In Sparrow, I couldnt connect to the poems initially. Towards the later half, the subjects of people and birds became more relatable.

The child had
to believe
the father was
righteous
to build virtue on own

The house in France
pedalo
Portofino

Morning, noon and night

Perri Klass with her 'different narratives' in Becoming a Doctor, recognises a patient not just as a victim of a disease but as a person in a family, a carrier og gene pool and all the other threads of stories that a person carries in him/her.
Lauren Slater

When a billion chinese jump

Baiji
soft shell turtles
Zipingpu dam

Immersion

Running Away to Home: Our Family's Journey to Croatia in Search of Who We Are, Where We Came From, and What Really Matters 

In running away to home, author Jennifer Wilson 'hungry for connections with land and food and family' sets in search of her ancestral family in a Croatian village with her own family. Although the writing was good, I was straying off the reader path and had to push myself to finish the book. In the end, knowing the history of her ancestors and what she was saved from by her family's immigration she returns with a great sense of gratitude. During her travel, she faces many moments where she is glad for having taken this unthinkable step of moving to an unfamiliar place with its new language but a place where the residents make her feel at home.
With a search specific for her ancestors, the author shows the reader, the history of the region. While that is something a writing maestro might appreciate, it is in this generalization that the story of the search lost its appeal. I am also biased from a reading of  The foremost good fortune  by Susan Conley, where we see a country through the struggles the author goes through in adjusting to a different culture. It could be the rural, low profile culture of Croatia which didnt lend itself to any major revelation.

The Foremost Good Fortune: A Memoir by Susan Conley

Reading TriQuarterly99, Spring/Summer 1997 issue, Kanai Mieko's short story 'When treading on soft earth' I cant help but wonder that I have never read this much description in fiction.
Another Mieko short story - The Rose Tango

I remember reading of Operating instructions by Anne Lamott and picked it up when I found it at used books sale in the library.

Lamott talks about a Sam with one arm. I wonder if this is that wonderful kid, embracing the tennis racquet all out.

Sandtray therapy
lomilomi massage
Bouvier puppy
odie dall
plastic Beatrix Potter bath book

Childhood

If we could write as children, how much of the world we could store.

Stories

Why we love them as kids?
Watching The Ballad of Josie, I am reminded of a story similar to How much land does a man need but in an Arabic setting.
We know of the world through them.

In Words, not swords the author introduces us to yeki bud yeki nabud. The jacket art with clad women on the shore reminds me of a colony of shorebirds.

The Forbidden stitch

Sujata Bhatt Muliebrity
Autumn Gardening is a great story which fills survivors with a sense of purpose. It is interesting to see how the sentences work too, with the physical actuations of the character punctuated by the happenings in the emotional landscape.
Compare Khalil's lines in To rise above with Blake's Chminey Sweeper. I came across this Blake poem in Morning,Noon and Night by Arnold Weinstein
picture bride

Carol Bly

I came across Carol Bly's 'My Dear Republican Mother' essay in 'From Daughters to Mothers book.
Reading it I felt thatthis is the kind of work, editors are talking of when they talk about work with layers in it. While she is writing about the mother she knew for the first 12 years of her life, its also about the times then, the presence or lack of psychological attitudes. At the language level, she translates the behavior of people then into the terms of psychology that we use now to recognise them.

Gloria Gervitz
Milagro in from From Shejarit.

Totems fusing together
on poetry

Tarahumara
Chicha
pinole
peyote
Baldachin
Sudarium
Monstrance
Crepitation
Bambina - girl
Bambino -little boy

The tricks pictures play

When I saw a thumbnail of this picture, I recognised the figure of a man and when itwent with the words..'In this novel an assimilated Australian Jew chooses a vicious, and symbolic, husband.' then I corrected myself of the main character and a close look reveals the larger figure of a woman.