Lynn Raye Harris

A discussion in my writers’ group the other night made me think of poems and how to say so much with so little. A new person was there who writes poems. She’s very young and undeveloped, but once she learns to hone those images, she’ll probably write very good poetry. One of her poems was very good, and it was the most sparse of the ones she brought. Her imagery was right on, so I’m quite sure she’ll develop as a poet so long as she doesn’t give up (always a danger with writers).

I was inspired to go hunting through the store for one of my favorite poems. I read it to the group to mixed reactions. The fact it rhymes put some of them off, mostly because people have this idea that rhyming is passe, but when we discussed the imagery and what it meant, we began to come to agreement on the power of the poem. I’ve found this poem in many places on the web, so present it here in hopes I am not violating any copyright issues. I urge you to read more poetry by Adrienne Rich.

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

What does this poem mean? Is Aunt Jennifer physically abused or just oppressed, as a woman of a certain time would have been? Are the tigers representative of her spirit? Or are they merely masculine images of a freedom she can never aspire to?

There are many ways to interpret the poem, of course. I like to think AJ is repressed by patriarchal expectations of what a woman’s role is, and that the tigers are representative of an unrepressible feminine spirit that remains unbowed beneath the outward manifestations of obedience. AJ the woman is broken by her life; AJ the spirit cannot be broken. Just my 2 cents and why I love poetry.

Monday night, we stayed in Waikiki. I’ve never actually spent the night there, though Mike had a hotel room courtesy of the gov’t for a month when he first got here. Since I stayed behind in Germany with our pets, waiting for them to complete the “quarantine” before we could enter Hawaii, I missed out on the experience. A year and a half later, I’m finally catching up.

We had a 13th floor room. I am afraid of heights, and so was a little wary about getting close to the edge of the balcony at first, but I mellowed enough to sort of lean on the railing for half a second before I plopped myself in a chair and stared through the bars instead.

Waikiki is blazing with activity at all hours of the day and night. We weren’t sure what we planned to do, but since we checked in around 4 and were practically starved, we went down to Biba’s and had drinks and an appetizer while waiting for them to start serving dinner at 5. I had a drink called a Tropical Itch (it even came with a back scratcher). I am not much of a mixed drink person, usually, but what the hell I thought. Mike ordered a Mai Tai. When the drinks came, I took a sip and nearly choked.

“What?”

“Bourbon,” I said, picking up the menu and reading the ingredients. How did I miss that?

“You can tell it’s got bourbon in it?” Mike didn’t quite believe it.

“Huh, can I,” I said. See, in the South, bourbon is the mixing booze of choice for teenagers (or was back in the 80s). I’ve had more Old Charter and coke (or Mountain Dew–yes, eewww) than I care to think about. I was a kid, though, so give me a break.

And then there was the time my mother and I sat at the bar in the Mount Vernon Inn and had a Mint Julep whilst waiting for Mike and his parents to complete their tour of our first president’s abode. I don’t remember why in God’s name we decided to order Mint Juleps, except I think the enticement to drink a Southern beverage that used mint grown in George Washington’s very own gardens was too tempting to pass up.

Neither Mom or I are whiskey drinkers, but it was that darned mint, I tell ya. So, we plop at the bar, peruse the menu, and order. I wish I’d known how Mint Juleps were made. I sort of envisioned a mixed fruity drink. I guess Mom did too. Um, no. Bourbon poured over ice and mint leaves. Supposedly, there’s sugar in there, but danged if I tasted it. Needless to say, half an hour and one Mint Julep later, I was getting pretty sleepy. I don’t remember much, except falling asleep in the car on the way home. ONE drink, dammit. Bourbon is burned on my brain for all time.

I finished the Tropical Itch with no side effects, thankfully. Mike decided to order one for himself, but I got a glass of house red instead. We ate dinner and strolled to the beach to watch the sunset. I know, I know, tons of sunset pics on this blog already, but it’s too beautiful and I can’t help it. Then we sat on the beach and watched the shark bait, er, tourists swim in the darkening water (Shark party, table for two, beachside. Special today is tasty arms and legs…)

We sat there for a long time, listening to the music from the beach bar and watching the stars come out. For some reason, country music was the order of the day, which seemed a bit incongruous. Finally, though it wasn’t even 8PM, we opted to go back to our room where we sat on the darkened balcony, drinking a bottle of red wine we’d brought along and watching the twinkling lights of Honolulu. Far below us, a luau was taking place, so we had the pulsing drum beat of a Tahitian dance and then got to watch the spinning fire sticks wielded by a Samoan dancer as the drums tattooed faster and faster.

I was almost reminded of Marlow and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, of the mesmerizing drum beat in the night and of Kurtz’s slow crawl to get back to it. But even with my eyes closed, the effect was ruined by the sounds of traffic and the voice of the luau host booming over the microphone. There was no native ritual calling me to lose myself in the primitive. Instead, I went to sleep high above the beach, tucked into a comfy bed, my dreams undisturbed by any sinister late night occurences.

Cribbed from Mark’s blog:

http://www.hsus.org/

The website of the Humane Society. Help animals displaced by the hurricanes, and send your Congressperson a letter (on the website so all you gotta do is click it through) asking them to support the PETS Act, which would help keep people together with their pets during evacuations. Many of the people who did not evacuate stayed because they didn’t want to leave their pets behind. As a pet owner, I understand this feeling. They aren’t just dogs or cats or whatever, they’re family. I’ve had Thumper for 15 years. Miss Kitty was with me for 18 years of her 19 1/2. I couldn’t leave them behind. No one should have to make that choice.

“AUTHORS struggle, mostly in vain, against their fated obscurity. According to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks sales from major booksellers, only 2 percent of the 1.2 million unique titles sold in 2004 had sales of more than 5,000 copies. Against this backdrop, the recent Authors Guild suit against the Google Library Project is poignantly wrongheaded.”

See the rest of the op-ed here. Killer first sentence, eh? Makes you wonder why we write. Not sure I completely agree with the argument, but it’s an interesting perspective and one worth considering.

And, just when you were thinking about getting discouraged, read this article about 21-yr-old Christopher Paolini, best-selling author of Eragon and Eldest. I haven’t read the books, but I salute the kid for his success and his maturity in the face of it.

Since I’m on a book kick, might as well include another list. How many of the best 150 novels of the 20th century have you read? I’ve only read 44. Dang, and here I thought I was well-educated. I only counted the ones I’d actually read, even though I know the story of Charlotte’s Web from the cartoon as a child. I did read Winnie the Pooh, but I also saw the cartoons. If I’ve read parts of a book, I didn’t count it. For instance, I am quite familiar with the story of Brave New World (in the year of our Ford), but I haven’t actually read the entire book front to back so I didn’t count it.

X marks the spot or, in this case, what I’ve read.

1.The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (X)
2.1984, George Orwell (X)
2.Catch-22, Joseph Heller
4.The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
5.Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
6.Animal Farm, George Orwell
6.Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (X)
8.Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (X)
9.Ulysses, James Joyce
10.The Lord of the Flies, William Golding (X)
11.Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (X)
12.Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
13.The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (X)
14.Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (X)
15.To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (X)
16.The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (X)
17.Native Son, Richard Wright (X)
18.Beloved, Toni Morrison (X)
19.Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
19.To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (X)
21.The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien (X)
22.The Color Purple, Alice Walker (X)
23.On the Road, Jack Kerouac
24.The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
25.The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck (X)
26.Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
26.The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien (X)
28.Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (X)
29.Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
30.The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (X)
31.A Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein (X)
32.My Antonia, Willa Cather
33.A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (X)
34.A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
35.I, Claudius, Robert Graves (X)
36.Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton (X)
36.The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemmingway (X)
36.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
39.Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
40.Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora N. Hurston (X)
41.The Call of the Wild, Jack London (X)
42.The World According to Garp, John Irving (X)
43.A Passage to India, E. M. Forster
43.The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
45.The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
46.The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
47.Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
48.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
49.Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
50.U. S. A.(trilogy), John Dos Passos
51.Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
52.Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
53.Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence (X)
54.Exodus, Leon Uris
55.All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
55.Rabbit Run, John Updike
57.The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
57.The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
57.Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
60.The Ambassadors, Henry James
60.From Here to Eternity, James Jones
60.Little House on the Prarie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
63.The Golden Bowl, Henry James
64.Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne (X)
65.The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
66.2001 : A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
67.Possession, A. S. Byatt
67.Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry (X)
69.All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria ReMarque (X)
69.Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
69.Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
72.The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (X)
73.Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
74.Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
75.Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
75.Roots, Alex Haley
77.Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
78.Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
79.Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (X)
79.The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
79.Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
82.The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
83.Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
84.Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence (X)
85.The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
86.Dune, Frank Herbert (X)
86.A Room with a View, E. M. Forster
86.The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
86.The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum
90.The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
91.The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
92.The Burger’s Daughter, Nadine Gordimer (X)
92.A Confederacy of Dunces, John K. Toole
94.An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
95.The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
96.East of Eden, John Steinbeck
96.Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
96.Howards End, E. M. Forster
99.Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
99.Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
101.Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
102.Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
103.The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (X)
103.The Wings of a Dove, Henry James
105.Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather (X)
106.The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell
107.Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
107.Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
109.The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (X)
110.As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (X)
111.The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder (X)
111.A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
113.A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor (X)
113.The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
115.Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
115.The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
117.White Noise, Don DeLillo
118.Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (X)
118.The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
120.Deliverance, James Dickey
120.The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever
122.A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
122.Snow Falling Cedars, David Guterson
124.Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
124.Watership Down, Richard Adams
126.The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
126.The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
128.The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
129.A Death in the Family, James Agee
129.Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
131.Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
131.The Rainbow, Pearl S. Buck
133.A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
134.Pale Fire, Vladimir Nobokov
135.Ironweed, William P. Kennedy
135.Light in August, William Faulkner (X)
137.Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
138.Parade’s End, Ford Madox Ford
139.Kane and Abel, Jeffrey Archer
139.Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm
141.Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
142.Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
143.Call it Sleep, Henry Roth
144.For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway (X)
145.Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons
146.The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
146.Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns
148.A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
148.The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
150.The Godfather, Mario Puzo

It’s banned books week! From the ALA page, here are the top challenged books of 2004:

“The Chocolate War” tops 2004 most challenged book list

Recent challenges to Anaya, Crutcher books highlight censorship concerns

CHICAGO – Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War” tops the list of most challenged books of 2004, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. The book drew complaints from parents and others concerned about the book’s sexual content, offensive language, religious viewpoint and violence. This year marks the first in five in which the Harry Potter series does not top or appear on the ALA’s annual list.

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received a total of 547 challenges last year. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. According to Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, the number of challenges reflects only incidents reported, and for each reported, four or five remain unreported.

“With several news reports just in the past week of books like “Bless Me, Ultima,” by Rudolfo Anaya being removed from schools, we must remain vigilant,” said ALA President Carol Brey-Casiano. “Not every book is right for every person, but providing a wide range of reading choices is vital for learning, exploration and imagination. The abilities to read, speak, think and express ourselves freely are core American values.”

Anaya’s award-winning book was banned from the curriculum in Norwood High School, Colo., for offensive language. Young adult novelist Chris Crutcher’s books also have come under fire in Kansas, Alabama and Michigan this year.

Three of the 10 books on the “Ten Most Challenged Books of 2004″ were cited for homosexual themes – which is the highest number in a decade. Sexual content and offensive language remain the most frequent reasons for seeking removal of books from schools and public libraries. The books, in order of most frequently challenged, are:

“The Chocolate War” for sexual content, offensive language, religious viewpoint, being unsuited to age group and violence

“Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers, for racism, offensive language and violence

“Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” by Michael A. Bellesiles, for inaccuracy and political viewpoint

Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey, for offensive language and modeling bad behavior

“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, for homosexuality, sexual content and offensive language

“What My Mother Doesn’t Know” by Sonya Sones, for sexual content and offensive
language

“In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak, for nudity and offensive language

“King & King” by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, for homosexuality

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, for racism, homosexuality, sexual content, offensive language and unsuited to age group

“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, for racism, offensive language and violence

Off the list this year, but on the list for several years past, are the Alice series of books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, “Go Ask Alice” by Anonymous, “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.

For more information on book challenges and censorship, please visit www.ala.org/bbooks.

Amazing, ain’t it?

He said he didn’t care if I blogged it, so here it is. Man and kitten enjoy a bit of nap time.

It rained yesterday, looked totally dark and depressing, and we had flash flood warnings last night. I wasn’t happy, considering my house backs up to a creek. But, though it rained in the mountains and on most of the island, we didn’t get a lot here. Not enough to make the creek rise even by half, thank heavens.

Tonight, we’re going to Kaneohe for dinner with some friends. Should be fun. The restaurant is supposed to have a great view. I love great views.

While out and about yesterday, stopped in the library and ran across a copy, for sale, of Freya Stark’s A Winter in Arabia. It still had the Borders’ tag on the back: $16.95. I paid fifty cents. The book doesn’t look like it was ever read. Yet another tome for my towering TBR pile.

Good post today by Kara Lennox over at Romancing the Blog. Do ya feel successful, punk? Well, do ya?

In case you haven’t heard, Oprah’s back. The book club will once again be featuring contemporary authors. Oh frabjous day, calloo callay! My turn is surely right around the corner (cough, snort, snicker).

Apparently, Faulkner failed to pull in the readers the way contemporary novels have in the past: “While sales soared for some of her classic picks, like ‘East of Eden’ by John Steinbeck, others did not reach expectations, most notably this summer’s selection of three novels by William Faulkner. “

Uh, ya think? As I Lay Dying is about a corpse which gets nastier and nastier as the family tries to get to town to bury it. The Sound and the Fury is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Light in August is the most straight-forward novel of the three and it spends an inordinate amount of time on a self-absorbed preacher and his inability to get over an incident that happened before he was born.

Really, in spite of my sarcasm, I love Faulkner. As I Lay Dying is my least favorite, probably. The mother is the most selfish creature and the father isn’t any better. Irritating group of people, though the Christ imagery is well done throughout the novel.

TSATF is greatness indeed, idiot or not. The part about clocks slaying time is so good. Quentin Compson’s section is probably my favorite. Poor kid. But, Light in August, in spite of the preacher, is a tour de force novel about race relations and not belonging. Joe Christmas is compelling. His story is sad and inevitable and unfair, but you see it coming anyway. This novel should be required reading for everyone.

I’m glad Oprah chose those novels, even if sales weren’t brisk. People who might never have otherwise read them picked them up and tried. Surely, more than a few made it to the end. I probably only got through them when I did because they were assigned reading for class. One of the good things about lit classes is being forced to read novels you wouldn’t otherwise. Ha!

My favorite Faulkner, however, is Absalom! Absalom! I’d have never finished it if not for the fact I had a grade riding on it, but am I ever glad I did. I’ve read that this novel is his most difficult and complex. I’d have to agree. It doesn’t have the obvious difficulty of Benjy Compson’s opening section to TSATF, but it’s a story within a story within a story. Getting to the truth is ultimately the reader’s responsibility. The novel demands a lot, but it’s well worth it.

I never kept up with Oprah’s picks, but I know I’ve read a few of them. I probably have a few more on my shelves. I even have the Franzen, though I think he’s a snot. I didn’t spend money on it, though. Someone gave it to me. Even if he’s a brilliant writer (I don’t know since I haven’t read him yet), he didn’t have to be so damn elitist about being chosen. Definitely a turn off, and insulting to his fellow writers. Really, is Toni Morrison low-brow? I don’t think so.