God is there because we know we can be better.

A dream

She was eager to please me
I was happy
wanted to please her too
Friend became a lover

google books

Proper Noun

Nancy Willard

Tall man in a small place. Do the plants miss the gardener, I wonder of the plants that I am watering for my husband. My sister tells me of an acquaintance who watered their plants - cardamom in their absence with used milk packets dripping water. The poet asks the gardener :

" or are you the pupil

they your examiners"

With teachers too I wonder who is the pupil. With the task of helping the child, they are the examined.

Tree House

A very still life

Walking with glass. Recently at a Pulla Reddy sweet shop, I walked to a tiered display of sweets and banged into the glass.

In Legend of the tangerine, the poet says 'never hurry a tangerine'. Tangerines may be off the hook but the raw green bananas better hurry up.

At the foundry. The poet finds improbable things found only by artifacts. Once she finds them, her ambitions want to overcome the frozen state of the metal and behave like the life of our world - animated, whole and mobile. Her fascination with the magic is reflected in poems like The mirror, Flying Carpet.

Losing compass and Deer in winter - Weather and deer.
Hummock
Foamflower

Poetry exercise
1. The Mirror. Begin with a noun and let a famous quote about be the springboard. Many poems in this book have a clear beginning. Noun or Proper Noun.
2. Some things should never be written down. A title in the book. What are those according to you?
3. Elementals. 'Put on my cap of air..... Put on my shoes of fire...' like the gifts given to Perseus.

All things DFW

Federer both flesh and not

Fictional futures and conspicuously young

Other DFW works

The nature of fun - On writing

Period poetry

What the poets of this century might not be on this time. Poets of previous century can write of us imagining science fiction, or of the next century as historical fiction.

When I read that the book has poems on Titanic, I can see how news articles might have led people to imagine about it.

The coming urban century.

Rocky point

If someone can interest you in rocks like the layers of a cake, then its a geologist who will let you feel the thrill of his findings as he joins the dots. He gets us conversant in using stratigraphy of looking at the layer changes in the rocks.
The story under Rome is no less riveting than the many on/of it.
Now a geologist is not going to leave you without rubbing off a thing or two about his subject - potassium argon dating. Other than this method, geologists have also used fossils and microfossils.
Can you believe that Earth's magnetic field is reversing from time to time? Not once or twice, if you look at the changes of magnetic polarity, it looks like a bar code. You can study these things if you become a paleomagnetist.
Lie water cycle, there's a rock cycle with sedimentary on the surface rocks are bedded deep into earth to become metamorphic rocks which later emerge as volcanic rocks. Then part of the water cycle erodes these rocks to form sedimentary rocks.

Dec 18, 2009

Clash of the natures

Madame X by William Logan

Pale blossoms, chipped like tea cups in The War, The War

The placid tuna, hacked into agate slabs in The eels of the lagoon

Words

VEX, hex, SMASH, smooch by Constance Hale

In an American Airlines inflight magazine article, when I came across 'luckily', I felt how our sense of gratefulness never comes across the page. It has become like the overused just.

A vocabulary list is included in DFW's 'Both Flesh and Not'.

Storing summer

The Golden Road by Rachel Hadas

origin,journey, wound and destination in The pattern. It has been said that all stories are about a person going from one place to the other. Into this shuttling story, the poet adds the bump of wound into the journey element. A resultant journey to find the cure creates a web of story yarn. 

departure and arrival in On the ferry. The author's poetry deals with states, before-after. The narrator is always in a flux, travelling in a plane, on a ferry in which she lets her thoughts to travel too laying down conversation starters dormant.

The address book begins as a data management/organizer, in years if it does not fall out of use, it stocks the living, dead and the forgotten all in the same book.

Plot of Macbeth
No good deed goes unrewarded reminds me of good intentions being misunderstood.
Rear window
The language of women

That was another summer though. Life has some times that return. Birthday celebrations and seasons which rest like layers on the previous.

In After the end of summer,  a brown brook
'over and over in its water voice,
a voice born out of silence'
takes us to that moment of beauty spent solely with nature.

poet on The end of summer in Three poets.

Storing the season

Ill naw mean

From a family with values derived from the mind of Shihuangdi, the man who built the Wall and unified China come tales that remind me of 'Talk Thai: the Adventures of a Buddhist boy' in the situation of narrators with fresh of the boat parents.

In the times when Instagram and smartphones werent heard of, author Eddie Huang has been part of many things that would have made popular videos. Ousted out of various schools faster than annually, you can see the making of the mean boys - he and his friends who bond over hip-hop.

'I found myself. I rehabilitated myself'
I went into the book thinking that it is about food. The author ends up owning a restaurant just like his dad but the route he takes is rife with many imagination pumping street fights and meets with cops.

'I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me.'
When in Taiwan airport, the author felt best at house, midway between his white America and Chinese Taiwan.

The author bangs into the stereotype culture wall and being called names for his ethnic looks. He veers off many times to be influenced by many 'most important' professors who recognise his talent.

Our response to culture is different based on the age we are exposed to it. The author's formative years form tales that turn into culture tapestry.

The transition of the voice from a child to the adult is maintained in the book.