The Inaugural Poem

You've heard of never speaking ill of the dead? Well, I choose never to speak ill of poets. I love poetry, and it's in too much trouble these days to crack on anyone trying keep it alive.

So with that preface, I'll say that I really liked the poem Elizabeth Alexander read for the recent inauguration. I advocate for plainer meaning in poetry, and this poem works nicely. Don't get me wrong, I love modernist poetry, which tends to be obscure -- think T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. But the historical moment for modernism has passed. I think what we need now is a plainer poetry that is easier for people to "get." Less obscurity and randomness. Isn't there enough of that in the broader culture these days? Whereas Eliot and Stevens to me seem like artistic responses to a culture of conformity.

So I really liked Alexander's poem. Read the whole thing here. I liked the lines:

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

I really liked, "Take out your pencils. Begin." Doesn't that sum up all the potential and excitement of learning? To me it does.

And I also really liked:

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Now just so you know I haven't gone completely Pollyanna, I also liked this critical examination of the poem from the UK's The Guardian, which accuses the poem of being too prosy. ("Prosy"?) It is critical, but it's also serious textual analysis. It's serious criticism worthy of a serious poem, so to speak. And if you go over to Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog, you'll find a wonderful font of comments, both pro and con, about the poem. Ta-Nehisi's blog is mostly politics and culture, but he posts a poem every Friday morning and then opens the comments in the afternoon. It's a lot of fun.

Book talk on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

Some of you have already seen this, but for everyone else, this is my book talk on "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Keep in mind that a book talk is different from a review in that a book talk is not overtly critical. It's a talk from a librarian meant to get patrons interested in reading a particular book.

Librarians, feel free to use this book talk yourself if you feel so moved.

Audience: Book talk at main library for "Book Group Night," for book groups looking for new ideas about novels to read.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell lives in New York City. In his spare time, he likes to write letters to famous people, play the tambourine, and think up new ideas for inventions to save people's lives. But Oskar also had days when he's very sad, or as he puts it, he has "heavy boots." His father died in the World Trade Towers on 9/11, and Oskar is keeping a secret from his mother and grandmother about one of his memories of that day. Months after the tragedy, Oskar finds a key among his father's things in an envelope marked "Black." He's instantly convinced that if he can find whatever the key opens, he will find something wonderful. He decides its his mission to visit every person in New York City with the last name of Black to see if they know what the key opens.

So begins "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is a novel for people who don't mind serious topics, but also enjoy a sense of the fantastic. Foer likes to throw in things that make a reader think, "That couldn't really happen, could it?" Perspectives shift -- sometimes Oskars' grandparents tell the story. The author also experiments with typography. One character literally circles words in the book in red, for example, and we see the red circles on the page.

Foer's first novel was the critically acclaimed "Everything is Illuminated," a novel about an author named Jonathan Safran Foer who travels to the Ukraine to find the village where his Jewish relatives lived before they died in the Holocaust. ("Everything is Illuminated" became a film you may remember starring Elijah Wood.)

Foer's work tends to get strong reactions from readers. Some people think of him as a "love him or hate him" kind of writer. About his work, Foer himself says, "Books make people less alone. That, before and after everything else, is what books do. They show us that conversations are possible across distances.''

If you like adventurous fiction about important world events, you will like "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Michelle Obama biography

Just to note it, here's a link to a review I wrote about a biography of Michelle Obama. Bottom line:

For researchers and investigators, (the book) is mostly a compendium of the known record, although Mundy gets bonus points for her easy-to-read prose style and for documenting her sources well in above-average end notes. For confirmed Michelle Obama fans or for those who are simply intrigued by a new first lady and would like to know more, Michelle is great night-table reading.

It was interesting writing this because I wanted to make sure I was just talking about the book and not veering off into extraneous commentary on Michelle Obama herself. My other goal was to summarize the book for the people who read reviews so they don't have to read the whole book.

Readers Advisory Class

I've finished all the core courses for library science school and now I'm into eclectic electives. The one I'm in now is awesome: The course title is Adult Services in Libraries, but it might be more accurately described as Reader Advisory. Whatever you call it, it teaches all the ins and outs of recommending books for adult leisure reading. One of the primary assignments is book talks, where the librarian gives a 10-minute talk recommending a particular title. We have to give four book talks in four different categories this semester. We get to pick the books.

Here's are the categories and the books I've selected:

• Notable fiction, i.e. a recent work of fiction that has won a major award. I selected "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," by Jonathan Safran Foer.
• Notable nonfiction, same deal but for nonfiction. I chose "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals," by Jane Mayer.
• A work of genre fiction from a genre with which we are personally not familiar. I chose "The Tin Roof Blowdown," a Dave Robichaux detective novel, by James Lee Burke.
• A work of notable fiction in translation. I chose "The Book of Chameleons," translated from the Portuguese, by José Eduardo Agualusa.

So far the class is excellent, excellent, excellent. Really interesting. In fact, I should be blogging more stuff from it like theories of reading and my new favorite reading theorist, Louise Rosenblatt. As usual, apologies for my very sporadic posting and I will try to do better soon. Sometimes life feels just too busy.