50 Books to Read Before You Die

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Tag: Poetry (Page 1 of 2)

Off-Topic: My Poetry

November 23, 2018 /

Good morning, class.

I should tell you . . . I’m not always writing about what other people have written. I feel like I’m doing a good enough job reviewing the 50 Books to Read Before You Die (you’d tell me if I wasn’t, right?)—but my writing talents aren’t limited to book reviews. I’ve written my fair share of poetry, for instance, and a handful of those poems have even been published. And today, I’d like to lend a bit of credibility to my own writing—by sharing some poetry, of course!

I’ve picked three of my poems to share, with a bit of commentary for good measure. Enjoy!

Consider the Ravens

Regarding musical thoughts . . . consider
The difference between thoughts and the ones who
Think them.

Through meticulous study, through
Expression, we thinkers rage and condemn
Stark thoughtlessness.

To impose on mayhem,
Order—that is our aim, our daily stress,
Our pang-laden dreamscape.

If we should guess,
God might be mayhem—leaves stretched in no shape
While we stand mean on wrathful roots.

That scrape,
Which our thoughts brace against the gentle fruits
Of our bodies and spirits, is music.

Consider the ravens—thoughtless and whole,
Scolding our scrape with their symphonic squall.

“Consider the Ravens” comes from a Bible passage, Luke 12:24, which can be boiled down do a pretty simple concept—birds don’t worry about anything and are fed nonetheless; you shouldn’t worry either. This verse always seemed to be aimed at me—the proof that I shouldn’t worry too much because God tells me everything will be alright. But worrying seems to be something the animal kingdom doesn’t suffer from all that often. Humans, on the other hand, worry all the time—it’s how we improve, how we change, how we challenge the status quo, and most importantly, how we make art, literature, and music. Our worry is what makes us seek perfection, and we’ll never reach it but never stop seeking it either, and that back and forth is sort of the secret to humanity.

I liked how this poem turned out, especially the rhyme scheme. This is a sonnet, but it’s been broken places that give it a different feel without becoming unbalanced. It looks like chaos, but it’s more like rearranged order, and I’m proud of that.

Campfire

A Crack
And a faint Echo.

He Snaps the branches,
Here a hard wrist twisting and there a swift foot stomping,
With a surge of Crunch and Crackle—
Fingers careen down the bark, rough skin toppling twigs and leaves
That Clatter to the ground like debris.

Then, repetition:
Crack, Echo…
Snap, Crunch, Crackle, Clatter, Clatter—
Crack, Snap, Clatter,
Crack, Snap, Clatter.

He gathers, organizes, sets—
The overlapping wood,
The hodgepodge twig-pile,
The leaves, crushed and stuffed—
All in a cube—a prison of bark.

He isn’t alone—poking out of his pockets are the fire-starters of the unnatural world:
Old newspaper,
Weeks of collected dryer lint,
And the protruding metal stem of a blood-orange barbeque lighter.

There’s an accompanying Snap.

Another Snap.

Another Snap—and then a Crack, and a spark.

A flicker appears—a teardrop of light—
And it buds into two,
Produces four, reproduces eight,
And becomes a living flame,
While a column of smoke explores the air.

Lint catches, newspaper blackens, leaves curl, wood peels,
And the bark settles into its pit.

The light swims across his hard eyes
As he surveys his work—he is calculating, probing, observing, listening . . .
He protectively prods the creature with a leftover branch.

His eyes soften. His shoulders settle.
He interlaces his fingers and Cracks
The air out of his knucklebones.
Then he sits in his foldable chair
And settles his arm on my shoulders.

Sylvia Plath’s poetry had a tendency to take something ordinary and describe it so poetically that it seemed strange and foreign. That was my approach here, and though I don’t think it turned out that way, the result was something so simple and rustic that I fell in love with it. It’s a scene around a campfire; the wood is collected, the fire brought chaotically to life, and the fire settling into a dependable flame.

I applied some of the regular poetic tricks—the metaphor of the fire as alive, the implication that the man is creating a living thing (almost parent-like), the destruction of the first half building to the creation of the second half, etc. I’m particularly proud of the use of sound . . . I’m typically more of a visual/verbal guy, and this is my attempt at capturing the noises of the scene as much as the visuals. You’ll notice the sound is mostly at the beginning, before the light becomes a factor in the scene (oooooo . . . meaning!!)

To Know a Man

I know a man as if from a strange dream. I know
His fervent voice, his sympathy, his charming face,
His internal adversity, and his true, whole
Story. Of few others can I claim such a bare
Knowledge; but my knowing is like a song I hear
In rare moments, when certainty guides my passion.

He wears a wooden mask, matching social passions
For etiquette’s sake—and with all I seem to know,
His mask, at times, fools even me. The voice I hear
Between the wooden lips of his fictitious face
Kindles in me an insobriety. I bear
It, if only to sense the more resonant whole.

I can sense harmony there, which resonates whole,
But seems built brutishly with divergent passions—
A series of conflicting fragments, never bare
But for the miracle of the harmony—no
One flaw exposed. This seemingly perfected face
Spoils any harmonic strain I would wish to hear.

But beyond these sounds is a voice I want to hear—
The voice of that man’s mind, trapped by the sullied whole
Of that harmonious character and that face
He shows the world. His mind speaks of different passions,
Of contrarian thoughts, of worlds I could not know,
And of dreams my spirit could only hope to bear.

Within the depths of such a hidden mind, he may bear
An ocean of knowledge, which deepens as it hears
The songs of others and swells as it comes to know
The strangeness of a senseless world, bursting with whole
Fragments of melodic, discordant compassion
That dares to flaunt itself at his fictitious face.

Beyond this hidden mind, and far beyond that face
Is, hopefully, some soul—a purity he bears
For entropy’s sake. This soul may guide his passions,
Divergent as they are, and may let his mind hear
Of love in the darkness we endure as a whole.
And beyond this soul dwells something no one could know . . .

. . . Perhaps some faceless, transparent eardrum that hears,
Perhaps, the whole human symphony, and that bears,
Perhaps, a passion for a man he hopes to know.

This one is more personal. There’s a man in my life who is hard to describe, but I used poetry and made an attempt—I left out the details and decided to describe my knowing him . . . the poem is less about the person and more about his closeness to me. He is a lot like me, and there’s a lot we know about each other, but the great obstacles of humanity keep us from knowing each other completely—I know him as he presents himself to me, but I don’t know his thoughts, his dreams, his soul . . . I can’t know those things. I can tell there are things about him that I can know, even without proof, because I like to think he is like me in that way—he wants to know me as much as I want to know him, and through that, we begin to know each other more deeply.

This poem is in the form of a sestina—a long and repetitive form that uses the last word in each line over and over again in different, predictable patterns. Using this form is a great way to tackle the kind of subject that is hard to convey in fewer words—the kind of subject that needs a variety of approaches in order to make sense, or that attempts to capture a concept in its totality, from all angles. It doubles back quite a bit, but I think it gets the point across, and of that I am happy.

I’m finishing up Martin Amis’ novel Money: A Suicide Note, so that’s what I’m writing about next. I’ll be honest, I am not at all thrilled by it—there’s a lot that makes it unlikable, uncomfortable, and unnecessary. I’ve got a few ideas about why it made the list, but I’m not sure that any of those reasons made it actually worth my time. In any case, I’ll try to write as unbiased a blog post about Money as possible.

Until then,

Prof. Jeffrey

November 12, 2018 /

“In the planetary aggregate of all life, there are many more suicide notes than there are suicides. They’re like poems in that respect, suicide notes: nearly everyone tries their hand at them at some time, with or without the talent. We all write them in our heads.”

—from Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis

June 4, 2018 /

“‘And though this be a poetical fiction, there is concealed moral in it, worthy to be observed, understood, and imitated.'”

—from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Off-Topic: Poetry Favorites (Part 3)

March 15, 2018 /

Hello again, class! Time to poetry it up again.

Be sure to check out my other favorite poems with Part 1 and Part 2 of this list. I’ve included links to each poem so you can read them for yourself!

Kipling isn’t one of my favorite writers, but this is certainly one of my favorite poems. It’s built on a series of almost-impossible virtues, with the father-son relationship tagged on for good measure. The poem as a whole paints the perfect ideal to strive for, and I love it.

My favorite lines are “If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim.” It always reminds me that my introverted delights should have a purpose, even if they aren’t clear to begin with.

I think that “The Road Not Taken” has more depth than most people give it credit for. There’s the comparison between the two roads, one slightly more worn than the other, but both inviting and undisturbed. I like the speaker’s internal conflict about which road to take.

But it’s the last lines that keep this poem universal: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Frost made good poetry, and “The Road Not Taken” is one of his best.

This is one of the weirdest poems I’ve ever read. The word choice gets to me every time I read it—“angularity,” “avalanche,” “guttural,” “hieroglyphics” . . . and the image of a hawk’s wings as scythes cutting down stalks of time to describe the passing of a day is beyond creative.

If there’s anything this poem does wrong, it’s overreaching—poetry for poetry’s sake, one step too far. But for me, before reading “Evening Hawk,” poetry was flowers and love metaphors. This is one of the few early poems in my life that changed the game forever.

If “Evening Hawk” is one of the weirdest poems ever, then “The Red Wheelbarrow” is one of the simplest. It’s one of those that’s simple enough for anyone to read, understand, and analyze, but it’s also complete and complex enough to have layers of meaning.

It’s about the length of a sentence—four stanzas of four words each, painting a brief picture of a wheelbarrow. But if you look closely enough, you see the balance of each phrase, the care in each word, the imagery and the symbolism between the lines. It makes me smile and wonder every time I read it.

This Heart of Darkness-inspired poem (blog post pending for that novel) is classic T. S. Eliot—too vague to make complete sense but just beautiful enough so that sense doesn’t matter.

I like Eliot’s artistic choices, and it’s hard to like his work otherwise if you don’t, but it’s not hard to appreciate how powerful his poetry is. “The Hollow Men” showcases the best that modernism is known for—rule-breaking poetry, terror at the collapse of the old world, and a hodgepodge of genre that clashes against itself. It’s pretentious, but incredible.

This poem is dedicated to victims of 9/11, and for that alone it speaks volumes. Collins picks the names of individuals who died on 9/11, one name for every letter of the alphabet (though he asks us to “let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound”). Those names haunt him—or maybe it’s less violent than a haunting . . . it’s more like the names are painted on everything he sees: the rain, the night sky, the shop windows, the bridges and tunnels of the city, and the petals of a flower. It’s a literary memorial; those names, and the lives that they belonged to, remain after the tragedy. Like I said, it speaks volumes.

Of all of the poems I’ve selected (between all three posts) this one is the funniest. Sheehan wrote the exact opposite of a love poem—there was nothing else to call it but “Hate Poem.” She REALLY hates the subject of the poem. Everything about her hates the other person, from the flick of her wrist to the lint under her toenail to the “goldfish of her genius.”

What’s really remarkable is how beautiful the writing is, which is maybe even because of it’s content—it’s full of passion and exquisite hatred, and it’s one of the most enjoyable poems that’s ever crossed my path.

I’m not planning on a Part 4, but at this point, who knows what’ll happen.

Next up, I’m finishing up The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Also by Sylvia Plath, the poem “Lady Lazarus” (found on my Part 2 poetry list) equally deals in the subject of suicide. “Lady Lazarus” and other poems by Plath have a sense of glorifying suicide and death, which certainly makes me uncomfortable, but The Bell Jar seems to be more interested in portraying than glorifying. I don’t think her poetry is better or worse than her novel, but they are absolutely worth comparing, especially since they are eerily close to Plath’s real life suicide attempts and eventual suicide. But more on that next time.

Prof. Jeffrey

Missing From the List: Citizen

February 15, 2018 /

Happy Black History Month!

I’ve recalibrated my view of Black History Month in recent years. Growing up, my privilege helped me see it as the month to remember the difficulties African Americans used to face. This is mostly the same today—it’s the “used to” that’s changed. What I see now is that the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement were both monumental eras in American history that changed how our laws and leadership treated black lives, and we have yet to solve the issue of racism separately from the law—i.e., the racism within the hearts and minds of American citizens. Nothing helped me understand that more than Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.

Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric

Citizen: An American Lyric has a perfect excuse for not making the list: it was composed after the list was. Nonetheless, since it’s publication only three years ago, I believe it’s one of the books everyone needs to read before they die.

Citizen is a collage—a hodgepodge of pictures, personal accounts, and nonfiction written like poetry. It’s also a wide variety of perspectives on racism in modern America. Mostly what you’ll find is Rankine’s unique take on moments of racism, where she describes the context to “you” the reader, putting you in the place of the slighted and ignored. She paints the figurative portraits of the man no one will sit next to, the woman listening to complaints about affirmative action as if she’s to blame, and the child ignored and knocked over by a white man.

Reading Citizen is an experience—or, rather, it portrays the experience no one wants to have: the racism she and others have personally felt in a way that’s painfully relatable. She writes of the anger black men and women are stereotyped for, and of the collective sigh built up from all of the moments when racism stung her. More than anything, Rankine proves how different the black experience is from the white in America, with privilege clearly bending toward the white.

Still of Serena Williams at the 2011 U.S. Open in a match she famously lost. Rankine uses part II of Citizen to tell Williams’ story.

No one passage carries more weight than another, but particular attention should be given to the passage on Serena Williams, widely considered the best female tennis player of all time. Rankine delves into Williams’ history with the game of tennis, and the racism in Williams’ most famous matches—how the umpire, intentionally or unintentionally, used Williams’ skin color and stereotyped anger to penalize her in matches she was clearly winning. But whether Williams was winning or losing, her blackness is used against her, and there is no resolution to the racism she faces; the story ends with a white athlete mocking her looks and behavior, and it’s as if that’s the resolution the audience needed . . . the stereotyped image of the best tennis player of all time, minus her black skin.

The word “citizen” appears once in the entire book, toward the end—almost carrying the weight of the entire anthology of racism before it. It seems that, for black Americans, citizenship means moving on from racism . . . letting your feelings go, however attached you are to them (even if they are all you are), and ignoring the racism against you with as much force as white people are ignoring you. That’s how poisoned by racism citizenship has become—as poisoned as America itself. That hasn’t changed since the publication of Citizen—in fact, I would argue that American citizenship has continued to deteriorate from racism in spite of Rankine’s powerful work. Perhaps if more people read it, more people would see what African Americans are seeing.

It’s not easy to read—not only because it speaks to some difficult truths, but also because Rankine’s ambiguous stream-of-consciousness poetry leaves a lot to interpretation—but Citizen is important now. It portrays the difficult truths of now. Rankine’s voice is one we need to hear so that we can change what the world looks like when we step out the door. She doesn’t make it easy because she doesn’t provide political answers to a political question—she only portrays the problem of racism, which she has no solution for. She provides the empathy needed to see injustice, not the tools to fight it, and it’s not fair of us to ask her for both. After all, we’re all citizens, too.

Above: The Slave Ship by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Below: A detail of a slave’s leg from The Slave Ship. Both images appear at the end of Citizen.

A few additional thoughts: In the realm of solving the problem of racism in America, I have no answers. I know brute force doesn’t work, and I know leaving everyone to their own devices doesn’t help much. My best guess is that education and love are the solution—both of which probably only work with the kind of empathy Rankine puts on her readers in Citizen.

Acknowledge your privilege, that’s another big step. Look in the mirror and see what society values—even if it’s a value from bad intentions—and use it to make the world better (not just for you). For starters, the fact that you can read this means you have enough privilege to go around. Reading Citizen is a good place to go next, in my opinion.

Prof. Jeffrey

The Divine Comedy

January 4, 2018 /

Dante’s depiction of Hell (portrait by Botticelli)

Happy New Year, class! Let’s jump right into some Italian literature.

Dante’s The Divine Comedy should not be on the list. My professional opinion is that no one has to read this book before they die. Your time could be better spent reading some of Dante’s famous quotes from the epic poem, looking at the maps of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven that Dante describes, and studying up on how The Divine Comedy affected everything written after it.

If you’re interested, by all means, read it! It’s a great story and it really has affected everything written after it—even on the list, it directly affected The Canterbury Tales, Ulysses, The Lord of the Rings, the His Dark Materials Trilogy, and everything in between. But it should be studied and analyzed in a college class. It’s not the kind of book you read in your spare time, and it’s not the kind of book that everyone has to read.

Before I come down too hard on Dante, why don’t I tell you what the poem is about—a journey through the afterlife as Dante himself tries to find his love, Beatrice. The ancient poet Virgil guides him through the nine circles of Hell, and then up the seven ledges of the mountain of Purgatory. Because Virgil can go no further, Dante meets Beatrice at the top of Purgatory (where the garden of Eden is, by the way) and together they ascend through the planetary spheres of the heavens. Dante meets figures from history every step of the way—the worst being punished eternally for their sins, and the best enjoying the fruits of Heaven. Meanwhile, Dante’s guides teach him as much as they can about the political sides of the afterlife, the spirituality that makes all three realms function, and the moral nature of things like love, hope, good, evil, faith, fate, and free will.

Satan portrayed as a three-headed beast in Dante’s Inferno

The things Dante imagined for The Divine Comedy are beyond belief—the terrifying three-headed Satan chewing on the greatest betrayers of human history, the Eagle composed of the souls of just rulers in the seventh sphere of Heaven, the Virgin Mary depicted as queen of the great Rose of the Blessed made of light in the Empyrean . . . it’s all a lot to take in. And right next to these fantastic images are passages about how love drives all human action to both good and evil, and why it’s reprehensible to pity those souls being punished for their crimes. The Divine Comedy is thought-provoking, emotional, and vivid, and it accomplished enough to alter literature, art, culture, and history permanently—clearly it had enough reason to make the list.

But for all the good and interesting moments, it’s incredibly difficult to read on it’s own. I used as many helpful guides as I could, and most of them made more sense than the poem itself. A smarter person might have even enjoyed reading it for fun, but I’m unfortunately not a part of that category. But maybe a person who’s read it before—studied it in a class, made themselves flashcards, answered essay questions . . . the whole nine yards—maybe that person could make sense of the reading, and could even reinterpret certain parts that didn’t click before, without bending over backwards like I did. Without help, The Divine Comedy is confusing and exhausting, so much so that I don’t believe it should have made the list.

Dante Alighieri

I recently learned this lesson with Ulysses, which I still love more than almost every novel on the list. But I studied it in a class that I loved with a professor I respected. If I had read for this blog for the first time, I would have thought it was a rambling mess. I would never have discovered the science and art of Joyce’s beautiful writing, and I never would have discovered the meanings behind it. But I had careful guidance alongside my frustrations, and that made all the difference. I imagine that reading Ulysses without help would have been more difficult than reading The Divine Comedy without help.

Works like that shouldn’t be on the list. These books need to be accessible—if not to the average person, at least to the average reader. The kinds of books everyone should read are the ones that can change a person’s life, round out their education, or give them a new perspective. The Divine Comedy did just about none of these for me because it was too far away from me, and I doubt it could do a bit of good for a person who isn’t in a college course on Italian literature.

Next up, I’m finishing up The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I wouldn’t put it in the inaccessible category like The Divine Comedy and Ulysses, but it wasn’t easy either. Having started this one over 3 months ago, it has been a journey reading this prison-break epic. But more on that next time!

Prof. Jeffrey

December 28, 2017 /

“‘I clearly see . . .
How time is hurrying towards me in order
To deal me such a blow as would be most
Grievous for him who is not set for it;
Thus, it is right to arm myself with foresight,
That if I lose the place most dear, I may
Not lose the rest through what my poems say.'”

—from Canto XVII of Dante’s Paradiso by Dante Alighieri

October 5, 2017 /

“In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but here the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.”

—from A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

Off-Topic: Poetry Favorites (Part 2)

May 3, 2017 /

Hello again, class.

There’s a lot of poetry out there, so I’m following up on my last post about my favorite poems! Be sure to check out my previous post to see the poems I’ve already written about.

I’ve included links to Poets.org for the full poems below. (Once again, as sort of a disclaimer, I’ve only chosen English poetry…I have zero expertise in poetry from other languages, and I wish I did. These are some of the best English-language poems I know.)

This poem is not one I would usually call a favorite, but it’s grown on me for its subtlety. Wheatley was one of the first black poets in America, and her work challenged beliefs about racial treatment and humanity. In this poem, Wheatley praises God’s mercy for being revealed to her, and celebrates God leading her to a new land. She carefully warns others that anyone can be a Christian, and anyone can be redeemed—even men and women from Africa. That’s a message that was sorely needed at the time, and has challenged prejudice and injustice to this day.

If you’ve ever seen Dead Poets Society, you know this one. Whitman asks the “To be or not to be” question: what’s the point of life? What good comes from living? The answer is that the powerful play of life goes on, and we can contribute a verse to that play. The poem is a simple and powerful understanding of life, worth reading every time.

A professor once told me that the best way to read and understand this poem is to get very drunk (his exact word was PLASTERED) and then read it. While I haven’t followed his advice, I can see where he’s coming from—this is a very long and complicated poem, and all of the helpful meaning has been filtered out. But it also captures the chaos and decay of the time; Eliot’s thoughts on the collapse of society, the terror of war, the brave new world around the corner . . . the poem does a really great job of capturing those themes. I discover something new every time I read it.

I know of no other poem about suicide, and I certainly don’t know any piece of art that glorifies it in this way. It’s off-putting, but it continues to draw me in. Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide in 1963, was writing about such dark themes very personally, and this poem reflects it by including Nazi imagery and graphic moments of bodily decay. It’s hard to read about her suicide attempts, but it is powerful, emotional poetry that shakes me.

The link above is to a picture of this poem on a wall in Charlotte, NC—I couldn’t find the poem anywhere else. It’s a simple poem about two people in love, but it’s also about the choice to love someone . . . a choice we face again and again. It’s a choice people face when they meet for the first time, and it’s a choice years later. But there is also the question that something external chose these lovers: God, the universe, or maybe the luck of the draw. It’s empowering and humbling poetry. The man who wrote it was a professor of mine in college, who continuously inspired me to write, and for that it’s personally special as well.

This piece of prose poetry is from Rankine’s incredible Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), portraying racism in modern America. Rankine describes a train (or any and all public spaces) where a black man sits next to an empty chair while another woman stands, uncomfortable sitting next to him. The speaker sits next to him, and in that simple action they form a bond that is close to family—a defiance of racial attitudes, of fear, and of injustice. Most of Citizen does this as well, but this is one of the more powerful passages.

Make sure to take a look at each of these! In the comments, tell me your favorite poems—I’m always down for reading more poetry.

Until next week,

Prof. Jeffrey

February 17, 2017 /

“‘[H]e wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.’

‘And so ended his affection,’ said Elizabeth impatiently. ‘There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!’

‘I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,’ said Darcy.

‘Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.'”

—from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

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