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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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acp5x has commented on (2) products
Body of the World
by
Sam Taylor
acp5x
, December 04, 2006
Sam Taylor?s book of poetry Body of the World was a refreshing change from the poetry one finds everywhere these days, particularly slam poetry. Contemporary poetry seems to focus so much on personal emotions that the rest of the world is lost. Each poem is individualized to each poet?s experiences, but all eventually speak of similar themes. However, this commonality is ignored almost all the time. Taylor, on the other hand, recognizes this, and incorporates it into his poetry. He uses imagery taken from everyday life in order to convey specific ideas that relate to the topic he is actually writing about. For example, he manages to connect ?The giant green wings of luna moths, a broom, dust? to broken love in the poem ?Arc? by implying darkness and decay. These bits of images, not quite metaphors, show that completely different aspects of the world can be related by some facet of life. The first section of Taylor?s book, ?Anonymous,? speaks of universal experiences: waking up, marriage, questioning the world, and more. Because of this, his imagery is very broad and ranges from a mythological reference in the poem ?Surfacing? to children?s cartoons in ?John 3:16.? The poems included are especially vivid and full of the life of the world, with variations due to the mood of the poem in question. The poem ?Realism: A Landscape of the Body at Any Longitude? is more melancholy and uses imagery such as ?octopus? ink,? ?moonless sky,? and ?Marilyn on the wall?who thinks it has been this way forever.? In contrast, ?The Wedding Song? speaks of ?a girl with pigtails eating alphabet soup? and of ?This one bolt [that] shall be the entire metropolis? to convey a sense of joy, hopefulness, and passion. The way Taylor chooses the specific imagery for each of his poems puts an emphasis on certain details, not all of which are always noticed by the vast majority of writers and readers when writing or reading other poetry. The second section of the book, whose title ?Listen? implies a theme of forgotten things, seems to speak of things that are avoided by many, due to fear, unfamiliarity, and other reasons. It speaks of birth and death, isolation of rural areas contrasted to isolation of urban areas, God, politics, and much more. Many of these topics seem to come from personal experiences, as the majority of these poems are written in the first person, and this impression lends an extra dose of credibility to Taylor?s writing. It was his friend who lost his girlfriend in a car accident; it was he who witnessed a taped birth; it was his first kiss. His imagery thus often speaks of wonder, sadness, anger?all personal and yet all related to the vast outside world. ?A country burning, bombed? is part of childbirth, ?the rivers of pavement, the oblivious thunder of engines, the quiet knives of the clocks? are found in the mountains, and ?[walking] through Walmart? possibly has to do with salvation. Taylor connects all these individual experiences to the outside world. This brings human beings back together in an age where distances are less due to the marvels of technology, yet people are more distant from each other than before because of the human contact that technology replaces. The last section, ?Sculpture with One Wing,? is more or less concerned with closure?that of both the book itself and of events in life. There is closure to be found in dreams, death, simple love, Judas? betrayal of Jesus, and other things. The word ?exit? is used more than once throughout this section as if to emphasize this sense of resolution. At the end of every poem there is some sort of finality, such as ?I made a gift of all I had,? ?a moment that is mine,? and ?But there is the dream.? In all of these poems, closure is found through acceptance of what has happened, is happening, or will happen. The acceptance can be peaceful or not, it all varies based upon the person and the incident in question, but it is not necessarily a freely chosen one. In death, acceptance is compelled, and in life, it is not though it can be preferable to living with open endings and dissatisfaction everywhere. This seems to be a message that Taylor is attempting to convey to his readers in his concluding poems.
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Midnight Salvage Poems 1995 1998
by
Adreinne Rich
acp5x
, December 04, 2006
At first read, it was difficult to comprehend Adrienne Rich?s poems in her book Midnight Salvage. They were so complex and full of imagery that it seemed one could get lost in the intricate webs she wove. However, the poems were also very structured in the midst of everything else, which gave one some groundwork from where to start. It was strange reading the poetry, which lacked grammatical clarity. Several readings though revealed an inner theme that held the discord together into something beautiful but hidden. Rich?s poems are often divided into sections, and each section seems to show an entirely different facet of the theme of the poem at hand. Nevertheless, there are times when a poem?s sections seem so disparate, like pieces of more than one puzzle mixed together. The notes at the end of the book quite useful in helping understand where some of the things mentioned come from. Overall, her writing makes one really think about how everything is interconnected so that everything arises from everything. Her titles often seem completely disconnected from the poems they refer to. Other times, they seem to simply be a line from the poem in question. This can be confusing to the reader because there is no hint to what is to come. On the other hand, it is a nice relief to start reading the poem with no expectations for it whatsoever. For example, the poem ?For an Anniversary? speaks of ospreys and their young. There seems to be no connection to any kind of anniversary. This brings one to wonder about why Rich chose to title it that, if it came from a personal experience, and what that experience was. On the flip side, ?Letters to a Young Poet? seems to be more of a useful title than anything else. Though it gives us the general topic, it still does not really tell us what to expect, because letters can be about anything. All the titles seem to be like that ? unrelated, disconnected, or useful, and nothing more. This brings into the light the question of why she chose the title Midnight Salvage for the book since it is also the apparently-disconnected title of one of her poems. This could be to emphasize a theme of interconnection. Rich?s poems are oftentimes very structured, but this is not obvious. They do not all share the same structure, and many seem wildly overgrown. Some of them are structured simply into the number of lines per stanza, while others are more complex, and there is no simple explanation. The last poem in the book is an interesting example. Titled ?A Long Conversation,? it incorporates many different styles and topics ? just like a real conversation, except that it looks one-sided. Most likely it is Rich?s side of the conversation. She even includes prose in it at one point, whereas other times she uses rhyme. In contrast, the poem ?Shattered Head? is mostly consistent in the way the lines are indented to emphasize certain points like ?but time is a bloodshot eye? after the non-indented line ?When? When? cry the soothseekers.? No matter the way each poem is written, its form fits its purpose and theme. The imagery used in much of these poems can be compared to that used by Sam Taylor in that both are very disparate and imaginative. However, Rich?s imagery seems to be more cosmopolitan and generally sophisticated in nature. She speaks of giving someone ?the earring, crushed lapis if it were? in the poem ?The Art of Translation? and of ?the famous dessert [that] is baked alaska / ice cream singed in a flowerpot / from the oven, a live tulip inserted there? in the poem ?Seven Skins.? This could be a reflection of her own life or education, or it could be coming from her point of view of the world as sophisticated. This type of imagery gives a certain impression of worldliness to her poems, though the themes may not reflect this. For example, the poem ?Camino Real? mentions ?a kind of alchemy, a study of transformation? though the poem itself is about the unhappy road to happiness. The poem ?The Night Has a Thousand Eyes? speaks of ?basalt blurring spectral headlights / darkblue stabbed with platinum? as a way of describing the dark. Rich even creates some words, by combining two words into one, such as ?santabarbara? in the poem ?Camino Real.? This gives a touch of vernacular to her poems, a relief from her usually more complex diction.
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