A Certain Slant of Light

Continuing my Barbara Cooney theme, I read the picture book in which she illustrates ”I Am Cherry Alive,” the Little Girl Sang, a poem by Delmore Schwartz, a mid-century American poet of whom I had never heard. Sorry, Mr. Schwartz.

The little girl is not only cherry alive, she is apple, she is plum, she is pit of peach, (she is deeply opposed to articles), she is red and gold and green and blue. What does this mean? I teetered between finding the poem exhilarating and finding it maddening, in a way makes me think irresistibly of Billy Collins’ poem Introduction to Poetry, in which he encourages his students to experience a poem,

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Okay, Billy! I get it! I need to follow Barbara Cooney’s good example and just vibe with Delmore Schwartz’s little girl who is cherry alive and apple and plum and witch in a zoo, “I will always be me, I will always be new!”

(But also what does it mean to be cherry alive. What does it MEAN.)

Cooney’s illustrations are of course beautiful. I particularly like the ones illustrating the colors, the girl in her red coat and hat watching the red sunrise above the snow, and sitting beneath a golden tree, and crouched on a rock in a green bathing suit by a green pool in a deep green forest.

Are you ready for another round of Angsty Poetry from My Old Notebooks? Probably not, but I found some more and I have to SHARE.

A little uncertain as to how to date this one. The Witch of Blackbird Pond notes clearly date the notebook as fifth grade, but the later descent into a taxonomy of telepathic animals of various kinds (fire lizards in Pern etc.) is just as clearly seventh grade territory… Given the everything about this poem I would say probably seventh grade.

I have a strong suspicion that this poem (in particular, the second stanza) is riffing off someone, but I’m not sure who and a google search has not helped me out.


And in this strange and bitter world
with all things born to die
blessed are those with hearts of stone,
for they will never feel pain,
watching thousands wither and fade,
and knowing only one will fly.

And would you give me just one wish
I’d ask for just another day,
Another day, another day to live
To do the things we never did
Show the things we always hid
Say the words I could never bring myself to say.

I just read John M. Ford’s poem “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station” and I wanted to share it because it is awfully good.

The first of a line of wagons have arrived,
Spilling footmen and pages in Court livery,
And old thick Kay, stepping down from his Range Rover,
Tricked out in a bush coat from Swaine, Adeney, Brigg,
Leaning on his shooting stick as he marshalls his company,
Instructing the youngest how to behave in the station,
To help mature women that they may encounter,
Report pickpockets, gather up litter,
And of course no true Knight of the Table Round (even in training)
Would do a station porter out of Christmas tips.
He checks his list of arrival times, then his watch
(A moon-phase Breguet, gift from Merlin):
The seneschal is a practical man, who knows trains do run late,
And a stolid one, who sees no reason to be glad about it.
He dispatches pages to posts at the tracks,
Doling out pennies for platform tickets,
Then walks past the station buffet with a dyspeptic snort,
Goes into the bar, checks the time again, orders a pint.
The patrons half turn–it’s the fella from Camelot, innit?
And Kay chuckles soft to himself, and the Court buys a round.
He’s barely halfway when a page tumbles in,
Seems the knights are arriving, on time after all,
So he tips the glass back (people stare as he guzzles),
Then plonks it down hard with five quid for the barman,
And strides for the doorway (half Falstaff, half Hotspur)
To summon his liveried army of lads…

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

At long last I’ve read Dylan Thomas’s memoir/short story/prose poem, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, in a beautiful edition illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (illustrator of Caldecott winner St. George and the Dragon and Caldecott runner-up Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, among many others).

I’m glad I waited till now for this book. The writing is beautiful, and I don’t think I would have appreciated it fully as a child.

Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.

Continuing the Christmas theme, I read a collection of Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas short stories, A Merry Christmas, and Other Stories. This is about as saccharine as you would expect (read: VERY), but for whatever reason I find that much more tolerable in nineteenth century authors. In Alcott’s case particularly, I think it’s partly because her own family was so poor when she was a child: when she writes about sad waifs who are transported when a charitable neighbor gives them a Christmas tree, you sort of feel young Louisa beyond it, yearning for SOMEONE to give her and her sisters the tree laden with mittens and gilded nuts that her feckless father will never provide.

I also finished G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle, which is a somewhat odd book. It sort of gestures at being a mystery without, in fact, fully developing its mystery. However, I enjoyed it enough that I am reading the sequel, which is actually why I read the first book in the first place, because the sequel is a Christmas story and I wanted to read it this December.

And finally, I read Iona Datt Sharma’s Division Bells, because skygiants reviewed it as a romance deeply grounded in the minutia of UK House of Lords procedure. This is not something that I knew I wanted until I read the review and my traitorous heart, determined to lengthen my ever-lengthening to-read list, said “YES.”

It’s very sweet! I did wish it was a little longer so the relationship had more time to develop, but on the other hand the Parliamentary procedure was everything I hoped and dreamed - in fact, considerably more; my knowledge of the House of Lords is so slight that I didn’t even know what to hope and dream for.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Tale. So far, Truman Capote has escaped from military school and run away to Alabama, where he almost doesn’t knock on Nelle Harper Lee’s window because she has been forced to wear a dress and so he is not sure that he has the right window.

What I Plan to Read Next

Christmas with Anne, and Other Holiday Stories, a collection of stories by L. M. Montgomery. I’ve never read Montgomery’s short stories before, so I am intrigued to make their acquaintance.

I've finally begun Emily Mayhew's Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I, which I wish I had read earlier, although to be fair "I want to make my hero a stretcher-bearer!" is a sentiment that would result in an emphatically different book than the one I wrote, and it's not so much that I wish I had written a different book as... I now have another book idea. Oh, hell.

I will review the book at more length once I've finished it, but one thing I LOVE about it as that the references in the back include not only regular citations, but also mentions of artwork and poetry related to the topics in the chapter, like Hayden McKay's An RAMC Squad with Infantry: Night at Nurlu, October 1918. (This is one of the less viscerally disturbing pictures, but notable nonetheless for the ghostly affect of the faceless, still-living figures. Many of the paintings have this quality.)

This poem, Mayhew actually quoted in the text. An army chaplain wrote it; it's drawn from the patter of the stretcher-bearers as they carried along the casualties, negotiating the difficult going while also soothing the men on the stretchers, and it's striking for capturing that cadence while remaining recognizably a poem.

To Stretcher Bearers
by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy

Easy does it — bit o' trench 'ere,
Mind that blinkin' bit o' wire,
There's a shell 'ole on your left there,
Lift 'im up a little 'igher.
Stick it, lad, ye'll soon be there now,
Want to rest 'ere for a while?
Let 'im dahn then — gently — gently,
There ye are, lad. That's the style.
Want a drink, mate? 'Ere's my bottle,
Lift 'is 'ead up for 'im, Jack,
Put my tunic underneath 'im,
'Ow's that, chummy? That's the tack!
Guess we'd better make a start now,
Ready for another spell?
Best be goin', we won't 'urt ye,
But 'e might just start to shell.
Are ye right, mate? Off we goes then.
That's well over on the right,
Gawd Almighty, that's a near 'un!
'Old your end up good and tight,
Never mind, lad, you're for Blighty,
Mind this rotten bit o' board.

We'll soon 'ave ye tucked in bed, lad,
'Opes ye gets to my old ward.
No more war for you, my 'earty,
This'll get ye well away,
Twelve good months in dear old Blighty,
Twelve good months if you're a day,
M.O.'s got a bit o' something
What'll stop that blarsted pain.
'Ere's a rotten bit o' ground, mate,
Lift up 'igher — up again,
Wish 'e'd stop 'is blarsted shellin'
Makes it rotten for the lad.
When a feller's been and got it,
It affec's 'im twice as bad.
'Ow's it goin' now then, sonny?
'Ere's that narrow bit o' trench,
Careful, mate, there's some dead Jerries,
Lawd Almighty, what a stench!
'Ere we are now, stretcher-case, boys,
Bring him aht a cup o' tea!
Inasmuch as ye have done it
Ye have done it unto Me.

Another cat poem. I’ve nearly finished the book of cat poetry; time to move on the my collection of Russian poets soon.

Cat on the Mat
By J. R. R. Tolkien

The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he is free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.

The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred
fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
leaps on his meet
where words loom in gloom -
far now they be
fierce and free
and tamed is he;
but fat cat on the mat
kept as pet
he does not forget.

I went to Bloomington for the last couple of days, and as a present one of my friends gave me a book of poems about cats. This one enchanted me:

The Spring Is a Cat
by Jang-Hi Lee
translated Chang-Soo Koh

On a cat's fur soft as pollen,
The mild Spring's fragrance lingers.

In a cat's eyes round as golden bells,
The mad Spring's flame glows.

On a cat's gently closed lips,
The soft Spring's drowsiness lies.

On a cat's sharp whiskers,
The green Spring's life dances.

In the days of yore, I used to post poems occasionally, and I think I ought to do it again, at least occasionally. Everyone’s day is better for a little poetry in it, right?

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
By A. E. Housman

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

My April challenge was “read a book nominated for an award in 2018.” I decided to go ahead and read all the 2018 Newbery books. (There are only four, and one was a picture book and another was in verse, so this wasn’t that hard.)

Erin Entrada Kelly’s Hello, Universe won the Newbery this year, and unfortunately it’s by far my least favorite book of the batch. The plot felt mechanical, and the characters just never popped into three-dimensionality for me. In particular, Kelly’s depiction of the class bully was flat. This would have been fine if she hadn’t written chapters in his POV - I totally buy that the other children would see him as a meanness machine rather than a person - but he shouldn’t be completely cardboard in his own head.

This is particularly a pity because any of the honor books would have made a good winner - even the picture book, Derrick Barnes’ Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, even though I have a bit of a bias against picture books winning the Newbery Medal. In 2016 Last Stop on Market Street somehow beat out both The War that Saved My Life AND Roller Girl, two wonderful and memorable books, and I still haven’t recovered.

But Crown a good book. It’s about an eleven- or twelve-year-old black boy getting a haircut and musing about how fly he looks, which is very sweet (without being cloying) and also sometimes quite funny.

I also quite liked Renée Watson’s Piecing Me Together, which about Jade, a young black high school student and collage artist who is attending a rich majority-white high school on scholarship. There’s a lot of good stuff in here - Jade’s dedication to her art, her friendships, connections to the Black Lives Matter movement - but I think my favorite part of the book was her complicated relationship with the mentor she gets through the Woman to Woman program.

On the one hand, Jade appreciates that this program is a great opportunity to her. On the other hand, she super resents the fact that she is always seen as in need of help, as the one needing opportunities, at the condescension with which Maxine - who comes from a wealthy black family - sometimes treats her. The way that Maxine sees Jade as somehow better than the other girls in her neighborhood, because she’s gotten herself into this fancy high school, - but Jade still sees herself as one of them and still loves them.

Or, as Jade puts it: “Those girls are not the opposite of me. We are perpendicular. We may be on different paths, yes. But there’s a place where we touch, where we connect and are just the same.”

But if I were god-king of the universe or at least the Newbery committee, the book I would have chosen to win is Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, the book in verse. After 15-year-old Will’s older brother Shawn is shot in a gang turf war, Will vows revenge. He sticks Shawn’s gun down the back of his pants, heads down to the elevator, and then… the elevator stops at each floor, and at each stop another ghost of someone from Will’s past killed by gun violence enters.

One: A ghost story! I love a well-done ghost story!

Two: This is a premise that has a lot of potential to get sappy or offer pat, easy, cheap answers, but it doesn’t. It feels real and raw and painful, and the way Reynolds writes, the way he spaces the words on the page particularly, makes you feel the emotions, mimics the slow thud of a heart as you take in the fact that a tragedy has happened and things will never be the same.

There was a little Island in the ocean.
Around it the winds blew
And the birds flew
And the tides rose and fell on the shore.

So begins Margaret Wise Brown's The Little Island. It's like a free verse poem: you can almost track the ebb and the fall of the waves in the length of the lines.

It strikes me that picture books are one of the last bastions of popular poetry that is widely read by ordinary people, rather than mostly by dedicated poetry-lovers. Poetry used to be widely loved and read and quoted and even written (although by people who were quick to declaim that they weren't true poets, true poets being rarified creatures who live on air), and then after World War I it all seemed to peter out until you end up with the situation today where so many people see poetry as impenetrably high brow with nothing to say to them.

I read a book, Gregory Orr's Poetry as Survival, about the ability of poetry to help people build bridges through suffering, a theme that both Eugenia Ginzburg and Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn elaborate in their gulag memoirs: they found reciting remembered poetry and writing poems of their own central to their survival, both in the purely physical sense but also as preserving their intellectual integrity (in the meaning of wholeness, although probably honesty also applies).

It is perhaps worrisome that the great mass of the American population is now armed with nothing but Dr. Seuss.

The other thing that strikes me about this book is the fickleness of fame. The Little Island won the Caldecott in 1947, but I had never heard of it; Margaret Wise Brown's reputation now rests on Good Night Moon. The award hit the right author but the wrong book.