HjemGrupperSnakMereZeitgeist
Søg På Websted
På dette site bruger vi cookies til at levere vores ydelser, forbedre performance, til analyseformål, og (hvis brugeren ikke er logget ind) til reklamer. Ved at bruge LibraryThing anerkender du at have læst og forstået vores vilkår og betingelser inklusive vores politik for håndtering af brugeroplysninger. Din brug af dette site og dets ydelser er underlagt disse vilkår og betingelser.

Resultater fra Google Bøger

Klik på en miniature for at gå til Google Books

Indlæser...

Strings: A Gathering of Family Poems

af Janeczko

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingSamtaler
1411,433,251 (2.5)Ingen
A collection of 125 modern poems based on the poets' experiences of family life, as parents, children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, cousins, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren.
Ingen
Indlæser...

Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog.

Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.

Let’s face it. Poetry anthologies are not for readers, but for browsers. At least, that’s usually the case. Poems are arranged arbitrarily, superficially, or haphazardly all too often, maybe alphabetically by authors’ names or chronologically by authors’ dates of birth. They are selected, using criteria unexplained, unclear, one suspects idiosyncratically. They rarely have the kind of headnotes or comments that poets almost always use when they read their poems aloud to an audience. So one browses, reading what catches the eye or accidentally comes to one’s attention. Now, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes there is great pleasure in browsing: I can spend hours among the shelves of libraries or bookstores (especially used bookstores), picking up tidbits here and there, sometimes real “aha’s,” always pleasant, even memorable, moments. But readers of poetry long for something else, some sense of unity or continuity or complementarity.

Years ago, back in 1967, Stephen Dunning and his colleagues demonstrated that poetry anthologies can be arranged to appeal to prospective readers, even adolescents, often indifferent to poetry or unused to finding it satisfying to read. Their first book, Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle . . . and Other Modern Verse, placed the poems attractively on the page, grouping them by theme or topic, often juxtaposing poems that spoke to one another in surprising ways (see my LibraryThing review). It was the kind of book that made those of us who were working with young readers say to ourselves, “Now, why didn’t I do that?” From that point on, I had my students browse poetry sections of the library to put together their own anthologies – eighth graders, high-school students, undergraduates, English teachers in my graduate seminars. I called all these volumes Garlic and Sapphires in the Mud, a phrase borrowed from T.S. Eliot to indicate that poems can be written about anything – anything! Whatever interests you, or intrigues you, or puzzles you, or involves you, can become the subject of a section of an anthology, one that invites and encourages readers. I’m not quite sure how many volumes of Garlic and Sapphires in the Mud I now have stored away. They’re all interesting. Each section begins with a brief, usually personal, introduction. The poems grouped together are organized deliberately to engage the reader, usually closing with one to provoke further reflection, just a little twist on the topic.

One anthologist, through the years, brought out one anthology after another, each of which appealed to readers just so. They usually addressed young readers and were marketed as YA (Young Adult), but they were appropriate for all ages. The anthologist, himself a teacher/poet is Paul Janeczko; his works include Poetspeak: In Their Work, About Their Work; Don’t forget to fly; Postcard Poems; Pocket Poems; Going Over to Your Place: Poems for Each Other; The Music of What Happens: Poems That Tell Stories; Preposterous: Poems of Youth; and many more. It would be hard to pick a favorite among these, but the one I’ve chosen to review is Strings: A Gathering of Family Poems (Bradbury, 1984). The volume has long been out of print, but at the time of this writing, there are twelve copies listed on AbeBooks.com, most ex-library copies at $5 or less, one or two very good ones with very good djs at $10 or more.

The title tells the story; the sections are to be expected: strings from wives and husbands, from parents, from children, from brothers and sisters, from cousins, from nieces and nephews, from grandchildren. The poems are contemporary, accessible to all readers, and just right. The title poem is “The String of My Ancestors” by Nina Nyhart, and it sets the tone just right:

I must not forget my children.
I teach them cats’ cradles:
Jacob’s Ladder, The Bridge and the River,
to keep them out of mischief.

I tie bows on my children’s fingers.
They must not forget
their ancestors.


The section on husbands and wives is brief, just eight poems (Janecko may have still been unmarried when he collected these poems), but every one of them is just right in its own way. The first one, Peter Meinke’s “Surfaces,” is a true love poem – not slurpy or sentimental (“darling / you are not at all / like a pool or a rose . . . .”), just down-to-earth, everyday, love and admiration, but it ends just right:

This is how I feel about you:
suppose
on the surface of a rippling pool
the moon shone clearly reflected
like a yellow rose
then
if a cloud floated over it
I would hate the sky


Then, too, there is Philip Dacey’s “One of the Boys,” capturing estrangement that can happen:

A week ago I shared the room
of our car with my wife
as she drove us for the first time
to a marriage counselor. How far apart
two people in a car can be!


The longest section is the one from children to parents, and every poem is just right. Like the other longer sections, it is divided into groups of related poems, untitled, demarcated only by dots in the table of contents and at the end of the last poem in each section. One, for instance, includes poems with the following titles: “Kitchen Tables,” “We Interrupt This Broadcast” (spoken from the point of view of a child playing under a kitchen table and listening to his parents right after December 7, 1941), and “Around the Kitchen Table”; the next related section includes “A Kitchen Memory,” “Kitchen Song,” “Stark County Holidays” (Mary Oliver’s disquieting account of recent Christmases, the table spread with linen, the family talk, the out-of-tune piano: “A kind of hesitation comes; / A silence echoes everything”), “Baking Day” (you won’t be able to resist the “spicy smell of new baked bread”), and “Canning Time.”

Some sections have to be faced, just as certain times in the life of a family eventually have to be faced. Sheryl L. Nelms uses her father’s name as the title of her poem: “Edwin A. Nelms.” We are not related, but I know him well.

the quick flick of a smile
is still there

the curly hair still
coal black
at 67


But Valium has mellowed his “luminous brown eyes,” he body has shrunk, and

brittle bone
cancer
has turned him
into a crisp cicada skin
ready to crunch
if I hug him


Once again, the poem is just right.

In my own mind I can’t call up another anthology in which I like every single selection. I relate to some more personally than others; some are certainly more cheerful than others; some, solemn. Each one is a string of the sort that ties us to the families we have loved, admired, tolerated, endured, escaped – the families we cannot forget and want our children to remember.

Haven’t we all been to this family reunion (recounted in a poem with that title by Jim Wayne Miller):

Here the living and the dead mingle
like sun and shadow under old trees.

For the dead have come too . . . .

They are looking out of the eyes of children
young sprouts
whose laughter blooms
fresh as the new flowers in the graveyard.


In our living room, on a formal easel which once stood on a landing in my grandmother’s stairway, in an old faded photograph from pre-civil war days, two of my ancestors peer down at us. I call them my Tennessee Gothic.. They used to stare at me, solemn, reprimanding, from this same gilded frame, when I raced noisily up that stairwell or slid boisterously down the banister. The man’s beard is long and white; the woman’s hair, pulled back straight and tight. I always thought of them as elderly – ancient -- but their features and complexion show that, in fact, they were not old at all, maybe fortyish, maybe still playful with children of their own. In her face I still see my grandmother and my oldest niece, now in her seventies; in his face I see a second cousin and my older brother. In their eyes, especially the man’s, I see myself, and my children, and grandchildren. They are not solemn; they do not reprimand.

I wish that all their descendants could gather at the old New Hope Methodist Church or the one-room school at Ostella for another dinner on the grounds. I wish I could watch these children (they would come from all around the world) run and play under the shade trees in my grandmother’s yard (the few that still stand). I wish I could share with all of them this book: Strings: A Gathering of Family Poems. It’s for reading, not just browsing. It’s just right.
  bfrank | Aug 4, 2011 |
ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Du bliver nødt til at logge ind for at redigere data i Almen Viden.
For mere hjælp se Almen Viden hjælpesiden.
Kanonisk titel
Oplysninger fra den engelske Almen Viden Redigér teksten, så den bliver dansk.
Originaltitel
Alternative titler
Oprindelig udgivelsesdato
Personer/Figurer
Vigtige steder
Vigtige begivenheder
Beslægtede film
Indskrift
Tilegnelse
Første ord
Citater
Sidste ord
Oplysning om flertydighed
Forlagets redaktører
Bagsidecitater
Originalsprog
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

Henvisninger til dette værk andre steder.

Wikipedia på engelsk

Ingen

A collection of 125 modern poems based on the poets' experiences of family life, as parents, children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, cousins, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren.

No library descriptions found.

Beskrivelse af bogen
Haiku-resume

Current Discussions

Ingen

Populære omslag

Quick Links

Vurdering

Gennemsnit: (2.5)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5 1
3
3.5
4
4.5
5

Er det dig?

Bliv LibraryThing-forfatter.

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Brugerbetingelser/Håndtering af brugeroplysninger | Hjælp/FAQs | Blog | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterladte biblioteker | Tidlige Anmeldere | Almen Viden | 203,230,743 bøger! | Topbjælke: Altid synlig