Poetry

The Pulitzer Prize is an annual awards given to excellence in newspaper and online journalism, literature, and musical composition and are administered by Columbia University in New York City.  The 2013 awards were announced yesterday.  For books, the following awards were given.

Fiction - The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Ambitious and inventive, this novel is set in an orphanage in North Korea.  Protagonist Pak Jun Do is forced to become a fighting tunnel expert and a kidnapper before he takes his fate into his own hands. Johnson is able to tell the tale of touching humanity set within the backdrop of a brutal regime. Read more »

In April, as poets have for centuries, we’ll celebrate poetry. For our next Books Plus discussion program, we’ll be highlighting sonnets—one of the shortest and most versatile of poetric forms. Did you know what King James I, Prime Minister William Gladstone, American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, President John Quincy Adams, and Edith Wharton all had in common? They loved to write sonnets!

Now you don’t need to compose any of your own, but if you have a favorite that you’d love to read aloud, please come and share. Or sit back and let language flow around you.  We’ll explore this little song’s history, discuss its variations, how contemporary poets have made it their own, and why a sonnet is still a sonnet even if it doesn’t rhyme.

We hope you can join us this coming Sunday, April 7 at 2:00 p.m. in discovering anew one of our best creations--the sonnet.  All are welcome and refreshments are provided. More information about this and upcoming Books Plus discussions below.

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I’m both a poetry and quotation aficionado, so what could be better than a twofer? Dennis O’Driscoll’s wonderful gathering of quotations about poetry Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry is the kind of book you read through to inspire you, make you laugh, or help you figure out what modern poetry is and does. Appropriately, Copper Canyon Press (the publisher) chose for their pressmark the Chinese character for poetry. It’s constructed of two parts that mean word and temple.

O’Driscoll begins his introduction with Boswell’s question to Samuel Johnson (the famous dictionary maker), “What is poetry?” Johnson’s witty reply was, “Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not.”

The book itself is arranged in sections each beginning with a phrase. Examples include: “What is it anyway,” “Making a Start,” “Inspired Moves,” “Call Yourself a Poet,” “Best Words,” “The Audience,” “On the Contrary,” and “In Memory.” This is just a sampling. O’Driscoll has devised a lot more categories.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes (although there are so many good ones it’s hard to winnow them down to a short list.) Read more »

Thalia Chaltas’ Because I Am Furniture is the story of Anke, a quiet, lonely freshman who feels helplessly invisible at home and at school. She compares herself to furniture, because whereas her abusive father pays far too much attention to her older brother and sister (and Mom pretends it’s not happening), he treats her like part of the background at home, ignoring her completely. Dad is a very charismatic professor at the local university, loved by everyone outside, and feared by his family at home, where his anger and need to rule his children with an iron fist literally paralyzes them. Meanwhile, Anke risks his wrath and makes the school volleyball team, and is soon learning to feel accepted, and becoming a center of attention.

Thalia Chaltas’ Because I Am Furniture is the story of Anke, a quiet, lonely freshman who feels helplessly invisible at home and at school. She compares herself to furniture, because whereas her abusive father pays far too much attention to her older brother and sister (and Mom pretends it’s not happening), he treats her like part of the background at home, ignoring her completely. Dad is a very charismatic professor at the local university, loved by everyone outside, and feared by his family at home, where his anger and need to rule his children with an iron fist literally paralyzes them. Meanwhile, Anke risks his wrath and makes the school volleyball team, and is soon learning to feel accepted, and becoming a center of attention.

Read more »