Shawn Sorensen
read and liked
Shappi's
review of All American Poem (APR Honickman 1st Book Award):
"Interestingly, I had a similar reaction to this book as I did to Chris Martin's American Music, though the two are very different in both form and content. I found myself drawn to particular passages in here, and to the strength of voice. However, th...more "
"Interestingly, I had a similar reaction to this book as I did to Chris Martin's American Music, though the two are very different in both form and content. I found myself drawn to particular passages in here, and to the strength of voice. However, th...more "
bookshelves: poetry
[2 1/2 Stars:]
I bought "Inside This House" right after a terrific reading by Crow at a Barnes & Noble in Portland. Enjoying that evening and reading through her tender, heartfelt stanzas, I finished this fine group of poems.
The elegant, simple craftsmanship pulled me in first, the themes the author exposing coming through clearly with a gentle, yearning undertow. There were even a few moments of laugh-out-loud humor, an excellent contrast to stories of family pain and instances of indifference, most notably to Crow being gay.
Crow is intent on keeping all of the poems short, which doesn't work with everything she tries. It does when she mixes an interesting moment with a pivotal stage in being human and throws in some juicy little details, as in "Religion":
She worshipped the long magenta choir robe,
The climb up to the loft behind the organ before sermons began.
Praying, she unbuttoned the stiff collar, robe up over her head,
Pulled her arms back through armholes wide as saucers
So she could talk to her best friend through the empty sleeves.
They licked pointed pencil lead and wrote letters on their hands-
K+E=Luv - whispered about who spit when they kissed.
When final chords hammered across the pews she emerged to sing
"Washed in the Blood of the Lamb" as holy as Julie Andrews
On top of the mountain, with all of the church bells ringing.
Crow displays a tremendous breathe of human wisdom and empathy and a wide range of skill as a poet, but doesn't always combine enough of her skills into each poem. Some poems are mainly metaphor with no back story, as in "Falling Awake" and "Onion", while other times the story is underdeveloped, as in "The Jackie Gleason Show". The author's penchant for quick poems often left this reader wanting more, wanting to more completely develop mental images and understand important messages that this body of work easily and vividly evokes.
The good poems in "Inside This House" are really good - "Mothering in Wartime", for example, should be considered a classic. Overall, I admired what Crow produced and look forward to more. ]]>
bookshelves: currently-reading
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bookshelves: humor
Normally I would give 5 stars to a Nobel prize-winning book or some classic like Don Quixote. Dave Barry is that much of a genius. In this audio edition, read gamely by ex-American Top 40 countdown host Shadoe Stevens, Barry expounds on seemingly everything in modern society that has ever annoyed me, like Harley riders and public cigar smokers who "smell like an arm pit on fire". He also rails against boredom, against activities like golf ("It's not all boring - just the part where you hit the little white ball around. The parts with the cart are fun.") and fishing ("...which is boring, unless you actually catch a fish. Then it's just disgusting."). Barry always lets you know he's human, too, like when he heavily criticizes Phillip Morris for trying to give a new brand of cigarettes the casual name "Dave's". Maybe during the commercials "Dave" can "hock up a folksy chunk of trachea. Maybe we can call one of the by-products of smoking a nice-sounding disease like 'Jeffrey's Leukemia'". I must say I found myself listening to many parts of book many times and also slowing down on the way home so I could hear more of it, laughing out loud as mildly annoyed drivers passed by. Barry is creative, vivid, opinionated and always on the side of the average human trying to make his or her way through an increasing complex world. ]]>
bookshelves: national-and-international-affairs
If we're using ratings, I would say that Obama ran a 5-star campaign and has so far been a 3-star president. I appreciate his calmness, his openness, and not in comparison to Bush because we as a country have far more to do than simply make up for 2000-2008: we now have an opportunity to change economic and political systems that continually brings us cycles of poverty and war.
The book itself, while having its moments of specificity and inspiration, is still mostly frustrating. A lot of numbers are thrown around without any reference points or context. One statement reads "As President, [Barack Obama:] will form an international working group and dedicate $2 billion to help the more than five million Iraqi refugees throughout the region." This acknowledges a large and pressing need, but is it enough money? Didn't Barack say during the campaign that Iraq had plenty of funding from its oil revenues? The book as a whole is more specific than most political titles, which I appreciate, but often leaves vital background information out. In the end there's not much to remember nor discuss with others.
And it doesn't answer some bigger questions - will Barack get anything significant done being slightly left of center on most issues? His big endeavor in 2009-2010 looks like it will be universal health care, which would provide a huge benefit to American businesses, who have to pay for benefits while European businesses don't. Their governments, using single-payer systems (the payer being the government itself) pick up most or all of the tab. Will Obama's system of universal health care withstand being changed or gutted by the next administration?
Couldn't we get past all lobbyists - especially the ones from defense companies that continually push for war and those from the health care industry who ensure that Americans pay far more for health care per capita than anybody else from the top 20 wealthiest nations - with publicly funded elections? Shouldn't we be cutting our defense budget in half (still spending significantly more than any other country) and focus on fighting poverty worldwide instead of sending 17,000 of our troops to Afghanistan?
I acknowledge that these are broad ideas, ones usually not found in our mainstream media. As a friend told me last week: "Sheesh, he can't do everything, he's only been in office a short time!" That's true, but how long will Barack have with so many like-minded legislators in Congress? Does a violence-plagued, economically wrecked country and international community have time to wait while Obama learns the ropes?
As our new president reminds us, we all have responsibility to register our opinions, converse with our neighbors and serve our communities to make a lasting difference. The current political climate offers more opportunities than we've had in a long, long time. ]]>
bookshelves: fiction, humor, national-and-international-affairs
Saunders sits on a butte - elevated due to several uplifting reviews yet isolated from many readers by underdeveloped or weird, finger-scratching-forehead writing.
With so many short stories to choose from here, I'd like to report that there are some gems, namely "my flamboyant grandson", "93990" and "commcomm". In "flamboyant" a grandfather heroically takes his weird grandson to a Broadway play. I say heroic because Times Square has turned into a mecca even more commercialized than it is now, with actual devices and people monitoring every move of the grandfather in order to help him "celebrate his preferences". There are even holograms of celebrities popping out of nowhere to talk directly to the grandfather in encouraging him what to buy. In a move straight out of Dukes of Hazard, the grandfather tricks one of the real-life "citizen helpers", allowing him and his grandson to run for it and make to an opening act of a Babar-influenced play. An ingenious story, and heartwarming, too, as a weird kid finds his true calling in acting.
Alas, the rest of the tales leave out too much of the human element. Saunders can be funny and crazily inventive, but he reverts time and again to shock value, as if he needs to gross the reader out or keep him or her guessing in order to be entertaining. Stories are bereft of context, then suddenly end. Chances for making useful commentary about our society and commercialism get lost in semi-nightmarish tales of dismemberment and other forms of extreme inhumanity, which aren't funny at all even though this is supposed to be satire. It's dark humor that manages to be uncomfortably morbid.
Saunders and his grouping of short stories might make a lot more sense within a book group, but until I sit around in a circle with some interesting friendlies, I'll keep looking for another great humor writer. ]]>
bookshelves: poetry
I was hooked when one of Dorianne Laux's poems was near the front. A very un-Billy Collins type of poet. ]]>
bookshelves: poetry
[3 1/2 Stars:]
These are welcoming poems that touch adroitly on the profound as much as they do on the ordinary. Delea's magic is her openness, unusually beautiful phrasing, and frequent moments of quirky, telling humor.
"Orange" is one of the book's best pieces:
What word, hanging by a sunset,
sleeping sense off in red and yellow,
forming autumn,
the color of Halloween and cat puke,
that which doesn't rhyme or
sound out a scream,
lazy fruit, unanswered questions
about skin and protection, a hard shell
not so hard, the mold
of summer, or a past summer gone
wrong instead of an easy tan,
the hair we thought
we wanted, that brassy hard-boiled
look, the marigolds, more name
than flower,
the oven's backdrop of fire, the flame
we crave as chill sets in, the spring
of juice, so primary.
This is work that, no small feat, mixes the profound with the playful. It's also gorgeous to read out loud - slowly, savoring the words and what they have to say.
By the end of the book, patterns emerged. While I frequently found the profound and playful, I also found great poems weakened by literary comfort food ("racoons hold secret meetings", "an angel in France reading a map", many examples of "moon", "ocean", "stars") and a little too much reliance on describing depressing places and what this reveals about the more depressing aspects of human nature. The important yet well-told bleak small town story.
Still, I had a strong connection to this ambitious and humane book. Delea has something to tell us, and she's not afraid of whatever beauty or hilarity or vulnerability she finds along the way. ]]>
by Barack Obama
Do you feel the same after almost a year of his presidency? I'm waiting...all I've seen yet is him somewhat overturn a handful of the policies from the worst president we've ever had. He's a deep, smart person and a great facilitator, but leader? The final mark is what actually gets done on his watch. I think he needs average folks to be as passionate now as they were during his campaign. ]]>
Shawn Sorensen
read and liked
Andrea's
review of The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream:
"I bought this book in April during an unexpectedly long layover at the Houston airport, read half of it, then forced myself to put it down as I was becoming too emotionally invested in the prospect of an Obama presidency and felt that I needed to pac...more "
"I bought this book in April during an unexpectedly long layover at the Houston airport, read half of it, then forced myself to put it down as I was becoming too emotionally invested in the prospect of an Obama presidency and felt that I needed to pac...more "