27 Mar
Taken before
today’s brew has had a chance
to temper,
morning’s first sip chastises
my impatience.
Stepping outdoors
as I head on a noontide errand,
stretching ahead,
my shadow is already intent
on its completion.
In conversation
with a friend at happy hour,
overeager before
their sentence concludes,
I interrupt.
Surly before
bedtime, once ensconced,
my hand
reaching for forgiveness
embraces sleep.
27 Mar
Set during the time period of the Trump presidency, Percival Everett’s novel, The Trees, opens in Money, Mississippi, the place where Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 for supposedly having addressed a White woman while being Black. In this dark social satire, which escalates into a bloodbath, three relatives of people involved in Till’s death turn up dead and mutilated, apparently killed by a Black battered corpse found nearby. The trouble is, this corpse continues to disappear from custody, only to turn up at later crime scenes.
Sent to Money are two Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, and they are later joined by a Black FBI agent seeking to untangle the supernatural aspects of these crimes. These three individuals are what make this story such an engaging read. Everett provides them, as well as the other characters, with crisp dialogue of wise cracks and black humor that delights the mind’s ear. Meanwhile, though dressed as a police procedural, the crime scene it presents is our country’s past sins. The novel is a caricature of the South’s redneck culture, intent on showing that not much has changed since the Civil War.
In the book, the first three murders spark copycat killings across the United States, resurrecting a marauding mob of ghostly Blacks and Chinese intent on revenge. Even the guarded environs of the White House are not immune from their reach. While the story ultimately spirals into unbelievability, its dark humor provides a rich stew to savor. The ending left me incredulous, but its haunting message of sweet revenge resonated. The Trees is a strange and unsettling novel, combining crime and horror to address this country’s history of lynching its minority citizens.
25 Mar
Hilary Mantel, who died in 2022, had a prolific career that produced two Booker Prize awards and numerous others. She is best known for her Wolf Hall trilogy of novels. In this collection of seven stories, Learning To Talk, which may or may not be autobiographical, she describes the troubled childhood and adolescence of characters growing up in mid-20th century England. She presents vivid descriptions of the lives of young women coming of age in England’s Midlands during the 1950s.
Last year, I read her book Mantel Pieces, a collection that gathered essays written for the London Review of Books. It showed the writer at the top of her game. But these stories failed to satisfy me. While there is much to enjoy here, Learning To Talk fails to capture the breadth of her earlier historical undertakings nor the insights presented in her shorter works. Nonetheless, this collection guarantees that Hilary Mantel is an author whose books will continue to be to appreciated for decades to come.
21 Mar
Easily overlooked in
the daily drone, its whispered
embrace elicits
a response so delicate that
an inattentive ear
forgets to register it is there.
Breath exhaled
bringing to life an entire
orchestra overhead.
The sound of wind and leaves,
a language impossible
to translate, but understood
nonetheless by birds
engaged in the conversation.
Friction harmonized,
best described as psithurism.
17 Mar
In dawn’s early light
cloaked by fresh green foliage
romancing house wrens
At the feeder a
hummingbird’s stillness explained
by wings never seen
In soil overturned
an inquisitive robin
harvests unearthed worms
The porch light left on
as sleepless parents listen
for a spring date’s end
With June’s arrival
a creaky window opened
to welcome moonlight
16 Mar
Selected Stories brings together 28 stories published over a thirty year time span. In the course of her fifty year career, Canadian author Alice Munro has shown she’s mastered the craft of short story writing. But there is nothing short about most of the stories included in this collection –– many run fifty pages or more. This allows her to fully flesh out the lives of her characters. They feature Canadian women, and in the telling she moves forward and backward in time as she weaves her complex storylines.
Munro vividly captures historical and regional details of the time periods she describes. While not all, a good many are partially set in the Depression era. She particularly excels at capturing rural and small town life. Her stories pack an emotional punch as she presents the convoluted aspects of human interactions. Lessons learned from past mistakes imbue her characters with a stoic kind of dignity. There is not a dud to be found in this excellent collection.
16 Mar
Disorientation, published in 2022, is Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel. In the past, I have read a number of delightful satires that address the politics of academia, and this novel attempts to update the storyline to reflect today’s university life roiled by current political and social unrest. Ingrid Yang is an Asian-American who is an eighth year Ph.D candidate desperately trying (and failing) to complete her dissertation. Her topic is a Chinese-American poet, Xiao-Wen Chou, who has been described as a Chinese Robert Frost. The problem is that Yang has been forced by her advisor to write about him, despite her not being enthused about his poetry or the man himself.
The book’s opening half humorously delights as the reader is charmed by its bumbling lead character. Her insecurities and desire to fit into the politics of a mostly White university provides the author with many juicy topics to tackle. As Yang delves deeper into Xiao-Wen Chou’s life, she discovers that the poet is not whom he seems. The secret she uncovers exposes an explosive, uncomfortable truth: the poet she is writing about is actually a white person presenting himself as Asian, and this fact is already known by her advisor and other top figures at the university.
Unfortunately, after that point, the novel veers into unbelievability. A newly aware Yang goes off the rails, questioning her white fiancée when she discovers that in his past he dated only Asian women, and she kicks him out of her life. From then on, the characters around her are inflated into an evil cast intent on preserving white privilege. While being a topic ripe for investigation, it is exaggerated to the point that it loses its punch. Disorientation’s storyline in the end becomes a sledgehammer, trying to prove its points. In this novel, the parts sadly exceed the whole.
5 Mar
This near to March,
shy, April usually arrives
robed in clouds,
a tired joke with snow
in the forecast.
But flirtatious tonight,
it wears only
the promise underneath.
Perfumed and
moonlit, its whisper has
aroused you
from blanketed sleep.
Drawn outdoors,
reckless without a coat,
your trek is
impressed in fresh dew.
In starlight’s wink,
a willing fool seduced,
hope chooses to
believe that undressed,
spring proves true.
3 Mar
In Japan, and to a lesser extent here in the United States, Haruki Murakami is a writer who has adoring fans who will stand in long lines to purchase each new work he turns out. Such was the case when this novel arrived on the shelves in 2014. Typically, his books fall into two camps, either falling heavily on the surreal side or focused on his lead character’s interior life. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki has elements of both, but this novel leans towards the cerebral.
In his second year of college, Tsukuru Tazaki experiences a traumatic event that drives him into a deep depression and close to death’s door. Throughout his high school years he had bonded with three other students, and they became an inseparable unit. Then out of the blue, when he went to college, they cut him from the circle without explanation. Shattered, he imagines that he has a colorless personality. Because of his pallid aura, he feels doomed to repel rather than attract friendships.
Despite the blow, Tsukuru continues his studies to become an engineer, in order to achieve his ambition in life – to build and refurbish train stations. Still, he remains cut off from society. His primary interest outside of work is going to various train stations to observe passengers setting off into a greater world he feels is denied him.
Two guides enter his life as rescuing lifelines. The first is Haida, a student whom he meets at a facility with a pool. Their brief friendship introduces him to the gifts of physical activity, classical music, and the importance of companionship. His second guide is Sara, a girlfriend who urges him in his mid-thirties to embark on a pilgrimage to discover why he was abandoned by his high school friends. It is here that Murakami introduces the surreal elements of his character’s dream world, one populated by his inner sexual urges and the elements of a possible parallel life. Thanks to Sara’s encouragement, much is revealed during this exploration.
Throughout this novel, Tsukuru, as the book’s narrator, remains a person readers can readily identify with. While the novel ends with a thread of the story unresolved, healed, Tsukuru emerges from his self imposed cocoon. His yearning for connection with the world around him has been rewarded with color being reintroduced into his life.
Robert Up At Dawn 