Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

I read Spoon River Anthology because it was important in the book club in How To Read a Book. I was intrigued by the description, so I ordered it from the library where I just kept ignoring it in favor of books that were coming due. I have no more renewals on this one, so I finally dove in. 

This is a collection of poems Masters wrote, but the kicker is that each poem is an epitaph of a citizen of Spoon River told from the perspective of that person. It tells the story of a fictional small Midwestern town through these short, snappy verses. Published in 1915, this book was a super successful poetry collection and even today is often used in literature and theatre classes. The characters are sometimes based on real people Masters knew from his own Illinois small town and that courted some controversy back in the day. 

Do I love me a juicy story about a small town? Yes. Do I love how ruthless Masters was in describing the town? Yes. Did I love the cynicism of describing corruption and hypocrisy in a small town? Yes. Do I love a book in which a clever person who pays attention to detail can find all the connections? Yes. Did I love that there is a character in the book based on Theodore Dreiser who wrote An American Tragedy? Yes, I really did.  Did I love this book? I sure did. 

Some poems are better than others and the epilogue is ridiculous, but I would recommend this book if you're willing to put in the work. Also, it's sort of sexist, but also sort of feminist. SO CONFUSING. I love it. 

4/5 stars

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All page numbers come from this copy from the Internet Archive. 

Lines of note:

Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,

Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,

And I married him, giving birth to eight chidlren,

And had no time to write.

It was all over with me, anyway,

When I ran the needles in my hand

While washing the baby's things,

And died from lock-jaw, an ironical death.

Hear me, ambitious souls,

Sex is the curse of life! (page 48)

And I say to all, beware of ideals,

Beware of giving your love away

To any man alive. (page 70)

This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt

Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day.

And why not? for my very dust is laughing

For thinking of the humorous thing called life. (page 86)

And I say to you that Life's a gambler

Head and shoulders above us all.

No mayor alive can close the house,

And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;

You'll not get back your money.

He makes the percentage hard to conquer;

He stacks the cards to catch your weakness

And not to meet your strength.

And he gives you seventy years to play:

For if you cannot win in seventy 

You cannot win at all. (page 155)

On spring days I tramped through the country

To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,

That I was not a separate thing from the earth. (page 248)

(I resisted writing some of the entire poems down, but if you're interested, Mrs. Charles Bliss, Albert Shirding, and Washington McNeely all got (!) written down in my notes.)

Things I looked up:

flaneur (page 107) - a French term used by nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire to identify a person, typically male, who wonders around and observes society. Confusingly, Merriam - Webster has it listed as "an idle man-about-town," so it seems like the connotation might not always be as positive as perhaps Baudelaire intended.

termagant (page 118) - a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman

demirep (page 138) - woman whose chastity is considered doubtful

Baden-Baden (page 151) - a spa town in southwestern Germany’s Black Forest, near the border with France. Its thermal baths led to fame as a fashionable 19th-century resort.

With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus? (page 239) - Elagabalus was Roman emperor from 218 to 222, while he was still a teenager. His short reign was notorious for religious controversy and alleged sexual debauchery. Maybe he was transgender (AFAB)? Something about his thumb (maybe thumb's up/thumb's down?). I don't know. I'm unwilling to wade through historians talking about this.

gonfalon (page 185) - a banner or pennant, especially one with streamers, hung from a crossbar

Hat mentions (why hats?):

old slouch hat (page 33)

fashionable hats (page 72)

Hats may make divorces - (page 72)

Her orders for new hats (page 276)

battered hat (page 279)

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Who's in on this? There's a blurb on the back of my copy that says "The single most widely read book of American poetry." - James Hurt, Illinois Authors. What's your take on this outrageous claim? What other American poetry collections do you think might be more read?

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

You know what Sheila Heti did? She journaled for ten years, put all of her sentences in alphabetical order, edited it down, and published the alphabetical sentences. That's what Alphabetical Diaries is. 

This was so magical. Heti writes frankly about her life from the banal to the interesting to the racy. I'm 100% sure if you took the lines from my journals for the last ten years and alphabetized them, they would not be nearly as insightful and poetic as this book was. I loved the repetition of certain phrases and how there was almost always juxtaposition in her feelings or thoughts throughout. I loved the way a cast of characters developed - Agnes, Lemons, Lars - even though time and plot meant nothing since the sentences were just mashed together regardless of when they were written. You see the relationships build and change even though you might be introduced to someone in the Bs and they don't show up again until the Ls.  I loved the brutal honesty of Heti's writing and it feels so intimate to be in her brain as she writes about all of the major themes of her life: writing, friends, boyfriends, worry about whether or not marriage is the right thing for her.  

I am 100% sure this is not the book for everyone. It's not even as cohesive as stream of consciousness, but rather is held together only by a wing and a prayer. It's disorienting and puzzling and beautiful and mysterious and mundane and prosaic. This was definitely a book for me. 5/5 stars

Lines of note:

 Actually, not that much is expected of you. Actually, people expect less of you than that. (page 8) 

The juxtaposition here is perfect. 

Alone in a room. Alone. Alone. Alone. Alone. Already I am feeling happier. (page 13)

I frequently found myself trying to figure out the timeline. Did the four "alones" come from the same journal entry or four separate entries? From a breakup entry? Why so enigmatic?! 

Be a pro, Lemons said. Be a woman. Be an individual, he suggested. Be bald-faced and strange. Be calm. Be cautious with your money. Be clean and attractive. Be comfortable and assured and confident in your work. Be creative, is what Pavel thinks people are told, and what is expected of a person, now more than ever. Be direct about the things you need that are reasonable requests, and apart from that, just enjoy him and your time together. Be impeccable with your word. Be miserable about the world. Be optimistic...(page 20)

Pavel and Lars sound like real jerks. 

DFW died. Did I betray him? Did I? Did not get much writing done, obviously. (page 33)

This whole sequence made me laugh so hard.

I wish I could wake up alone in oatmeal. I wish I could write about everything in a less completely narrow way. I wish I had never kissed him. I wish my head didn't feel so full of junk. (page 93)

This is not what I write in my journal, but I do indeed frequently wish my head weren't full of junk.

The world doesn't need anything from me. The world doesn't see me, no one is bothering to judge. The world has its place for all of us. The world is great, not mediocre, and I am a part of it. (page 173-174)

Also, it becomes clear that my journal is quite boring because I've never (NOT ONCE) pondered about the world in it. I suppose that's why my random journal entries aren't published. 

Things I looked up:

Glenn Gould (page 131) - a Canadian classical pianist

Yaddo (page 141 and 156) - nonprofit retreat for artists and writers located on a 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York 

Helen DeWitt (page 142) - an American novelist who lives in Berlin

The Married Man by Edmund White - Published in 2000, this novel is about an American living in Paris finds his life transformed by an unexpected love affair

Nick Laird (page 165) - a Northern Irish novelist and poet (neither here nor there, but if you are interested in what type of man NGS likes, look no further than photos of this man post-2020)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Then it was raining, and I put on my hat and scarf and walked in the rain to Vig's place. (page 178)

We played a game with words in a hat. (page 199)

Life Poem

Kari and Ally both wrote a life poem based on this template, so if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. I'm no poet, but I'm here to pretend. 

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Fifth grade photo. Love that laser background. 1990ish?

Where I'm From (Original poem by George Ella Lyon)

I am from overfilled ashtrays

From Marlboro Silvers and Pepsi bottles 

I am from the rundown farmhouse on a two-lane road

Cold, drafty, my sister and I huddled around the only heat register to get dressed on those winter mornings when we could see our breath 

I am from the cornfields

Knee-high by the fourth of July, creaking like old bones in the September wind

I'm from fighting and stubbornness

From Nancy and Catherine

I'm from the grudges and the family feuds

From "does money grow on trees?" and "get your nose out of that book and go outside"

I'm a heathen, never setting foot in a church until my grandmother died

I'm from Rhineland and County Clare and the Appalachian Mountains and the City of Chicago

Stuffed peppers and green bean casserole and sauerkraut (sometimes in the same meal)

From the man who raped my grandmother and the man who took in a pregnant woman and then gave her nine more children, blessings every one - pass the butter, honey child, he would say to me, not knowing exactly which of his dozens of grandchildren I was, only knowing that I belonged

The thoughtfulness of my Uncle Lenny, teaching me that you don't have to be good at something right away; you can practice and get better at anything

The way my Aunt Jackie drove me in a winter storm to buy cough medicine and Tylenol when I came to her house and immediately went to bed for two days

The hugs of my Aunt Debbie, who knew that summer was too short and that I'd have to go back to the home where she could not protect me

The photos on the wall by the staircase in that house on Sumner Street

The photos on the wall in my own home right now that I see every day

My sister and I. I loved that duck. It made a terrible quacking noise until my father figured out how to disable the noise mechanism. 

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How often did you hear "does money go on trees?" when you were a child?

Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope

I needed a poetry collection to fulfill one of my Pop Sugar Reading Challenge prompts for the year. I heard that Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope was a humorous collection, so I dug around and ordered a copy from the interlibrary loan system at the university library (sadly, this book only came from UW-Madison, so it's not like it travelled far). This book was published in 1992, but it was so yellowed and stained that I sort of assumed it had been published far before then, but then I did the math and realized it was more than thirty years old. *sigh* Time is passing by, isn't it?

This was fun! I had fun! Look at some funny poems. 

I think that "The Orange" is maybe Cope's most famous poem, but what do I know? It makes me laugh every time I read it, particularly the first stanza.

But, somehow I laughed even harder at "An Argument with Wordsworth." Why not pick an argument with a guy who's been dead for a 150-years?

But it's not all fun and games, you know? There were occasional heartfelt poems in there. Consider "Names." 

Anyway, if you're looking for a quick poetry collection that will give you an occasional chuckle, this one might be it! 4.5/5 stars 

No hats, friends. No hats. 

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Has anyone else read Wendy Cope? Do you have a favorite humorous poet?

Dog Songs: Thirty-Five Dog Songs and One Essay by Mary Oliver

I've talked about my latest podcast obsession, which is Books Unbound, before. Two friends, who are quite a bit younger than me, talking about books. One of them reads poetry a lot more than me and she's always talking about how great Mary Oliver is, but as someone who is not a regular reader of poetry, this was not appealing to me. Until she talked about her poetry collection about dogs! I was ALL IN.

Dog Songs: Thirty-Five Songs and One Essay by Mary Oliver is a beautiful little book about a topic I feel so clearly drawn to that I think I might ask for my own copy for the holidays. If you can get your hands on a physical copy of this book, rather than an ebook, I highly recommend it because the illustrations are gorgeous.

Pages 4-5

You are greeted with this lovely image and a poem about a true fact. There is nothing better than a dog running free.

Page 27

If I understood half of what makes Hannah stop in her tracks during walks, I would be a much better person than I am.

Page 61

I will continue to say it forever and forever, but I hope to someday be as good a person as Hannah seems to think I am.

Page 85

Ha ha ha. Truer words have never been committed to paper and ink. Dogs are not perfect, but they are perfect friends.

Page 121

In case you can't tell, I loved everything about this. Huge thumbs up and a huge recommendation for all the dog lovers out there. 5/5 stars

Leaves of Grass, First Edition by Walt Whitman

I put Leaves of Grass on my list after reading Hello Beautiful. I'm not normally a poetry gal, but when my reading notes say "must read X," I guess I gotta read it. For those of you who missed the lesson about Whitman in your American Lit class, Whitman originally published Leaves of Grass anonymously (although his name is in one of the poems) in 1855 and he kept tinkering with it and revising poems and adding stuff and there's a "Death-Bed" edition that also exists. I did not read the later version mostly because it's much longer. 

I had a copy from the library with both editions and an introduction and notes by Karen Karbiener. This might be a bit sacrilegious to say, but I enjoyed reading the introduction and notes more than I enjoyed the actually poetry, but you must consider the audience. I'm not generally a lady who reads poetry and with the exception of a handful of Langston Hughes poems, I've never really understood what people are talking about when they talk about how beautiful it is to HEAR poetry.  

Whitman. What a guy, right? He grew up in a working-class home, but became one of America's first and finest poets. He was a true patriot, but also was a politically aware, most likely gay, artist.  He has a really interesting history and I really enjoyed reading all the notes about Whitman.

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

[Preface, page 7] The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. 

What a lovely sentiment. Occasionally I'll get these moments of patriotism and wonder what it must have been like to be around when Donald Trump wasn't alive. 

[Preface, page 26] There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done....A superior breed shall take their place...The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. 

Alas, Whitman was not as prophetic as he thought he was.

[Song of Myself, page 44] 

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,
One of the great nations, the nation of many nations - the smallest the same and the largest the same

I love this. We're all complicated beings. 

[Song of Myself, page 58]

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

The ambiguity of this stuck with me. "I can stand" as in it makes me so happy or "I can stand" as in if another child touches me in the next six minutes, I'll lose my mind? Who knows?

Things I looked up:

A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen by Bryan K. Garman (xvii) - It looks like our public library doesn't have this book in its collection, but the university does, so I'll have my husband take it out for me. 

Astor Place Opera House riots (xxxii) - Leaving between 22 and 31 rioters dead (that's a big range, isn't it?), this May 1849 riot was part of the tension between immigrants and nativists.

tenoned (48) - boring carpentry term

frisket (99) - On a sheet-fed letterpress printing machine, a frisket is a sheet of oiled paper that covers the space between the type or cuts (illustrations) and the edge of the paper that is to be printed. Look, I still don't really understand, but I get that it's a term used in printing.

tympan (99) - Another boring printing term.

guttapercha (99) - this is a type of tree

Hat mentions:

[Preface, page 8]  - the President's taking off his hat to them not they to him - 

[Preface, page 13] Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men...

[Preface, page 19]...when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart...

[Song of Myself , page 47] 

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids....
    conformity goes to the fourth-removed,
I cock my hat as I please indoors or out. 

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

 

The Poet X is a novel in verse told from the perspective of an Afro Latina teenager living in New York City Xiomara. She and her twin brother were long-awaited babies for older parents and their religious views mean that Xiomara has limited freedom and choices. She puts her thoughts and feelings out on the page as poetry.

Someone on Goodreads talked about this book as a survival guide for teenage girls and I think that's a really accurate assessment. It does talk about her experience as a child of immigrants, but also just regular harassment, embarrassment, young love, body image issues, and general teenage angst that many young women might feel. 

I'm not huge into poetry, but this format really worked for this topic and did a lot of work in terms of character development. I'm docking it half a star because the ending was not great, but what an impressive debut! 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:
I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips
so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school
now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong. (page 5)

Heartbreaking. 

What if I like a boy too much and he breaks my heart,

and I wind up angry and bitter like Mami,

walking around always exclaiming how men ain't shit,

even when my father and brother are in the same room? (page 32)

My mom did this. LOL. All men are bastards was a very common refrain in our household growing up. It is no wonder that I find most men terrifying.

It happens when I'm at bodegas

It happens when I'm at school.

It happens when I'm on the train.

It happens when I'm standing on the platform.

It happens when I'm sitting on the stoop.

It happens when I'm turning the corner.

It happens when I forget to be on guard.

It happens all the time.

    I should be used to it.

    I shouldn't get so angry

    when boys - and sometimes

    grown-ass men - 

    talk to me however they want,

    think they can grab themselves

    or rub agaisnt me

    or make all kinds of offers.

    But I'm never used to it.

    And it always makes my hands shake. (page 52)

This was long, but I couldn't help but type it all out because it was so powerful to me. The ubiquity of sexual harassment for young women is so troubling.

The world is almost peaceful when you stop trying to understand it. (page 223)

Is it?

I can't remember the last time people were silent while I spoke, actually listening. (page 259)

I can't imagine how powerful this line would have been if I'd read it when I was a teenager.

Thing I looked up:
chancletas (page 3) - Flip-flops! (or flippity-flops, as I call them)

Hat mentions:

None