The Bay Psalm Book was the first book printed in the New World, in 1640. Its working of the Psalms into English metrical form, while not exactly praised by poets and critics today, shows something interesting about poetics in English, and the great potential for English poetics in terms of syntax. I also find that […]
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While Americans observe Memorial Day today, a holiday commemorating U.S. men and women who died while in military service, I thought I would share eight of my favorite poems on the subject of war and loss. The Links on the poem titles will open a new window with the text of the poem. 8. “Soldier,
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Mailer, Norris C. (2010). A Ticket to the Circus. New York: Random House. ISBN: 978-1-4000-6794-7 I love reading life stories of any kind, especially those by or about writers. So when I heard Norris Church Mailer had written a memoir, I immediately raced out and got, read it, and savored it. Then I mentioned it to
A Ticket to the Circus: a late 20th century woman Read More »
Uliano, Sophie. (2009). The Gorgeously Green Diet: How to Live Lean and Green. New York: Dutton. ISBN: 978-0-525-95115-5. The title implies a diet book, but it is much more than the typical diet book. It has the usual suspects: eating plans, nicely exercises, allowed and not allowed foods. But the book expands the idea of
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OBSESSED currently with LibraryThing. It is an online book cataloging service with social media applications that combines a love of books with a mania for organizing. It allows all of us to indulge in our librarian fantasies without actually having to get a Library Science degree. I found out about Library Thing last May and
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Koontz, Dean (2009). A Big Little Life: a memoir of a joyful dog. New York: Hyperion. ISBN: 9781401323523. Why do so many of us sit cold-hearted, distant when we read or watch a scene of a person’s death, vioolent or valiant, but weep copiously at description of a dog’s demise? It took Dean Koontz’s memoir
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Pollan, Michael. (2008). In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin. ISBN: 978-1-59420-145-5 How much actual food do you eat? That is the somewhat disconcerting premise that underlies this book. Michael Pollan suggests that, because of the great many processed food products with many additives and the policies of seeking to make more
Buchanan, Cathy Marie. (2009). The Day the Falls Stood Still. New York: Voice/Hyperion. ISBN: 978-1-4103-4097-1 320 pages. Fiction: Novel: Historical Fiction Gist A young woman grows to maturity in Niagara Falls during and after World War I. She endures loss in many forms, testing her faith and her strength. Based loosely
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McCarthy, Cormac.(2006). The Road. New York: Knopf. 2007 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction Everything in The Road is reduced to the minimum; the language and writing style are stripped along with the lives of the characters. No linguistic decoration or extraneous description, luxury or sense of comfort. No neat tidy chapters or markers to tell
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Strout, Elizabeth (2008). Olive Kitteridge: Fiction. New York: Random House. ISBN: 9781400062089 2009 Pulitzer Prize, Fiction The most striking this about this novel is its structure: it is a landscape novel with the title character as a running theme or motif as a constant among thirteen stories. This landscape is lonely; each character essentially lives
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