Review: Who Needs a Reef? A Coral Ecosystem by Karen Patkau

Who Needs a Reef? 

A Coral Ecosystem 

by Karen Patkau 

Random House of Canada Limited 

Tundra Books 

Children's Nonfiction

I love these Karen Patkau books. They're well written--lean sentences with zip:

"Crunch, crunch, crunch." A parrotfish munches on the algae-covered corral. Sea snails graze on it, too....

A triggerfish pokes at a starfish that is prying open a clam. 

The books are also well illustrated and explained. How does a coral reef form? What kinds of plants and animals thrive in this peculiar yet teeming ecosystem? How do nutrients and energy flow through the system? What kind of climate impacts it? How do reefs protect beaches and harbors? What can damage a reef? How do reefs improve human life?

The books also include a glossary and further explanations for the inhabitants that occupy the coral reef ecosystem.

These books are sure to enthrall the special science nerd near and dear to your heart in your home or classroom.

Top 16 poems from this year's Rhysling anthology.

These, for my money, are the top 10% (approximately) of the poems included in the Rhysling Anthology. They are alphabetized.

There are other poems not listed here with good passages, lines, clever concepts and executions. I was quick to whittle because of all the poems—a novel’s worth, or about four books of poetry worth. I almost missed a few good ones when I reread, so it’s possible I missed others. I was torn about several and the arbitrariness of cutting my selection at 16.

Behind each poem I list what made the poem stand out. I only read the poems and the names showed up after I read them. I looked at where they were published at the end, and only Star*Line showed up twice in my list (its editor once). Eye to the Telescope also showed up twice, but it rotates editors. By chance—being no factor in my selection—the women were favored but maybe women out numbered the men in the anthology as well.

I still haven’t decided on my favorites among these yet. Good luck.

Where possible, I included links.

1. Bergmann, F. J. • “3-Minute  Future” • Unlikely Stories Volume V [Well done repetition and moving if a bit long—strong contender]
2. Blythe, Andrea, & Laura Madeline Wiseman • “Pouring  the Pennyroyal” • Priestess & Hierophant 5: Darkness and Light [Lovely language]
3. Boston, Bruce • “Lost Memories” • The Literary Hatchet 19 [Potent frame]
4. Buchanan, Rebecca • “If you would seek a Seeress” • Star*Line 41.1 [I like this one, the authorial recipe yet almost demanding and spooky voice—good selling points]
5. Clink, David • “Planktivorous Fish and the Structure of Pelagic Plankton” • Juniper 2:2 [well done but for the clunky title, shoehorned in but kind of clever]
6. Cook, William • “Commemoration of the Divine Passion” • Eye to the Telescope 30 [dark, foreboding close that doesn’t go where you think it will from the title; language and syntax of high dark fantasy slips into a few minor infelicities]
7. El-Mohtar,Amal • “Thunderstorm  in Glasgow, July 25 2013” • Fireside Fiction broadside  [Lovely language]
8. Gardner, Adele • “In the Vaults” • Pedestal Magazine  82 [Lovely and metered—I wouldn’t be surprised if it won, but I was hoping for it to be a wee bit more moving]
9. Gotera, Vince • “Son of Aswang” • The Philippines Graphic, October  [Well done repetition, sets up a resounding rhythm]
10. Huerta, August • “Concerning   President  Carter  and the  UFO  Sighting” • Strange Horizons 3/19/18  [Lovely opening and close]
11. Jones, Russell • “That’s one small step for (a) man...” • Dark Matters (Tapsalteerie Press)  [Awfully damned clever]
12. Kopaska-Merkel, David C., & Ann K. Schwader • “Misstep” • Star*Line 41.4 [Feels like a compressed novel, suggestive—cool. I’ll be looking at this one to study]
13. Shultz, David F. • “five sigils” • Eye to the Telescope 27 [I was rather taken by the form, which despite being prose poem is incantatory, magical, suggestive of a buried narrative—I’m less sure about the haiku but I like the hybrid blending]
14. Simon, Marge • “The Southern Lady” • War (Crystal Lake Publishing) [Good lines, at times moving]
15. Spires, D. A. Xiaolin • “atomic  numbers” • Analog Science Fiction  and Fact, January/ February [Not many poets here attempted a natural voice—admirable for this and the moving personal story behind the elements]
16. Trotta, Ali • “Lorelei” • Uncanny 22 [Lovely with dark wisdom—despite being a bit long, final lines are stunning]

Who Needs a Desert? A Desert Ecosystem by Karen Patkau

Who Needs a Desert? 

A Desert Ecosystem 

by Karen Patkau 

Random House of Canada Limited 

Tundra Books 

Children's Nonfiction

These Karen Patkau books are a treasure. They're well written--lean sentences with zip:

The sun burns in a cloudless sky. Scrubby "Yip-yip-awoooo," howls a lone coyote. Plants, rocks and boulders are scattered. In the distance, another howls back.

The books illustrate and explain the core concepts well. How do plants and animals thrive where there's so little water? How do nutrients and energy flow through the system? What kind of climate impacts it? What can damage a desert?

The book also includes a glossary and further explanations for the inhabitants that occupy the desert ecosystem.

These books are sure to stun the special science nerd in your house or classroom.

Review: The Undefeated by Una McCormack

The Undefeated 

by Una McCormack 

Macmillan-Tor/Forge 

Tor.com 

Sci Fi & Fantasy

Monica Greatorex, sixty years old, is rich without having tried to earn it, reporting on the world. From the planet Sienna, she travels the Commonwealth with Gale, one of the jenjer. Now she's retired, and she has returned to Sienna with Gale. Sienna is in ruins. The jenjer are coming.

The jenjer, to live, had to have a medicine that kept them alive, However, one by one, the jenjer have acquired independence from this medicine and have liberating themselves and are returning for revenge and retribution.

Monica doesn't play much of a role except as passive observer. Maybe she represents the rich who benefited from slavery but now deserve to die. Strangely, despite this conviction, she hasn't given up Gale.

Because of her passive role and the conflict not being with her since she's decided to give it all up, she's not terribly dynamic and the opening is, therefore, sluggish.  If this description sounds intriguing and you don't slowness, start on chapter 1. If it's intriguing but you're balking at sluggishness, start on chapter 2. If you're unsure, start at the last scene in chapter 2 and read on. You can always return to the beginning if you like what you read.

Review: Witness by Carrie Brown

Witness 

by Carrie Brown 

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Vintage 

General Fiction (Adult)

Hector's girlfriend, Azmina, is a head-scarf-wearing Muslim who plans to get rid of the scarf although Hector likes it. She tends clean his apartment, an apartment he paid extra to have his own room. He would like that they went somewhere else. Her brothers would not approved of his relationship. Meanwhile, Hector fears his roommates snooping around his room and his girlfriend finding out he's not only undocumented but not good at school since she is about to go to college.

There is no plot here. I read it three or four times to be sure (recently--I'd read it a few time earlier). Random things happen like meeting Jehovah's Witnesses preaching about life and the end of the world.

But it is a layered experience where "witness" takes on several different shades, and Hector as an impoverished immigrant hungry to get ahead, ready to help himself. I will say those last words are meant for the reader, not words occurring to Hector as he hasn't exactly been building up to this. Still it's an interesting read once you figure out what you're reading for, and I gave the game away, so have at it. Recommended for literary types only.

Review: Ink by Hari Kunzru

Ink 

by Hari Kunzru 

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Vintage 

General Fiction (Adult)

Hari Kunzru was named one of Granta's twenty "Best of Young British Novelists" on the basis of his Somerset Maugham Award-winning The Impressionist. So I entered this with high-expectations.

Overworked businessman tells his story. He prefers seeing the world as a series of transactions. He reads self-help books and quotes from them. Were you to interrupt his visualization of his future money he promises he would beat you up.

"In business manuals, in magazines,  in the  entrepreneurship seminars that always seem to be held in grim hotel function rooms smelling of carpet cleaner and those chemistry experiments Americans call 'Danishes'--in every venue where the so called art of starting a  company is taught and learned, positive thinking lurks."

Lovely, humorously self-acidic to his stated goals, this text seems to be working against itself. He recalls vicious bullying he'd done as a child naming Babcock--like dumping ink over the weak kid's stuff--without regret except to blame Babcock for his being a bullying victim. The story builds towards certainty that this narrator was too hardened, too accepting of his conflated bullying and business ways.

But all of that washes away when he comes face to face with the victim of his former torment.

The story ends well although I'm not sure that the narrator would 1) be this articulate, and 2) wait this long to come to regret if it's been on his mind and he's into self-analysis and betterment. But the writing is lovely and the emotion keenly felt. It's worth the read--a succulent sample.

Review: In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle

In Calabria 

by Peter S. Beagle 

Tachyon Publications 

General Fiction (Adult) , Sci Fi & Fantasy

This was up for the World Fantasy and Locus Awards for best novella.

There's something magical about Beagle's prose that I still haven't put my finger on. He can write about nothing happening and have it still be interesting (not riveting but piquing curiosity). Here's how he opens. There a little aggravations between these two that are both real digs but gentle ribbing:

THE WHOLE TROUBLE with your farm," Romano Muscari said, "is that it is too far uphill for the American suntanners, and too low for the German skiers. Location is everything." 

"The trouble with my farm," Claudio Bianchi growled through his heavy, still-black mustache, "is that, no matter where it is located, the postino somehow manages to find his way out here twice a week. Rain or shine. Mail or no mail." 

Romano grinned. "Three times a week, starting next month. New government." He was barely more than half Bianchi's age, but a friend of long enough standing to take no offense at anything the Calabrese said to him. Romano himself had been born in the Abruzzi, and in a bad mood Bianchi would inform him that his name suited him to perfection, since he spoke like a Roman. It was not meant as a compliment. Now he leaned on the little blue van that served him as a mail truck and continued, "No, I am serious. Whichever way you look — down toward Scilla, Tropea, up to Monte Sant' Elia, you are simply in the wrong place to attract the tourists. I grieve to mention this, but it is unlikely that you will ever be able to convert this farm into a celebrated tourist attraction. No bikinis, no ski lifts and charming snow outfits. A great pity." 

"A blessing. What do I need with tourists, when I have you to harass me with useless advertisements, and Domenico down in the villaggio to sell me elderly chickens, and that thief Falcone to cheat me on the price of my produce, when I could get twice as much in Reggio —" 

"If that truck of yours could get even halfway to Reggio —" 

"It is a fine truck — Studebaker, American-made, a classic. All it needs is to have the transmission repaired, which I will not have Giorgio Malatesta do, because he uses cheap parts from Albania. Meanwhile, I endure what I must. Whom I must." He squinted dourly at the young postman. "Do you not have somewhere else to be? Truly? On a fine day like today?"

We know that we have two characters that care about each other yet still have opposing world views--they gather to nag and complain in a way that shows they are close. Any character Beagle chooses to develop, the reader will likely develop a fondness for, which is part of his magic.

That's the energy that powers the opening until Bianchi spots cloven hoof prints in the ground and spies a unicorn. 

Cherubino [Bianchi 's goat] was a little way from [the unicorn in his vineyard], seemingly frozen in the attitude of a fawning acolyte: head bowed, front legs stretched out on the ground before him, as Bianchi had never seen the old goat. The unicorn ignored him in a courteous manner, moving with notable care around the fragile arbors, never touching the vines, but nibbling what weeds it could find on the cold ground. It was a kind of golden white, though its mane and tail — long and tufted, like a lion's tail — were slightly darker, as was the horn set high on its silken brow.

At first it's a mystery why it's around. He even questions it though it does not reply. He wonders if it's a sign:

For a second time, Bianchi asked, "What do you want of me? Are you here to tell me something?" The unicorn only looked calmly back at him. Bianchi fought to clear his throat, finally managing to speak again. "Am I going to die?"

Eventually he realizes she is pregnant.

He tells someone, a postmistress he likes who happen to tell her brother who happens to tell... and so on until the whole community and reporters swarm the area. Worse comes to worse when "the monster" arrives.

Up until this point the narrative has a slow-building drive, and it continues to be interesting and certainly more dynamic, but the monster is too undeveloped to carry the weight of the narrative dynamo. Even so, the story maintains your interest and ends satisfactorily--with the unicorn accruing a mythic symbolism--but one can sense that maybe a more powerful narrative lurked beneath this one had the antagonist been built with the same care as Bianchi.

If you love Peter S. Beagle, you won't want to miss this one either. If you like the samples above, then you will enjoy this tale as well.

Review: Rumi: Unseen Poems by Rumi

Rumi: Unseen Poems 

by Rumi 

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Everyman's Library 

Poetry, Religion & Spirituality

Rumi, a Sufi poet from the thirteenth century, was made popular in the US by poets Coleman Barks and Robert Bly. Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz claim to have gotten closer to Rumi's intent while maintaining the spirit of the originals. Gooch and Mortaz collect, as the title suggests, poems that had yet to be translated, or ones that hadn't quite hit their mark.

Both Barks and Bly would play instruments and slowly read the poems. It is nice to divorce the words from the extra sounds and just revel in their cadence.

Without music, some poems attain a rhythm close to what Rumi states: "Physician, recite a magic spell":

Once again you are unkind. Remember.... 

Saying we'd be joined until the Resurrection. 

Now you're joined with cruelty alone. Remember. 

You whispered in my enemy's ear.
You saw me and you hid. Remember.

or perhaps my favorite, Blakean poem:

What better cure than madness?
Pull up a hundred anchors with madness!

Sometimes the intellect gives rise to apostasy.
Have you ever seen doubt caused by madness?  

When your pain grows fat, go mad.
Your pain will grow thin from madness.  

In the tavern where the mad ones go,
Quickly grab a cup of madness.... 

To find your love,
I opened a hundred doors of madness. 

Elsewhere he speaks against madness. Like Whitman, he accepts contradictions. Likewise, he speaks against wordplay, but we entire into contrariness and wordplay in this lovely passage:

Whether I call it a pen or I call it a pennant
It is both aware and unaware, such unaware awareness! 

The mind cannot fully explain such contraries,
A kind of artful artlessness, a marvelous form freely formed.

Some poems have rhythms or repetitions that do not feel natural in English (translations make it difficult to lay blame although certain liberties may have been needed):

Where is the grace I saw in your face all night?
Such a sweet story I heard from you, all night.  

Although your flame burned the moth of my heart,
I circled the flame of your beautiful face, all night.  

Before your beautiful moonlike face, night veiled itself.
I ripped apart the veil of night, all night. 

My soul, full of joy, licked itself like a cat.
Like a baby, I sucked my thumb, all night.

and

Today the line between a stranger and me,
   I do not know.
So drunk that the road to my own house,
   I do not know.

Beautiful passages do dot the book:

O heart, since the royal falcon hunted you,
You are able to translate the secret language of birds. Such translations!

and

where did that tall, shapely cypress tree go? 

He spread his light among us like a candle.... 

Go to the garden and ask the gardener... 

Go to the rooftop and ask the watchman--
That unique sultan, where did he go?

Some passages we may need more context in terms of 13th century Persian language and in terms of the Quran:

I blush when I call love human.
I fear God too much to say that God is love.

This seems a rebuke of Judeo-Christian notions, which is fine, but what does he propose instead? Is it implicitly understood? Or is it the leaping, dancing and fire? Those, though, seem more of an aspect of the believer than of God, unless by doing them the believer becomes God. It's hard to tell without context.

The other problem is that much of the text is addressed to a lover, which I understood to be both literal and God, but maybe it is just the lover, or maybe just God. If the lover is God, then in what ways is God love or not love? How are we to know without more context? I am asking for a generous introduction, setting the stage for our reading.

I cast my net wider to find my own net wider and read on Wikipedia, "Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi." This only raises more questions. Are these poems pieces of one larger work? Or just dissociated poems? If the latter, are we to read meaning into them or read meaning out of them?

So I spread my net wider. Gooch, one of this volume's editors, apparently was more forthcoming with the BBC:

says Gooch[,] “[Rumi and a wandering mystic known as Shams of Tabriz] have this electric friendship for three years – lover and beloved [or] disciple and sheikh, it’s never clear...." Shams disappeared. "[Rumi's] work comes out of dealing with the separation from Shams and from love and the source of creation, and out of facing death.... a line from Rumi: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.” 

In the same article, Anne Waldman addresses the implied question that Gooch raises, calling the verse “homoerotic... consummated or not." Maybe. But could it be a vibrant Platonic love--something our culture cannot fathom because we have bound or limited all "love" to just one: the sexual kind?

"Rumi's poems articulate what it feels like to be alive," says Lee Briccetti.... “And they help us understand our own search for love and the ecstatic in the coil of daily life.”

Mojaddedi relates for the BBC Rumi’s four innovations:

1. his direct address to readers in the rare second person 
2. his urge to teach [‘inspirational’ literature] 
3. his use of everyday imagery
4. his optimism of the attainment of union within his lyrical love ghazals. The convention in that form is to stress its unattainability and the cruel rebuffs of the beloved. Rumi celebrates union.

This all helps although it doesn't seem true that the "you" is the reader. Perhaps the lover, or an aspect of one's self (e.g. the heart as seen above), or even God. Or are all these conflated: reader, lover, self, God?

It's great to know how Americans read it, what they find appealing. But how do Muslims read it within their tradition? 

Again Wikipedia goes on to say that Rumi speaks on his own work:

I am the servant of the Qur'an as long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one.
If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by these words. 

[T]he book of the Masnavi... is the Explainer of the Qur'ân.

Do any of our Western readings chaff the Quran? Would Rumi be outraged? Do Muslims accept or reject the way Westerners read Rumi? Do they have something in between or have a different interpretation entirely? One Muslim acquaintance called Rumi's work religious, and we Westerners tend to remove the verses from this context. Why do we do that, and what is the religious context?

The title of the collection is curious as well. This isn't the normal way we'd call such poems. We might call them [previously] "uncollected or "new translations," not "unseen." Does that suggest that we haven't yet seen Rumi and here he is now? Or are these poems that ask us to un-see? Why do they suppose these verses had yet to be collected? Why are they choosing these verses for this volume? What does it add or reshape what we know about Rumi and his vision?

As you can see, the volume raises questions that a good introduction needs to set straight, given that these poems have traveled so far in time, distance and language. But we do get moving selections, selections to inspire us, selections that sway with grace.

This volume will appear on September 10, 2019.

Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water by Vylar Kaftan

Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water 

by Vylar Kaftan 

Macmillan-Tor/Forge 

Tor.com 

Sci Fi & Fantasy

Abeja and Chela have been crawling around in caves, forever on the run. They are telepaths who have been imprisoned because they killed thousands aboard a starship. They've been given a chip that will knock them out if they ever try to use their talents. Large robots patrol the outside and Chela and Abeja only have each other.

Except Abeja senses a presence, a voice calling her telepathically. Chela warns it is a telepath in league with the government. But the voice is familiar, and Abeja wants to connect.

This parallels Philip K. Dick territory, but veers into something else. It's quite intriguing although it bogs a little in the middle. Definitely worth your time. It wouldn't surprise me to see it on award ballots.

American Hunger by Eli Saslow

American Hunger 

The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post Series 

by Eli Saslow 

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Vintage 

Politics

It's easy to see why Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He drops us into the lives of real people, real politician, real citizens living in poverty. We sit in their houses, sit at their same dinner tables, stand in long lines with them as they wait to collect free food. If your heart isn't breaking for the hungry before, it will be afterwards.

Saslow begins the series of six articles following Representative Steve Southerland from Florida, who tries to get colleagues on the same side, to find a way to feed the hungry yet help them also get working. However, he comes up against opposition on both sides of the aisle. What's fascinating is Saslow's choice. He shows 1a) Republican politicians that this is an issue worth paying attention to, 1b) Republican voters that this has potential solutions that they can be invested in, and 2) Democrats that Republican indifference is politically expedient dishonesty. As Southerland says when he tries to explain to his daughter how he cannot cross the political aisle to gather allies:

He reached two milk shake glasses to help him illustrate the problem, setting the glasses side by side on the table, their rims touching. "This is me, and this is the other guy when we get to Washington," he said. "Different ideas, different people, but we are close. We are touching. Democrat and Republican. We can do something with this.

He started to slowly pull the glasses in separate directions, ticking off reasons for the escalating divide. "Fund-raising. Campaigns," he said, moving the glasses farther apart. "Votes, strategy, rushing around, lobbyists, name-calling," he continued, spreading the glasses farther, moving his daughter;s plate to clear a path for one of them. "I have my meetings and they have theirs. I run by them. They run by me. It's all about winning, winning, winning. Winning--not fixing problems--defines all."

Then there's the Munoz family who can get more of the cheap food that fills them, but it comes at a cost. It's not healthy, and they require doctor visits for cholesterol, diabetes. Should food programs regulate what people get to eat?

The Richmond family struggles to stretch their food stamps across the whole month. They go to locations that have free food. Her children's fathers don't provide child support. They stand in line for hours just to get hand-outs that may not be there or leave something to be desired.

We had to Woonsocket and meet Pichard, a grocer whose primary customers are those on food stamps, and the Ortizes who try to live on minimum wages and food stamps.

Then Dillie Nerios is a recruiter for the food stamp program among the senior citizen set. Some had misfortune and lost their savings and now qualified for assistance, but they are reluctant to give in, seeing it as shame.

Finally, we have Rick Bible who drives a bus around the Appalachia area delivering bread to the hungry.

It's a painful journey with, as yet, no answers. Saslow sketches the scope of the problem in human detail. Give it a read.

ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound, pt 1 (front matter + Chapters 1-7)

I write these as much for me as for others--to jog memory and to grapple with what I'm reading. This one's curious though. Usually you open a book and the author wastes takes time to explain why you need to buy his book. Not so here. Ezra Pound* seems to discourage reading about art as opposed to going out to read or see art for one's self. He also warns us about "a long dull stretch shortly after the beginning of the book. The student will have to endure it." He's as harsh with himself as he is others, apparently.

An opening claim:

• A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author probably never heard). It is classic because of eternal and irrepressible freshness.

I've always bought into "Make it new," but "fresh" seems problematic. If we're using the metaphor of grocery produce, they have a "sell by" or expiration date. How can a thing set to expire be eternally "fresh"? Also, similarly, what if we see a thing used a hundred times? If we come upon that in the originator, how can it feel fresh? I don't mean to disagree but to ask for a different metaphor. It doesn't seem exactly apt. He also writes that it's "news that stays news," but that's just the same metaphor in a floppy hat.

• If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

Surely, that's a testable hypothesis. So the pinnacle of British literature was Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and the King James Bible. Was that also the pinnacle of their empire? Was the pinnacle of Russia the 19th century with Tolstoy, Chekhov, et al? Does county power = literary power? and country weakness = literary weakness? 

Chapter 2 concludes saying you need an expert to help you pick out whatever you're looking for: cars, radishes, diaper capacity. Presumably, this means we need Pound to guide us (even though he told us it's better to go look at the art itself than to read about it--presumably the person who reads about it also looks... unless he's turned off by what he's expected to see).

• Good writers are those who keep the language efficient.... keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the bad writer wants to do harm.

This seems intuitively true. But what about ambiguity--not the murky kind but the multiplicity kind? Isn't that unclear? Also, do some poets, to a degree,  purposefully move away from clarity to get readers to struggle with the language? Is that good or bad?

Chapter 4 brings us the ideas that two writer types are worth reading--the inventors and the masters. The first come up with something cool while the second perfect that. He has four more categories he doesn't think are worthy, including those who start crazes, but could that also be an inventor? Maybe it is a cheap invention.

He talks about needing to be able to read all the world masters in their native languages. Pardon my snort. How does one do that and make a living? Maybe one has to start early or start rich. That also brings to mind his idea of nations atrophying when literature atrophies but what if he has it backwards? What if literature is a rich man's game and the only way we can have rich literature is to have rich people? (I don't mean that to be definitive but fodder.)

One advantage in a writer learning another language is seeing his own language in a new light. Other languages approach their construction differently, e.g. in Spanish you can leave out pronouns if they're understood.

• it is my conviction that a man can learn more about poetry by really knowing and examining a few of the best poems than by meandering about among a great many.

I won't debate that one.

• start by thinking of the different KINDS of expression, the different WAYS of getting meaning into words, rather than of particular thing said or particular comments made.

Ah! He gets at the heart of art: aesthetics... which brings me to following disclaimer which shouldn't need saying but does in our present society:

* For those lacking aesthetics, reading a fascist does not make one a fascist. It makes one objective, or at least attempting objectivity. In a world of increasing divides, we desperately need objectivity. 

Chapter 5 gives examples of what he was saying in previous chapters but using languages most of us won't be able to translate, so that we really can't follow. We'll have to take him at his word.

Chapter 6 suggests reading Shakespeare not against his mediocre contemporaries but against someone Dante, Voltaire, Stendahl, Flaubert, or Fielding (in the original languages, of course).

• Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.
• There are three kinds of melopoeia, that is verse made to sing; to chant or intone; and to speak.
• The older one gets the more one believes in the first

I was just listening to Tennyson read on Poetry Speaks and fascinated by his nearly singing or chanting his verse. Sometimes I read older verse and it feels stodgy. It's too bad we don't have more great poets reading their own works. I'll post a video of him reading, but you won't be able to understand him unless you're reading along with his poems. The first is "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The second video is creepy and cool--I'm not sure which adjective I'm leaning toward.

Chapter 7 is two paragraphs saying that mediocre poetry knows no language barrier.

This covers a third of the book. Thirty more pages of the ABCs remain as does "Exhibits," which makes up half the book (poems plus commentary), and a small section on meter.

Review: The History of Soul 2065 by Barbara Krasnoff

The History of Soul 2065 

by Barbara Krasnoff 

Mythic Delirium Books 

Literary Fiction , Sci Fi & Fantasy

One of the coolest aspects of this book are where the stories first appeared, some of which are professional (but not the major venues), others semi-professional and yet one of them was in the running for a Nebula:

Space and Time, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Weird Tales, Mythic Delirium, Apex Magazine, Electric Velocipede, Clockwork Phoenix

Yet here they are: stories collected between two book covers--a place that commands respect.

One key of the collection is the simplicity of the tales, which is probably good considering their non-traditional structure. They aren't really character stories where someone learns something (although maybe) or where someone should have learned something but didn't or plot stories where a character solves a problem. If any, it's the lattermost, but it pulls deus ex machinas, or solves someone else's problems. You'd think the stories would trip and land flat on their faces. But they don't. Strangely they can be satisfying like sipping hot mocha on a hot day.

Let's take, for an example, the Nebula finalist that Jane Yolen reprinted, "Sabbath Wine." It's the story Malka Hirsch's Dad's struggle to get wine for her bat mitzvah (even though it's for boys, even though the dad is secular, even though something which is the great secret at the end). It's all a MacGuffin, and we don't even start in our protagonist's POV or get his name until the third scene. The story itself is something of a mosaic. The opening scene is something of prologue although it's useful to the story. And I can't tell more without ruining it.

In fact most of these stories don't develop in a normal fashion making them difficult to summarize. Most people are probably scratching their heads why the story made it as far it did.

"The Cancer God" is a pretty good not-exactly-deal-with-the-devil story where Abe is dying of cancer and doesn't want to be. "The Ladder-Back Chair," the second of two stories that Yolen especially liked, is sure to resonate with those who have lost someone near and dear. Joan lost her spouse, Morris, who had been dying by degrees. Interestingly, both of the stories Yolen liked have surprise endings that hinge upon them.

Other stories of note include "The Sad Old Lady"--a tale of young girl who is terrified when she sees herself as she will be when she gets old. "In the Gingerbread House" relates how a cheap pasteboard jewel becomes an instrument to tell stories and save lives. "Time and the Parakeet" is a fantasy time-travel tale where random chance allows someone to make a simple choice that improves one's life for the better. A boy has "An Awfully Big Adventure" when visited by a witch figure--however he's been given numbers that will help. "Rosemary Is for Remembrance" is actually a rare story which does the opposite of the other: It takes something that seems sweet (a trip to the beauty parlor) and renders it horrifying. In "Stoop Ladies" a woman seems to be at the end of her rope until she visits the ladies who gossip on their stoop. "Escape Route" almost worked for me--lovely setup but Krasnoff didn't carry out the ending with her usual magic.

Those are the major stories (about half) that stood out for me. Do they hang together? There's a little bit of a frame story. Two young women meet in the woods and vow to meet again. Chance prevents their reuniting although their descendants do at the end.

The book's description makes a claim of being a mosaic novel, which is said to be a novel of stories that share the same setting or characters. I'm leaning on the term "novel" to build toward some plot, character, or thematic resonance--perhaps all three. One might claim many Dickenson novels as mosaic novels since they are stories that eventually tie together as some of the threads come to have great importance by the novel's end.

I'll throw in a few other terms as well. There's the "fix-up," which is a group of stories that usually follow characters through time but don't often build toward something greater than the individual stories themselves--pleasing as the individual stories may be. This includes a number of Van Vogt fix-up "novels" and some of the Moorcock fix-up novels like Elric. Any episodic adventure like Swift's Gulliver's Travels would fit. Then there are thematic or motif collections like Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles since, although some seem to build toward something, that eventually fades.

Stross's Accelerando is an interesting case. If you consider the developing artificial intelligence as a character, then it's a mosaic novel. If not, then it's part thematic collection, part fix-up.

Where does Krasnoff's The History of Soul 2065 fit along this continuum? If you can tell by the summaries, it's probably closer to thematic/motif collection. Like Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, plot or character threads do connect the stories, but not across the board. Even the stories, that directly connect via characters appearing in one to die in another, don't rely heavily on what was built up in a previous story. They do hang together in the sense of characters who want to peer beyond the grave or peer into the past, often focusing on the Holocaust. This probably coheres the narratives more strongly than anything else.

What one calls this book may be less important than knowing the overall effect, and for the most part, most Krasnoff stories leave the reader with a little hope and a sweet tenderness, no matter how dismal one's circumstances may be. And that may be all you need to know.