Journal to a Muse

On the reading table

Maureen Corrigan is a book reviewer for NPR among other things, and she has said out loud what many of us in my family have often thought. There comes a time, no matter how much fun one is having, when we'd rather be reading a book.

She's a literature professor, so some of her discussion is about over arching themes, including literature for and about women, and how literature reflects the times during which it is written.

She had me after a few dozen pages when she noted aptly that Astrid Lindgren's Pippy Longstocking is an anarchist. Leave Me Alone is also laugh out loud funny.


I don't know what schools do (or did in the middle of the 20th century) that makes poetry so hateful and unpleasant. Maybe poetry just NEEDS older readers. (Except for Shel Silverstein, Edward Lear and some others). Except for works by May Sarton and Margot Atwood and Marge Piercy, I've had a difficult time slogging through volumes of poems by a single author. (some poets seem to only play one note.

But a good anthology, what a pleasure. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Poems to Read is a collection, if I understand Pinsky's introduction correctly, of rejects from an earlier book, America's Favorite Poems. Most every poem has a sentence or two by a person whose age and profession is listed, which expresses why they nominated the poem for inclusion. As one browses the categories, it is like having new found friends recommend their favorites. Many standard poets are included, but rarely is it the "one" poem you HAD to read in 11th grade literature class.

I received a copy of The Art of Friendship

from the author of Chronic Hope. We wrote a manuscript together, which we should probably update, about men that was similar in format. A general statement followed by a bit of exposition and then an anecdote. The founder of The Horchow Collection and is daughter has written a good hearted book which is a wonderful antidote to Enron and Halliburton and other companies that seem to have scant empathy or heart.