Essays

Best American sports writing 2012
Best American Travel writing
Best American essays

GEOFFREY BENT. Edward Hopper and the Geometry of Despair 
To put forward a thesis on a painter with a new understanding of his work opposing the prevelant theories. Such a bold step is seen in BENJAMIN ANASTAS. The Foul Reign of “Self-Reliance” 

DUDLEY CLENDINEN. The Good Short Life 
Graceful life with ALS

PAUL COLLINS. Vanishing Act 
Does the society owe an artist a living as a child or an adult?




Bestamerican cience and nature writing

Mothers

Title: This I Believe On Motherhood

Edited by Dan Gediman, John Gregory and Mary Jo Gediman

Grabbing the baton reminded me of my special moment of my daughters birth. The author has maintained the gravity of that moment, when she began holding the baby even though she wasnt the biological mother.

Rituals passed on from mothers to daughters and forth.

Do the right thing at the right time. A similar advice I gleaned from my relatives and parents who are working all the time. 

All trees are not the same

Title: A Sanctuary of Trees

Author: Gene Lodgson

Have you ever wondered about the wood used in utility poles? Strengths and weaknesses of trees. Then this book is for you.

From his childhood, the author the author has lived in woodlands. He has amassed immense knowledge about trees, their worth in BTU, how best to cut them, how to get the most out of an acre with planting well chosen species, the prevailing myths about dangers of trees like sassafras, how to gain fuel independence by maintaining your own woodland and replenishing before cutting, sustainable forest farming.

If the main subject wasnt trees, you could mistake it for math with all the acreage and BTU information and calculations. You will learn another meaning of cord.

Inspiring at times

Title: Good prose The Art of Nonfiction

I have read `Among Schoolchildren' by Tracy Kidder a couple of years ago and passed on the book to a teacher. For that reason and The art of Nonfiction, I read this book.
The example of Nabokov's chronophobe for a writing that is simple but is of complex things. The book has some very strong examples of the points being explained.
`Narratives' chapter with the choice of first person, third person lost me. But when the authors talk of structure, the example of a complex double telling of a story brings across how the actual writing/telling of a story can influence or lead to a particular way of telling and retelling.
In the `memoirs' chapter, the readers are left puzzled how Tim O Brien of `The things they carried' felt that he told the story better in his fictional book than the non fictional one. One of those' truth is stranger than fiction' revelations where `fact seems simply insufficient'. Pacifique's need of writing down horrible past so he can less haunted is heart touching.
`Essays' chapter refers to work outside the book that I still need to look at.
Style chapter seemed like a grammar book and the advice of avoiding cliché is pedantic.
Editing as done between the writer and editor in the author duo is an insight into the editing process and the publishing world.

Portrait of the essay as a warm body
Jenny Boully - the Body essay
reference to 'Castro's beard' essay

3 and 1/2

Crushing cancer

Its always interesting to read about the lives of people who have

passion for what they do. It is a nice dream come true, when you always walk home 'the winner'.Imagine, such a reverie being broken with something like a cancer.

Lance Armstrong proved himself to be a real brave sports person, by staging a comeback fighting such an illness with all the courage it took.

This book will be very inspiring to all the people, who cannot imagine life after a major setback.

Aug 25, 2005

Creative writing blogs
Ways to boost creativity
Top writing tips funny animal stories by Jeanne Willis
The-last-poem-i-loved-she-had-some-horses-by-joy-harjo/
Essay on 2012 Essays
Make yourself marketable
Top blogs for writers
Prune fingers on being wet for long
Slinky
Why book review

QR code and art

QR-Code-Artworks: Martin R. Becker - 2011/12 (German Edition)

If you read magazines a lot, you might have seen the QR Code in the advertisements.  A recent CBS news clip was about art in the zoomed in codes.

What tests a flashlight has to go through

ANSI- FL1 flashlight standards explained

The flash light has a flexibility for near or close spaces. It is light weight with a great intensity of light than I would expect from a torch. Only goes to show how like knives, torches too have gotten Swiss with all the optics and technology. It comes with a case for its safe keep that can be strapped onto loops for easy reach.

Stilty

You Are Special (Max Lucado's Wemmicks)

I come across so many unheard of children stories like The Phantom Toll Booth, that I stash away as a list to read them some time as my daughter grows. Today I cam across a book with wooden characters called 'Wemmicks' which is the kind of name that catches your attention, that you try to remember for later reference and forget. I was introduced to the concept of stars where kids place the stickers on the things they like in a TV commercial. And taking that a little further is to put 'dots' for the things you dont like. Then I started looking at other books. Its not like other children books where its ok even if you dont know what happened next. The tension between the stars and dots, between the donts and dos, haves and have nots builds up. This one has the allure and the mystery of a story with a message that most kids need growing up.

Far to near

Big Five game. In Swades movie, the heroine, a teacher asks about the five big rivers in India.
Yales's museum returning antiques

Travel faux pas - They are committed not only when you are in a foreign country. Even when you are interacting with people of a different class. As an intern, I once traveled in the back of a boss's boss's car while he was driving.
This magazine has advertisement labeled on top of the page to avoid glossy pictures to be mistaken for magazine's article.
Booker travels

National Geo six to summit

Six to summit is about Everest summit by Americans in 1960s. I saw the movie Everest 82 about Canadians summit.

In this magazine, there is an ad about a watch that does updates date on the watch automatically. My sister asked me how is it done? I told her like a digital engineer, when the clock reaches 12 condition is true then the date is changed. But the actual how is here. While reading about this, I am taken back to the days when my parents would say the thorn (hand) is wrong and go about winding it to right. And now I learn that the watches used to rely on the motion of the wearer for heir function and if it hasnt been on the person for too long or the person hasnt moved then the watch does not show correct time. Loosely, we can say that a watch then was like a pedometer, that would not tell you how many but enough steps have been taken. From wiki, I learn the big deal about Seiko and a way to fashion a compass with a watch and a shadow.

Knorr soup that we know in India, is a German Company.

Essay poem

Author: Amy Leach

Her prose is like poetry. Prose poem

At once non-fiction, another time with anthromorphization of strong willed salmons to brides and grooms working against the river to reach the altar, the author adds stories to strife. Her subjects - beavers, Fainting goat with their abilities add to the charm of her writing.
Salmon as Old salt.

Authors interview and more work
A review

Best Books of 2012

Everybody has a list. Last year my friend told me that Bill Gates reads a lot too and he has a years best list.
Here's mine

2012
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
My Dyslexia - Phillip Schultz
The blue bird effect - Julie Zickefoose
Planet of Viruses - Carl Zimmer
The man who changed the way we eat - Thomas McNamee
Yes Chef - Marcus Samuelsson
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake - Anna Quindlen

Mention for Ideas
Extra Virginity - Tom Mueller
The toaster project - Thomas Twaite
How Eskmos keep their babies warm - Mei-Ling  HopGood

Poetry
The animals - a pastoral Richard Grossman


2011
The Anti-Romantic Child - Priscilla Gilman

2010
Muffins and Mayhem - Suzanne Beecher

Article

This article A brief history of wrapping paper, could have begun with the stalwart Hallmark's of greeting card fame. (Hallmark). But it ended with it. Usually we go after the inventors, but in this case, the product with its sole purpose of glitz is the cynosure.
exercise: Leave aside the person, focus on the thing, let it tell its tale independent of the inventor. Let Galatea tell her story. For example, To what Miserable wretches have I been born?


Zadie smith on joy. This article can help maintain a log of your personal experiences by mood.

Next year's read

Authors site

When the author writes of the kinds of people and questions he faces on his floor in the library, they make for funny incidents. This is how the chapters begin and then he brings in his personal life. The way the author has deal with his Tourette's by weight training is amazing.
In the end during a  competition he recalls how like Joe of Touching the Void , he is on his own. Wow, that story was just revisited by Sarah wheeler in access all areas.

National Geographic, 1969, Vol 136, Issue 6 of Moon landing

 Looking at the articles of Hassleblad (camera used for the moon - $22500 cameras. I am curious about how companies are after they are talked about in magazines. Also clears up if they are real), General dynamics ocean station, its har to tell that they are not the NG magazine articles and are advertisements.
Berlitz Language Schools - You are going to Haiti to learn french.
Jai Alai - What language is it? Its a game.
Zenith hearing aids
USF & G uses 'People, place and things' in their ad as all they insure. But really  Name place animal things game that we play as children seems like a budding travelers symptoms.

To turn a procedure into a fissile poem

Be scannable might be a good advice for a prose writer. But if the reader of your poetry is jumping a para, theres not much left to scan.

Woman mined. begins with a commonplace

snap you with an ultraviolet camera,
show you what you've done to your skin just
by living.....

Carolyn Creedon has jumped from a quotidian scene in a specific setting, a cosmetic department , from the material to the emotional space of a life time.

Exercise: Take a procedure done at any place that offers service - doctors, hair salon (or car wash) and see if you can hop onto the next circle post leading to the altar at the center of the lake.

Another exercise: Create out of tornado of fish.

Reigning nonfiction

Author: Lee Gutkind

Three rs of narrative nonfiction. An article by the author using the example of Rebecca Skloot's Henrietta Lacks story.


Creative nonfiction playing by the rules. Give the nonficion writers a break or name a new category. Sounds like there is a need for rule book.

Be scannable. Never thought I would find that as an advice to a writer.

Galvanize

An article
Leyden jar
Luigi Galvani

At home travelling

Andrew McCarthy
Lenga tree
El Calafate glaciers

At the end of prologue when the author is relieved that his wife is not freaked out having just missed a flight after a jangling ride in a foreign country brings two points to light. One, that travel is important to him. Two, that his partner knows this.
Our author is a blur traveler. He is back from one place and already onto another trip before the family can get to grips with it. His partner to be wife ghost travels with him. The reader can sense the guilt in the solo trips.
The author is mostly comfortable with loneliness. His patience for others is checked in a boat trip on the Amazon. There is a scene described, where a girl has an infected tongue hanging out. It couldnt have been in the book without a happy ending. Just when I was ready to chuck the book, there are references to further action on that matter.
The author shows an interest in the history of the places he visits. Goldpanning in Osa Peninsula, he meets people who have settled down in a place where they went on travel.
The Kilimanjaro hike is funny to read with the oximeter being passed around, like an elimination round on 'The Chopped'. The guide says that the most difficult ones are honeymooners and that too men as they are busy taking care of the women and forget about taking care of themsselves. A nurse in the delivery room said similar things and asked my husband to eat so he doesnt pass out when the baby is ready for the world.
All through the book, his wedding is planned which happens in the end in Dublin.

I have seen the movie Mannequin a long time ago. An the sculpted lady is Kim C. Wow.

Authors travel writing
Ever since I read of Kilimanjaro trip, I set my exercise to 'Kilimanjaro' profile on LifeFitness.

Easy book to carry along

Read twice

Debora Greger

The cover seems very familiar. Chairs. The women in them are focused on are they turn their back and focus into the inner world. 

I have never read poetry of Florida so much. 

Feeling cold is not something we ever go for. But the poets lines urge you to divest the objects of their agreed symbols and utility and build new ones in the process of comprehension.
With Tomas Transtromer (can I refer to him as Transformer) as inspiration, I can see where she gets her obscurity in her poems from. 

The reader cone

I didnt think I would read much of this book from the LARB review. How do reviews manage to accomplish distancing the readers instead of getting them into the reader cone. (A review like this comes from the other end of what the book could have been). But once into it, I like the book's development as it goes through reading and women in history.

Silent reading. As kids there was a stage where we had to graduate from reading aloud to silent reading. It is interesting to know that at some point most reading was done aloud in a room. 

The introductory point where the book had me was about the myth of Philomela were weaving was used as a communication tool to point to the times when education for women was not prevalent.

the book lists the service of many women towards paving the path for other women to learn. By digging up history it breaks the common held knowledge of the lack of educated/powerful women in Arab countries. The book is geared towards women in the west and Europe. There are a few references to the east. I kept thinking about how was it in India.

A slate article

A review

Author interview

Walk 'into' mountain

(Poetry exercise)
1. In Hardy's novels, stretches of path can carry memories of a person, just as a person might of a path.
2. how we are scattered, as well as affirmed, by the places through which we move.
3. He(Edward Thomas? or Hardy) imagined himself in topographical terms. corners, junctions, stiles....
4.For paths run through people as surely as they run through places.
5.what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself.

Machair
William Fox essay - cognitive issonance in isotropic place
NYT review
An example of what William Fox says
Hachure map
Miniature lake of mercury in Chinese king tomb

Syntax virus

What is a syntax virus? In the notes the author says that it is an exact grammatical replica of another poets poem, injected with her words.

Area 25  poem is about a part of brain called area 25 that can help relieve depression for some.  Not until this poem id the book start for me. up until this the list in the poems seemed like
chubby cheeks
dimple chin....
syntax virus of Sylvia plath's You're seemed like that rhyme. The poet does love rhyme's, what with 'the countin sing no 5'. At least 'one two buckle my shoe' reaches the end faster.
In Paradise-Un, not in this book, the poet shows her talent, her ability to be inspired and sustain the journey of that projectile.
Area 25, Still murmur, Riddle in the vein of poems on body.
Playing with words in Self-medication (This article will lead you to raw poetry exercise.)
But it must be with the experimental angle that the poet delivers simple, elegant The Darker sooner

A fan
Review of poets previous book

Adam Zagajewski

Life as a board game

Dots and Boxes is a game like tic tac toe. How does love compare in your life to the claiming of lines that can be connected and the concomitant boxes that can be claimed.

Apophasis at the All Night Rite aid and other poems.

In the Apophasis poem, the poet 'not wanting to be alone' is shown the door to the moon.

Litany by Billy Collins that begins with an exact pin pointing of what 'you' are goes into an apophatic phase with what you are not.

A Brief poetics of the Hinge, an article by the poet Catherine Barnett is her search for hinge in poetry, where there is both movement and restriction like that offered by a tether. In Providence,

some of the best sermons

dont have endings, he said

comes to my mind as an example of the restriction and release. (A poetry exercise, map the dynamics of your poem to a physical object and vice-versa)

chorus is the title of many poems in this book. One thing the title helps with is the conectedness and the identification of the literal chorus for/of many voices. But with so many under that tag, readers will have to remember the first line of the poem for its ID. Couldnt these poems be put into one section with 'Chorus' subheaing and look for any other interesting internal theme.

Agape  is for word lovers, not the ones who like them by sounds but for those who like them for their meanings sometimes only and sometimes many.

Coming to the style of the poems, with so few lines and words, the reader is forced to think what the poet intended instead of just bagging nice phrases as low hung fruit and proceeding to the next poem. Having hooked the reader into the gap of the poem, there is no choice but to fill our thoughts after the question in Inventory, ii

Really, what chance do any of us have 

for moments of bliss?

But proceeding on without waiting for us to come up with suggestions, she  dismisses them.

Inventory

In Old story, The clock doesnt have an amygdala. With no Amygdale, there is no sympathy. As in the warning time and tide wait for none.  Whats natural than time and waves, but the measuring of them makes them so inorganic. In 'to speak of other things' gardens speak in a way reminiscent of the serpent eating its tail. Styrofoam in 'Scavenger hunt' shows an imbalance of  biodegradable activity and chemical nonbiodegradable inactivity.

A review

Open Verse

Printers Devil Review is looking for essays on Charles Olson  Projective verse

The essay itself starts with an assumption that we want verse to go ahead and stay of use. the essay is supposed to end with 'Objectism' reducing the writer of the verse to an object. Let us see if verse can have meaning without the relevance of the life of the breather. Can verse 'put into itself certain laws and possibilities of the breath , of the breathing of the man...'.

When we talk of energy discharge from poet to poem to reader it seems like a uniform thing. But there are peaks to it. How do we transfer that?

Related article by Fred Wah

Walking like a fox. Slowing down to natures pace.

Saving birds

Guinea pigs are the experimented. But so are pigs. Earlier explorers left pigs on uninhabited islands to see how well they fared before trying to inhabit it themselves. 

Rhinos

I had to pick this book for 2 reasons

1. Rick Bass

2. The book before it was about White rhinoceros

The tales beneath the board

Authors site

An article
The first part is about the incident that changed the author's life like Bethany Hamilton's.
The later part of the book talks about the acute senses of Great white shark. They dont do well in captivity.