Month: December 2005
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Begin Again: Collected Poems by Grace PaleyFarrar Straus Giroux, 2000
I already knew I loved Grace Paley’s short stories, and it turns out that I love her poems, too. I love her city-poems, about streets I recognize, like “An Arboreal Mystery” (which begins with the lines “On Jane Street in October/I saw three gingko trees”) and “20th Street Spring” (about the seminary way out on…
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Fear of Subways by Maureen SeatonThe Eighth Mountain Press, 1991
Sometimes this book seemed dated: not just because New York in 1991 was a different place from New York in 2000, in 2005, but maybe also because’s of Seaton’s particular politics and experiences, her life and her anger and the shit she had to deal with on a daily basis because of who she loved,…
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Dizzy by Cathy CassidyViking, 2004
It’s Dizzy’s twelfth birthday, and her “New Age traveler” mom, who left when Dizzy was four, suddenly appears in her life again, with plans to take Dizzy on the festival circuit for the summer. To the reader, it’s clear very early on that Dizzy’s mom, Storm, is bad news: she’s flighty and selfish and dishonest,…
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Birdland by Tracy MackScholastic, 2003
Jed, an 8th grader, is dealing with the aftermath of his older brother’s death: his dad has renounced Judaism and thrown himself into work; his mom’s on leave from her job, but isn’t very present as a parent. Jed, meanwhile, is having a hard time speaking. When his English teacher tells the class to document…
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Dailies & Rushes by Susan Kinsolving
The first poem was perhaps my favorite: a child asks for a magnifying glass when she means to ask for a microscope. Also pleasing: “My Late Father’s Junk Mail.” Elsewhere, slightly less interest: Kinsolving does interesting things with form, with rhyme and half-rhyme, but nothing really grips.
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Valentine Place by David LehmanScribner Paperback Poetry, 1996
Some of these poems (all about men & women) struck me as too obscure: not pleasant to try to unpack, more like hitting a wall. I do enjoy Lehman’s tone, though, his line-breaks and ends of sentences, but I like it more in other books, not this one.
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Decreation by Anne CarsonBorzoi Books (A.A. Knopf), 2005
I read this book last month, quickly, and loved it, though I didn’t yet have anything to say about it. So I took a break, read some lighter things, and then picked it up again. On a second reading, familiar with the arguments and names and allusions, I was more able to grin at Carson’s…
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What Erika Wants by Bruce ClementsFarrar, Strous and Giroux, 2005
This is a well-written and engrossing story of a fourteen-year-old girl whose divorced parents are in the midst of a custody battle. Erika’s been living with her dad, but her pushy mom wants this to change: when the book opens, Erika parrots hollow phrases from her mother, like, “a girl should be home with her…
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Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam SelvaduraiTundra Books, 2005
At first, this book seemed too slow, too flat, but after a few chapters, I was entranced. Selvadurai’s descriptions of Sri Lanka, its streets and architecture and its climate, its trees and birds and foods, are precise and vivid, and then there’s also the sense of history, both personal history and the colonial legacy of…