

Anyway, I hope to get back into literary fiction after the current pile of 'upcoming reviews' are done. Here's a call to publishers, publicists and authors to send me books of literary fiction for review. Though I am just one person with a day job and therefore cannot promise to review all books sent me, I am certainly always open to receiving review materials.

Is Literary Fiction on the Decline?

I came across an interesting article today from the Toronto Star--"Why novelists are nervous." The article, by the Star's books columnist Philip Marchand, made me grunt, swear, beat my fist upon the unsuspecting and innocent dining-room table and, since she was within earshot, share especially frustrating points with my partner. You, incidentally, are also within proverbial earshot.

We have often discussed and lamented the very things brought up in the article. Marchand notes changes in practice, if not policy, at this year's International Festival of Authors in Toronto, to which I won't have the time to go. "It used to be," he writes, "that non-fiction writers need not apply to appear at the International Festival of Authors--unless they were literary biographers." This year, the IFOA, starting at Harbourfront today, has expanded its non-fiction entries available and will highlight the Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. And a number of prominent writers--Charlotte Gray, Larry Gaudet, David Gilmour, and Rudy Wiebe--will be there specifically because of their non-fiction work.

What's so bad about opening the festival up a bit? Nothing, really. I'm all for inclusion--there is a great deal of very good non-fiction work being produced. The question is whether literary fiction coverage will be reduced, or pushed aside, to accommodate the inclusion. Does it mean, as 'some nervous novelists' feel, that literary fiction is slowly losing its footing in our culture? Marchand says that particular complaint is being raised more often from various quarters--"'literary fiction is losing market share to memoirs and genre fiction'" (from Australian Book Review, April 2005), and '"literary fiction has lost its authority in the culture'" (from Publishers Weekly, Sept. 10). John Updike, quoted by Marchand, also thinks people are becoming less comfortable with the novel, in part because readers no longer have the "backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It's sad."

It is sad. I've certainly noticed less allusion in modern fiction (with notable exceptions), certainly allusion to older forms--literary, as well as cultural, linguistic, and religious. More often now, allusions are to popular culture, or music, or other contemporary forms. Again, I don't decry these. But I worry that there is an erosion of culture where much of the former depth is lost, that deep, nutrient-rich vertical accumulation out of which successive generations have grown, and that we'll be left with only a thin layer of often artificially enhanced and fertilized topsoil. Without that depth, we lose perspective, and without perspective we lose strength, especially to weather storms. Pardon the extended agricultural metaphor.

Philip Roth is also quoted, responding to a question about the conditions for literary fiction, in which he states that there's no doubt that the conditions have deteriorated. He says the status of literature has gone down since he began writing, and that there are also fewer serious critics, fewer serious readers, and many more distractions. He points to 'the screen' as a major distraction--the movie screen, the television screen, and the computer screen. We may as well throw in souped-up cell phones, iPods, and gaming machines that provide both auditory and visual distractions. And then, of course, there are the distractions, brought to young people in large part by ubiquitous advertisements, of mass consumerism.

Marchand, perhaps to balance the article's perspective, approaches both the festival's artistic director, Geoffrey Taylor, and independent booksellers. Taylor, not surprisingly, assures readers that the change does not portend a decline in literary fiction. They have added to, not subtracted from, the program. "But we're trying to be more reflective of what people read," he adds, and "[r]eal readers will read all kinds of things."

Independent booksellers in Toronto, Marchand finds, don't think there is a decline in literary fiction. But I think they, like the festival organizer, are the wrong people to ask. It is in their best interests to sound upbeat about it all. How else can they continue to sell? It might be more instructive to ask the owners/managers of large bookstore chains. First, they carry enough of everything to not care so much about the decline of any one area, and second, because they are so much larger, they are better able to recognize and predict overall trends.

What I would have liked more of a focus on is the decline of literacy, something to which he refers, almost as an afterthought, in a paragraph mentioning the impact of the events of 9/11 on the New York publishing industry. And "the situation is different in Canada and the United States," he adds. Yes, perhaps, but mainly in degree. In many areas we are fast catching up. And not in a good way, either.

Book Review: Teeth. by Aracelis Girmay

(Published Oct. 9, 2007 in BC Magazine--Book Review: Teeth by Aracelis Girmay)

Teeth is, whatever one's stylistic preferences, an important collection of poems. Girmay's is a bold and fresh voice in poetry.

Aracelis Girmay's poetry collection, Teeth, though rather new on the scene, is no timid voice on the poetic stage. The poetry of Teeth is often bold, brave, and dark, but also joyously triumphant. It is both a poetry of protest and of celebration. It rails against discrimination, despair, death, rape, and war, and celebrates the enduring beauty, strength and perseverance of peoples, languages and cultures.

Aracelis Girmay is a writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She was born and raised in Southern California and has a degree from Connecticut College and an MFA from NYU. Girmay is a current Cave Canem Fellow and former Watson Fellow, and her work has appeared in Callaloo, Bellevue Literary Review, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, and MiPOesias Magazine, among others. She has worked as a writer-in-residence with the Community-Word Project and Teachers & Writers Collaborative, as well as the CARE project in her native Santa Ana, and believes her work as writer and educator to be integral to social change. Teeth, published by Curbstone Press in June 2007, is her first collection of poetry.

Girmay begins her collection with a poem of protest entitled "Arroz Poetica." The title alludes to Horace's Ars Poetica, a long epistolary poem on the art of poetry. Girmay substitutes 'ars' (art) with 'arroz' (rice). Instead of discussing the art of poetry, this poem discusses poetic rice, as in rice as a metaphor, a symbol of protest. It opens with a friend's suggestion that everyone against the war should protest by sending George Bush little bags of rice inscribed with "If your enemies are hungry, feed them."

The rest of the poem argues, essentially, that her enemies

are not hungry.
They are not standing in lines
for food, or stretching rations,
or waiting at the airports
to claim the pieces
of the bodies of their dead.

Rather, her enemies "ride jets to parties... eat meat & vegetables at tables/ in white houses where candles blaze, cast/ shadows of crosses, & flowers." Her enemies, dressed up in "ball gowns & suits & rings" sit around "to talk of war in neat & folded languages/ that will not stain their formal dinner clothes/ or tousle their hair." Her finger points directly at George Bush and his administration as the real enemy, and she will not send him worked for rice while the death toll rises, while the "radio calls out/ the local names of 2,000/ U.S. soldiers counted dead since March," but "will not say the names/ of an Iraqi family trying to pass a checkpoint." The imagery is powerful and personal.

While the opening poem is about war directly, there is much else in this collection that is dark, about discrimination, despair and death. Particularly powerful and disturbing is "Sudan," a poem about rape in Darfur. It paraphrases a line from the Darfur Testimonies: "You are black, woman,/ & you are/ our slave." She connects it to similar atrocities committed much closer to home — "Or, it is not Kornei, & it is not Sudan, & her/ children are not in a field, but in the next room,/ waiting." There are also poems referencing inequality in America, both past and present.

Not everything in this collection is dark and depressing, however. The poems I enjoyed most in this collection are, on the surface, about food. "Ode to the Watermelon" is a celebration of enduring symbols and pleasures despite oppression and slaughter. In Palestine, where it is forbidden to fly their own flag, the watermelon with its red and green and black is raised in its stead. There is beautiful language in this poem — ripe, playful, sexy.

The watermelon is a "Ripe conjugationer of water & sun... bandera of the ground,/ language of fields," a symbol of hope, wafting its scent even under the blade. Addressing the watermelon directly,

Men bow their heads, open-mouthed,
to coax the sugar
from beneath your workdress.
Women lift you
to their teeth

And most hopeful,

yours is a sweetness
to outlast any slaughter:
Tongues will lose themselves inside you,
scattering seeds. All over,
the land will hum
with your wild,
raucous blooming.

(Listen to Girmay read from this poem)

Also celebratory and rich with meaning, and also about food, is "Scent: Love Poem for the Pilon." Food is used wonderfully here in both it's literal and metaphoric senses. The narrator is thankful for the Mercado, for chopped onions, oregano, salt, cloves, red beans, black beans, and rice. She is "thankful for the kitchen table:/ block of wood, & nails,/ & the carpenter's hand," thankful for the pepper grinder, "the clean smell of tomatoes & cilantro."

And most potent and most pregnant with meaning, she is thankful...

...for the pilon
that burst the knots of garlic,
thankful for the way it always worked & worked
under a fist. How, even now, after washes with limes
& soaps, the scent of what it's opened
still lingers there.

The pilon, the pestle and mortar, and the garlic whose smell endures all cleaning attempts, are powerful symbols of the endurance of culture, the lingering aroma that cannot be washed away. Food, perhaps the most tangible, most palatable marker of culture, is used wonderfully in this poem to celebrate its enduring power.

The apparent lack of structure in this collection, and the seemingly arbitrary line breaks, though common in modern poetry, are uncomfortable for me. I prefer more structural constraint in poetry, more devices, both visual and auditory, to set it apart from prose. But that is largely a matter of personal preference. Girmay employs some wonderful imagery and clever language. But most importantly, she tackles serious subject matter, giving voice to those who are often unheard. She is at her best, it seems to me, when approaching serious subject matter obliquely, at an angle, as in "Ode to the Watermelon" and "Scent: Love Poem for the Pilon," rather than head-on, as she does in "Arroz Poetica."

Teeth is, whatever one's stylistic preferences, an important collection of poems. It's a bold and fresh voice in poetry.

NOD: Teeth

(from "The Piano")

I remember her wide body & how she flipped
out over the side, & there was nothing we could do,
& how she crashed into the street
with her hundred teeth & voices,
& there was nothing we could do
but run out into it, the street, I mean, keys
splintered like bones.

NOD: Teeth

I have been posting NODs (nugget of the day) while reading books for review. I'm finding it more difficult to do with a book of poetry. How do I choose a nugget out of a poem? If I pull a little piece and show it to you, will its power still transmit?

As much else on this site, if it doesn't work, I hope you will let me know. There may only be a couple of NODs from Teeth anyway, as I intend to write the review and have it posted by Monday at the very latest.

Here we go then:

(from "Ode to the Watermelon")

Men bow their heads, open-mouthed,
to coax the sugar
from beneath your workdress.
Women lift you
to their teeth.
Sandia, dia santo,
yours is a sweetness
to outlast slaughter:
Tongues will lose themselves inside you,
scattering seeds. All over,
the land will hum
with your wild,
raucous blooming.

Some Notes on Toronto's "The Word on the Street" 2007

My partner and I spent most of the day in Toronto today at "The Word on the Street," an annual book and magazine festival. While we enjoyed it, on the whole, walking away with some useful information and a couple of good books (we would have liked to walk away with many more books, but are rather financially challenged), it ended with both of us very disheartened, disturbed and enraged. I'll get to that part in a bit.

My partner bought Courage Underground, a small book of poetry by Julie Roorda, published in 2006 by Guernica. I bought Writing Life: Celebrated Canadian and International Authors on Writing and Life, edited by Constance Rooke and published by McClelland & Stewart in 2006, with proceeds to PEN Canada. I shall write about that when my pile of to-be-reviewed books gets smaller and I get to reading this one.

We also attended a couple of events at the Diaspora Dialogues Tent--"Sounds of the City: Hip Hop, Soul & Spoken Word" and "Writing "The Diaspora": Strengthening Our Voices or Ghettoizing Ourselves?" The first event, at 1600, was an interesting mix of spoken word and soul, featuring Mohammad Ali, lisa 'luscious' tai, a young Somali-Canadian artist (she is not listed in the program and I don't remember her name), and GreenTaRA.

While I enjoyed the clever and politically-charged spoken word of lisa 'luscious' tai, and found the songs of GreenTaRA quite pleasing, I particularly liked the little sketch by the young Somali-Canadian artist, a conversation on politics and soccer between two old Nicaraguan men in a Toronto barbershop that was rather profound. I was also quite impressed by the young Mohammad Ali, "a socialist anti-war activist and hip hop artist working with the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, the Toronto Haitian Action Committee and the War Resisters Support Campaign." His Haitian history and freedom rant, with tie-ins to George Bush and the war on terror, was right on the mark and very well executed.

The last event we attended, also in the Diaspora Dialogues Tent, a discussion of the usefulness and continued relevance of terms such as 'mainstream' and 'writer of colour' in the publishing industry, was expected to be interesting but academic and civil. It might have been so had the latter of the following two unscheduled panelists not showed up--Tina Edan, a poet and community leader in Toronto, and Joseph Kertes, founder and director of the Humber School of Writers at Humber College. Scheduled to be on the panel were Nadine Sivak, Policy Officer at Canadian Heritage, and House of Anansi Press Publisher, Lynn Henry.

Since I did not, unfortunately, record the panel discussion, nor take notes, I will have to summarize (hopefully someone has recorded the discussion and will post it online). The discussion was at first fairly interesting and civil, with some disagreement between Joe and the rest of the panelists on equality of opportunity and access of minority writers in the publishing industry. While Nadine cited statistics compiled by the Canadian government on funding offered to writers and other artists, noting that minority groups were greatly underrepresented in receipt of funding, Lynn emphasized that much still needed to be done in terms of seeing proportional representation of minority writers in the Canadian publishing industry, and Tina mentioned the lack of representation of minorities on panels, in funding committees, and at the head of publishing houses and writers' programs, Joe Kertes would have none of it. He seemed to be of the opinion that, to paraphrase, 'you can only do so much to coax them into writing', that there no longer exist, in Canada, any barriers to access for minority writers, and that we now live in a wonderful country where we all love one another and where there is equal opportunity and access for all.

Joe's views seemed to range from naive to arrogant to downright patronizing and colonial. Indeed, some of his comments were reminiscent of 19th Century British colonialists in India. Indeed, when discussing Aboriginal issues, his comments prompted Tina to interject with a 'Colonialism 101' remark, explaining that they were indeed the First Peoples here, and that Canada carried out a genocide against them that, in some ways, continues to this day. Joe retorted angrily that there is no such thing as original peoples anywhere, and that while there might at one time have been mistreatment of Aboriginals in Canada, it is certainly no longer happening. He turned to the audience, requesting a show of hands on the question of a continuing genocide against Aboriginal Peoples, and many in the audience lifted their hands. One audience member suggested, for a little proof that something is still very amiss on Native Reserves, that he try drinking the water there. Joe Kertes' arrogant, patronizing and, quite frankly, colonialist attitude is a grim reminder of just how far we have yet to go and what barriers to access minority writers do indeed still face with people like him at the helm of creative writing programs and in other positions of power in the publishing industry.

Monetization of Wordwork|play

While I feel somewhat conflicted about advertising, you have no doubt noticed that I do have Google ads on this site. I have a couple of small Google AdSense boxes in a sidebar, one content-, the other referral-based, and have recently also accepted an independent paid advertisement that will soon be posted.

And just yesterday, I became an Amazon associate. This I don't feel as conflicted about. I review books. Understandably, especially if my reviews have been favourable and successful, readers will want to buy the book about which they have just read. Now they can click on the titles or images of the books I have reviewed, or happen to mention in another context, and purchase them directly. In the process, I earn a little bit of money to support what I love to do here on Wordwork|play.

Since I would really love to do this full time, I hope I will see some increase in earnings soon. If you are so inclined, having enjoyed the writing on this site, there is also a tip jar (button) in the sidebar.

Thanks for stopping by.

Just Doing Some Reading Up. Book Reviews are Coming...

I really thought I'd have the review of The Most Dangerous Animal published today, but I am still digesting, still mulling it over. I have already begun reading the next book on my review list, An Ocean of Air, by Gabrielle Walker. Sometimes getting on to other things, putting heavy things on the back burner, letting them ferment a little, makes for a better review (or article, essay, story, poem) when it's finally written. And The Most Dangerous Animal is heavy.

So I used this evening, tired as I was after my day job, to do some research on the evolution (devolution?) of the book review. Though I'm too tired to go into any great detail, I was directed to an article by Steve Wasserman a couple of days ago, entitled "Goodbye to All That." It was depressing, inspiring and intimidating all at once. Sad to see the dumbing-down of society, the plummeting of literacy, and with/because of it, the gradual disappearance of the newspaper book review section. Inspiring to read that there are people still who value thoughtful, thorough reviews of literature, people who recognize the importance of literature and criticism. And intimidating because I know it is now increasingly up to people like me to provide them. That puts me on the spot. I feel like a schoolboy on the stage, deeply engaged and interested, even passionate, but so new to it all that I half seek, half dread, the spotlight.

There are a number of other writers expressing great concern over the erosion of book review sections. Art Winslow, in a post at the Huffington Post entitled "The New Book Burning," though perhaps a bit dramatic, also laments their ongoing collapse. And then there's the NYT article by Motoko Rich, "Are Book Reviewers Out of Print." It, while troubled by the changes in print book reviews, does try to point to literary blogs as perhaps a new incarnation, an evolution (not necessarily vertically) of the book review. Am inspired by the story of Dan Wickett though.

Anyway, I will continue to review here on this blog. In fact I intend, over the next little while, to greatly sharpen the focus of Workwork|play. I want to focus mainly on reviews here, moving forward, with the occasional reflection on writing itself. I realize I have tried to include far too many subject areas on this blog, often leading to a loss of focus. But more on that later.

More reviews are coming...

NOD (Nugget of the Day): Irresistible Morsels from Current Reading

Most books worth reading, be they fiction or non-fiction, contain at least one or two striking phrases, phrases that stand out because they are cleverly or beautifully constructed, or because the idea(s) they contain are particularly powerful. Each of these descriptors--clever, beautiful, powerful--itself could be unpacked and further defined. Each of them, also, is subjective. Really good books contain numerous such phrases.

Not so long ago I picked up an old Aldous Huxley book, a work of historical fiction entitled The Devils of Loudon. I hadn't read more than 20 pages before realizing that there were simply too many delicious nuggets in that book to continue reading sans pencil. I stopped reading, grabbed a pencil, and instead of continuing where I'd left off previously, returned to the beginning. Armed with a pencil, I was able to capture, by underlining, the many beautiful, clever, disturbing, insightful, powerful, or shocking sentences and paragraphs.

It may be an old habit formed in university English courses, but I rarely read a book without pencil in hand. Or if it's a borrowed book, small sticky notes. And this is always the case when reading a book for review. It may take me a little longer to get through a book, stopping here and there to underline or write a note, but the process helps me find relevant points for discussion more readily. And, significantly, it is also a great aid to memory, underlining the selection, as it were, in one's memory.

To share the many wonderful nuggets contained in the books I am reading and reviewing, I will begin posting, under a new category, my nuggets of the day (NOD). I will try to post one daily, but please don't hold me too rigidly to this schedule. The NOD, conveniently, will also serve as a nod to the book (and author) from which (whom) it is derived. Less significantly, it will also provide busy readers with daily fascinating and thought-provoking, yet quickly-read, posts. There shall be no reason, if you'll excuse the pun, to nod off when reading these.

Book Review: The Last Day of Paradise, by Kiki Denis

(Published Sept. 4, 2007 in BC Magazine--Book Review: The Last Day of Paradise by Kiki Denis)

The Last Day of Paradise is a cathartic coming of age story spanning three generations in small-town Greece.

Coming of age is a universal experience. At least nowadays it is. Adolescence as a distinct stage of life between childhood and adulthood, with its own culture, activities, rituals, products and angst, is a modern invention. Before that children were just little people growing slowly into big people.

But we need not go too far into the past to find out how much things have changed from one generation to the next, how different the expectations, behaviors and preoccupations of young people are today. Many of these differences have to do with larger societal changes. Kiki Denis's novel, The Last Day of Paradise, is a coming of age story spanning three generations in small-town Greece, narrated by fifteen-year-old Sunday. Her narrative not only captures how much things have changed since her grandparents' time, but also how much their actions, decisions, and experiences are carried over to affect her generation.

The Last Day of Paradise is Kiki Denis's debut novel. Born in Greece, she came to the United States in 1990 to pursue her BA in philosophy and economics at Mount Holyoke College on a full scholarship. She then went to Exeter, England to complete an MA in psychology before settling in New York City in 1997. There she began writing short stories, poetry, and this novel. She is currently working on her second novel, Noble Silence, and a poetry collection entitled The Cycle of Consciousness.

The language of The Last Day of Paradise is unique - sometimes funny, often jarring and disconcerting. Sometimes writers who choose to write in their second language are particularly good at capturing the voice of a second language learner. Denis tries to do that in this novel with Sunday. Just a few pages in, Sunday says that she is sure by now "you got a feeling that the language I am using here is not my mother/first tongue." She uses Greek during the day and English at night. And just in case the reader finds something weird about her use of language, she says: "'cause of this overworking situation, I may often use your language irrationally, inappropriately, over-loosely, but please spare the sweat..."

It's difficult to say whether Sunday's voice fails to convince because the second language aspect is not captured successfully, or because the author simultaneously attempts to capture teen-speak. The teen-speak is at times convincing, capturing the raw cynicism of modern Greek teen culture. I suspect it is the combination that proves ultimately too much for Denis to manage with consistency.

What's nice about the use of English in this novel is that it is not just Kiki Denis choosing to write a Greek story in English for the benefit of anglophone readers. Rather, it is written in English because Sunday, the young narrator of the story, likes to use English with her friends and chooses also to write about her experiences in English. Sunday and her clique use English as a sort of code language amongst themselves, a language most of the adults don't understand.

The real difficulty with the use of language in this novel comes through a lack of consistency and the overuse of certain words. When the author attempts to capture darker or more serious subject matter, the language tends to become more conventional, more regular. At these times, especially (though not exclusively) when the focus is on the older generations, the novel reads like good fiction and becomes rather engaging. Then, as if the author suddenly notices that she's slipped out of both the second language and the teen voice, one of those overused words, like "mega," appears, jolting the reader clean out of the narrative.

Denis has certainly imagined a very interesting and engaging story. At times her casual handling of really dark subject matter, like the repeated and rather routine sexual abuse of a servant girl by an aristocratic old man who fondly remembers the first time, "reaching for titties and found nothing," or the rape of the teenage girl a couple of days before her arranged marriage to a lawyer twice her age, is chillingly well executed. At other times, especially when it comes to the intermediate generation - the twenty-something men - the voice is not convincing. There seems something amiss in the characterization of that middle generation. They do not seem to have their own voice. Instead, they tend to have the same voice as the fifteen year old.

The Last Day of Paradise took some time to get into. Once into the story, because there really is some good substance between the pages, I wished the strange use of language would just disappear so that I could read without interruption. The overuse of certain words kept kicking me out of the story.

It was very difficult to place the novel as well. Is it meant to be a young adult novel with some serious content? Is it meant to be adult fiction that happens to be narrated by a teenager? Some people would probably not be comfortable with aspects of the book, particularly concerning sexuality, for young readers. Yet adults, though appreciating the multi-generational story and the serious treatment of class, arranged marriage, and sexuality, will have difficulty with the narrator's strange use of language.