I have not been keeping this blog up to date! You may have noticed.
Anyway, here’s an annotation I wrote a little while ago about Lisa Jarnot’s book Ring of Fire. I liked this book enough that I’m planning to buy a copy when the opportunity arises. Right now I just have it from the school library.
(essay after the jump)
Book: May Sarton’s collection of poetry A Grain of Mustard Seed. I mentioned this poem, the Invocation to Kali, before, back when I first bought the book. Well, I liked it so much that I ended up writing a whole annotation on it. And my enthusiasm seems to have come through in the essay, because my advisor responded by saying that she didn’t think she liked May Sarton, but now she wanted to get a copy of this book and read it for herself.
I love poetry that gives me a push. Here’s an annotation that I wrote about Lucille Clifton’s poetry. She’s a new and exciting delight to me, and I know I should have been reading her work a long time before I actually did.
A litany is a form of poetry that repeats and repeats, repeats and circles. I’ve been trying to make friends with it lately, both through reading and writing. Here’s a little annotation essay of mine on some of Joy Harjo’s litanies:
I’ve put this photo I took of a covered bridge here because I’m posting (after the jump) an annotation I wrote about Eleni Sikelianos’s book, The California Poem, and since I’ve never been to California, I did some thinking about what her book would be like translated into Vermont language. Vermont is my home state. And Vermont is very proud of its covered bridges.
I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been travelling and I’m on a break from school at the moment, but I have this one last annotation that I wrote for this past semester that I hadn’t posted yet, so here it is! It’s on Carol Guess’s book The Femme’s Dictionary. This book, according to my advisor, was supposed to be my “candy” at the end of the semester, something fun and refreshing after all the hard work, my dessert. It was good, but it wasn’t my favorite thing of the semester. Anne Carson has to take that place!
Of course, I have lots of other thoughts on writing and gardening and life, etc., and I do want to get back to posting more regularly. But for now, here’s Carol Guess:
This photo is of an oddly-shaped carrot that I bought at the farmer’s market. Not only was it interesting to look at, it was also very crisp and tasty! But I’m not posting it here right now because of its flavor. I decided to use this photo for this blog post because a lot of people told me the carrot looks like a hand. A witch hand, perhaps. And the following annotation on a poem by Rilke is also somewhat focused on strange hands.
It’s snowing pretty heavily outside, which actually looks quite lovely, despite the fact that I’ve had enough of winter. But the snow is a sleepy, peaceful, pure sort of image, so I’ll take it for now. I’ll take it and let it guide me to a warm place in the bed and a nap under cozy blankets while that bluish light sifts into the room. Yeah, I couldn’t sleep again last night. But I’m sleepy now.
After the jump: an annotation on Franz Wright’s book Ill Lit: Selected and New Poems. And discussion of an insomnia poem. You can read it while I’m snoozing.
Here’s another annotation. This one’s on Lyn Hejinian’s book My Life. As you will gather if you read on, I was kinda baffled by this book, and it took me a long time to get through it even though it’s rather small as a physical object. In the end I decided that I didn’t feel confident enough to write something essay-ish and academic about it, but I thought I could manage to approach it creatively, so I tried to imitate the style without exactly understanding what I was doing. It seemed to be an appropriate way to express the jumble of my thoughts, though, and maybe I’ve developed a slightly higher level of understanding in the process.
Click to read the annotation:
This wooden ball was found on the shore of Lake Champlain, I think one of the times that S and I spent the weekend in Chazy, NY when we were living in Burlington. We theorize that it’s probably an old croquet ball. But it’s also a meaningful, magical object. A discovery. A mystery. That’s why I love walking along a beach (doesn’t everyone?), because each pebble or bit of glass or trinket you pick up has been hidden by weather and water, and then is revealed to you in that moment when your eyes settle on it. I find that I always want these objects to act as symbols for me, to solidify the peace that I feel while walking along the shore so that I can carry that peace with me just by taking a few pebbles and shells in my pocket.
I’ve included this photo here as a preface to this annotation I’m posting, because the poem I focus on in the annotation is about beachcombing and a similar spherical find–one of these glass fishing floats.
ebebee 