The Water Dance by Ta-Nehisi Coates

very slow beginning but gave it the benefit of my the doubt, because I enjoyed Coates non-fiction books so much.

But ultimately, closed the books after getting not even halfway through. He writes beautifully and grandly, but core elements of fiction -- distinctive characters, a compelling plot line -- are missing.

Coates seems to assume we are familiar with all of the usual stuff of slave narratives, and that he doesn't have to re-hash that. But the mystery at the core of the book -- what magical powers the narrator possess -- had still not been clear to me by page 150, and I have up trying to care.

Success by Martin Amis

One of my favorites of his, along with MONEY and EXPERIENCE. A little less excited after re-reading, though. His style remains breathless and brilliant and over the top. Much to love. But the incest and sex stuff is borderline icky.

Milkman by Anna Burns

Got through 150 pages, and thought it rather brilliant, if taxing. She reminds me of Beckett, but that, in the end, was what did me in.  Too hard.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Finally reading this, at age 58. My brother is incredulous that I did not read it in high school, as he thought everyone did. An incredible book. How can a 16 year old be expected to get anything out of it though?

Literally couldn't put it down, and it went fast.  Some of the "interlude" chapters are not as compelling, but the whole narrative has an intense pacing and compression, covering as it does a matter of weeks or perhaps a couple months. Deaths, desertions, still births.

Tom stood looking in. Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the back- ground, The dress came down to her ankles, and her strong. broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her or it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone. (chapter 8)

They sat and looked at it and burned it into their memories. How’ll it be not to know what land’s outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and know-and know the willow tree's not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can’t. The willow tree is you. The pain on that mattress there-that dreadful pain-that’s you. (chapter 9)

The houses were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractorand the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the bam there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay* and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the length of fiber in the cotton Is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land. (chapter 11)

Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses; for a change of tone, a variation of rhythm may mean— a week here? That rattle— that’s tappets. Don’t hurt a 1 bit. Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as the car moves along— can’t hear that— just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn’t getting someplace. Maybe a bearing’s startin’ to go. Jesus, if it’s a bearing, what’ll we do? Money’s goin’ fast. (chapter 12)

And always, if he had a little money, a man could get drunk. The hard edges gone, and the warmth. Then there was no loneliness, for a man could people his brain with friends, and he could find his enemies and destroy them. Sitting in a ditch, the earth grew soft under him. Failures dulled and the future was no threat. And hunger did not skulk about, but the world was soft and easy, and a man could reach the place he started for. The stars came down wonderfully close and the sky was soft. Death was a friend, and sleep was death’s brother. The old times came back— a girl with pretty feet, who danced one time at home— a horse— a long time ago. A horse and a saddle. And the leather was carved. When was that? Oughta to find a girl to talk to. That’s nice. Might lay with her, too. But warm here. And the stars down so close, and sadness and pleasure so close together, really the same thing. Like to stay drunk all the time. Who says it’s bad? Who dares to say it’s bad? Preachers— but they got their own kinda drunkenness. Thin, barren women, but they’re too miserable to know. Reformers— but they don’t bite deep enough into living to know. No— the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything’s holy— everything, even me.

(chapter 23)

the final haunting image, of Rose of Sharon who'd just lost her stillborn baby, breast-feeding the dying man in the blackened barn, with a smile on her face (chapter 30)

Chances Are... by Richard Russo

I'm a big fan of Russo, but this one was unsatisfying. For a thick book, it's awful thin.  Russo's characteristic irony and humor lack power. The plots twists in the second half are unsatisfying. The 1960s and early 1970s American culture is not really fleshed out. The three main males characters-- Teddy, Micky and Lincoln -- are thinly done, particularly Teddy. Jacy, their common love interest, isn't vivid to me. The real estate plot line-- part Howards End and part Richard Ford-- is also thin.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

underwhelming at first, but slowly gathers steam.  felt a little more researched (obviously) than The Underground Railroad.  In the end, though, it satisfies, through a neat and appropriate narrative trick of point of view.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam

Astonishing book. What starts out as one side of a correspondence between two former neighbors becomes a deeply lyrical, desperate attempt by the narrator to puzzle through and retain her sanity. One forgets very quickly that one is reading letters, and instead enters a vividly recalled and cast memoir of a troubled life and marriage and mind.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

Friday Black, Stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Cool.  The story "The Era" could be by George Saunders himself. "lark Street" even more so, and alarmingly like a story I've started about a sensate fetus attaching itself to a family, albeit a fetus from outer space.

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

Pretty great, if thickly laid on in spots, THE PORPOISE re-imagines the different historical versions of the Antiochus/Pericles myth, centering on a family broken apart by a mother's dead, a father's violent abuse of their daughter, and the daughter attempts to flee her fate.  Throw in an adventurous young man who attempts to save her, and you've got plots and settings for days.

Haddon is ambitious and writes beautifully, so that many times I didn't know where I was, or which version of the myth I was in, and it mostly didn't matter.

The Shakespeare chapter, though stunningly rendered, seems a bit out of place, relating as it does the story of Shakespeare and his dissolute Pericles co-author, the pimp and playwright George Wilkins, reuniting after their deaths for a boat trip to nowhere.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Really admired this book, a slow cooker about a boy and girl who become friends in high school and stay friends until the end of university, with the relationship deepening, fading, re-appearing, and evolving often along the way. Rooney's two main characters think and speak in an emotionally complex manner the whole way.  At first, I doubted the probability that teenagers could even come across that way, mentally or verbally, but she convinces me by the end of the book.

Good Behavior by Molly Keane

Inland by Tea Obreht

Great book.  Arizona territory in 1893.  A conflicted women awaits the return of her travelling husband and two of her teen aged songs, while watching over her senile mother in law, her younger son and an addled/visionary working girl.

Sort of Cormac McCarthy crossed with some Lonesome Dove-era Larry McMurtry.

The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney

Sort of Gone Girl meets Machines Like Me, but less well-written than either. Intriguing plot though.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Another powerhouse book.  Morrison's razor-sharp prose, drawing poetic strength from pitch-perfect dialogue, is a moral density the likes of which I've never witnessed before.  Truly a giant of American literature in the past fifty years -- possibly THE giant. Giantess, even.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

There is no bottom to this book, which I first read as a junior in high school and just re-read to mark Toni Morrison's passing. What the reader suspects (as a high school junior) to be the symbols and archetypes of the novel stay firmly grounded as people, places, things happening in a world where the miraculous and the fantastic breed with the real flesh and agony.

He became a plain on which, like the other cowboys and Indians in the movies, she and her husband fought. Each one befuddled by the values of the other. Each one convinced of his own purity and outraged by the idiocy he saw in the other.She was the Indian, of course, and lost her land, her customs, her integrity to the cowboy and became a spread-eagled footstool resigned to her fate and holding fast to tiny irrelevant defiances.

Guitar on FDR and white people: "What I’m saying is, under certain conditions they would all do it. And under the same circumstances we would not. So it doesn’t matter that some of them haven’t done it. I listen. I read. And now I know that they know it too. They know they are unnatural. Their writers and artists have been saying it for years. Telling them they are unnatural, telling them they are depraved. They call it tragedy. In the movies they call it adventure. It’s just depravity that they try to make glorious, natural. But it ain’t. The disease they have is in their blood, in the structure of their chromosomes."

People behaved much better, were more polite, more understanding when Milkman was drunk. The alcohol didn’t change him at all, but it had a tremendous impact on whomever he saw while he was under its influence. They looked better, never spoke above a whisper, and when they touched him, even to throw him out of the house party because he had peed in the kitchen sink, or when they picked his pockets as he dozed on a bench at the bus station, they were gentle, loving.

Apparently he thought he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be . . . what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.

Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee

vivid and psychologically compelling.  but bone-dry and humorless.

Up Against It: A Screenplay for the Beatles by Joe Orton

Just saw A HARD DAY'S NIGHT again so was thinking of this fateful final creation of Joe Orton's. Sort of silly really, but I still like it, as I do all things Orton.

"Do Nothing Marvell Would Not Do": Remembering Professor Mary Kinzie

[In May of 2019, I was thrilled when my friend and Northwestern University Department of English Senior Lecturer Brian Bouldrey contacted me to ask if I would write a short memoir about studying poetry with Professor Mary Kinzie, who would retire that month.]

In 1980, almost 40 years ago, I studied with Mary Kinzie for two short years. But her effect on my life and my writing has been astounding, though: she asked the right questions of me, and challenged me, and pointed me toward many poems and poets who have been right here with me almost every day since then.

When we read Elizabeth Bishop, I transcribed inside the cover of my The Complete Poems Mary’s suggestions for what to keep in mind: Note her use of the conjunction “and”;  how she immediately establishes a visible landscape and is extremely descriptive, but how her outrageous images are meant to help readers, not to show off; how she absolutely finishes a thought; her “refusal of the literary”; how she uses repetition to glue herself to an idea; her childishness, her self-correcting style, her good manners.

The seeds she planted in me grew up – she might be appalled at how the plant has tilted, and some of the colors and shapes it has taken on – but I consider her the monumental mover of my mind during my undergraduate years.

I was attracted to form but at 19 years old was a firm communicant in the Church of the Romantic Ejaculate – my writing was holy, and the poem as first-struck was a sacred relic and to be preserved as such. Mary taught me how form flexed but must be cared for; to revise with intent; to change what the draft poem was not, in most cases, in my eager and largely dreadful work; to finish a thought or moment or abandon it; to be deadly efficient and finely honest.

She was stern and brilliant and methodical, but also had a pungent, memorable wit, particularly in her written comments: I remember from her daily poems assignment list for three Marvellian-tetrameter stanzas: “Formally, do nothing Marvell would not do.” “The danger of alliteration, according to Gross, is ‘consonantal clang.’” Her note on my Auden imitation was, “You’ll have to have a clearer plot (i.e., mythology) and an array of details more telling (and more easy to stick into an iambic pentameter line) than a DISHWASHER.”

But she taught me to expect more of myself, as she always did: she noted on my journal entry on a Yeats poem, “You should be cross with yourself over this irrelevant entry.” 

I determined to do everything she said to do, even if I couldn’t understand very much of it. It was like learning a tricky piano piece: you just kept going through it again and again, and note by chord by bar, it improved, and your hands warmed to the pleasure of your ears hearing the code in front of you begin approach the sound you wanted.

After I left Northwestern, I continued to pay attention to Mary: via her volumes of poetry, her reviews in APR, and eventually in her collected criticism and essays, her epic A Poet’s Guide to Poetry. In the back of Summers of Vietnam I scrawled the words I had never heard before: tarn, fardels, chitin, faience, morrices, tmesis, clerestory, colfox, cok brake, calor, ghostwheat. She refused to stop teaching me, from a distance.

I watched her own formalism retreat over time, but the poems expand and astonish me with their emotional and narrative effect. “Reading an Old Poem of Mine” and “Lunar Eclipse”– I almost memorized them. Again, it was mostly beyond me, but I kept writing, thinking, reading:

I tear back all I know till I don't know it,

and I can see the jagged

flicker at the core

prior to understanding,

tearing thought down into pieces

that sit about oddly under a different light,

strange, hard, anonymous.

(from “Lunar Frost” by Mary Kinzie)

At the same time, I partly blame Mary’s rigor for driving me away from anything to do with academic study. My lazy soul took ten years to go back and get my MFA. During that time, something loosened in me, in reaction to Mary’s exercises: my mind was suddenly brimming with unassigned poems. But even as I started drifting from formal verse, something had also tightened: there was always a formidable ghost of form.

And my very first published poem in 1988 was a revision of a daily poem syllabics assignment– in 1981 Mary had noted, “This is close to being a perfectly realized poem.” She wanted more in the middle of the poem and a new title – it took me eight years to add two lines and change the title. True to me, it’s about a lazy soul, but true to Mary, it’s well-wrought.

Progressions

Outside the window it is evening.

Since morning I’ve watched the shadows change

From pointing this way to pointing that,

Combing the tall lime grass of the lawn.

It now glows dark olive, still uncut.

I’ve planned all day long what I would do

All day long, so haven’t done a thing.

The temptation to move slides further

Away even as I reach for it.

Perhaps today was not meant for acts

But for the gradual notation

Of shadows that will never return—

Not exactly, at least, as before.

New Age Magazine was pleased to have it, and I hoped they moved plenty o’ vitamins and healing stones as a result. They’d never know how hard it was to write – and how much of what Mary Kinzie taught me in class still clanged clear across the years since I’d seen her. And continues to. Thank you, Mary! And enjoy your redeployment.