tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85623306244328665612023-11-15T22:52:31.542-08:00Common Good Books<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.comBlogger266125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-2438240191912754402013-07-05T18:32:00.001-07:002013-07-05T18:32:49.755-07:00We've Moved! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That's right! The entire male staff, plus Shoshana, has moved! Enjoy Common Good Books' slicked back new blog at <a href="http://commongoodbooks.tumblr.com/">commongoodbooks.tumblr.com</a>. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-19320707258698457852013-06-19T14:36:00.002-07:002013-06-19T14:37:03.795-07:00Common Good "Amateur" Love Poems <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's hard to say what it is about poetry that invites amateurs to the plate. Outside of a contest, I mean. Most people, for instance, don't assume they're fit to fly a plane or run 23 miles, without practice. Then again, most people wouldn't think to compare poetry and aviation. For one thing, the odds of dying on a plane are less than one in a million, while those of dying a little each day one spends on poetry's as sure as rain in April, as they say. It's become something of a right of passage, limning lines of verse to those you love or, at least, smelled once at some point in junior high and--if fate has vehemently saved for you a life of romantic incredulity--even up through college; a kind of youth-fueled task on par with playing catch or learning how to build a fire. You don't have to be an expert, in other words, just be able to look up around the fire someone else knew how to start and confidently roll your eyes when asked if you can believe "that game" the other night. You can and you can't. I mean, how hard is it to catch a pop-up in left field? That all depends, you think, on where left field is. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The odd thing, though, apart from the fact that a man could watch his only son kick a baseball in the grass in order not to have to throw it, call it good and move on then to shaving, is that poetry, unlike the major leagues, maintains an air of apprenticeship; holds dear its naivete, if not the damn ball. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Everyone's a poet!"</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Not a motto, quite. At least not until it becomes socially acceptable to shout "Thank God It's Recycling Day!" up and down the halls of one's workplace.</span> I couldn't say who coined the phrase, not jovially, in any case (</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">one can hear Plato lamenting an afflictive rise of poets and distortedly asperse that "everyone's a poet," like sad Eeyore, glancing sideways at his house made out of sticks, before knocking back another shot of ouzo), but everyone from Patricia Smith, who </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">in the recently released <i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781934414958" target="_blank">Passwords Primeval: 20 American Poets in their Own Words</a></i> </span>says, "Writing is our second throat. The only difference between someone who doesn't write and me is something in my life caused that throat to click open," to your average 3rd grade arts crawl organizer seems </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">drawn to the idea, if not the reality.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Until recently, I fell into the camp of those who... how can I put this... sort of doubt that "everyone's" a poet. Children five and under, sure. You get to be "poets," and eat free on Monday nights at participating family restaurants. But I am, or was, afraid that anyone capable of holding pen to paper and, at the very least, acknowledging that, just because you <i>can</i> rhyme love with dove and heart with lark, doesn't mean you should, isn't too free to compare themselves to Plath just for delineating journal entries into anapestic trimeter. So then we announce this contest, to which the prefix "amateur" was, I thought, pretty clearly appended, and what happens? People, normal people; people you might well mistake for teachers, students, bloodline relatives, etc., start sending us these works of art. Unpublished works of art, perhaps, but artworks nonetheless. And anyway, long story short, 12 poems were selected, hung from banners like declarations of previous hockey championships, and read before a wildly attentive audience. And now they're up <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/common-good-amateur-love-poems" target="_blank">online</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The poet is an imitator," Plato said. Well, actually, he said "the tragic poet is an imitator," but why kick a dead horse/state the obvious? The truth is we're all imitators. Framing selves on facebook, professing love or, worse, disgust, on cell-phones for the benefit of passers by, and all the while pretending not or fatally missing one's chance to care. Poets may be lots of things--lazy, broke, covered in hair--but few are truly apathetic. "Amateur" at least connotes an interest or attempt; an unfrenetic answer to the already confusing call for audience engagement, tempered by a dash of reverence like a whiskey watered down with Coke. Deference and humility should speak to us of courage, not its opposite. Even Junot Diaz said ambivalence, not confidence, is what startles his work to life; the challenge of the void most writers face each time they write, leaving brainless bravado on the field, where it almost certainly belongs. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-12069606779570984772013-06-02T15:15:00.000-07:002013-06-02T15:32:45.643-07:00Common Questions for Helene Wecker <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Helene Wecker talks to Colin about writing like a golem and finding truth in fiction</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>At the beginning of our conversation, Helene and I discovered that we both grew up in the fictional-sounding small town of Libertyville, IL. I asked Helene if she recalled the candy store, Some Other Nuts, where as a child I was regularly chastised for buying candy cigarettes and Helene, turns out, got her fill of jalapeno jellybeans. From there our conversation turned to similarities between people and creatures in her new novel, <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780062110831" target="_blank">The Golem and the Jinni</a>. Meet Helene in person on June 20th at 7:00 p.m. at Common Good Books.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>CGB: Both Chava and
Ahmad, after landing/being set free in Manhattan, have the good fortune of
quickly meeting humans concerned with their wellbeing, or at least their social
lives, as they’re instructed to behave like members of society instead of
mystical creatures. What proved more challenging: imagining the behavior of a
jinni or a golem, or a typical New Yorker? </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">HW: (Laughs) I think
it was more challenging to create the golem and the jinni because they had to
be that mix of outlandish fantastical <i>and</i>
typical New Yorker. In their bewilderment they are slightly typical New
Yorkers. Certainly as they’re starting out and slowly learning the ways of the
city. It’s funny you say that because I’m thinking now about when I moved to
New York, and that first two or three months of just learning how the crowds
flow, what platform you need to be on in the subway. You could always identify
the tourists by the way they were walking, their speed, how they went through a
turnstyle. I went back to New York a couple months ago and I was smiling at people,
and people were looking at me like <i>Why
are you smiling at me?</i> I’ve got that sort of suburban <i>Hi, how are you?</i> thing, and everyone else is like <i>Who the hell are you?</i> But to get back to
your question, I think it was harder to
create the golem and the jinni because there were so many elements that went
into them, and having to square them with their surroundings and think about
what would be new to them. Not just new to them in terms of the city but not
knowing what people were like. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>What’s so interesting
about setting the novel in New York at its peak of immigration is that everyone,
to some extent's, an “other.” Chava and Ahmad, in fact, are fundamentally alike
in their otherness. What about the outsider attracts you as a starting point? </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’d always felt
slightly other growing up Jewish in a small town, which I realize is about as
“slightly” other as you can possibly get. But feeling </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">just</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> a little different. Also, growing up reading a lot of science
fiction and fantasy, and that making me the weird kid. But a lot of it was
connected to the similarities I saw between my family’s history and my
husband’s family’s history. We’re both the children of immigrants and
grandchildren of immigrants. It was a long time before I realized that not
everybody’s grandparents had accents. I thought grandparents had to have
accents, and so I would meet other kids’ grandparents who had come from the Midwest
and that really weirded me out. That off-kilter perspective on being American
with a history from somewhere else; that feeling like something else is the
normal and you’re one or two degrees off has always interested me. And looking
at our family histories and noticing the overlap of issues of language and
culture and all that “stranger in a strange land” sort of stuff--seeing that as
a commonality between the Jewish and Arab-American experiences in America
fascinated me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>How did that
idea or image of otherness change as you switched from the point of view of a
human to a golem? </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are
different takes on the experience of coming to America in the novel, different
psychological baggages. I think maybe it comes down to two different emotional
flavors I ended up seeing. One was coming to America with the forward looking
hope of making a new start, and the other being the bitter feeling of coming to
America and feeling like you’re escaping something or you’ve been pushed into
it. And different characters in the book fall at different places on these
spectra. Of course, it doesn’t mean they’re either one or the other but some
combination of both. There’s hope as well as grief in any immigrant experience.
For characters in the book like Saleh it’s a new beginning, but it’s a
beginning that he thinks is going to be a death he’s galloping toward. And in
as sort of bleak a method as possible, he wants to die. But he doesn’t want to
kill himself; he thinks America is going to do that for him. And then on the
other hand you have all the immigrants in the Hebrew sheltering house for whom
this is a new start. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>It’s interesting
to hear you relate your personal experience to the novel’s larger themes. When
I first picked up the book, I assumed it was a YA novel, based on its inclusion
of the supernatural. And yet, as it’s been said and shown, the people who are
actually reading YA books steeped in fantasy are not necessarily young adults.
Your life prior to writing the novel suggests a kind of ownership with the
material, but did you feel a certain freedom to explore the world this book
creates because of the success of late of books like <i>Twilight</i> and <i>The Hunger Games</i>?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I first
started the book, my very first vision was that it was a short story I was
going to write before getting back to what I was really working on. And then I
thought maybe it was a novella. And then there was a point where I thought
maybe it was a YA novel, because it was relatively short and I thought, <i>I’ll try to write for a younger audience.</i>
I had no idea what that meant back then—this was like seven years ago—and then
it became clear a month or two after I started that this was going to be a big
novel. And at that point I thought it probably wasn’t a YA book, partly because
I wasn’t very well read in YA at the time. And seven years ago… was <i>Twilight</i> even out then?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>If so, it wasn’t
<i>TWILIGHT</i>, yet. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was <i>Harry Potter</i>. And it didn’t feel like <i>Harry Potter</i> to me. And YA hadn’t
blossomed into the crazy huge movement that it is now. And I was writing in an
MFA setting at Columbia, which might have dictated in my mind what it was going
to turn into. But I always kept in mind that I wanted it to be something that
could be read down to a teenage level. Not a ton of sex, not a ton of, I don’t
know, deep darkness, although YA is so much deeper and darker than a lot of
fiction right now that I don’t know what that would have meant. This is the
sort of book I would have completely glommed onto when I was 15-16 years old,
and I wanted a teenager to be able to read it because that is such an awesome
reading age, when you can give yourself over to a book in a way that feels a
lot purer than when I read books now and think, <i>Well, that’s a very well written sentence!</i> But an <i>Oh my gosh, my soul is being pulled out
through my eyes!</i> sort of experience of reading a book. I’m hearing that
people are giving it to their nieces or nephews and that just thrills me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>As you say, it’s
a big book, in part, because it contains so much research about New York at the
turn of the century. How does having rather unlimited access to information
impose on or inspire your writing process? </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s funny, the
research killed a lot of good story ideas, but I think it generated just as
many. So it became a symbiotic process. For example, I made the golem and the
jinni so that they didn’t sleep, thinking that was a cool way for the golem, at
least, to explore the city. And then, I don’t remember where I read it, but through
some offhand reference I read that “Of course, women didn’t walk alone after
dark,” and I was like, <i>Oh my God, what am
I gonna have her do? She’s just gonna sit in her room all day! She’s gonna go
nuts! </i>And then I thought, <i>Wait, she’s
gonna sit in her room all day and go nuts… that’s gonna be awesome!</i> It
became the impetus for her and the jinni to go out walking together. And I
thought that maybe they would have a walking date once a week. And as soon as I
latched onto that set up the structure for the middle part of the novel and
their relationship was sort of organized around these weekly visits. So I would
get an idea and the research would either feed it or kill it, but in the
process I’d find something out that would contribute somewhere else. It’s
funny, I think about writing something contemporary now and I wonder where
would I get my ideas. Am I just gonna make stuff up? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>My last question
is a bit self-serving, but I’ve always thought of Libertyville as the perfect
title for a future Garrison Keillor novel. Say you were assigned to write a novel
in the Lake Wobegon series titled <i>Libertyville</i>.
Where might you go with that? </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What immediately
comes to mind is… remember Main Street in Libertyville, where Some Other Nuts
was? All of those businesses--and I don’t know how much of this is still true
because so much has changed, but certainly when I was growing up--they were family
businesses, and so many had been around for years, sitting on that street,
accruing history, and the families all knew each other, so I think it would be
a multi-generational, interlocking love/hate, revenge book, involving all the
families that owned stores on Main Street. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Oh, that’s
great. You could even have a conflict with the newer, corporate businesses. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yea, like everyone
hates the Honda dealership, because they have motorcycles going up and down the
street all day. You know something funny? I grew up in Libertyville, now I live
in Pleasanton.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>(Laughs) The
name Libertyville sounds made up. I’m always having to convince people I came
from somewhere. </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It does! I went
through Minneapolis, Seattle, New York and finally came full circle. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-43505440544011752832013-05-20T13:31:00.003-07:002013-05-26T12:34:58.249-07:00The Great Gatsby, Even Better<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The other day at </span><a href="http://www.andersonsbookshop.com/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Anderson's Bookshop</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, in Downers Grove, IL, I came across a t-shirt that said "Don't judge a book by its movie," just next to a shirt that said "My book club can drink you book club under the table." The first shirt made me laugh, the second made me smile and nod in recognition. "Damn straight," I thought. "Enough with the jokes."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ever since the ads for <i>The Great Gatsby </i>started showing up on TV and in magazines, it seems that readers too have had enough of their own inexperience. I can't say what accounts exactly for the change--the hit strewn, hip-hop soundtrack? Director Baz Lurhmann's first name?--but watching Leonardo DiCaprio buzz around in a Rolls-Royce, as if speeding off with any chance of making our own first impressions of Jay Gatsby's character, impelled in these last weeks a not surprising surge in sales of Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece. And yet, I'm still surprised. Or gladdened. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Reaching for a book packed tight inside the canon is hard work. What's the point, after all, if the book's contents are going to be projected at us in the form of images and poster art and references at parties made to dimly draw the line between the well reads and the Luddites in a matter of time, anyway? And yet, those who have saddled up or walked past our F. Scott Fitz display and asked to see <i>The Great Gatsby</i>, without a hint of sarcasm, insist the</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> movie less inspired them to finally read the book than, like some portent of a future separating nuts from bolts, rattled and reminded them how necessary words are in a scream of lights and sound effects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And so I saw the film. And not out of some masochistic impulse to inflict pain on myself, either! Nor a desire to back up my being right with specific examples, but, in truth, because I'd mixed up the release date of <i>Star Trek Into Darkness</i> with that of <i>Pain & Gain</i>. And without going into detail I'll just say some stories hit too close to home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now when I say "I saw the film" I mean insofar as possible. Today, for example, I "made lunch," by which I mean I opened up a jar of peanut butter and kept on dialing the number for Pizza Luce. I bought a ticket. I sat down. I sat through innumerable advertisements for <i>Coke</i>, The National Guard, <i>Superman Returns, Again</i>, and, as far as I could tell, some combination of all three, which seemed to suggest that if you drink <i>Coke</i> and join The National Guard you could win tickets to see <i>Superman</i>. And yet, I spent the movie formulating one of my personal all time best grocery lists ever. Including, but not limited to, bread and jam. Why? Because I could. As I said to my companion dressed regrettably as Spock, the film is a connect-the-dots of images and plot points, in the most sportive sense of that word; or, better yet, a kind of Mad Libs but with spaces where the parts of speech that help to form a sentence go, while words like "poop" and "dingle flap" lay visibly in wait to give our wackiest, most devastating readings of the novel shape. I didn't have to "read" or pay attention to the film to grasp its meaning, but check on it from time to time like something cooking in the oven... from what I understand. Instead, as if adding swaths of color to a paint by numbers, I filled in the pretty faces and car chases with the language of the novel, or at least my memory of it, that its sensations, and so its plot, depend on and spring from, as 3-D strings of beads and effervescent champagne pearls failed wildly to translate, or distract me from, words anyway. Or what I imagine was 3-D had I not arrived already wearing Lt. Geordi La Forge's visor. What, I wondered, would anyone who hadn't read the book make of such placeholders, which on their own resembled a kaleidoscopic disarray of images devoid of sense, let alone substance. Perhaps Baz Lurhman's vision was in bringing not the words but world of <i>The Great Gatsby</i> to life, in all of its material splendor. And come to think of it I suppose that's the point of any film, no less a summer blockbuster. Which still doesn't make sense of why a story whose eponymous protagonist throws all his weight in fashioning a narrative from life would prompt a writer or director to regard merely its surface. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lest you think I'm suggesting that movies and books are incompatible, let me be clear and say there's something, frankly, impossible about adapting books to screen. Not in the act but outcome. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just as there are plenty of good stories that can't and shouldn't be told literally. </span>Regardless of how accurate or true to x, y, z, one's reading is, to some extent, oblivious of such concerns as plot and temporality. We read stories in spurts and study characters like mirrors, conflating and creating a persona, if not an identity, as David Foster Wallace said, that we may come to recognize as ours; our lives, in other words, are recklessly entwined with those we read about, like bowling balls hurled sideways at the pins seven lanes over. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No wonder then, especially in talk of books like </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gatsby, </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">whose loosely ornate sentences oppose the skyscraping opulence Jay Gatsby's world demands, like diamonds scattered brazenly across a four-lane highway, we say "my," as in "my <i>Gatsby"</i>; the one that several customers of late at some point lost and now want back, lest it be taken from them, this time, in the form of a Brooks Brothers ad for menswear. <i>Gatsby</i> is a book about impermanence,"a conflict of spirituality set against the web of our commercial life," as Edwin Clark wrote in <i>The New York Times, </i>and that was back in 1925! To reduce its smoldering ash and firmament to a $200,000 headband is to rebuild Babel's Tower, and suggests either a careless apprehension of the novel as a starting point or hilarious misunderstanding of the function of metaphor. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To put it in terms then Fitzgerald himself might have appreciated, not having read </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gatsby</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is like living in St. Paul and not having been to Chicago. It's always there and always will be, so why bother? What's the rush? And while it's pretty clear that I'm defending the first book I read as an adult and loved the way I've come to love all books that I don't "get," that's just my point: if you don't try, someone else will on your behalf and spit it back to you like a bird. And who wants scraps of chewed up paper spit out in their mouth? It's a rhetorical question, mam. "Don't judge a book by its movie." Or its promo tie-in cover, for that matter. That is, unless you have no plans to read the book. In which case, I can think of worse things to have sitting out on your coffee table than Leonardo DiCaprio's smug grin and starlit eyes. But don't get me started on that. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-18727615833038409712013-05-17T14:43:00.000-07:002013-05-18T08:11:11.616-07:00TO-READ l Airmail <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A few weeks back I wrote about the poet Christian Wiman's meditation on belief, and once again, I find myself drawn to a book about a poet that's not poetry. Actually, it's two poets. And, truth be told, <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781555976392" target="_blank"><i>Airmail</i></a> is full of poems sent back and forth between said poets, Robert Bly and Tomas Transtromer. That is, when they're not talking about the 1964 election, or the death of Randall Jarrell, or the birth of a daughter. By the way, why is it that we caution ourselves from poets with the title, while novelists and memoirists and famous chefs stay, simply, "authors"? Is it the worry that a poet might actually open the door of a moving vehicle while a novelist, at worst, might base a character's penchant for cursing on your road rage? (One good for nothing poet makes a joke about free will that doesn't play and has to ruin it for everybody.) Hmm? Oh, nothing. I thought <i>you</i> said something. Ha. Funny. </span><br />
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You could look at <i>Airmail</i> as a collection of poems with extensive background notes, but it is, in fact, or in guise, a collection of letters; the letters of two internationally acclaimed poets who after, by chance, checking out each others' books at the same time (Bly coming home from the University of Minnesota library with a copy of Transtromer's <i>The Half-Finished Heaven</i> in hand only to find a letter waiting for him from Transtromer himself) started up a correspondence that would last for nearly thirty years. With more than 290 letters in tow, <i>Airmail </i>more than represents the baggage of both poets' concerns, from the war in Vietnam--which Bly rallied against in the poems that he wrote and those he published in his magazine, <i>The Sixties</i>, and in co-founding American Writers against the Vietnam War--to the daily struggles of living a life that affords time to write as well as eat, pay bills, and travel. Which isn't to say that <i>Airmail</i> documents a time when either Bly or Transtromer were nobodies. Though the poets' friendship took off before Bly won the National Book Award, and nearly 50 years before Transtromer won the Nobel Prize, becoming something of a household name, both poets were well established in their respective countries. Thanks, in no small part, to Bly and Transtromer's concomitant commitment to translating each others' work, the ins and outs of which are on display and irresistible for anyone interested in the intricacies of a poem's, much less a translation's, evolution, Transtromer's is now a face of poetry in America, just as Bly, presumably, is recognized in Sweden. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So, that's the big idea. But as in all art it's the little ones that do and should take shape. As Transtromer writes, referring to the lack thereof in several of his contemporaries' politically astute polemics: "They drape themselves in an attitude instead of giving form." And not surprisingly, the form of these letters--indeed, the form of letters, period, or semicolon, depending--is what gives readers the sense that we are in on the conversation. And not in some scandalous, drug-addled, out of depth look into Robert Bly's sock drawer sort of way, but as if coming across ideas and information for the first time: conversations unrecorded, works in progress, words unmeant and pardoned. A pensive spontaneity seems to be what Transtromer and Bly had in mind when they began their correspondence; a practice that with luck and time might grant their poems, and their lives as poets, a kind of validation no reward could supplant; that of close reading and acceptance, in the sense of being given, not just baited. "What makes translating SNOWFALL so worthwhile," Transtromer writes, "is that the poem will strike Swedes as completely natural--a good reader knows that this isn't an exotic product by some American but I have experienced this mystery for myself." Likewise, as Thomas R. Smith notes in the book's introduction, Transtromer's letters were as sparsely edited as possible so that we "may enjoy [them] as Bly first did." (Just now, for instance, I could have sprung the label "editor" on Thomas R. Smith's name, but did I? No. Because no one thinks Thomas R. Smith is capable of sleeping with your best friend and, literally, forgetting all about it.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now me, I don't even answer the door unless someone is pressing record. And though a reader has to wonder whether two of the world's most famous writers saw their exchange as a potential intellectual artifact, as a <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780670026661" target="_blank">certain, recent publication</a> seems wont to assert, all signs point to, if not the opposite, a general disinterest in embellishment and voyeurism in favor of a drawing back, again, in terms of shedding their personas and in effort to delimit and refortify their work (i.e., at no point does Transtromer take advantage of the opportunity to ask Bly why <i>he</i> thinks he's the "only poet worth reading in North America" or "what gives [his] hair such volume"). "Other translators give a pale reproduction of the finished poem," writes Transtromer, "but you bring me back to the original experience." Originality is what we addict for in works of art like these; a starting point from which to base what we consider to be easy, though intangible, works of the imagination; plumes of time intensive smoke that slowly rise up from the ashes of experience and go on to shape a writer's legacy, while staying secrets even the most articulate of authors often can't, or won't, explain. We want answers. Damnit! (Eh, just trying it on.) Yet letters, journals, prison scrawls, etc., more than remnants scattered across the literary landscape for posterity, remind us that no book or poem is a relic but a product of exchange. And not a consumer product, either. Ha! There! One for poets! Two for the uncle who <i>didn't</i> order pizza at Thanksgiving and pretend not to be home. But one for poets! </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-33196474350199274122013-05-07T15:28:00.001-07:002013-05-18T08:11:32.405-07:00TO-READ l A Guide to Being Born <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 13pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Blurbs on the back of books with
platitudes about a writer's prowess don't really help you understand why you
should read a book (or story collection in this case). A story can be
"beautiful", "ambitious", "sweeping prose", or
any number of other similar phrases, but they are like a peppermint candy:
essentially all the same. What can you say that gets to the heart of how an
author uses language and how that writer tells a story?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 13pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span">For Ramona Ausubel, in her story collection
<i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781594487958" target="_blank">A Guide to Being Born</a></i> each story is a
recipe of elements, the ingredients include: European fairytales, images from
Surrealist painters, seemingly random collection of objects, and the quirks of
an independent movie, undermining your expectations at every turn. Not a
cheaply earned tear or kitschy turn of events, but more often odd, non sequitur
of stuff moves you. Like a Robert Wilson experimental opera staging,
where elements, characters and objects are all put together and you can't
figure out why you are laughing or crying because the elements alone don't add
up to that reaction. The pieces come together and just hit you. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 17px;">How in the life of a lonely teen can
the love lives of other teens have anything to do with a lost tooth? This
is how:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 13pt;">"The truth of those love lives--a
glance in the dingy hallway from a crushable boy, a dark tangled session on an
out-of-town parent's couch--was like a tiny, yellowed lost tooth, hidden under
a pillow, which the high-schoolers believed, prayed, would be soon replaced by
gorgeous, naked adoring treasure."
(Sounds like straw that gets woven into gold?). Or the pregnant couple, where suddenly the
husband finds he has drawers in his chest at the same time his wife is growing
a child in her womb. See Salvador Dali for that one, although the mood is less
despair, and more pure curiosity. </span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 13pt;">Why read this book? Because it is scintillating, confusing, and lovely all at once. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 13pt;"><i>-Rene Meyer-Grimberg, Bookseller </i></span></span></span></div>
<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-21373653787611945922013-05-07T15:16:00.001-07:002013-05-09T11:47:42.266-07:00Interview with Kevin Powers <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Kevin Powers talks to Colin about his critically acclaimed first novel, <i>The Yellow Birds</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/event/kevin-powers-reads-yellow-birds" target="_blank">Meet Kevin Powers on Friday, May 10th at 7:30 at The Weyerhaeuser Chapel, on the campus of Macalester College</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>CGB: You earned your MFA in 2012 after serving in the U.S.
Army, but I was both surprised and--after reading <i>The Yellow Birds--</i>not surprised at all to learn that your degree
was not in fiction, but in poetry. What inspired you to conceive of a novel
instead of a collection of poems when it came to writing this book?</b></span><br />
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<span class="il">KP</span>: I was working on both simultaneously. I started
writing poetry when I was about 12 or 13, but it wasn’t long after that that I
started trying to write short stories and prose. They’ve always both been a big
part of my life as a writer. And because I had a certain amount of personal
investment in the subject, I tried to take every approach I had available to me
to explore it with the depth that I wanted and in search of the clarity with
the material I was hoping to get. I actually have a book of poems I was going
to bring out at the same time. <br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
C: Having
written then a novel and a book of poems, did you have a moment, or several
moments, of thinking you might write a memoir?</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">K: It never occurred to me. And as far as I can tell, through
thinking back on it, it probably has to do with the kind of reader I am. I do
appreciate nonfiction, but the nonfiction that I turn to is more larger scope
stuff. I really like history and things like that, but for me, when I’ve been
interested in the more personal story, I always seem to find satisfaction with
fiction and poetry’s ability to represent the interior life of an individual. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
C: A
review in <i>The Daily Beast</i> that I
thought shone a light in its appraisal of your book said that in a media
saturated landscape, most of us get information, in general really, but
especially about our conflicts overseas on a “granular” level; one that’s easy
to sink in, but difficult to let sink in or take time to evaluate, writing,
“Everybody’s paying attention and nobody’s paying attention.” It seemed to me
his point was that the language of your novel is what not only changes our
understanding, but provides us with an understanding of the war in Iraq, based
in part on the subjective experiences of your characters, but also on how you,
the writer, shape those experiences. Did language help you to frame or
reconceive of your own experience in the war?</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
<br /><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">K: I have a belief in the capacity and quality of language
beyond carrying information; that the sonic qualities of the rhythm can
communicate something to a reader intuitively. It’s a way of accessing parts of
our perceptive abilities that’s different than just conveying information. So I
was trying to find some form that would pair well with the extremity of the
experience, something that would be capable of communicating how surreal it
was. I thought if I paid attention to the language I could communicate that to
a reader, while also telling a story and talking about things that are actually
happening, but with an atmospheric quality that’s really important. And again,
as a country, our relationship to the war is sort of constantly present, but
always in the background, so I thought perhaps if I could get somebody to pick
the book up, immediately, upon encountering this language, the information they’re
so familiar with might somehow become new again. <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>C: My sense of things is that, in terms of ownership,
readers still associate works of fiction and poetry with authorship. And this,
I’m sure, has more to do with my ignorance about the war, but I kept wondering
whether you struggled to “own” the background, or topic, of the novel, which is
so embedded in our culture, for better or worse. </b><br />
<br />
K: In a way, I did. But I was conscious about, and I tried
to deliberately define the boundaries of what it was I was trying to own. I was
trying to present one possible example of what the war was like. Not
necessarily making any claims or definitive statements, or anything like that,
but “here’s one possibility,” “here’s one manifestation of that thing,” which
is probably foreign to most. So, within those boundaries I wanted to make a
statement of a kind. <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>C: At the beginning of the book, in Bartle, there’s a kind
of fissure through his idea of himself as an existential survivor in the war
vs. the idea of himself as a solider in an army. He seems to perform a kind of
emotional mathematics in order to relate to himself as someone who will live as
others around him die, except when it comes to taking lives himself, in which
case he’s certain that it’s better to be together in order to transform his act
of killing into an act of solidarity among companions. And yet, the young man
is, at times, disgusted with his apathy in this regard, hating the fact that he
needs to be called on, screamed at in order to participate. This kind of
contradiction, or ambiguity, struck me, again, as an outsider, as a uniquely 21<sup>st</sup>
century disposition toward war. Was it your intention to represent the kind of
war we’re fighting now? Or has ambiguity always been the reality of the
individual in combat? </b><br />
<br />
K: I think it’s something that’s probably, if not universal,
the experience of being a soldier in combat. It’s probably very common, this
idea that there’s some fluidity between your desire to save yourself or to be
apart of the group, or allow yourself to be subservient to this larger thing. In
the case of Bartle, he gives himself this task of dressing it all up so he can determine
his individual level of accountability. That’s one of the challenges of trying
to sort through those moments, when your perspective on even your ability to
understand your place or significance within any given situation is changing
all the time. It’s something that probably contributes to survivor’s guilt or
whatever you want to call it: this idea that of course there’s a fundamental,
evolutionary instinct toward self-preservation, but there are also societal
influences and expectations that are put upon from the outside. “You’re a
soldier. You’re supposed to put your brothers above yourself.” So there’s this
weird negotiation that is always happening between your fear, your self-loathing,
your desire to be good. It’s just this sort of swirl that’s really difficult to
sift through, and ultimately I wanted to present that difficulty. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-81837269020488239512013-05-06T16:36:00.000-07:002013-05-07T14:58:54.166-07:005 Movies (You May Not Have Known Were) Based on Books<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Among
book lovers, you’ll often hear the cliché, “The movie was fine, but I
really preferred the book.” And while Hollywood is littered with films
based on well-known books (<em>Lord of The Rings, Twilight, Hunger Games</em>),
here are some of Tinseltown’s most successful films that you may not
have known were based on books.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>1.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></b><u></u><b><em>The Shawshank Redemption<u></u></em><u></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It’s
a lot to ask of people to remember that a novella launched a movie that
now sits at the very top of IMDb’s list of the Top 250 user-voted
movies of all time. This is especially true when the novella is simply
one of dozens of legendary stories written by one of the most prolific
and successful writers of all time: Stephen King.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Nevertheless, it <i>was</i> a </span><a href="http://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/top-legal-books-every-lawyer-should-read/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">legal book</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
that first told the story of how Andy Dufresne tunneled through the
walls of Shawshank Prison, using nothing more than a tiny rock hammer
from his buddy Red, and the determination of a man wrongly convicted of a
crime he didn’t </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">commit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://images.indiebound.com/638/219/9780449219638.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.indiebound.com/638/219/9780449219638.jpg" width="205" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>2.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> <em> </em></span></b><u></u><b><em>Jaws<u></u></em><u></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Peter
Benchley’s 1974 novel is gradually becoming a footnote to one of the
most iconic films of all time, but it was no throwaway paperback. The
novel <i>Jaws</i> spent more than 40 weeks on the bestseller list and
sold over 20 million copies. Interestingly, in later years, the author
came to regret his portrayal of great white sharks as vicious
man-eaters, and became an ardent ocean conservationist.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Early titles for the book included <i>The Stillness in the Water</i>, <i>Leviathan Rising</i>, and then <i>The Jaws of Death</i> and <i>The Jaws of Leviathan</i>.<u> </u></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ultimately, the world came to know the classic and terrifying story as simply, <em>Jaws</em>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>3.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> <em> </em></span></b><u></u><b><em>Gangs of New York<u></u></em><u></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Somehow, in 1970, Martin Scorsese came across a 1928 book titled <i>The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld</i>.
The famous director was enthralled with the description of the
nineteenth-century criminal underworld, and started to visualize an epic
movie.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<a href="http://img2-3.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/050310/17140__gony_l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://img2-3.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/050310/17140__gony_l.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Of
course, at the time he encountered the book, he wasn’t the wildly
successful director he is today. It wasn’t until 20 years later that the
vision became a reality. And while Daniel Day-Lewis’s much-awarded
performance will not soon be forgotten, few now know of the book that
inspired it all.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>4.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></b><u></u><b><em>Witness for the Prosecution</em> <u></u><u></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">This
legal book actually became a movie in three steps. First Agatha
Christie wrote the gripping short story, which was published in 1925
under the title <i>Traitor Hands</i>. Then, Peter Saunders produced a
theatrical adaptation for the stage. And after that, the story became
the Academy-Award-nominated classic film.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><u></u><u></u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The
original ending, in which a murderer escapes justice, was ultimately
found unsatisfactory to Christie. Her solution? In later versions, he
is stabbed to death at the end of the story. <u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>5.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></b><u></u><b><em>Who Framed Roger Rabbit?<u></u></em><u></u></b></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.awn.com/files/imagepicker/5086/roger_rabbit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://www.awn.com/files/imagepicker/5086/roger_rabbit.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The 1981 novel<i> Who Censored Roger Rabbit</i>
is largely unknown, but it was the basis of the wonderfully lively and
inventive movie named above. We aren’t aware how Gary K. Wolf </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">came up
with a story in which a murder mystery is launched when a cartoon strip
character’s speech balloon is found at the scene of his murder. But we
assume that, given the creativity involved in telling the story in movie
format, it must have been quite a feat to pull it off using words
alone.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #090909; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></i>
<i><span style="background: white; color: #090909; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></i>
<i><span style="background: white; color: #090909; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Chelsea Wilson is the Community Relations Manager for <span class="il">Washington</span> University School of Law’s online </span></span></i><a href="http://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/" target="_blank"><i><span style="background: white; color: #c60000; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">LL.M. Degree</span></span></i></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #090909; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></i><i><span style="background: white; color: #090909; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">program, which provides foreign trained attorneys with the opportunity to earn a <a href="http://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/masters-degree-in-law/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #c60000;">Master of Laws</span></a> degree from a top-tier American university from anywhere in the world.</span></i></span></div>
<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-11341858700570865882013-05-04T16:18:00.001-07:002013-05-04T16:20:57.779-07:0020 Questions<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In honor of National Poetry Month, I asked poets from across the state<strong>, </strong></span></strong><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and beyon</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">d</span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><strong style="font-weight: bold;">, </strong>a question posed by the Academy of American Poets<b style="font-weight: normal;">: "Where, ideally, would or do you plan to put some poetry this month?" Here are their responses: </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></strong></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></strong></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></strong></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="198" src="http://coffeehousepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Sun-Yung-Shin1.jpg" width="183" />
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"I would
plan to put poetry in the place of every ad on the Internet and on billboards
and in bathrooms and on the sides of buses and on television and before movies
in the movie theater and at the doctor's office and at signs at the mall and in
fortune cookies and when you log into your computer instead of a password you
would have to write a new poem and instead of leaving a message the system
would read you a poem and instead of news about bombs and guns and money there
would be poems. Instead of bills you would get different kinds of poems, a poem
about electricity, a poem about natural gas, a poem about water. When you
cleaned your house, you might vacuum up a bunch of letters and the machine
would make a poem. In the refrigerator, instead of aging lettuce, you'd get a
poem. Maybe a little wilted, a little tired, but with some life left in it.
Inside your wallet, instead of plastic and bills and receipts--poems. Instead
of eviction notices--poems. Instead of prison sentences, poems. Instead of a
line of cocaine, poems. Instead of giving grades to students--poems. Instead of
standardized tests--poems. Poems instead of nuclear weapons. Poems instead of
knives. Poems instead of rape. Poems instead of pollution. Poems instead of
trafficking children. Poems instead of prostitution. Poems everywhere taking up
the space of things we do and make to violate and dishonor and destroy
ourselves, our home, and everything that shares the earth with us."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Sun
Yung Shin, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781566893145" target="_blank">Rough,
and Savage </a></em>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="265" src="http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/ows_136692577731095.jpg" width="263" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><em>"</em>I plan to put poetry amidst
the metal and stone monstrosities, and the glass and boulders small and large,
and the wild rushes of wormwood everywhere, and along the shore of the
Mississippi River, in Northeast Minneapolis, down beyond the deadend of 13th
Avenue and 2nd Street, where we've seen muskrats and houseboat ambassadors, and
the remains of cookfires and stormdrift and deer and crows and kids, and have
banged drums and passed between us a peaceful vapor, and where we built a fire,
and performed the Death of Poetry."
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Sarah
Fox, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781566893268" target="_blank"><em><span style="color: blue;">The First Flag </span></em></a>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="170" src="http://i929.photobucket.com/albums/ad133/commongood/authors%20photos/john-koethe-448.jpg" width="281" />
</span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"The poetry venue I'm
looking forward to this month is a reading at the National Portrait Gallery in
Washington D.C., with Yusef Komunyakaa and Paul Muldoon. The Smithsonian
commissioned a dozen poets, including the three of us, to each write a poem
related to the Civil War to be included in a volume, <em>LINES IN LONG ARRAY</em>,
to be published this fall to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the War, a volume which will also include photographs by Sally
Mann of Civil War sits and poems and phototographs from the Civil War era.
We're to read the poems we've written for the volume, along with other
poems."
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-John Koethe,
author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780062136022" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">ROTC Kills</span></a></em>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="317" src="http://i929.photobucket.com/albums/ad133/commongood/deborah-keenan_zps3a2ba912.jpg" width="230" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I send key poems to
my children, I gather poems that I think might inspire my son and my nephew,
who are both writers, and send them small poems taped into little
notebooks. I hand write poems in little notebooks that I keep for my
grandchildren, Aisling and Ezra."
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Deborah Keenan, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781571314260" target="_blank"><em><span style="color: blue;">Willow Room, Green Door </span></em></a>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="250" src="http://blogs.walkerart.org/ecp/files/2012/08/PX.Kysar_.11.jpg" width="250" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Ideally,
I would gather a group of Saint Paul Public Schools poetry-fearful teachers in
a lovely room at the Minnesota Humanities Center. They’d be given a generous
honorarium, served delicious food, and their schools would be reimbursed for
substitute pay. Into the room would walk John Minczeski, a brilliant and
experienced poet-in-the-schools. John would read them Pablo Neruda poems in his
lovely melodious voice; he’d recite poetry in Italian; he’d read Rolf Jacobsen
poems. The poems would float through the air and into the minds of the teachers,
who, with eyes closed, would listen with their hearts, with their senses, with
open minds and no expectations, letting the poems wash over their bodies like
feathers, leaves, or snow. They would not worry how to dissect, understand,
explain, or teach the poems: they would experience them. They’d leave the day joyfully
ready to share poems with their students, who would be inspired to express
their own ideas in creative, strange, and wonderful ways. Here’s one poem John
might read:"</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16pt;">
<em style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Guardian
Angel</em></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 16pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By
Rolf Jacobsen, translated by Roger Greenwald
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am the bird that knocks at your window in the morning
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and your companion, whom you cannot know,
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">the blossoms that light up for the blind.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am the glacier’s crest above the forests, the dazzling one
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and the brass voices from cathedral towers.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The thought that suddenly comes over you at midday
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> and fills you with a singular happiness.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I am one you have loved long ago.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I walk alongside you by day and look intently at you
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and put my mouth on your heart
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> but you don’t know it.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> I am your third arm and your second
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">shadow, the white one,
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">whom you don’t have the heart for
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">and who cannot ever forget you.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry <em>Dark Lake</em> and <em>Pretend the
World</em> and the editor of <em>Riding
Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers</em>. She has two children in the Saint
Paul Public Schools.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<div align="left" style="font-size: 14pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 19px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></strong>
</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 14pt;">
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="215" src="http://images.publicradio.org/content/2011/04/04/20110404_moore_33.jpg" width="287" />
</span></div>
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</div>
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</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span>
</span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I love the sidewalk
poetry program in St. Paul. Such a terrific idea and I've seen so many
people stop, look down and read the poems. So, I am thinking other public
places: parks, plazas.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
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I wish every coffee
house had its "local poet." There's a bar or restaurant that
has a "David Ferry" corner, for example. It's the
unexpectedness of seeing poems in such places that is wonderful. Years ago
there was a program in Minneapolis that put photographs up on billboards and,
of course, there is the on again off again program that puts poems in public
buses. John Berryman told a class once that he used to leave copies of his
books on buses for other people to pick up. I don't suppose we should
have to go that far, but maybe....
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Poems always particularly
resonate in places and situations where people are under a lot of stress:
hospitals and prisons, for example."
</div>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Jim Moore, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781555975814">Invisible Strings</a> </em></span>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="196" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOETwYWg8lhJ54tBAklq9-O1MwcEgW60MQjDUysWrYAvTrDwXg" width="235" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">"Assuming that I could successfully accomplish this, I think
I would like to put a short daily poem on my answering machine, aka voice mail,
before the beep. Of course, no one calls me. But I do get robocalls, and
wisely-chosen poems could very well disable them!"</span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Connie Wanek, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781556592942">On Speaking Terms</a></em> </span>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="316" src="http://www.freyamanfred.com/freya%20photo%20small.jpg" width="246" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">"In honor of Louis Jenkins, every ice house should have a
poem on it. To honor Connie Wanek, put a poem in your garden. And for
myself, I'd like to see a poem on the dock of every swimming hole. But -- even
more seriously -- my primary goal this year would be to put poems in children's
hospitals, adult hospitals, doctor's offices, and hemo-dialysis centers -- in
honor of my brother, Fred Manfred, and his comrades, who have survived in the
close-to-invisible war-zone of long term illnesses for decades. They could use
a lift. And so could those dreary rooms and corridors."</span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Freya Manfred, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781890193768">Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle </a></em></span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></div>
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="331" src="http://i929.photobucket.com/albums/ad133/commongood/1083_zpsa12e69de.jpg" width="252" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I
plan on putting Natasha Trethewey's <em>Native
Guard</em> into the heads of a group of Core lit students at St. Kates,
this commencing Monday on the heels of reading <em>Light in August</em>: You know Trethewey alludes to Joe Christmas
in a couple poems in that collection. And on Thursday, April 18, we're doing a <strong><em>Poem
In Your Pocket</em></strong> thing: <a href="http://news.stkate.edu/articles/poeminyourpocket.html">http://news.stkate.edu/articles/poeminyourpocket.html</a><br />
<br />
Ideally . . . At the State Capital, I'd love to read with lots of other
Minnesota poets somewhere on the Capital grounds or over at the History Center:
Some sort of one day in April state poetry celebration."
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Robert Grunst, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780932826961">The Smallest Bird in North America</a></em>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.mtu.edu/humanities/department/faculty-staff/faculty/mb-seigel/image76974-pers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.mtu.edu/humanities/department/faculty-staff/faculty/mb-seigel/image76974-pers.jpg" width="148" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">“I teach creative writing and literature courses at Michigan
Technological University and the bulk of my students are in the engineering
college. That said, my ongoing project is put as much poetry into the laps of
as many would-be engineers as possible. April's mission will be no different.
They don't often know it, but engineers need poetry even more than most, and
the experience for everyone involved can most definitely be described as ‘unexpected.’” </span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-M. Bartley Seigel, author of <a href="http://www.mbartleyseigel.com/writing/"><em>This Is What They Say</em></a> </span>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="320" src="http://www.mauchmauch.com/uploads/3/5/1/2/3512682/7223046.jpg" width="212" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">“I would need a grant or a benefactor or a savvy plan to
pitch (pun intended) to Twins marketers, for if I could put poetry in an
unexpected place I'd want to put it in Target Field on game day. Specifically,
I'd like fans to receive copies of <em>Poetry City, USA, Vol. 3</em>, the
anthology of poems and prose on poetry that goes hand in hand with the annual
Great Twin Cities Poetry Read (the former of which I edit, the latter of which
I curate). Everybody knows that both baseball and poetry go well with peanuts
and beer, right? I also think that there is going to be a lot of late-inning
restlessness, given the state of the Twins pitching staff. When the fans can no
longer bear to look at the product on the field, they can turn to the poetry in
their hands. Saving the day, is what the poetry will do.”</span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Matt Mauch, author of <em><a href="http://www.mauchmauch.com/blog.html">If You're Lucky Is a Theory of Mine </a></em></span>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="201" src="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/joyce-sutphen/448x/joyce-sutphen.jpg" width="308" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I’ve
been attacked by a mean cold, and it’s made my head pure static and fuzz! Speaking
of my head, that’s one place I’m putting poems; as always, I am memorizing new
poems and saying ones that I know. I think it would be nice to see poems
on the backs of cereal boxes and on the front page of the newspaper (you did
say “ideally,” didn’t you?). Since I am usually driving across the
prairie between my house in Chaska and St. Peter, I don’t get a chance to ride
the bus or light rail, but both of those would be fine places for poems . . .
and wouldn’t it be nice if everyone sent a poem to someone else this month?”
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Joyce Sutphen, Minnesota Poet Laureate and editor of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780898232325">To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present</a></em>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="269" src="http://milkweed.org/media/images/sallykeith-web2.jpg" width="195" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">“I had first thought to suggest poetry in all sorts of
waiting rooms--the DMV and doctors' offices came to mind--but then I could too
easily picture the anxiety of waiting canceling out all the wonders of losing
oneself in a poem. A better idea would be to have a poem, ideally recited and
read, shown at the movie theater an lieu of all the pre-preview ads. There
audiences sitting in the dark, in soft seats, with minds waiting to be moved
and entertained, might truly receive a poem and be changed.” </span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Sally Keith, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781571314482">The Fact of the Matter</a></em> </span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="191" src="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Images/academics/english/pcampion.jpg" width="296" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">"In my mouth."</span>
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Peter Campion, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780226093109"><em>The Lions</em></a> </span>
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="227" src="http://images.publicradio.org/content/2012/06/04/20120604_katrina-vandenberg_33.jpg" width="304" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div align="left">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I've
been playing with this idea since you sent it to me, trying to put poetry in
the most outrageous-but-plausible place possible. 'Restaurant menus'
was my favorite place I came up with.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But
really, the most unexpected place for poetry to appear would be right on the
nightstand, the passenger seat of one's car, in the briefcase, in the stack of
books from the library. I have two theories on why contemporary readers don't
embrace poetry as much as they do prose: one, the line breaks. Two: the lyric
poem is a frozen moment the poet walks inside, exploring. We aren't used to
time stopping on the page like that. Ideally, this month, I hope to put poetry
in the most ordinary places possible, right up there with pleasure reading.
Happy National Poetry Month."
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
-Katrina Vandenberg, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781571314468">The Alphabet Not Unlike The World </a></em>
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="234" src="http://www.minnpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_detail/Peter4_landscape.jpeg" width="156" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">"I'd
love to see more poetry in public spaces; on sidewalks,
on buses, in town squares and shopping malls and community centers.
Placing poetry in the public eye has the potential to inspire discussion
about the role of language in civic life. Poetry is a form of
communication and increasing its visibility in public space(s) might
inspire dialogue about the enduring value of creative expression in our
changing communication environment."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Peter Joseph Glovizcki, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781908836243">Kicking Gravity</a></em> </span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="188" src="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/mary-rose-oreilley/448x/mary-rose-oreilley.jpg" width="289" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">As a poet and potter--with interests in classical
antiquity, paleontology, and similar old stuff--I'm fascinated by fragments of
manuscript-- burned at the edges, floating here and there--by scraps of Sappho,
by scraps of grocery lists, fossils, potsherds, runestones. I've
experimented for quite awhile with inscribing on my pottery, usually very banal
journal entries and little gnomic verses. I'm interested in how a scrap
of crockery suggests a whole culture, how a fossil embeds the memory of life
form. I can't stay away from wet concrete. I love the mystery of sending
and receiving messages among present and past and future. Most of what I create
I give away to the Goodwill, and it sometimes passes me again on some stream of
detritus. I like the idea of accidental survival, which is how most
pottery and lots of manuscripts end up in museums.</span>
</span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Mary Rose O'Reilley, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780807149508">Earth, Mercy</a> </em></span>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="222" src="http://www.mnartists.org/ejournal/images/TimNolan.jpg" width="201" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">"I'd like to see my poems up on people's refigerators."</span>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Tim Nolan, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780898232653">and then</a> </em></span>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj67fQFBkKERBPic_zCNrfcXnY9tfHllVQYPRAofdhWnqjqm9DaFKRDU3waQGKnYUEEDy8wVag9lY8q48TVOZ8EiMs0jIIOwjQBCggmikgOH5W97_EGCRHulJQqAn6doCb_YZqGbs9gVbI/s1600/Kelly+Davio.jpg" width="204" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">This month, I plan to put
poetry in the hands of those who might not otherwise read it. When I find a
poetry collection I love, I plan to buy two copies--one for me, and one to give
to a friend, coworker, family member, or acquaintance. What better way to increase
poetry readership than to give great poems directly to other people?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Kelly Davio, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781597092364"><em>Burn This House</em></a><br />
</span>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="176" src="http://www1.umn.edu/news/prod/groups/ur/@pub/@ur/@news/documents/multimedia/ur_multimedia_314141.jpg" width="234" />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My poetry
will be onstage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in a play titled <em>Nice
Fish</em> April 12-May 18.
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Louis Jenkins, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780979312809">North of the Cities </a></em>
</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="180" src="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/authors/dobby-gibson/448x/dobby-gibson.jpg" width="276" />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There isn't any place we shouldn't
put poetry -- including putting it away for a while. That's a perfectly
honorable thing to do with poetry! We can leave it out on the counter for our
beloved, like bowl of yellow pears. Or we can fold it up into a tiny square and
bury it in our sock drawer, like our most dangerous secret. Either way, it
will lie there patiently and wait to be discovered. Yesterday, I walked out the
door at work to grab some lunch, and this sign on the sidewalk stopped me dead
in my tracks. Poetry! Namaste!</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Dobby Gibson, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781555976323"><em><span style="color: blue;">It Becomes You</span></em></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
</span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">My wife and I fell in love in
college, where Shakespeare and the classics and contemporary poetry were part
of our daily lives. Since then, our marriage has become a bit … shall we say …
prosaic. I hope to … ahem … re-"verse" this trend by bringing some poems
to the bedroom. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Todd Boss, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780393081039"><em>Pitch</em></a> </span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="264" src="http://milkweed.org/media/images/kirkpatrick-web2.jpg" width="191" />
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</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">"I'll
be
giving each person at a board meeting a particular poem chosen just for
him or her. And I'll be enclosing poetry bookmarks - as I often do - in
envelopes with my utility bill payments. Some poems will go in emails
and probably on Face Book and I love to mail poems to people on
postcards. And I'm hoping to get some poems in the mail too!" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">-Patricia Kirkpatrick, author of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781571314567"><em>Odessa</em></a> </span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />"David
Young, distinguished poet, co-founder of FIELD magazine, professor emeritus of
Oberlin College’s English and creative writing departments,
internationally-renowned translator (including, notably, from the Chinese),
threw a dinner party for friends. You’d have been lucky to be invited:
David—as witnessed by his poetry-infused cookbook Seasonings—can slice and
dice. It was an Asian-themed meal. At the end of the evening, after the courses
had run amid good conversation, David presented each guest with a fortune
cookie. On its face, this was a joke—the fortune cookie being, of course,
an American invention. But David (as usual) had gone several steps further.
With tweezers and a squint, he’d extracted the store-bought fortunes and
substituted similar slips of paper. On each slip he’d composed a fortune in the
form of a couplet, personalized for each guest. Imagine the surprise and sweet
wonder! It was a coup."
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">-Dore
Kiesselbach, author of <em><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780822962175"><span style="color: blue;">Salt Pier</span></a></em>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img height="300" src="http://i929.photobucket.com/albums/ad133/commongood/authors%20photos/smallen-2.jpg" width="198" />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"</span></strong><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I love this question. This month, I'll be reading at several locations in
St. Paul, the University Center in Rochester, and the Brick House
Coffee Shop in Austin. But since you asked about unexpected places, my
first and lingering thought was to leave a poem on a lover's mouth. My
more realistic-at-this-point-in-my-life answer is that you've inspired
me to sneak some poems into the Como Conservatory and leave them by the
koi pond."</span></strong>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></strong></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-Su Smallen, author of <a href="http://susmallen.com/"><em>Buddha, Proof</em></a> </span></strong>
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<strong style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></strong><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-35589824248998444492013-05-01T17:23:00.003-07:002013-05-01T18:49:50.234-07:00Common Questions for Mary Losure <br />
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<a href="https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/3046320878/8121d2f674e145a2e5678e33beb99886.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/3046320878/8121d2f674e145a2e5678e33beb99886.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mary Losure talks to Colin about superheroes, summertime, and writing like a detective</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://www.marylosure.com/mary-losure-author-bio/" target="_blank">Mary Losure</a> discusses <i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780763656690" target="_blank">Wild Boy: The Real Life of the Savage of Aveyron</a>, </i></span>Tuesday, May 14th at Common Good Books!<br />
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>CGB: <i>WildBoy, </i></b><b>like <i>The
Fairy Ring</i>, is based on a true story that is bewilderingly hard to believe.
What attracts you about truth that's stranger than fiction? For the sake of
argument, why not give the wild boy a cape and have him come from planet
Krypton? Licensing?</b></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 12.25pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">ML: What
attracts me is the chance to be writer-as-detective, which is what happens when
you choose non-fiction. It draws you in, and pretty soon you can’t stop
thinking about these characters in your book who are also real people who left
paper trails for you to follow. I had no idea when I began <i>The Fairy Ring </i>what
an extravagantly odd story it would turn out to be. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The
wild boy’s story I knew from the start was strange, but I didn’t want to
fictionalize it. In part that was because it had already been done quite a few
times as fiction, but mostly I wanted to tell his true story because I wanted
to learn for myself who he really was. But I admit the idea of wild boy as
caped superhero didn’t occur to me! A GRAPHIC NOVEL! I just wish I could draw… </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>On the
back flap, both you and illustrator Timothy Basil Ering talk about what drew
you to the story. It's an amicable touch that let me know the book was
something that you cared about and, quite possibly, aren't through caring
about. Having written the book, what about this boy's story remains a story to
be told? And can it?
</b></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 12.25pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There’s
a fascinating gap in the wild boy’s history—his life from his mid-twenties
until he died at the age of 40. The paper trail cuts off there entirely. Unless
new evidence is discovered, I think the grown-up part of his life is a story
that can never be told.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 12.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If
I were writing it as FICTION for adults, though, I can imagine all kinds of
scenarios. Wild Man knows sign language fluently, joins the underground
community of deaf people known to exist in the Paris of his day, sails with
them to America to begin new life in wilderness…and so on.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Sub
question: If a box of macaroni or a face soap did the same thing--including not
just a synopsis but behind the scenes look inside/personal reactions to the
making of the macaroni/face soap--would you be more or less inclined to give it
a whirl? </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Less! Way less! Unless
children were somehow involved as the heroes of their own well-documented
story. (The Macaroni Gang. The Face Soap Conspiracy.) In which case, I would
look into it.</span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">With summer movies coming up, there is no shortage of
"true stories" to choose from. What plus side is there to spending a
lazy afternoon reading a book as opposed to spending a lazy afternoon watching 3-D movies about loud crashing noises? </span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I really like 3-D movies with loud
crashing noises! I loved Avatar. I’m a big fan of Dreamworks and Pixar and
computer animated movies with talking animals, castles, princesses, monsters,
etc. But the thing about movies is -- it’s dark in theaters. And summer is short!
Winter is long. You can watch movies then. Or at night, when it’s dark outside.
Not on a beautiful summer afternoon when the ideal form of entertainment is a
book. </span></div>
<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-24050018749244462352013-05-01T14:14:00.002-07:002013-05-01T14:14:36.455-07:00TO-READ l The World Without You <br />
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<a href="http://images.indiebound.com/183/277/9780307277183.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.indiebound.com/183/277/9780307277183.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt;">We can’t stop
ourselves from going, but is there anything more emotionally messed up
than a gathering with your “family of origin?” It doesn’t matter how old
you are or what you’ve done with your life since, you’re still a child –
often a petulant, needy, easily hurt child – when you go back home,
stay in your old room, and slide into that familiar give and take with
parents and siblings. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
<br />
Josh Henkin’s second novel was called <i>Matrimony</i>. His third one, <i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780307277183" target="_blank">The <span class="il">World</span> <span class="il">Without</span> You</a></i>,
starts off with a 44-year marriage that’s about to end, until its
demise is postponed by the return of the extended family for a Fourth of
July weekend in the Berkshires. Fireworks ensue.<br />
<br />
I took a creative writing class from Josh once, and I remember a point
he made about lifting a short story above mundane concerns. Quoting the
Passover script, he said, “Why is this night different from all other
nights?” He meant what’s at stake here? What’s urgent about it? <br />
<br />
For the Frankel family, this Fourth of July holiday also serves as a
memorial for the fourth child and only son, a reporter kidnapped and
killed in Iraq the year before. Three older sisters, one widow, two
husbands, a boyfriend, and a cluster of grandchildren join Mom and Dad
to be together one more time. Old resentments meet new ones. Knee-jerk
defensiveness parries every peace offering and once in a while there’s a
deliberate stabbing, just to prove that cruelty can feel like love
turned inside out. As one of the semi-outsiders notes, it’s a bit like
being swallowed by a “many-tentacled beast.” <br />
<br />
Be thankful, then, this is not your family, and be thankful that you get
to spend this particular weekend with the Frankels, intimate witness to
the simple wonder of human beings working it out with one another.
Really, that’s what makes this novel special. Each character you meet is
a vibrant being, dense with energy, and you get to know them and keep
learning more about them all the way through – who they are, where
they’ve come from, what they’re trying to be – even as you come to
realize that “sibling” may be the fundamental unit of relationship and
every other connection we try to form is just some twisted variation on
that theme.<br />
<br />
Another Hebrew expression shows up near the end, “Those who understand
will understand.” Like a great play, there’s catharsis and consolation
in experiencing these trials on stage. Suddenly the weekend is over,
more quickly than you’ve expected, and you’re saying goodbye to the
people who have marked you and formed you for good and bad, and you’re
wishing that you weren’t. You’re left with that most painful of endings:
You want more time with those you love.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">-<a href="http://keithhollihan.com/" target="_blank">Keith Hollihan</a>, author of <i>The Four Stages of Cruelty</i><br />
</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-4042518878063927292013-04-17T15:55:00.000-07:002013-04-17T15:57:59.326-07:00Poem in Your Pocket Day <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tomorrow, April 18th, is <a href="http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406" target="_blank">Poem in Your Pocket Day</a>. Initiated in New York, in 2002, and adopted by the Academy of American Poets, in 2008, PYPD encourages schools, bookstores, libraries and other venues to "ring loud with open readings of poems from pockets." The Academy offers several "easy ways to celebrate" on their website, such as rewarding students "caught" with poems and posting a poem on your blog or social network page, or, better yet, in public places. Micawber's Books, for instance, is inviting a reader a day to read one poem aloud inside their store at 6 o'clock. Here at Common Good, we're celebrating poems all month long, with readings, <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/finalists-are-literally" target="_blank">contests</a>, and our series, <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/20-questions-0" target="_blank">20 Questions</a>, which asks poets from all over to respond to the same question, also posed by the Academy: how many hot dogs could or do you <i>think</i> you could put in your mouth at once, not counting buns? Kidding. Speaking of jokes, here are a few more ideas on how to celebrate: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Ask everyone you see if that's a poem in their pocket</b> or they're just happy to see you. Apologize and explain that April 18th is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Again, apologize. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Mail a poem to a friend</b>. Be sure your poem's postmarked with tomorrow's date. You don't want friends thinking you're just some weirdo who sends poems to people for no reason. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Tweet individual lines of poems</b>, taking care to include line breaks, indentations, and all spaces, until you have successfully tweeted an entire long poem. Put yourself in the shoes of one of your followers and imagine receiving updates in your feed throughout the day, one after another, of already esoteric, decontextualized shards of nonsense talk, comparable to that of a bleating goat or small child. What a treat. <b>*</b></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Add a poem to your email footer</b>. Oh, also, make sure to email someone. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Organize a neighborhood "search committee"</b> to go out at night with flashlights and search for people carrying poems in their pockets. When you find one, shine the flashlight in their eyes and say, "Not so fast" or "Let's see what's inside," or something to that effect. Then slowly walk away and say, "We're everywhere." Don't mess this up. Make sure the batteries are charged and that someone is dressed in a medium weight button-down tweed cape with matching deerstalker cap. If you can't find one that matches, just make sure you've got the batteries and a magnifying glass. This really isn't as hard as you're making it. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Start a street team</b> to distribute poems in your area. Stop freaking out and listen. All you need to do is don a neon colored vest and accost passers by for money on behalf of some unspecified organization that helps people (<i>World Vision</i>, if anyone asks). When they tell you "No means no," ask them if they care about children/the future/the future of our children. As they turn to walk away, tape a poem, preferably one from <i>A Child's Garden of Verses</i>, by Robert Louis Stevenson, on their back and shout, "Gross! What's on your back!?" Otherwise, they could miss it. It's either that or a sandwich board. It's up to you, I guess. But people aren't just going to stop and take a poem from a crazy person. FYI. </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lastly, as <a href="http://commongoodbooks.blogspot.com/2012/10/write-poem-to-your-congressperson.html" target="_blank">reported in October</a>, poet Matthew Dickman's initiative to send poems by mail has inspired an assortment of small presses, including our own Milkweed Editions and Coffee House Press, to offer <a href="http://redhen.org/" target="_blank">Buy One, Get One</a> deals on books throughout the month, as if our 20% off sale on poetry wasn't incentive enough to put more poems out into the world. Now stop sitting there and spread the word! </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>*</b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Trust me, this is exactly the kind of thing Twitter was designed to <span style="font-size: x-small;">mak<span style="font-size: x-small;">e easier. </span></span> </span></span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-9633384989921214602013-04-15T21:22:00.002-07:002013-04-15T21:22:45.488-07:00This Week's Poem l Ghazal V<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ivGMMyZBLsQNNnSQjZ5VP4koacLBgXxCTSHUaa_dJCfj3c5FSp-Gq4Ytr38i2seyUgSqPQCLIaxXY4iwW82LwR6YvtmsC3Y29MzM2y1eIqC0YqxGR8BdDd26KrY5mr5goikQgn52EFXS/s1600/61V2PtIjGrL._SY300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0ivGMMyZBLsQNNnSQjZ5VP4koacLBgXxCTSHUaa_dJCfj3c5FSp-Gq4Ytr38i2seyUgSqPQCLIaxXY4iwW82LwR6YvtmsC3Y29MzM2y1eIqC0YqxGR8BdDd26KrY5mr5goikQgn52EFXS/s1600/61V2PtIjGrL._SY300_.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The drop dies in the river </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">of its joy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">pain goes so far it cures itself </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">in the spring after the heavy rain the cloud </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">disappears </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">that was nothing but tears </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">in the spring the mirror turns green </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">holding a miracle </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Change the shining wind </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">the rose led us to our eyes </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">let whatever is be open</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">From <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781556594090" target="_blank"><i>Selected Translations</i></a>, translated by W.S. Merwin and Aijaz Ahmad, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2013 </span></div>
<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-19144838128024256612013-04-15T21:06:00.000-07:002013-04-17T19:44:07.557-07:00Uncommon Bestsellers l #82-89 <br />
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<a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/love-in-vain/image_mini" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/love-in-vain/image_mini" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>#82: <i>Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson</i>, by Alan Greenberg </b>-</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You can always tell when Bookseller Joe really likes something because his eyes ablaze, as if embroidering two stop signs on your forehead, and he says the word "amazing" as frequently as teenagers say "like" or "why?" or "no, this sucks." Alan Greenberg's vision is a screenplay without borders. With elements of fiction, anthropology, history, and blues, Robert Johnson's short life explodes off the screen, "even if it's just inside your head." See what I did there? I inserted a quote from Entertainment Weekly's blurb to complement and dovetail joint my own half-baked idea. Poets do this all the time when asked to blurb friends' books, culling lines of text to color up and fill the blanks in of the fact they neither understood nor read all of their friend's poems. You want to talk about suspending disbelief, read the back of <i>Love In Vain</i> and picture Werner Herzog, Robert Palmer, David Lynch, and Dylan sitting down to lunch, and Palmer saying, "Anyone read Greenberg's thing on Johnson?" as Bob Dylan nods and Werner Herzog launches into some haphazard, aimless scree about the nature of reality, when who should raise his hand but... who's on base... David Lynch, in protest, but before he can it's clear that Dylan fell asleep. Who then wakes up and, without saying a word, begins recording his next album. </span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://milkweed.org/media/items/292/odessa-web2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://milkweed.org/media/items/292/odessa-web2.jpg" width="206" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b> #84: <i>Odessa</i>, by Patricia Kirkpatrick </b>- Poetry is 20% off this month. Normally, I'd leave it at that and get back to putting stickers on the books that have dull jackets. But as you probably know, the <a href="http://www.thefriends.org/programs/mnbookawards/award_winners_and_finalists.html" target="_blank">Minnesota Book Awards</a> were just announced and this year's prize in poetry went to Patricia Kirkpatrick for her stunning collection, <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781571314567" target="_blank"><i>Odessa</i></a>, which inhabits both the underworld of ancient Greek mythology and memory of a speaker diagnosed with brain cancer. At this point in the blog post I had planned to upload a video of Patricia Kirkpatrick reading from <i>Odessa </i>at Common Good Books. Wouldn't that have been something? Unfortunately, things don't always go as planned, and the video I took and tried to email to myself is either floating in the cloud and on its way or accidentally gone forever. I'm the glass half full type, so let's act as if it's on its way, still, and there's nothing to worry or feel bad about. Watch as I smile and continue on to #89. It'll be six years come August. Why? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>#89: <i>The Fault in Our Stars</i>, by John Green</b> - The last book on our list is once again not an uncommon book, but one that I think demonstrates how working at a bookstore changes how you look at books. As a commodity, namely. I'm kidding. Please. Books are great. Who doesn't like books? Besides the vast number of Americans who don't, I mean. I'll be honest. I should pay closer attention to the papers than I do. Not even the papers so much as the news. Not even the news so much as npr. And--you guessed it--not even npr so much as <a href="http://npr.org/books">npr.org/books</a>. Terry... Gross. If I had a nickel for each time someone came in looking for a book they heard about on npr, I'd treat myself to the first three seasons of <i>Downton Abbey</i> on DVD. Heck, I might even make myself some... let's see here... South of France Tomato Soup with Young Chevre to go with it (<a href="http://splendidtable.org/recipes">splendidtable.org/recipes</a>). Which is why last fall I was so caught off-guard when dozens of young people came in looking for John Green's book, without flashing their sustaining member cards and reminding me that members save 10%. Instead, it seemed, that word about Green's book got spread around the old-fashioned way: by mouth. Which, in case you're wondering, is the <b>lone exception</b> to the rule about not spreading things by mouth. But that's what I like best (Oh, come on, guys, grow up, some of us are trying to run a respectable blog here): looking at books not as preexisting certainties or advertisements in the flesh, but conversation starters, couriers of authors and ideas you've never heard or thought of. I love opening a box, or rather, watching Joe open a box, and waiting with anticipation to see what's inside, and hoping it's not cooking books. I love finding out that John Green is worth reading from a friend instead of online or inside a magazine. In short, I love it when the news of good books takes its time and comes as a surprise, and why I'm so taken aback when I see books I thought, irrationally, were ours, in airports or in line at Super Target. More often than not, though, I'm entitled to see books as an adventure, with its attendant implications of privacy, or specialty, in hand, as if dropped down from the clouds, wrapped in a blanket. Or plastic wrap. Whatever. The point is, each and every book is as uncommon as you make it; a treasure to behold. Oh, and don't worry about #90-100. It's mostly crap books about animals. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-32173982948145171392013-04-12T18:37:00.001-07:002013-04-13T13:49:27.776-07:00TO-READ l The Black and White of Christian Wiman's Bright Abyss <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"I'd passed right by the church every day for three years on my way to the train and work downtown, but I couldn't even have told you what denomination it was. I wasn't tuned into churches. Or to Christianity." </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">To write about belief is more or less taboo, these days. Indeed, to call one's self a Christian is akin to telling people that you don't vote or recycle and hunt fawn for sport. It is, in other words, audacious. The same thought kept occurring to me as I read <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780374216788" target="_blank"><i>My Bright Abyss</i></a>, a meditation, by Christian Wiman, poet and editor of <i>Poetry</i> magazine: how does death affect one's writing. Not so much their prose or even productivity, but </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">what they write about; their subject. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Wiman, who, in 2005, was diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer, was not "tuned into churches" or a sense of a higher power at the time. It makes sense to connect the dots and guess right that the diagnosis catalyzed his search for God (or "spirituality," as we tend equivocally to call that which breathes air into but scrims the surface of experience). But Wiman wasn't quite spurred to action in the way that, say, Eben Alexander came to find <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/%5Bmodel%5D-50" target="_blank">proof of heaven</a>. Wiman, as evidenced in poems neatly placed throughout the book like candles in a room, both to illuminate and reinforce the dark and doubt they bring to light, had sought to give his faith a name, or, rather, sought to let it come to terms in books and poems that he wrote for years before he turned, or settled on the name of God. Wiman's inclusion and close reading of poetry throughout <i>My Bright Abyss </i>makes clear that his transition wasn't smooth, abrupt, or even necessarily observed, much less defined. The poems he "responded deeply" to before and after seeing in them breadcrumbs of his hunger for relationship with God retain their force and use as poems, as the world retains its force and drudgery of email, work, and disappointments. Wiman doesn't flip or feel for any mystic on and off switch to make God appear. As in reading, in these pages he is seeking more than anything to argue and to notice where he's "poured the best parts of [himself]" rather than cling to a "fixed, mental product" of what God is or who one ought to be to ask. Training his eye to see those parts as indications of desire not to accolade and shut himself apart from life in solitude, but enter in communion with a sense those parts are needed is as much a part of Wiman's struggle as his treatment; his close reading of God. "Faith," he writes, "is change." And as if to enact his faith in writing, change is everywhere apparent. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In fact, my favorite quality of <i>My Bright Abyss </i>is how selflessly it changes course from one thought to another, as if Wiman is reviewing his own spiritual journey from the vantage of an outsider; how hesitant, or unconscious, of coming to conclusions or</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> asserting for the sake of building one thought on another just to form and fall apart some ego-plastered thesis like the Tower of Babel, which makes its brief epiphanies that much more believable, before Wiman retracts and retraces his steps. Which isn't to say the author lacks conviction. Quite the opposite. The author is so fearless as to contradict himself with angst, to spotlight his humanity. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Doubt serves as a constant introduction to what Wiman calls a "radical openness," oscillating between "the void of God and the love of God." </span>Perhaps that's what I meant about how death impacts one's writing: weakness begets power by another name. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Wiman, as a poet, is perfectly aware of the power in naming that which otherwise eludes us. The consequence, for good or ill, of claiming a religious identity; the use, as Martin Buber said, of acting like one's faith is real. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just as the comedian Louis C.K.'s show </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Louie</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> reframes the hard truths of reality his comedy is based on, Wiman points out that religion and popular conceptions of God as a benevolent and omnipresent white male in the clouds are "not made of these moments" he describes as something either "essential about the way we know God or merely" examples of "[his] own weakness of mind," but, in the case of religion, "means of honoring" and making them routine. Much like the way a poet practices his art by showing up and sitting down to write. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Poetry is devalued each time as a culture we insist it comes spontaneously "from nowhere," as if work wasn't, and shouldn't be, involved. In a secular society, faith too is reduced to a pretentious magic trick that pales in comparison to modern technologies. And yet, in our constant pursuit to uplift and accommodate the individual, we wind up denied access somehow to ourselves. It is "the kingdom of boredom," which manifests in absence and excess that Wiman comes to argue "could be the kingdom of God," noting that atheism is "equally useless in terms of understanding your experience, but easier to move away from"; a practical convenience in a culture that works hard to prohibit and disparage opportunities for self-reflection. For all of its ethereal and otherworldly wanderings, <i>My Bright Abyss</i> is very much a product of our times. The difference is that Wiman seeks to challenge what that means. As he writes, "</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We crave radical ruptures when we have allowed the nerves of our inner lives to go numb."</span><br />
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<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-80012195738172385182013-04-09T15:26:00.000-07:002013-04-09T15:26:22.704-07:00Uncommon Bestsellers l #57-84<br />
<a href="http://images.indiebound.com/846/530/9781609530846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.indiebound.com/846/530/9781609530846.jpg" width="216" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>#57: <i>Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates</i>, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein</b> - So Martin said the other day it was depressing to read the national bestseller reports and see what most of America is buying, if not reading. Actually, he tweeted it. And it was funnier the way he said it. It was like, "I'm always a little depressed... etc." You know, care free, insouciantly ambivalent, as if he'd been bemoaning the state of consumer book culture while ringing up a customer's purchase of <i>Calico Joe</i> and stirring the cream in his coffee. Now I don't know if Martin, in fact, takes cream in his coffee or if after reviewing our bestsellers in philosophy he'd care or not that a book like <i>Heidegger and a Hippo</i> is on top. But I do know that when it comes to foods that can be safely placed on top of books while finishing the newsletter, the man knows how he likes it. Mostly <b>no foods</b> on <b>any books</b>. But, again, it's all in how you say a thing. Plus, <i>Heidegger and a Hippo</i> was remaindered back in March, and remaindered books don't even count. Might as well call <a href="http://commongoodbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/uncommon-bestsellers-4-42.html" target="_blank">Al Gore's book <i>The Future</i></a> a bestseller! Hmm. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>#72: <i>The Lighthouse Road</i>, by Peter Geye </b>- <i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781609530846" target="_blank">The Lighthouse Road</a></i>, by Peter Geye's been called "an intricate narrative perfectly balanced and hand-carved," "a novel that charts the whole of the human heart," and comes "highly recommended for individual enjoyment." Blurbs are great, aren't they? Less praise for an author or their work than a gratuitously disjunct spree of adjectives and spurious statements of fact. Blurbs are to books what drunk people who think you're funny are to bars and college parties: uninhibited exaltations of the heretofore ineffable. Another word for that, I'm pretty sure, is poetry (20% off this month through April 30th). My theory about blurbs is that people who write them are so tickled with themselves for simply finishing a book that by the end they'd help set up a stuffed animal tea party if called upon, much less jot down a few words on paper. Why else would so many blurbs resemble clips from Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol Sweepstakes? It's either that or authors really are catching famous authors on the best days of their lives. Imagine if Ebenezer Scrooge had been asked to write a blurb at the end of <i>A Christmas Carol. </i>Instead of words the miserly old crank turned saint would probably have duct taped silver coins inside the cover. None of this has anything to do with <i>The Lighthouse Road, </i>by the way, which by all accounts is stunning and comes out in paper on June 1st. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>74: <i>The Vegetarian Option</i>, by Simon Hopkinson</b> - Everyone here has their thing: I frequent towards poetry, Kathy loves to travel, Claudette flips through magazines, and Joe likes books on music, and The St. Louis Cardinals. Likewise, no one knows as much about our cooking books as Molly. I would even go so far as to say that no one knows as little about our cooking books as me. One could, in fact, argue I know nothing about cooking books. To watch me try to find you any book in Cooking, big or small, faced out or on the shelf, about cooking or, in a last minute, Hail Mary effort to stop looking and move on with life, something else entirely, is to endure a kind of humiliation typically reserved for interactions with children in line at the market whose parents you don't know. Except, you know, without the goofy faces and deviant, largely unsolcited exclamations of potty talk. Molly's always saying thing like, "Who put this in 'canning'?" Or "Grilled Cheese isn't something that's 'in season'." I, meanwhile, am always saying things like, "Don't tell Molly I put it in 'canning.'" Or "What is 'canning'?" That said, it doesn't take a foodie to figure out what <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781603582865" target="_blank"><i>The Vegetarian Option</i></a> is all about. It's just that Molly can explain it better than I can and she's not here right now, but poetry is 20% off this month. Let me know if I can help. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-51410255881615396222013-04-03T13:32:00.000-07:002013-04-03T13:36:16.213-07:00Common Questions for Nick Dybek <span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">From June, 2012. <i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781594486562" target="_blank">When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man</a></i> <span style="font-size: large;">n</span>ow <span style="font-size: large;">a</span>vailable in <span style="font-size: large;">p</span>aperback! </span></span></span><br />
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</style> <span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">CGB: You've said
that one theme of your book is how idealized images of things and people can be
hard to reconcile with the reality of that thing or person. You're also an avid
record collector. Who, if anyone, has totally foundered your expectations in
live concert?</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">ND: Unfortunately, there
are many occasions when seeing a band live has zapped the magic from the
albums—in performance the artist doesn’t always conform with the picture you
had in your head. It’s a bit like seeing a film version of your favorite novel
where the characters don’t look or act anything like you pictured them.
But why focus on that?</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I drove up to Detroit
during the fall of my freshman year in college to see Modest Mouse. I’d
been listening to <i><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Lonesome Crowded West</span></i>
on repeat for three months, though I knew next to nothing about the band: no
one really did back then. The album painted such a vivid portrait of an America
full of deserted truck stops, trailer parks, drunk cowboys, junkfood, and long
rides on the seedy public transportation. But the lyrics were so thoughtful and
poetic that part of me didn’t quite buy it. I expected the singer, Isaac
Brock, to look like a Swarthmore grad, a disdainful intellectual in
thick-rimmed glasses. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">The man that took the
stage at the Magic Stick that night was overweight, side-burned,
flannel-shirted and drunk out of his mind. He sang through the pickup on his
guitar. He charged into the crowd, not affectionately. At one point he
bent down to whisper in the ear of a heckler in the front row. The man turned
white and immediately headed for the exit. A few songs later Brock emptied what
looked like a water bottle onto the stage, lit a match, and dropped it. The
stage erupted in flame until a roadie came with a fire extinguisher.
Incidentally, he also played the absolute hell out of the songs. Now that I’m
past 30 I’ve pretty much abandoned my old rock dreams. Except this one. <br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Besides records, objects in general
seem to play a part in your thinking and writing about people, in terms of how
things help us visualize ourselves. Say it's your birthday and you're given an
oversized American League jersey from a not terribly close friend. Do you
consider integrating it into your wardrobe or move confidently in the direction
of an adult male?</span></b><br />
<br />
I’m a big sports fan. Reading about Michigan Football, and the Chicago Bulls
and Cubs, is my go-to procrastination. And while trying to write, I
procrastinate a lot. Any interest in an analysis of the Wolverine’s 2012
recruiting class? Care to know more about the Cub’s top minor league prospects?
We should talk. So maybe it’s hypocritical to fully accept some parts of the
culture of American sports fandom while rejecting others. But as to the jersey
question: salvation army, pronto. <br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia;">One reviewer noted, after reading
Captain Flint, they had to stop themselves from "crying in public."
Which I imagine must feel great. If that same person though was sitting next to
you on the subway, book in hand, obviously struggling to keep it together,
would you be more likely to sit back and enjoy the ride, so to speak, or
pretend to be wearing headphones?</span></b> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I became a writer because
it got boring bringing only my friends and family to tears. I thought I could
do so much more. But if there is one thing I’ve learned about the New
York Subway in the brief time I’ve lived there: always pretend to be wearing
headphones. </span></span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-68862246561836642952013-04-01T19:17:00.001-07:002013-04-01T19:17:05.328-07:00This Week's Poem l Confession <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Last night, I ate a soup bowl of ice cream</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">with butterscotch sauce. My basement </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">is full of trash I paid too much for. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I did not love my mother </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">and though I loved my father </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I did not please him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I take naps. For fourteen years</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I couldn't forgive my ex-husband,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">only hardened my heart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My drawers are a mess. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I own too many shoes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I don't give much money away. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There are light bulbs I ought to replace. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I don't understand foreign policy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've let my languages slide. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I throw out the mending. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sometimes I pretend </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">to care, to listen, to be working. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I read stupid mystery stories,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">criticize. Also the dog</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">does not obey me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">From <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780807149508" target="_blank"><i>Earth, Mercy</i></a>, published by Louisiana State University Press, 2013</span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-60306856754448993972013-03-28T08:32:00.000-07:002013-04-01T19:18:15.847-07:00TO-READ l A Box of Photographs <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The title of today's post is, admittedly, misleading. For, in fact, I have to talk about two books, both published by The University of Chicago Press. "Have to" as in am fortunate enough to have read both. I couldn't pick just one, and didn't care to cram the titles of both books together up above, in fear that it would read like I had planned to talk about <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780226308319" target="_blank"><i>A Box of Photographs</i></a>, by Roger Grenier, but changed my mind and was "recalculating" the whole business of writing about books at all, instead opting to blog about, say, new restaurants opening around town. "TO-READ: Boneless Thursdays at Buffalo Wild Wings." That said, both books could find shelter under the umbrella of "A Box of Photographs," as both, I think, are meant, or built, to be sorted through as such.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For one thing, Roger Grenier's memoir, translated from the French by Alice Kaplan, is divided in short chapters, more like fragments of stained glass, that very much resemble pictures of a life. His boyhood growing up in Pau, learning to ski, develop film, and to infer a fairly accurate familial hierarchy based on who owned what size and model of camera; his efforts in the war as an outside member of The French Resistance, shooting with his father's Voightlander, instead of a gun, which ironically is what nearly gets him killed; his many friendships somewhat superstitiously entwined by each owning the same brand of camera: a Leica.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The title then's a working one that typifies the tone and form throughout: chronological though nonlinear, compelling but devoid of that which falls outside the frame; the omnipotent narrator, in other words, who tends to save the day by backing up to bring to light the past and future reeking peripheral havoc on our subject, as perhaps all truly satisfying stories must be. That is, incomplete, so that we may "recognize the ways that resistance to easy assimilation might sustain our engagement with the poem," as Charles Bernstein writes. It's true that Grenier's "box" is not, strictly speaking, a book of poems, but it's close enough in structure to <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780226925288" target="_blank"><i>Recalculating</i></a>, that to deconstruct and impute one over the other as more worthy or in need of our efforts as readers would be to deny ourselves a great pleasure. Namely, that of watching these writers variously widen and zoom in on what's at stake, which changes with what Berstein calls "the flow of perception," and which aggregates to form less one well-rehearsed thesis than, as the title of Bernstein's book suggests, one well-nurtured writer still rampantly finding and losing their way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For Grenier that means wondering what happened to the pictures he remembers but can't find, and looking for them buried in some shoebox, while coming across others he can't place. For Bernstein, alchemizing history, poetics, ingenuity and adage to proclaim, as many voices, that poetry and politics, the personal and social, are inseparable. "Nothing forced you to advance the film after you took the photo," Grenier writes, in stark contrast to the ease with which we now "develop" and disperse images. It seems as if such lack of force and of agenda, by extension, lends these books their many eyes and ears. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-77822153172472866012013-03-25T17:18:00.001-07:002013-03-25T17:20:06.752-07:00"Does This Taste Funny?"<br />
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<br /><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-35987046122161849292013-03-24T19:52:00.002-07:002013-03-24T19:52:41.925-07:00Uncommon Bestsellers, #43-54<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>43: <i>Daring Greatly</i>, by Brene Brown</b> - I'm not making this up. At the time of this writing, I am, literally, in the process of selling yet another copy of <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9781592407330" target="_blank"><i>Daring Greatly</i></a>. Swear to God. I told the person buying it I'd be a minute while I checked to see what's "wrong with the computer," that I wasn't "blogging or anything." But all the while I've been... okay, shoot, hold on, I think the person sees me blogging. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>44:</b> how to fix what's wrong with the computers. Google. <i>Or</i> Send. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>43: </b>Okay, we're clear. But seriously, this book's been flying off the shelves the last few weeks. One thing I love about working at a bookstore full of smart people is that more often than not I hear of books by way of conversation. "You haven't read Tolstoy?" someone will ask, feigning incredulity. "No!" I say, "What's that?" Or, "Where would I find James Agee?" And before I can offer them the pen and paper on which to leave their phone number in case the guy stops in, they're rushing out the door (worried, I suppose), and someone else across the store says, "<i>Let Us Now Praise Famous Men</i>?" as if to keep the conversation going, and waits for me to know what they're talking about. Invariably, I end up Google-Sending whatever it is I'm supposed to instinctively agree with or know magically, and nine times out of ten I come across some book I've never heard of in the process. All of this is to say that between the books that Martin orders and our customers unwittingly alert me to, I've learned a lot about behaving vulnerably, in public, which is more or less the subject of Brown's book. And I'll tell you what, she's absolutely right: it's a virtue for a reason. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>46: <i>The Pocket Pema Chodron</i> </b>- Do you ever get the feeling her real name's "Debbie" or something like that? Anyway, <i>The Pocket Pema Chodron</i> isn't exactly what we in the book biz call a "sideline," but it's close. Sidelines include things like birthday cards and thank-you notes and most books about dogs, I think. (Notice I didn't say <i>"all</i> books about dogs, I think.") Pens are sidelines, too. If that helps. Sidelines are like when a waiter approaches you at the end of a meal and offers dessert for a dollar. "It's only a dollar!" the waiter taunts, while balancing a tray of tiny ice-creams and profiteroles. Plus a lifetime of habitually bad decisions and regret. That's the part they don't say. </span><br />
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<a href="http://images.indiebound.com/585/110/9781452110585.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.indiebound.com/585/110/9781452110585.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>51 or 2, probably:</b> <b><i>I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats</i></b> - Say, while we're on the subject of sidelines, do you have any idea how embarrassing it is that a poetry anthology, ostensibly written by cats, is our bestselling book of poems? I'll tell you: pretty <i>damn</i>! The good news is that poets Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and Patricia Kirkpatrick all cracked our top 100, as well. Poetry Month is coming up, and to help celebrate I've been brainstorming ideas for how to sell more books of poetry. One idea I had is hiding digital download codes inside of books, so readers could both read the poems, analog style, or listen to either The New Pornographers' last album or an Aimee Mann live iTunes session. Neither of which have yet to be redeemed. But then I only had the two, and couldn't find the Aimee Mann one, plus that's not the kind of thing you want to advertise: a wonderful surprise like that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>54: <i>Letters to a Young Madman</i>, by Paul Gruchow</b> - The 25th Annual <a href="http://www.thefriends.org/programs/mnbookawards.html" target="_blank">Minnesota Book Awards </a>are coming up on April 13th, and Paul Gruchow's posthumously published memoir about mental illness is nominated in the category of Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Hey, that reminds me. You know what else is happening in April? Poetry Month! Wouldn't it be great if we could all band together and think of a creative way to help sell more books of poetry? One idea is had is to stand out on the corner of Snelling and Grand and slip books in the back pockets of unsuspecting passers by, on <a href="http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/406" target="_blank">Poem in Your Pocket Day</a>, then ask them what they think they're doing stealing from a bookstore. But, as I say, suggestions are always welcome, until April 1st, when I would really need to know by. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Hey, Samantha! Made you look!"</td></tr>
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<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-35952881937321911652013-03-19T21:16:00.002-07:002013-04-07T13:03:59.276-07:00TO-READ l Tiger Writing <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The other night, I had the great pleasure of attending author David Shields' reading at Magers & Quinn bookstore, in Minneapolis. Which for those of you unfamiliar is what happens when you cross the Mississippi and keep going. In many ways, author Gish Jen's anthropological memoir is about going beyond the... Oh, right, but David Shields. So David Shields the other night was calling for a literature less occupied with setting, less ruminatively paced, less characteristically narrative, in other words, in favor of work patterned (or fractured, as the case may be) after how we live today. That is, distracted, hyperactive and, generally, in our own heads. (That's hardly the whole story to Shields work or <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780307961525" target="_blank">latest book</a>, by the way, but it's a start.) Shields' call to action stirred in me a sense not just that he was right, but that we needed to start burning novels written during or prior to the Victorian era. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Wait, no. I seem to have gotten off track there. Plus, you know, it's writing we're talking about, so I don't know if it's a call to "action" so much as a call to stop impersonating Henry James in between long stretches of looking at friends' pictures of trips to Minneapolis on Facebook. Shields, in fact, was one of the most gracious and attentive authors I've met, and his remarks were as clear-eyed as inclusive of his audience's viewpoints, as well as works of art he finds no longer worthy of creative emulation, but no less rigorous and emblematic of their place and time. <i>There's a better word for that... there's a better word for that... there's a better word for that...</i> CONTEXT! Which according to Gish Jen's <i><a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780674072831" target="_blank">Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self</a></i>, we Western storysmith's don't pay near enough attention to. Or is it the other way around? That Easterners, historically, don't value isolation? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If David Shields' talk brought to mind poet/fascist/scraggly old Ezra Pound's invocation to "make it new," Gish Jen's Westernized self-scrutiny, and that of her ancestors, might rally one to "make it whole"; to represent the self, in part, by neglecting to cull grains of life from one lived in the sandbox, not insidiously but, rather, habitually; neglecting to make clear the blurry vision of our steeped (to borrow a traditional, Eastern image of the making of identity, or lack thereof), amorphous memories, attenuated, in a sense, by a culture that insists the self is in no way enlivened by ignoring its surroundings. Not that Jen is choosing sides. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In paintings, photographs, and more expository narratives, including those of her father and grandfather, Jen finds much to speculate, in terms of its relation to an invisible, but promissory, or perhaps tantalizing, "inner" I. Pointing out, for instance, that her grandfather's retelling of a birthday celebration that for one momentous afternoon unlocked his family's eight palatial doors speaks to the hierarchical framework through which he, as well as his son, saw what Jen refers to as their "interdependent" situation in the world, and would eventually go on to write about it. What, Jen's left to wonder, are they thinking?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We have inherited a gift for analyzing, in the West, which we generally think of as a good thing, and indeed does serve us well, as individuals. (Thanks a ton, Aristotle.) But maybe that's the problem. For as Jen seems to suggest, it's our ignorance of that which binds, in favor of what stratifies that tends to turn our stories into stone. Characters and plot outlines (even and especially those that lurch from the supposed depths of reality), like chemically-grown vegetables, aren't quick to age or, in the case of characters, mature, develop, grow, instead resembling vestiges of their would-be dexterous and unbranded selves. How interdependency relates to organically grown produce, I have no idea. Indeed, no one wants to read about Harry Potter getting high on anything besides a broomstick, or watch Reese Witherspoon shave one leg and spiral out of control on<i> </i>Steaz Organic Iced Tea. Actually, a lot of people would probably watch that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What's more, not surprisingly perhaps, is how apt we are to notice when our icons, like artifacts in a museum at night, mysteriously leave their place. In one study Jen cites, Westerners shown pictures of a series of things set against a fixed hotel room background, are perceptive to the change, while Easterners are more likely to register a swap in background that accompanies an eagle frozen in mid-flight, less alert to that which sets itself apart, in other words.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780674072763" target="_blank"><i>Mind, Modernity, Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience</i></a>, Liah Greenfeld writes,"Citizens of the twenty-first century enjoy unprecedented freedom to become the authors of their personal destinies. Empowering as this is, it also places them under enourmous psychic strain." It probably is the case--and Jen is quick to be the first to point out the flaws that come with making inferences based on cultural generalizations--that more and more both East and West will come, as Greenfeld says, to see themselves as "authors" of their lives, and more pressingly, identities. Jen's lectures, filled with self-effacing humor and empathy, don't have in mind to argue or negate first person points of view, so much as remind that ego manifests itself through myriad and often unrecognizable outlets. </span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-34488204362287814382013-03-18T18:11:00.002-07:002013-03-18T18:11:58.866-07:00This Week's Poem l Open to the Psalms<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When you write to us, "Snow coming on the mountains,"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">your words arrive as chill and comfort, our nerves now</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">still with any news, age wandering through us like the quiet</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">of our blood. We think of you there cabin-sheltered. We</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">will wait. A week or two. The beeces, maples, willows,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">birches, and oaks along the creek now leaf-lost or yellow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When our time comes to look into our own first now, I</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">will think of what I think of every time--how within each</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">winter's long surround of cold, my father kept the family Bible</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">on the kitchen table always open to the Psalms. On any morning</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I woke early in the iced arrival of the light I would see him turn</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">a page, slap on his hat, and walk outside to shovel on into the day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">From <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780814334539" target="_blank"><i>Practicing to Walk Like a Heron</i></a>, by Jack Ridl, Wayne State University Press, 2013</span><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-2125517257327587902013-03-17T14:15:00.003-07:002013-03-24T19:59:39.523-07:00Uncommon Bestsellers, #4-42<br />
<a href="http://images.indiebound.com/670/126/9780316126670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://images.indiebound.com/670/126/9780316126670.jpg" width="210" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's that time of year again. That time I bother looking at what's actually selling, rather than assuming it's t-shirts and telling people which ones. But don't worry. I'll be leaving it to Martin to flesh out a more scrupulous and true-to-sales list, reflective of our inventory. What follows then remains a cumulative but no less arbitrary assortment of our top 100 bestsellers from last month. Oh, and one more thing. You'll notice, well, <i>you</i> won't notice, but were you somehow to log in to Reports and print a copy of our sales period from 02.01.2013 through 03.01.2013, which would take forever to explain, not because you're slow, but because there's 18 different passwords, you'd notice books like Al Gore's <i>The Future</i> (not featured) have, in fact, sold more than 150 copies. Way more, for example, than <i>Heidegger and a Hippo</i>, which I'll come back to, in order to reference a joke Martin made about our philosophy section. And if you're anything like me, you'd wonder why Gore's book is so conspicuously absent from our list, and also how long it would take you to drive to Chipotle if you left now and<i> </i>probably would be back in 10-15 minutes but it's hard to know because of traffic on the weekend if you were the only one here... for awhile. Reason being, we sold <i>The Future</i> for Al Gore's event at the Westminster Town Hall Forum, and not surprisingly such sales aren't necessarily indicative of what's selling in store. Although, you could do a heck of a lot worse than Al Gore. Had we sold books at a Wild game, for instance; an oral team history, perhaps, full of endearing anecdotes about the first time Brett Clark smiled or how long it took Brodziak to get over his reluctance to pass players, without first saying "excuse me": <i>that</i> would pop up on the radar. Anyway, I just want you to know how excruciatingly adult I'm being by not taking this opportunity to tell you that I MET AL GORE AND AL GORE SAID THE NAME OF OUR BOOKSTORE ON THE RADIO! I'll refrain (see below). Now on with the fake list! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>4.</b> <b><i>Google Offer </i></b>- I couldn't resist. I'm sorry. The rest are books, I promise. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>8. and 13. <i>Tenth of December, </i>by George Saunders and <i>Round House</i>, by Louise Erdrich </b>- <i>The New York Times</i> proclaimed Saunders' latest "the best book" of 2013. I know what you're thinking: <i>Colin, what's the point of putting together a purely subjective bestseller list if you're going to tout the same books as The New York Times?</i> First of all, <i>The New York Times</i> likes good books, too, okay? Furthermore, <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780812993806" target="_blank"><i>Tenth of December</i></a> really is one of, if not <i>the</i> best book of the year. Truth is, I feel the same way about calling books "best" and "worst," or rating them on some meaningless scale of #1-100, as I do about eating chocolate and comparing it to an orgasm: it doesn't take much and odds are I won't remember anyway. That said, Saunders' short stories have stayed with me longer than most novels, poems, and would be reminiscences of former... sure, let's call them "lovers." <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780062065247" target="_blank"><i>Round House</i></a> I've not read, but <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2012_f_erdrich.html#.UT3uulfUSq8" target="_blank">heard was good</a>. Plus when Bookseller Joe told me that his mom "loved it," he held "loved" like a fermata and did that thing with his eyebrows where it looks like he just came to in a startlingly public place, until I poked him to make sure he was still breathing. Then I said, "Is it me or is it weird that we've sold this many copies of <i>Round House,</i> when Louise Erdrich's own bookstore, Birchbark Books, is right over the river?" And then we both just started laughing about the difference between St. Paul and Minneapolis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_oGjg8JTPN4Gm8kNibiDBfYTOCycy00c-_nL3sJX7S1ykRy7vi0642QEfEiLK8ddBGeE214Mc4dIcaM641G2CDeo5H2cvsasYhaM86ptZXal7V8_BSurxTXtquWOAgu7hlsINaunl1bk/s1600/Cookie+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_oGjg8JTPN4Gm8kNibiDBfYTOCycy00c-_nL3sJX7S1ykRy7vi0642QEfEiLK8ddBGeE214Mc4dIcaM641G2CDeo5H2cvsasYhaM86ptZXal7V8_BSurxTXtquWOAgu7hlsINaunl1bk/s400/Cookie+2.jpg" width="400" /></a><b>22. <i>Cookie The Walker</i>, by Chris Monroe</b> - About a week ago, Chris Monroe and I got into this <a href="http://commongoodbooks.blogspot.com/2013/02/common-questions-for-chris-monroe.html" target="_blank">big debate</a> about the difference between children's books and grownup books, and why so many children's books star cats and dogs instead of humans. Oh, and by "debate" I mean in the Old French use of the term, as in to "deliberate," "consider," "eat food slowly then complain about it." Regardless, I said some things I shouldn't have, mostly about dogs. Luckily, Chris Monroe is one of the coolest writers and illustrators 'round these parts, and was all like, "I have no idea why children's books are about animals, but it's fun to draw an alligator in leisure wear!" Monroe's latest, <i>Cookie, the Walker</i> has some humans who are mostly bad people, and I was like, "Hey, how come all the humans in your book are mostly..." and then Claudette told me to be quiet and just enjoy Chris' reading. And I did! I laughed a lot, and even got a copy of the book signed. For my nephews. What? I swear to God for my nephews. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>42. <i>The Art of Fielding</i>, by Chad Harbach</b> - The only thing I can think to compare <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780316126670" target="_blank"><i>The Art of Fielding's</i></a> rookie of the year success and out of the gate traction to's the pain I get these days in my shoulder when I exercise. It starts off as this negligible book about baseball two holiday seasons ago, then blows up just in time for Little, Brown And Company to confess it hadn't... maybe... printed enough copies (<i>"Hey! Remember when we published Malcolm Gladwell!?"</i>), and for me to fake a problem with my iPod and stop running. Now it's back in paper and still selling like fifth inning cheap seats to take in a Twins loss. What do they call that in baseball? Not abject failure but the thing about longevity? "Long game"? Is that a term? A player's "long game"? Or is that golf? Like, <i>"Boy, I'll tell you, Terry, he's a little guy, but he shoots a heck of a long game, which I'd argue is what drives him to wear so many layers in this heat. His long game."</i></span> <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Al Gore choosing audience members at random to "swear to ride the bus."</td></tr>
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<a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8562330624432866561.post-91335680973911491742013-03-05T06:11:00.002-08:002013-03-05T09:31:09.958-08:00TO-READ l Come Along With Me <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Shirley Jackson's legacy has mostly survived through movies (her 1959
novel <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i> has spawned numerous cinematic
adaptations) and high school English classes ("The Lottery," a short
story that first appeared in <i>The New Yorker</i>, has since become a staple
of American horror in the vein of Poe and Hawthorne). But few readers
today are familiar with her lesser-known works, such as her final novel <i>We Have Always Lived in the Castle</i>, or the short stories and lectures
collected here. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Jackson suffered from
psychosomatic illnesses until her death, at age 48, of heart failure in
her sleep, and that same eerie confluence of psychic disruption and
physical danger run through <a href="http://www.commongoodbooks.com/book/9780143107118" target="_blank"><i>Come Along With Me</i></a>. She has been called the mother
of modern American horror by Stephen King, but both fans and detractors
of King's will be quick to point out the blurrier boundary between
supernatural and earthly terrors in Jackson's works. Her brave excursions into
psychological darkness live precariously on the brink between the other wordly and the everyday, mastering the art of comforting the
disturbed and disturbing the comfortable. Although the
occult is never far from her character's minds, it is their altogether
human actions that cause disaster in her stories. No other author of the mid-20th-century was better able
to conjure quiet cruelties and deep unease from the trappings of conventional American
life; to read Jackson is to take a brave step away from the literature
of the comforted.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">-Hope Rehak, Customer. Follow Hope (doesn't that sound nice?) at hoperehak.com and @hoperehak</span></i><a href="http://commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp">Common Good Books</a>http://www.blogger.com/profile/16089213627532693973noreply@blogger.com0