After a couple of weeks of reading and rereading 272 pages, I am left with a choice of deciding whether I didn’t like this book, it wasn’t good, or it wasn’t for me. In the end, this one probably wasn’t for me. There is a zone where great writing and hard work meet, and in that zone the reader can fully inhabit the atmosphere or world that the writer intended to create. These works are challenging and rewarding. While I’m a casual Kerouac fan, the amount of […]
Challenging Stereotypes: The Crossover
Other than his vibrant use of language, a strong narrative voice, and his realistic portrayal of the speed, heat, and energy of basketball, Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover (2014) is wonderful because it challenges the “single stories” of black life related in many books: It isn’t about impoverished black boys from a single parent female-headed household living in a crime-ridden neighborhood who play basketball to escape. Rather, it is a universal story of growing up, of family, and of love told in narrative verse (poetry). Read the full […]
The Pop-Up Video of Poetry!
In last year’s CBR, I tried to hype National Poetry Month by reviewing several books of poetry. This year, in anticipation of doing the same thing, I bought several new collections of poems and dug out some books from my personal library that I had never gotten around to reading. Sadly, I neglected to notice that April was National Poetry Month. I completely missed it by two months. So, I will have to make my own thirty days of poetry. First up is Gary Soto’s A […]
Trigger Warnings Come with Provocative Poetry
I only became aware of Rupi Kaur this past Friday, when, after sharing a few of my favorite poems with my students in recognition of National Poetry Month, one of my seventh grade girls came up to me at the end of class, put the book in my hands with a smile on her face, and said, “Read this.” I opened the book and quickly closed it because I had landed on a page of a line drawing that was sexual in nature. My quick thought? […]
Something Different
This is probably the first book I’ve read that falls under the category “experimental literature.” Rich Ives has written what seems to be a series of connected vignettes, each introduced with a diagram by Nils Davey and concluded with an illustration from Jack Callil. Each chapter is named for its diagrams, each of which illustrates a common tool. Even the final chapter, “Ghost Twins” shows a tool, though a more complex one: “the twins may not reveal their purpose easily.” It’s a strange read if, like me, you’re […]
The Art and Poetry of War
I teach British Literature to 17 and 18 year olds of various levels and degrees of interest (in different classes). Something that I’ve noticed over the years is that just about all my students feel something when we read World War I poetry. I don’t know if it’s because it’s visceral, perhaps they appreciate the simple plain language, or maybe they can relate to the poems where the young authors express regret and naivete about their involvement in the war. Because come on, I remember […]