Unputdownables

April is National Poetry Month, and I’ve been asked by Serena from Savvy Verse & Wit to bring attention to my favorite poet. Since I couldn’t choose just one, she said it was ok if I picked my top too (no Sophie’s Choice here… I can’t decide between my two lovelies).

Perhaps it’s because they are similar (both talk about relatable situations in an easily readable way). Perhaps it’s because both were incredibly progressive women of their generations (while still suffering from humanity), but these two ladies fit into a similar category in my poetic filing cabinet.

Without further ado, I present to you Dorothy Parker (my Queen of Wit), and Edna St. Vincent Millay (my Master of What-I-Meant-To-Say). Beware, it may just be some of the most enjoyable poetry you’ve read since Shel Silverstein (assuming it may have been awhile since you cracked open some verse). Here are a few of my favorites from them, these women who so clearly convey the female condition. I’m afraid if you can’t find a few of their poems that resonate with you, it’s the sign that you’ve lead a very (too?) safe and measured life.

Lady, lady, never start
Conversations toward your heart;
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean.
Show yourself, by word and look,
Swift and shallow as a brook.
Be as cool and quick to go
As a drop of April snow;
Be delicate and gay
As a cherry flower in May.
Lady, lady never speak
Of the tears that burn your cheek -
She will never win him, whose
Words had shown she feared to lose.
Be wise and never sad,
You will get your lovely lad.
Never serious be, nor true,
And your wish will come to you-
And if that makes you happy, kid,
You’ll be the first it ever did.

The Lady’s Reward by Dorothy Parker

********

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, – let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Lately, it has started to amaze me how people respond to an author’s feelings about a bad review. I am shocked that they are shocked that someone who has spent possibly years on their work (developing an idea, putting their heart onto paper, fighting to get an agent and publisher, and then finally getting published) would take offense at an unfavorable review. However, I am even more shocked when reviewers and bloggers get upset because authors react to a scathing or snarky review. Of course they will react. Do we react when people say rude things to us in general? Then why would we be surprised when others react to rude things that we post on the Internet (or print publications) about something that they, most likely, feel vulnerable about in the first place? I say this as someone who has taken a bashing (publicly – online) about my own work. It’s not fun, and I don’t like it. I try to be respectful when I get it, but I don’t take it lying down – and will usually give an opinion back (unless the person giving the barb is just too crazy to respond to… I think most intelligent people let those go). However, I’ve never had to experience what it’s like to devote the amount of time it takes to create a book and then have that book destroyed by whoever wants to tear it apart in public forums.

I don’t consider myself a reviewer, as I don’t do many reviews on this blog (almost none). I almost only recommend books, and usually don’t mention the ones that I didn’t care for; mostly because I agree with Michael Silverblatt, who says that there are enough people in the world telling you what not to read – he wants to tell you what to read. My thought is that it takes more time to write a scathing review than to walk over to my bookshelf and pick up my (possibly) next great read. I also usually pass along books that weren’t to my liking, because very often someone else will enjoy them.

Let me be clear, if a book has grammatical and spelling errors by the time it is published, that should be mentioned – as those things should be fixed if the book makes it to another printing. However, there is a difference between pointing out work that is subpar quality versus work that just didn’t jibe with what you were wanting? Where is the line between giving a book quality criticism and bashing it? Do reviewers and bloggers have the right to critique a book without expecting critique back? (I can’t help but think that’s a bit hypocritical.) With the ability for everyone to have a voice in this age of technology, should everyone also be expected to be held accountable for that voice?

What are your thoughts about this topic?

1. “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind
2. “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude 
3. “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.” by Toni Morrison, Beloved
4. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” by Virginia Woolfe, Mrs. Dalloway
5. “You better not never tell nobody but God.” by Alice Walker, The Color Purple
6. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” by Kafka, Metamorphosis
7. “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” by William Gibson, Neuromancer
8. “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday night. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” by Irvine Welsh, Transpotting
9. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” by C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
10. “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” by Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
11. “But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.”  by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
12. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further … And one fine morning –
    So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
13. “They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there — and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see.” by Jack Kerouac, On the Road   
14. “It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved, and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” by Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
15. Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.” by Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne
16. “No matter where I went, my compass always pointed west. I would always know what time it was in California.” by Janet Finch, White Oleander
17. “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” by Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
18. “Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.” by Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
19. “It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together. ” by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
20. “May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there – not in heaven – not perished – where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” by Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
21. “Not gray, exactly. Right before the sun rises there’s a moment when the whole sky goes this pale nothing color—not really gray but sort of, or sort of white, and I’ve always really liked it because it reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.” by Lauren Oliver, Delirium
22. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” by Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Now that I am all caught up on Mad Men (start to current in less than a month), they can officially say that the last person holding out has finally succumbed to the “madness.”

After a fun Twitter conversation, I was sent the link to Billy Parrott’s Mad Men reading list on the New York Public Library blog. Are you a Mad Men fan? Have you (like me) written down titles of the books the characters are reading? Have you read any of the books because they were brought to your attention by Mad Men? In case you’ve missed a few of these mid-century culture defining titles, we can thank Mr. Parrott for making comprehensive  Mad Men Reading List for us… enjoy!