Last year, when I started my new job, one of the first books I was given to read was Kwame Alexander’s Booked. I read and devoured it in a day. And then tracked down The Crossover, and loved that one, as well. Rebound is a prequel to The Crossover — it tells the story of Chuck Bell, the father of Jordan and Josh Bell, the twin basketball stars who tell their story in prose in The Crossover. Chuck’s claim to fame was that he played […]
Howl: A Graphic Novel
I first read Allen Ginsburg’s Howl: The Graphic Novel many years ago. I was familiar with the poem, of course, but every time I read it I find something else. I do not know how many times I have read it and even after all those readings, I still do not understand it. In fact, I think if you say you do understand Howl, you are not being truthful. There are too many references the modern reader would not get. However, you get the jest: […]
One of the women greeted me. I love you, she said. She didn’t Know me, but I believed her
What is the poet laureate in the time of Trump? I recall thinking back very clearly about this question when Amiri Baraka wrote “The Day they Blew Up America” an interesting, inflammatory, and sometimes hateful poem that “cost” him his job as poet laureate of New Jersey. If memory serves, he said no when they asked him to resign. I forget what happened next, but this would have been when Democrat John Corsine was governor. So now, we have Tracy K Smith as poet laureate […]
Lin-Manuel Miranda and I recommend this collection
I struggle with poetry. Reading it never has the same effect as listening to it, even when I read it aloud to myself. But, since April is National Poetry Month I thought I’d give it another shot. In an example of past me having current me’s back, one of the books I picked out for last year’s Read Harder challenge that I never got to was No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay and it is a book of poems. I don’t know how I […]
American Sonnets
What is not to love about a title called: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin? It screams out “I am different” and “Please read me.” I was excited to dive into the seventy different poems. April is poetry month, so this was the perfect time to start. I then realized that every one of the poems all have the same title (American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin). Different, but not impossible, I figured. Ah… I am sorry to say, I am […]
Life
Dealing with Life (a beautiful, changing, not easy thing) this author/illustrator team have created a lovely work that is truly poetic. Author Cynthia Rylant and Brendan Wenzel (illustrator) have created a home run out of the park with Life. While there is a lot of heartache to Life they show that there is a lot of good, too. The illustrations accent and compliment the text without over powering them. After reading, and the ever bookseller, my brain did its check list: Do I like this? […]
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