On Anticipation of National Poetry Month

I know I am home. Today when, at lunch, a table full of my colleagues, my friends, spent our time voluntarily making plans for celebration of National Poetry Month, I knew I was with my people. I do my best each spring to synchronize my lit class syllabus with the calendar as well, introducing poetry just past mid-April, hoping that by the time April Fool's Day rolls around, I've managed to light a spark or two at least.

Today was that day. Never do those fifty minutes of class time fly faster than when I'm teaching poetry. Even without the bell, I know when my time's nearly up by the rustle as obvious as hymn books scraping out of the racks as the preacher winds down his sermon and offer the altar call. I want to say, "Oh, sit back down. Let's blow off your math class today and just talk poetry." I've had wonderful teachers who loved poetry and passed that love on to me. I've also had teachers who firmly believed they held the answer key to all of the literary canon. For Mrs. Hopper, my fifth and sixth grade teacher, I am grateful for her willingness time and again to read to use Longfellow's "Skipper Ireson's Ride."

My family also passed along a love for poetry--nothing over the top. We just managed to be surrounded by it--Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, "The Duel"--the dreadful tale of the gingham dog and the callico cat, "Abou Ben Adhem" ("may his tribe increase"). Since Daddy's still preaching, he'll occasionally call and ask me to help him find a particular poem that's on his mind. I feel sure, too, that with a little prodding, he can still quote the last stanza of "Thanatopsis."

This month, I will keep reading as voraciously as ever, but I will be deliberately reading poetry. I have a backlog of chapbooks of friends and of friends I've never exactly met. That's where I intend to start. I'll be tuning in and sharing some of the best.

On Anticipation of National Poetry Month

Revisiting a Favorite

If I didn't teach literature, I'm not sure how many books I'd read a second time--not that there aren't several I would love to revisit, but there are just so many out there still untouched. My re-reading experience, though, reminds me how much is to be gained by reading a book--or a poem or a story--for a second time or more. Sometimes even though the book hasn't changed, I have. Even when I've read a book recently, I make so many new discoveries the second time through.

This week my students in English 111 were to have read the first nine chapters of Ron Rash's latest novel Serena. I first read the book back before it went on the market, and I loved it. I had read Rash's three earlier novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight, as well as some of his poetry and short stories. Having taught Macbeth to high school seniors for many years, I particularly enjoyed the allusions and parallels.

Assigning a novel to a composition class is a tough sell, but all of our first year English classes are incorporating the novel this semester in preparation for Rash's appearance at our Writers Symposium April 22-23 on campus. Some grumbled a little, but as they've started to read, I've enjoyed hearing the chatter. Most gratifying of all, I get questions such as "Can I read on past the first nine chapters?" I overhear students saying, "Our cable went out, so I started reading it and then I couldn't quit." They hate Serena, the title character. I reassure them they are supposed to hate her. She's evil. She makes Lady Macbeth look like a Girl Scout.

When I recommend books to individuals, I can tailor my selections to fit the reader, but when I am helping to choose something for dozens, even hundreds of people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds, I want to get it right. Since my overriding goal is to inspire a love of reading for pleasure, I want to do everything I can to make the literary experience a good one. In fact, my goal is for them to be ready for the next suggestion. I feel as if I'm participating in one big book club. I know, too, that having Ron Rash on campus to speak to them will be such a bonus. I can't wait to see what we pick for next semester.

Revisiting a Favorite

Summer Hunger

Don't get me wrong: I love my job. I love teaching. I love my students. I love planning lessons. I do, however, loathe grading papers. I honestly believe I could teach writing better if, instead of sitting up all hours assigning a number grade to student essays, I could spend time one-on-one discussing the particular areas of improvement needed, I would be more productive.

What does this age-old English teacher complaint have to do with reading? Everything. I am always unnerved by the number of colleagues who don't read for pleasure during the school year. I do understand, though, but I refuse to give up. I do know, though, that while I'm falling behind in my personal pleasure reading, authors continue to pen and publish even more books I want to read.

Right now I'm working in time to read The Forger's Spell, the account of the Vermeer forgery scandal perpetrated during WWII. I'm still listening to The Castle in the Forest, and when I swap cars, I'm listening to The Virgin's Lover, Philippa Gregory's story of Elizabeth I alleged love affair with Robert Dudley. In my powder room, I catch a page or two of You Can't Drink All Day if You Don't Start in the Morning, another laugh-out-loud offering from Celia Rivenbark. On my nightstand stack awaits The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and Lemuria Books just delivered my signed copy of Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.

Is it any wonder I'm X-ing off the calendar days until my summer vacation begins? I may not catch up then, but I can assure you, I'll make a valiant effort.

Summer Hunger

Listening Light

My book purchases vary from intentional to serendipitous: sometimes I go looking for a specific title, but just as often I fall for an intriguing title--or an enticing cover. My audiobook selections are more accidental. I work my way through the library shelves and then I search the shelves of off-price stores for books on CD. As expensive as they are at retail, I'm more likely to pay the price for a regular book. As a result, when I finish listening to one book, I have fewer choices for what to plug in for my drive than I do when I need a bedside book.

Lately, I've found myself listening to some darker fare. I just finished DeLillo's Falling Man, revisiting 9/11, and now I'm partway into Norman Mailer's last novel Castle in the Forest, which traces Hitler's (allegedly incestuous) ancestry--very interesting, but not prompting many laugh-out-loud experiences.

When I confess my audio addiction, lots of people tell me they just can't concentrate enough to listen in the car. I admit that sometimes I have to hit reverse myself, but I find listening much less distracting than a cell phone conversation, and I'm sure it demands less attention than texting!

For now, I have 13 more CDs to go, then one more recorded book waiting in the wings. With a weekend road trip in my immediate future, I hope to be ready to hit the library shelves again soon, hoping they've added some new acquisitions.

Listening Light

Book Balance

Since I keep one book on the nightstand and another in my car CD player, I rarely finish both at once. Last week, though, I finished The Well and the Mine at the same time I reached the end of The Anansi Boys. I felt almost lost--and extremely frustrated--as I faced that best of all questions: What next?

Right now (as always) I have an overwhelming "must read" stack. Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna is calling, and I just read that it was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner award. I have several good possibilities from my Lemuria First Editions Book Club. For my next book club meeting, I have The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Sweeping up Glass waiting.

On a whim, I started a nonfiction work, The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick. This book follows all the parties involved in the huge hoax involving a fake Vermeer and the ruthless art collecting of Goering and Hitler. I've been a Vermeer fan for years (although I'd never be so arrogant as to expect to be able to buy one--or forge one.) Even the footnotes of the book are fascinating (although I had to figure out how to move from the text to the footnotes and back on my Sony Reader.

In the car, I am listening to Falling Man by Don DeLillo, set in New York City in the days following 9/11. This couldn't be less like the Dolnick book. I've only read one of DeLillo's novels before--Underworld--although I've been meaning to read White Noise for years. The main characters are Keith, a man who escaped the burning towers, his estranged wife Lianne, at whose door he showed up, injured and covered in soot, their son, and her mother.

I find myself drawn to stories surrounding that horrible September day and the people affected by it. Joyce Maynard wrote a young adult novel The Usual Rules. (I gave my signed copy to a high school student who had borrowed it and while reading it found her family was moving back to Mexico. She came by my classroom to return the book and tell me goodbye. I just couldn't take it.) I also loved Jonathan Safron Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Near, about a young boy whose father was in the towers when they fell and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors. It was a quirky, fascinating novel I couldn't wait to pass along.

I'll admit that I sometimes fantasize about a job like the one of Robert Redford's character in Three Days of the Condor--reading books for a living. I wouldn't even mind having to read closely for subversive government plots. Just let me read.

Book Balance

Book Club History

Tonight at my book club meeting, we were talking about all the different books we've read together. Of course, the membership has shifted since we began, so one of our newer members wanted to know what we had read, so she wouldn't recommend one of those. I dug out my reading record and found my notes from our first meeting in June of 2002. This is the list from that first selection until now:
Josephine Humphreys, Nowhere Else on Earth
Lee Smith, Me and the Baby View the Eclipse
Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
Anna Quindlen, Blessings
Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Madeline L’Engle, Circle of Quiet
Frances Mays, Swan
Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed in America
Susan Jacobs, After All These Years
Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
Alexandra Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, Rule of Four
Julia Glass, The Three Junes
Carl Hiassen, Skinny Dip
Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune
Khalad Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Donna Woolfolk Cross, Pope Joan
Cassandra King, Same Sweet Girls
Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama
Steve Perry, The Romanov Prophecy
Robert Hicks, Widow of the South
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
Khalad Hosseini, One Thousand Splendid Suns
Nancy Pickard, The Virgin of Small Plains
Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden
Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants
Debra Dean, The Madonnas of Leningrad
Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See, Peony in Love
Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle
Ann Patchett, Run
Leon Uris, The Haj
Donald McCaig, Rhett Butler’s People
Lauren Goff, The Monsters of Templeton
Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells
Jodi Piccoult, My Sister’s Keeper
Kris Holloway, Monique and the Mango Rains
* * *
Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea
Jodi Piccoult, Nineteen Minutes
Sheila Weller, Girls Like Us
Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth
Kathryn Stockett, The Help
Robert Goolrick, The Reliable Wife
Lisa See, Shanghai Girls
Pat Conroy, South of Broad
Jeannette Wells, Half Broke Horses
Helen Thorpe. Just Like Us
Gin Phillips, The Well and the Mine

Book Club History

In an Alabama State of Mind

Although I've been living in North Carolina since 1995, I guess I'll always be an Alabama girl at heart, so when my friend Claudia gave me a copy of Gin Phillips' novel The Well and the Mine for Christmas, I was interested to see that it is set in Carbon Hill, Alabama, not far from my hometown and even closer to my sister Amy's home. Claudia had heard the book mentioned on NPR, I believe, and thought it sounded good, even though her only Alabama connection is I.

When our book club met in January, everyone else agreed to choose the book for our February discussion. I mentioned the title in an early post and learned that not only have several of my friends from "back home" read the book and met the author, but one of my good friends from college plays Canasta with Phillips' parents. It's a small world indeed.

The book started off with a bang--or more precisely, with a splash--as the younger daughter in the family who narrator the book together sees the shadow of a woman throwing a baby into the family well. Much of the tale follows different members of the family, especially the daughters and their father, trying to solve the mystery in order to give the baby a name.

Even more interesting to me was the life of this family of a coal-mining farmer in the toughest of times and the dignity with which they lived their lives. I couldn't help drawing contrasts to Jeannette Wells' childhood in Glass Castle. I still haven't forgiven Rosemary Wells for hiding under the covers eating a candy bar when her children were hungry. The mother in this novel fed her husband breakfast, telling him she would eat later with the children; then she'd lead the children to believe she'd eaten with their father. They rarely had meat with meals, but the pleasure they took in what they were served was genuine.

Phillips also tackles touchy issues of racism with sensitivity, particular as Albert, the father, becomes increasingly aware of the intelligence and humanity of the black man with whom he works side and by side and begins to desire a friendship, despite the obvious problems this would cause for both men and their families.

The author effectively balances the points of view of all five members of the family, even giving a glimpse of their later years. Because of my own geographical proximity to the story, there were shades of details I recognized and appreciated that might slip right by some readers (especially subtle details about religion). She has achieved a story, though, that will appeal to readers who've never crossed the Alabama state line, much less the Walker County line, creating characters readers will care about. Overall, the book rings true.

Postscript: If you need a soundtrack for the book, try Shelby Lynne's "Alabama State of Mind" or Kate Campbell's "Crazy in Alabama."

In an Alabama State of Mind