Acrostic Poems

I was late to my first poetry class last night. I popped up out of the metro and went in the exact opposite direction. After asking at least eight people, I got turned around. Just a few minutes late and one student arrived after me. Not the end of the world.

The class is offered by Grub Street, a non-university conglomeration of writers teaching writing. The class is called 10 Poems in 10 Weeks. The instructor, Morgan Frank, will dole out a writing exercise each week as our homework. Our class time will primarily be spent work-shopping each students' work. This is considered a mid-level course and all the students have had experience writing, most have been in a variety of creative writing workshops. It looks like a good group. I need to write. Especially these days.

This morning I forced myself out of the house. I knew the empty house and my inbox would defeat me entirely. I knew that I needed to be squarely at the mercy of a patient waiter and a gallon of caffeine. It was just one of those days.

I plunked down, ordered my double-shot cappuccino and then followed that with a fresh carrot-apple-beet cocktail. A liquid breakfast, quite tasty. My lower GI was primed, for sure. The instructor started us off with an assignment to write an acrostic—you know the form, you’ve seen them since you were in the third grade. Here is the definition:

ACROSTIC: A poem in which the first or last letters of each line vertically form a word, phrase, or sentence. Apart from puzzles in newspapers and magazines, the most common modern versions involve the first letters of each line forming a single word when read downwards. An acrostic that involves the sequential letters of the alphabet is said to be an abecedarius or an abcedarian poem.

While this kind of assignment might make the highbrow guffaw, Me? doing a third-grade piddling of a doggerel? I think it was a great choice on the part of Ms. Frank. This form is playful. And it is good to get warmed up with play. Too many words get in the way of visceral poetry. Play first, furrow your brow later.

The assignment: choose a six-letter word and write an acrostic poem.

Here are the six-letter words I first brainstormed:

afghan
virgin
climax
famine
toilet
varsity
gran’ma
Grade 9


See me play! I chose the more "playful" titles. These are unedited! Just me having fun.

Grade 9
Get on the bus, don’t look back
Rivulets of dread pool beneath his freshly shaven lip
Asinine, waste of time teacher be
Damned. Stop. Looking.
Even that prick has more friends. My life is over—
9th Grade— it’s only Grade 9.

***

Grade 9
Going to Snow Ball, he sidles up to
Rachel, bumps her tray and lights up an
asinine, faintly sour, grin.
Darn, she almost says too loudly.
Evan asked me, like, just yesterday.

O No problem, shit, well, then, later.
Into the crowd he swaggers.
No, she fierce whispers to Tiffany,
Evan didn’t ask me—he is so gay, but that guy, come on!

***

Grade 9
Go stand in the hall, if you must pass gas.
Read, please.
Assignments be damned! Let’s play!
Dismal and endearing
Energy black hole.

***

Grade 9
Get it on, yeah, my friend,
Romeo, down with his girl, Juliet—those Montagues
and Capulets. Damn. Even my buds—

Matt, Ryan, D-man, Tyrone, Rat, Spence, that loyal Heather chick and yeah my wet dream Mrs. Sweater Just a Bit Too Tight, Mrs English Teacher. Yeah.

***

Toilet
Tea tinkles and wafts delicate jasmine and castor
oil slicks and sluices, a satisfying shit.
If only poets could defecate
letters—expel vowels and similes from the lyrical bowel, the poet’s
entrails composted, sprouting rebel pumpkin vines,
then a flush could punctuate the flesh.

***

Toilet
Tata takes us to India, Bangalore
on a trip to see the other side of the world.
It assails us--putrid air, defiant silks
Please, Not spicy at all no. Please, May I help you? Miss?
Even a half-moon of mango we doubt.
Then, squat on a hole to piss 'n shit, I see suddenly the beauty of it.

***

Climax
Cooh ew catch cuddle, can’t quite—
lick, yes,
m m m m m m m m m
and then

X o x o x o x o x o x o x o x o o o

***

Climax
Chester lost his mother and
loved no one. He
met Lucy
and found where
X marks his heart.

***

Henry
Hop, kick, jut, speak volumes
Eavesdrop too, Henry dear.
noodle arms, seafish eyes
reverses our clocks, Oh
Henry. Henry, oh!

Things I Plan to Read. . .

Arab and Jew: wounded spirits in a promised land by David K. Shipler

The perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chobsky

Speak by Laurie Anderson

The writing on the wall: a novely by Lynne Schwartz

Independent People: an epic by Halldor Laxness

What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank

and. . .Preparing Your Catholic Wedding: Practical Considerations by Overbeck and Marcozzi

Writing Down the Bones

I started to hear the title probably about the same time I started to teach high school a few years ago. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. A quick reference or a cherished passage popped up now and then in conversations. I might have even scribbled the title on a napkin or a ripped sheet of notebook paper. This past fall, I happened to see it on the book shelf at the Trident book store. There it was. Slim and inviting. Then a few weeks ago I saw it recommended again by a valued colleague. I had to pick up something else anyway and it fit so nicely in my open palm. So now I have my own paperback copy.

I needed this book.

Natalie Goldberg’s collection of essays presents a coherent vision for why writers write. Her philosophy is that writing is a kind of practice like yoga, even music--an idea she seems to have gleaned from her Buddhist practice. Indeed, the novel could have been called Zen and the Art of Writing.

Goldberg’s novel fell into my hands just as I was in a glump (what I call the gloomy slump when I can’t get my butt in the chair and make the damn keyboard sing). I need a path. I need a community of writers. The Fall semester had ended and I was waiting, waiting for my next round of classes to get me back in line. Goldberg reset my gears. Tuned me up. Got me hot to write. If you write or don’t write because you think you can’t. . . check out this little book for a patient guide into the practice of writing.

Memorable Passages

“It is easy to lose sight of the fact that writers do not write to impart knowledge to others; rather, they write to inform themselves.” (Foreword, xii)

“It is not an excuse to not write and sit on the couch eating bonbons.” (15)

“Don’t worry if what you know you can’t prove or haven’t studied. . . . Own anything you want in your writing and then let it go.” (29)

“Writing practice softens the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery, disappear.” (35)

“In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not just staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.” (47)

“I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work.” (48)

“But we should always concentrate, not by blocking out the world; but by allowing it all to exist. This is a tricky balance.” (73)

“It’s much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.” (80)

“Writing is the act of discovery. You want to discover your relationship with a topic, not the dictionary definition.” (97)

“Have a tenderness and determination toward your writing, a sense of humor and a deep patience that you are doing the right thing.” (109)

“You can’t go deep into your writing and then step out of it, clamp down, go home, “be nice,” and not speak the truth. If you give yourself over to honesty in your [writing] practice, it will permeate your life.” (134)

“And the truth is that the truth can never ultimately hurt.” (160)

“Anything we fully do is an alone journey. . . . you can’t expect anyone to match the intensity of your emotions.” (Epilogue, 169)

Gregory Maguire: Wicked

The lovely Ms. L.-H chose the phenomenally successful Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (published 1995) as her inaugural book club selection. I finished it yesterday while I was on the bus, oddly. It is quite unsatisfying to finish a novel while lurching along breathing in the odors of strangers. But I digress.

Ms. L.-H is the group’s newbie and chose one of her dearest favorites to share with us. In our Book Club the custom is that one member hosts at her home and whips up a scrumptious meal to get our literary cogs turning, while another member leads the discussion about the book of her choice. If you host, you don't have to fuss with prepping a discussion (actually we rarely need any grease for our booky-talk hinges). Everyone gets to proffer their book selections; and we take turns preparing our homes and dinner tables. The sharing of books and our culinary talents (or experiments, in my case) works for our group.

I should clarify, for the record, that I am actually not attending Book Club this year. You see, Book Club is in South Bend, Indiana. I am in Boston, Massachusetts. While I would love to find a grant that supports my desire to travel for Book Club, it hasn’t happened. Apparently, Oprah just hasn’t read my letter stipulating my wildest dream and why she should make it come true. I understand; Oprah is quite busy. All those needy kids in Africa—I bet she reads their precious little letters first. Alas. Did I just digress, again?

Yes, Ms. L-H, it is true that I had to deal with a bit of personal reluctance before I dove into Wicked. I am a Kansas girl, born and bred on the tales of the plucky young Dorothy. Yes, I owned a Cairn Terrier—the exact same breed as darling Toto. My Toto was named: Haley’s Comet (check your astrology charts and you can do a complicated story problem to figure out my age when I welcomed little Haley into our Kansas acreage.) Little Haley went the way of the car accident and we buried her on a gentle hill near the road. But you didn’t log in to read dead-dog stories.

My point is this: I grew up with the Munchkins and the Wicked Witch of the West. I am sure many readers are drawn to the tale precisely because of their great familiarity with and love for the characters and its fantasy. I was hesitant, however, to jump into a long novel about a story that I already “knew” and LOVED.

But I love Ms. L-H too. It was a terrible triangle: me, the Wicked Witch of my childhood and my passionate devotion to Book Club. I gave in. And. . .I am glad that I did. I am glad to have been goaded into reading a fantasy.

I have to say, honestly, that I did really get into the Wicked Witch. I think Maguire did a convincing job creating a fully realized character for her. She was the star of my reading. The discussion of EVIL, on the other hand, just got annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I love EVIL (really, I studied it in college. no really.), but here I felt it was a bit forced.

I wanted adventure, intrigue. I wanted to feel delight. I wanted to empathize with the witch. I didn’t want to think about the nature of evil or her “baptism” at the end. She died. End of story. She was not baptized. I know, I know that I should/could think more deeply about the ideas in the novel. But I don’t want to. I want to read this one for pleasure. Don’t make me think. I love Maguire when he lets me gallop along in his fantasy land. I love him not so much when he tries to get too deep.

Recommendation: Yes, read it. It is a perfect bedside/planeride read. Here are some of the little jewels you will delight in down the yellow brick road. . .

Memorable Lines
(page numbers taken from paperback edition)

"He meant this, and for such intensity she had fallen in love with him; but she hated him for it too, of course." (9)

"She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though she what she signified, and to whom, was not clear to her yet." (65)

"The broad, offensive panoply of life and Life, seamlessly intertwined." (75)

"Walk softly but marry a big prick." (161)

"I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral," said the Wizard. "In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged, who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical." (175)

"When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis," she said, "those who are the most themselves are the victims." (238)

"Poets are just as responsible for empire building as any other professional hacks." (320)

"Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it." (377)

Intriguing words

gawp (67; 167)
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: English dialect gawp to yawn, gape, from obsolete galp, from Middle English

etiolate (108) A perfect way to describe a blanched green witch!
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: French étioler
1 : to bleach and alter the natural development of (a green plant) by excluding sunlight
2 a : to make pale b : to deprive of natural vigor : make feeble

voluble as in volubly weeping (142)
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin volubilis, from volvere to roll; akin to Old English wealwian to roll, Greek eilyein to roll, wrap
1 : easily rolling or turning : ROTATING
2 : characterized by ready or rapid speech : GLIB, FLUENT
synonym see TALKATIVE

glower used as glowery (161) to describe the weather
Function: noun
: a sullen brooding look of annoyance or anger

splenetic (171)
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin spleneticus, from Latin splen spleen
1 archaic : given to melancholy
2 : marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite

sententious (175)
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, full of meaning, from Latin sententiosus, from sententia sentence, maxim
1 a : given to or abounding in aphoristic expression b : given to or abounding in excessive moralizing
2 : terse, aphoristic, or moralistic in expression : PITHY,

camels in glittering caparisons (236)
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French caparaçon, from Old Spanish caparazón
1 a : an ornamental covering for a horse b : decorative trappings and harness
2 : rich clothing : ADORNMENT

parlous (361)
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, alteration of perilous
1 obsolete : dangerously shrewd or cunning
2 : full of danger or risk : HAZARDOUS

Shipler: The Working Poor

The lovely Ms. A and I first wondered the winter streets of Paris in 1994. We tried to love Picasso at his museum, lingered in front of an exquisite bridal boutique with a discrete doorbell, and popped out of the dank metro to find the Eiffel tower just where we least expected. We made a daily landmark plan based on travel books, but mostly let our stomachs and noses lead us. We even flirted with danger and found ourselves in a Cuban restaurant for food that flamed our internal organs. Our adventures were precious and precocious.

My reading life this year is just such an indulgence. A recommendation, a passing comment, a footnote or a nagging good intention jolts me into action. Within seconds I have it on hold at the Boston Public Library. Or I dash out to the Trident to sip jasmine tea and check out their stacks. In my “normal” life, there was considerable lag time between that initial burst of reader’s curiosity and then sweet indulgence. Now I can jump right in. Get me hands messy with ink. Get my head in a tizzy. Follow where I am taken. Let my stomach lead.

All of this rumination springs from reflection about just why I read David K. Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America. I exchanged emails with the always on-line Mr. I, to whom I mentioned reading "The Shame of the Nation" and hearing its author, Kozol, expound at a public lecture(see my blog entry). Soon I had Shipler as a suggested author. I placed in on hold at the library. It sat on my shelf for a month and then some. Finally, I cracked the spine.

Shipler makes the invisible working poor in America starkly visible. I was struck by the story of Caroline in the chapter “Work Doesn’t Work.” Actually, I quickly realized that Shipler must have had this chapter published elsewhere (maybe the New York Times Sunday magazine?) because I already knew her story. Yet I still re-read once again with fresh eyes.

It is not a terrible sexy read, but stick with it. As one interviewer put it: “I suggest that readers -- and this is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now -- stick with it” (emphasis added).

Shipler's work did get me thinking, once again, about how I spend my working time. Specifically as a public high school teacher, I don’t fret over how or why I work, but I do think about where I choose to teach. Which students and schools need all the attention they can get?

Quotes
(page numbers from hardcover edition)

“Job trainers are discovering that people who have repeatedly failed—in school, in love, in work—cannot succeed until they learn that they are capable of success. To get out of poverty, they have to acquire dexterity with their emotions as well as their hands.” (7)

“The American ideal embraces an equality of opportunity for every person but not an equality of result.” (88)

“When a woman discloses such intimate humiliation to a stranger, she reveals its magnitude.” (143)

“One study found that ‘emotional deprivation, particularly at an early age, may predispose adolescents to seek emotional closeness through sexual activity and early parenthood.’” (145)

“Children saddled with grown-up burdens cannot succeed, and that is often their first failure, the root of inadequacy.” (155)

“The psychological techniques that help a child cope with sexual or physical abuse do not work when the child herself becomes a parent.” (161)

“. . . in a society where money is power, financial insufficiency may feel like personal inadequacy.” (168)

“When he laid out his plans, he got a clipped tone of false confidence in his voice, as if he knew that he was saying what he wished, not what would be.” (190)

“Students try to get attention because that is what they need, like food or water or oxygen.” (238)

“Will is a function of power, and the people who work near the edge of poverty don’t have very much power.” (286)

“To appraise a society, examine its ability to be self-correcting.” (298)

Related Links

York Times Audio Interview with David K. Shipler about “The Working Poor: Invisible in America”

New York Times Book Review "‘The Working Poor’: Can’t Win for Losing” by Ron Suskind

Brokeback Mountain

I read Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story Brokeback Mountain this past Fall in the Scribner’s Anthology of short fiction. It is a powerful story and the film adaptation directed by Ang Lee, as I found out last night, is well done. The only other work by Proulx (rhymes with “true”) that I had read previouisly was The Shipping News (1993) which I found in an English language used bookstore in Budapest a few summers back. I adored that book, which did win a Pulitzer Prize and was also made into a film, but hadn’t pursued her other writing. Now I am curious to check out more of her books and stories and to learn more about her as well. “At Home with: E. Annie Proulx; At Midlife, A Novelist is Born” by Sara Rimer offers colorful insight into her life and her writing career. (The article is dated 1994 and so I am sure there will be more up-to-date human interest pieces in response the film’s great success.) In this link Proulx reacts to the film and talks about how she wrote the original story.

I had intended to see Brokeback Mountain ever since it arrived in theaters, but just didn't seem to find the time. Then yesterday an occasion presented itself: The Coolridge Corner Theatre was screening the film in partnership with the Boston Psychoanalytical Society. As the Boston Globe blurb put it: "This year's buzz movie, "Brokeback Mountain," has a cast of characters who could use some one-on-one time with a licensed psychologist. The movie contains loads of denial, passive-aggressive behavior, alcohol abuse and phobias." The event was part of a series called "Off the Couch" and occurs every first Tuesday of the month.

After the film the majority of the audience stayed for an open discussion of the film and a consideration of the issues from a psychoanalytical perspective. It was a lively discussion. I was fully aware that this kind of gathering of minds is a rare thing in my usual neck of the woods. The gentleman seated in front of me was happy to confess that this was his third viewing, he had read the short story and the screenplay, and he listened incessantly to the soundtrack. When I asked him later if he was a film buff or an English professor, he said no. He had simply been swept away by the tragic tale. Another woman pointed out that this is the first film to use the predicament of the two men as the crux of the story while staying clear of identity issues, which I thought was a good point. Their predicament is true love that society thwarts. Romeo and Juliet cast as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.

It is a tragic story. Not one single character in the entire story gets want they want out of life, except the young daughter at the end of the story. The price for her happiness is almost too much to bear. I will not say any more about the plot or the characters! It is a finely drawn tragedy and the actors do an exceptional job. See it.

Things I Know

Last night as I tossed and tried not to toss in order to let L. sleep, images and characters and entire plots raced through my head. I am terrified about taking a novel writing course. I can handle a month’s investment into a short story that goes nowhere. Somehow, a semester for a novel that may flop seems scandalous.

Yet, here I am, on leave in Boston. Isn’t that already scandalous enough? I may as well climb all the way up to the high dive and take the plunge. I am not going to save the world or reach nirvana in the next few months. I might as well try and write a novel.

The wise ones who plan such a class know that it is impossible to complete a novel in one semester. Thus we are expected to have a working outline and bring in three chapters for review. I know the professor. I should not be a lily-livered quake. But I am.

A rakish young man once rashly told me that you should do the thing that scares you the most. (I’d love to check in with him and see how that advice has governed him.) So, with one week left until the class begins: I remain on the roster.

Okay, so the title of my entry is “Things I Know.” People always say: write what you know about. This is useful, especially in terms of landscapes and politics, but requires the gumption to bald-faced lie when you do if what you know happens to reveal deep dark secrets about those you love, or those who love you or those you once loved or, even worse, your inner ruminations about near-total strangers who share your dinner table on occasion.

Last night, per usual, my mind raced along the Things I Know. None seemed to bear fruit when placed under the microscope of a novel’s strange and provocative distortion. Then I had a mini-revelation: It is not the THINGS I Know but perhaps the things I KNOW that matter. In other words, I know a lot of stuff (who doesn’t), but I think that I should write about the things I KNOW emotionally. This is why we read fiction after all. We read novels to watch other people make decisions and empathize with them. Empathy is the novel. So I have to start with emotions to get at emotions. Now I am thinking like a writer.

Theater: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

As you can tell from my previous entries, I have devoted quite a bit of time to reading over the holiday break. Lots of time on planes--to KS and then to South Bend last weekend--is always a boost for my reading shelf. It was vital for me to connect with friends and places in South Bend. Thanks to all who made time for me! Currently I am between novels and spending my reading time on various literary magazines.

Of course one shouldn't squander away all the fun of Boston between the pages. Both of us enjoy the theater and so last night we went to see another piece by the Huntington Theatre Company (in residence at Boston University). The playby Christopher Hampton is based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses written by Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de Laclos and both published and set in 1782. The center of the plot are two sexually liberated upper-class French snobs who use the bedrooms of Paris and its environs as a playground for their own tortured "love" affair. They use other people's bodies as a way to show their emotional superiority. All of this depravity, or at least the cynical spirit of it all, captures the very reasons why the peasants revolted in the French Revolution in 1789 shortly after Laclos penned the original epistolary novel (his one and only novel).

I have to admit, the play appealed more to L.'s sensibilities than mine. I just never connected to any of the characters--either the acting or the writing left me cold. At times I was disgusted at the events, but I suppose that was the point. There was one scene that positively exasperated me. The old aunty gave the following bit of wisdom to a young niece: men are happy when they have feelings, women are happy when they cause others to have feelings. Is this true? Or worse, still true? L. found it witty and a classic period piece. True, the costumes (with a few exceptions) were well done and the staging was finely choreographed. It was well executed, but soap operas -- even dark ones-- have never been my style.

This might be a good novel to accompany a study of the French Revolution, however. You most often get poignant stories of the poor and this offers another perspective--a portrait of the poor in spirit.

The play runs through February 5th at The Huntington.

Murakami: Kafka on the Shore

“It is easier to be bewitched by Haruki Murakami's fiction than to figure out how he accomplishes the bewitchment. His novels -- in America, the best known is probably ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'' -- lack the usual devices of suspense. His narrators tend to be a bit passive, and the stakes in many of his shaggy-dog plots remain obscure. Yet the undercurrent is nearly irresistible, and readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, convinced they've made contact with something significant, if not entirely sure what that something is. Murakami's latest, ''Kafka on the Shore,'' is no exception, although it is a departure for this Japanese novelist in other ways.” --Laura Miller (see link below)

Miller captured my experience of reading my first Murakami novel, Kafka on the Shore. I was entranced, horrified, and utterly blown away. Humans who converse with cats, Con-cepts that eat cat hearts, a boy named Crow, sex dreams that redefine reality, and characters who exist on the edge of this world and interact with parallel truths. Crazy stuff. But highly engaging, and a breath of fresh Japanese air. Read it. Why not?

Memorable Quotes
(page numbers from hardcover library edition)

“I fumble around in the bushes, but all I touch are branches, hard and twisted like the hearts of bullied little animals.” (65)

“Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason—or at least they appeal to certain types of people.” (102)

“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.” (148)

“I happen to like the strange ones,” the driver said. “People who look normal and live a normal life—they’re the ones you have to watch out for.” (174)

“A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That’s what’s critical. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, you gold-plated whale of a dunce?” (255)

“We’re not metaphors.”
“I know,” I say. “But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”
A faint smile comes to her as she looks up at me. “That’s the oddest pickup line I’ve ever heard.” (273)

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s just a natural feeling. You’re not the person who discovered that feeling, so don’t go trying to patent it, okay?” (276)

“Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.” (292)

“The strength I’m looking for isn’t the kind where you win or lose. I’m not after a wall that’ll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things—unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.” (293)

“I feel like I’m exactly where I belong. When I’m with Mr. Nakata I can’t be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha’s followers and Jesus’ apostles felt the same way.” (301)

“That’s what love’s all about, Kafka. You’re the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.” (335)

“That’s right. a reciprocal metaphor. Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside. Most definitely a risky business.” (326)

“Without those peak experiences our lives would be pretty dull and flat. Berlioz put it this way: A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.” (352)

“The music that had been playing in my head vanished, leaving behind some faint white noise like a taut white sheet on a huge bed. I touch that sheet, tracing it with my fingertips. The white goes on forever.” (369)

“. . .the forest tries to threaten me. Blowing a chill breath on my neck, stinging like needles with a thousand eyes.” (370)

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us,” he says after the phone stops ringing. “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.” (432)

Useful Links

Official Haruki Murakami website (worth a click!)

"Book of the Times: Adrift in a Universe in Flux Like Some Big FedEx Box” New York Times Review by Janet Maslin

“Crossing Over” New York Times Book Review by Laura Miller

“Subconscious Tunnels” New Yorker Review by John Updike

Purple Hibiscus

After reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty over the Christmas holiday, I picked up Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2003. It will be read by my book club in the coming months. So I will try to avoid spoiling the story.

The author is Nigerian and tells a story of love and a country in turmoil set in her native land. The narrator is fifteen-year-old Kambili, who loves her father and God almost as one when the novel opens. In a few short months, she will begin to find her voice, even if she says very little. The events in the novel happen to her and she reacts and begins to blossom much like the hibiscus flower.

Memorable Quotes
(page numbers from paperback edition)

“I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved. . . . The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue, and if lunch was something peppery, my raw tongue suffered. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into me.” (8)

“Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant and with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.” (16)

Papa: “Because God has given you so much, he expects much from you. He expects perfection.” (47)

Papa-Nnukwe: “If I had meat in my soup,” Papa Nnukwu said, “I would offer it to you.” (65)

“The first time I heard Aunty Ifeoma call Mama “nwunye m” years ago, I was aghast that a woman called another woman “my wife.” When I asked, Papa said it was the remnants of ungodly traditions, the idea that it was the family and not the man alone that married a wife, and later Mama whispered, although we were alone in my room, “I am her wife, too, because I am your father’s wife. It shows that she accepts me.” (73)

“She said “teenagers” as if she were not one, as if teenagers were a brand of people who, by not listening to culturally conscious music, were a step beneath her. And she said “culturally conscious” in the proud way that people say a word they never knew they would learn until they do.” (118)

“Sometimes I imagined God calling me, his rumbling voice British-accented. He would not say my name right; like Father Benedict, he would place the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first.” (179-180)

Amaka: “But what’s the point, then?” Amaka said to Father Amadi, as if she had not heard her mother. “What the church is saying is that only an English name will make your confirmation valid. ‘Chiamaka’ says God is beautiful. ‘Chima’ says God knows best, ‘Chiebuka’ says God is the greatest. Don’t they all glorify God as much as ‘Paul’ and ‘Peter’ and ‘Simon’?” (272) “His letters dwell on me.” (303)

“Amaka says that people love priests because they want to compete with God, they want God as a rival. But we are not rivals, God and I, we are simply sharing. I no longer wonder if I have a right to love Father Amadi; I simply go ahead and love him. I no longer wonder if the checks I have been writing to the Missionary Fathers of the Blessed Way are bribes to God; I just go ahead and write them. I no longer wonder if I chose St. Andrew’s church in Enugu as my new church because the priest there is a Blessed Way Missionary Father as Father Amadi is; I just go.” (303-304)

Burning Questions

Why does the author have Kambili draw the distinction between her brother’s defiance and the people’s defiance against a tyrannical government? (See above quote from page 16.) Aren’t they parallel narratives? Is Kambili too young to see this?

Did the father beat the mother and cause the first miscarriage mentioned on pages 32-33? I think that he did because the narrator recognizes the sounds and tries to imagine that it is something else. When the mother returns she claims it was “an accident” and then cleans her figurines. But the author does leave it somewhat unclear. Even if the father didn’t cause the miscarriage (which seems unlikely if he wants more children), he still comes across as a monster when he prays for the mother’s forgiveness.

Did Jaja know that his mother was poisoning his father? It seems that he did (at least after the fact and before Kambilis knows, because he refused to drink out of the cups from his family’s home.) (p. 289)

Useful Links

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/purple_hibiscus1.asp
Reading Group Guide

http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/from_the_archives_12_questions_for_chimamanda_adichie
Interview with Author