From the Bookshelf of 2015 Snagged @ The Library Challenge…

The Gone And The Going Away

Maurice Manning

Finish date: April 14, 2015

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Apr 10, 2015 Angel Parrish rated it it was ok

Shelves: snagged-library, poetry

Saved $18 because I Snagged @ the Library!

Let it first be understood that I am NOT a fan of poetry. I grabbed this at the Library for the same reason a person grabs extra produce at the grocery store--trying to add more broccoli in your diet because it's good for you, right? And maybe the store had a sale on broccoli or maybe it was in season and looked good?

My library had a bunch of copies of this, and it looked pretty good. As for the diet...I set a goal to add poetry into my reading diet for Saved $18 because I Snagged @ the Library!

Let it first be understood that I am NOT a fan of poetry. I grabbed this at the Library for the same reason a person grabs extra produce at the grocery store--trying to add more broccoli in your diet because it's good for you, right? And maybe the store had a sale on broccoli or maybe it was in season and looked good?

My library had a bunch of copies of this, and it looked pretty good. As for the diet...I set a goal to add poetry into my reading diet for one month. Every day I read a few pages of Shakespeare and a few pages from a collection like this one. So with that understood, here is my review:

My opinion of this collection varies greatly from poem to poem. The longer, epic poems--particularly the funny ones, and especially the ones based on dreams--are pretty good. The one about Foot Washing or the one about the End of the River...now those are highly entertaining. And remind me just a tad of Mark Twain who is kind of my hero. Some of the more serious longish poems are okay. They are thoughtful and worth perusing. They make a thoughtful point about growing old or about country living. They are interesting.

Now on the other hand, the short poems that are just 6 or 8 lines long...I gotta tell you...I don't have a CLUE what they mean. As a professional writer, a teacher of English grammar and literature, I find this to be a particular personal character flaw. My brother, however, is the poem whisperer. So I shared them with him. And you know what he said? He said, "I have no idea what that is about." So if you are into existential poetry that looks like, in order to fill a book, a writer simply threw 30 words at a page and left them in whatever order they stuck, then these poems are for you. But if you think that, you know, a poem ought to end with a complete sentence, or a complete thought, or at least contain a complete thought somewhere within those 6 lines....well, you might be expecting a bit much.

I could wax eloquent here as to how this book is the very reason why I both hate poetry and know it is good for me. But you probably quit reading my review back when I compared poetry to broccoli. Let's just say this: I read the whole thing. EVERY word. I ate my vegetables, Mamma. Now can I have some dessert? Maybe a murder mystery? ...more

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