Poem of the Day

I ran across the website entitled "Poem of the Day" to which I am grateful for the following poem.


"Antilamentation"
By Dorianne Laux

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

Taking Margaret Atwood to Bed

I have been invited to write a book review for PG CWWN, which as given me the excuse to take a break from my chapter on Angela Carter and read a bit more of one of my all-time favorite authors, Margaret Atwood. [Please note: this is not my actual review; this is just me sharing my excitement about Atwood.]

She has recently published a new text In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination in which she takes a rather autobiographical approach to her lifelong relationship with SF. Having written only three of her 20-something novels in the form of SF, this may seem a surprise. Yet the pages are filled with literary history, historical criticism and a delightfully whimsical personal narrative woven together to display both depth and breadth of knowledge of SF, its influences, motifs, and visions.

Despite the hard back, this book was very easy to curl up with, and, indeed, take to bed.

If you want a good SF read, try her Oryx and Crake (2003) followed by its sibling text The Year of the Flood (2009).

The Gift of a Poem

Because I have been perfectly terrible about keeping up with this blog yet still desire to do so, I submit a peace offering. I give the gift of a poem, which is one of my favorites for this time of year:

"August" by Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

from: American Primitive (Boston: Backbay Books, 1978), 3.