19 Sunday Jan 2020
Posted in Sunday Sentence
My weekly contribution to David Abrams’ “Sunday Sentence” project in which participants share the best sentence read during the past week “out of context and without commentary.”
All the time he had ever squandered in his life seemed to be clinging to his footsteps, dragging him down.
SOURCE:Sweet Bean Paste (One World, 2017), a novel by Durian Sukegawa
11 Wednesday Dec 2019
Posted in C.A. Explains It All, NonFiction Nook
Tags
abookolive, Aja Raden, Lara Prior-Palmer, Maxwell King, Mr. Rogers, nonfiction november, Rough Magic, Stoned: Jewelry Obsession and How Desire Shapes the World, Sy Montgomery, The Good Good Pig, The Good Neighbor
November was a tumultuous month. Thanksgiving and the weeks before and after were spent going back and forth to the veterinary hospital, while my dog recovered from various ear problems that resulted in surgery. My family was disappointed in missing my gumbo and deep dish apple pie, but I was just too tired to cook. On the actual holiday, I found myself driving with sick doggo to the next town for additional pills and stronger antibiotic cream. All I wanted was sleep!
Needless to say, my TBR for #NonFictionNovember mostly sat untouched up until this week. It’s only two weeks into December, so that still counts for November reads, right? Y’all better be nodding your heads.
Anyway, the four books that I picked up were great. I was highly entertained by the antics of naturalist Sy Montgomery‘s Christopher Hogwood, the Good, Good Pig that started out little and turned into a big pain in the rear. Well, he was more like the Liz Minelli or pigs–high maintenance in all the right ways. If you are following the four-word challenge, this one falls under ‘voice’.
I was late to the party on Lara Prior-Palmer‘s Rough Magic. I wasn’t convinced someone so young had anything interesting to say. A few pages in, I realized that I had grossly underestimated the writer. Thank you to abookOlive for the recommendation. Category: ‘sport’.
For ‘design’, I chose Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World. This is an inside look into the machinations of the jewelry world, that left me pretty sour on diamonds, more appreciative of pearls and lustful of emeralds.
And last, but not least is The Good Neighbor. Reading this book felt like reuniting with a long lost friend. I absolutely adored Mr. Rogers. Still adore Mr. Rogers. He was a unique and greatly missed human. I did not realize how much the creator of Blues Clues was influenced by him, but appreciate that programming all the more. This one falls under the ‘true’ category.
20 Friday Sep 2019
Posted in C.A. Explains It All
Tags
Adrienne Rich, book pairs, Diving Into the Wreck, Dr. Richard Smith, Joshilyn Jackson, Never Have I Ever, Read This With That, The World Beneath
Last month, I ran across a BookPage blurb about Joshilyn Jackson‘s new novel Never Have I Ever. I was surprised, but happy to see that she had finally jumped into the suspense genre. I, of course, scooped up a copy and enjoyed it immensely. Besides the twisty action going on regarding Amy Whey’s mysterious past, diving surfaces as a type of mind-clearing lifeline for the character.
It reminded me so much of poet Adrienne Rich’s collection, Diving Into the Wreck that I dug out my well-worn copy. You can read the book’s titular poem over on Poets.org. (I’ll wait for you) .
See what I mean? So gorgeous! Perfect pair.
Then a short while later, I found another fun surprise: Dr. Richard Smith‘s super sleek The World Beneath: The Life and Times of Unknown Sea Creatures and Coral Reefs, which is a frickin’ eye-gasm of deep ocean photography. Seriously, do yourself a favor and buy this book, or at the very least follow Smith’s Insta like right damn now.
09 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in C.A. Explains It All, Fiction Experiments
Tags
#readwomen, abookolive, bookslikewhoa, booktube, Emily Croy Barker, Emily Skaja, Hollow Kingdom, Ink and Paper Blog, Jean BookishThoughts, Karen Walker Thompson, Kira Jane Buxton, Marilou is Everywhere, Martha Wells, Mary Roach, Murder Bot Diaries, Packing for Mars, Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums, The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
Real Talk: Booktube is not my favorite thing. It tends to be overloaded with YA and is lacking in diversity in just about every category. That said, there are four channels that are pure gold.
1.
Jean BookishThoughts is produced by a Scottish academic, who reads across genres and always manages to surprise me with her recommendations. It was because of her that I fell in love with Martha Wells’ Murder Bot Diaries series.
Currently, there are four, killer novellas about a rogue sec unit thrown by its human side. Start reading now because a full- length “sequel” is due out in 2020.
2.
Mara of bookslikewhoa describes her reading tastes as “omnivorous” and it certainly shows. After her mini-review, I devoured Emily Croy Barker’s The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic. 
It is comparable in size to one of Gabaldon’s Outlander tomes and is about a grad student who walks into an alternate world full of medieval-ish magical beings. Really absorbing and also due for a sequel.
3.
Ink and Paper Blog (owner of awesome bookshelves) is the place to go for mainstream and indie reads. Recent favorites from his channel are Karen Walker Thompson’s The Dreamers, Kira Jane Buxton’s Hollow Kingdom and Sarah Elaine Smith’s Marilou is Everywhere.
4.
abookolive has fantastic non-fiction picks and is not too shabby in the other categories either. Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars and Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums were gems I found because of her channel.
Any booktubers you love? Let me know in the comments.
16 Tuesday Jul 2019
Posted in Sunday Sentence
My weekly contribution to David Abrams’ “Sunday Sentence” project in which participants share the best sentence read during the past week “out of context and without commentary.”
SOURCE: Paper Son (Pegasus, 2019), a novel by S.J. Rozan
13 Saturday Jan 2018
Tags
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alexander McCall Smith, Andy Weir, Artemis, Audible, Circle of Life, Connotation Press, Copper Canyon Press, Directions on Dying, Drew Brees, Jessica Chastain, Lion King, Lobison Song, Mardi Gras, Memorials, Molly Bloom, Molly's Game, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Oceanic, Poetry magazine, Richard Blessing, Saints game, The House of Unexpected Sisters, Who Reads Poetry
It’s been awhile. I know. And I’m smooshing together several types of posts here: #2sdayPoems, Odd Bits from a Creative Life, C.A. Explains It All. You’ll understand why towards the end.
First of all, thank goodness that the stress of the “official” holidays has passed and Mardi Gras is in full swing here in Louisiana. I’ve just had a slice of King Cake with my lunch and my neighbors have all gone off in truckloads, beer in tow, for the parade streets away.
The dog is not fond of the noise this time of year, but his real nemeses are the possums that always seem to congregate under our shed when the temperatures
drop. He will brave the weather for a lick at those furballs, but he’s decided snow is better off left to the plants.
That little dusting we had back in December was toed, tasted, christened, and abandoned for a warm bed in a matter of seconds. Here he is trying to get to the space heater. My cat, a scrappy ten-year-old “runt”, on the other hand, got into her tiny, red sweater as fast as she could and frolicked until she
was almost a popsicle.
What can I say, she enjoys the outdoors, especially when she can scoop up stunned, half- frozen lizards at wholesale. This is her pissed-because-you-made-me-come-inside face.
Even arctic foxes aren’t dumb enough to brave the negative temps like some (crazy!) New 
Orleanians are doing for the Saints game in Minnesota this weekend. Just to be clear: I don’t care that much about football. Okay, I cared that one time when I had chump change on the Denver Broncos back in the nineties.
I do follow the Saints some, but only because Drew Brees is literally days ( yes, days) younger than me and my twin.
I look at old man Drew and I wonder how long he can keep up the pace. I wonder what the hell he is doing to keep up the pace. I wonder where the hell I can get some of the gris-gris he’s imbibing. Seriously, that can’t all be discipline? Can it?
Anyway, suffice to say, Baby Brees and I had and are having fantastic b-days this year. Had he lived, my father would have been having a good one too. At least, I
like to think so. Hard to believe it’s been three years next week since his passing. It was three days before his birthday and very unexpected.
Meanwhile in Florida, my grandfather’s (his father’s) 90th year did not start out so well. A bad fall landed him in rehab, his favorite dog passed away, and the Seminole responsible for his physical therapy was being too rough (accord
ing to him). Just when he’d finally started to like the Seminole, was having lunch with him in fact, Grandpa had a sudden, terminal heart attack, the same as my father.
His last words to me were scribbled in the Christmas card, a brief note about a $150 book on the Tlingit that he had donated to his local library. It stands to his second wife to sort out his complicated life, starting with getting his ashes into the totem pole as he requested.There will be several memorials along the pow-wow trail, with the big dinner next year. RIP Kashka. And Dad.
Odd Bits from a Creative Life/#2sdayPoems
When the news came, I had just picked up a copy of Who Reads Poetry: 50 Views from Poetry Magazine. It opened randomly to the essay with lines from Richard Blessings’ poem “Directions on Dying”. Very surreal and a little disconcerting.
Later, I was sorting through poems I’d bookmarked for the next round of #2sdayPoems. The window with Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Lobison Song” froze. It’s a poem about the birth of one of her sons, who oddly enough had come into the world with the same hairy condition as my little brother. Suddenly, it was like the Lion King’s “Circle of Life” was going off in my head. Another Dali-esque feeling.
But these two poems taken together made me feel…better. Somehow.
[FYI, Aimee’s latest Oceanic is available for pre-order on Amazon.]
Eventually, the aforementioned brother, grown and not so hairy, decided my computer was suffering from failed RAM. He got it all squared away and here I am writing about…everything.
A few more things to say about books before I close. The audiobook of Molly’s Game was a wild ride during this time and much deeper insight into the evolution of the real woman. I’d seen the movie earlier in the month. Loved it. Jessica Chastain is phenomenal, btw, like when 
she channeled that weird final vulnerableness in the lawyer’s office with that carpet wobble on her (faux?) Louis Vuitton’s. The real Molly Bloom, as the book proves, is a tough frickin’ nut, but totally addictably likable, inspiring even.
I also dug into Andy Weir’s Artemis, which is about another tough, smart woman making it in a man’s world, this time a lunar colony. Weir probed the political, social and economic cycles of such a place in a thought-provoking, yet very grounded way. 
The next book is the latest installment of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The House of Unexpected Sisters. The main character Mma Ramotswe, is dealing with thorny family issues in Botswana, a place that is, putting it lightly, a less than friendly landscape for women in business, or women in general.
I felt very encouraged by the resiliency of the women in each of these books. So, basically, it’s all going to work out in the end.
12 Tuesday Dec 2017
Posted in 2sDay Poems
Tags
#2sDayPoems, Barbara Crooker, Birthday Cakes, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, I Want to Write a Poem to Celebrate, Pinwheel Journal, Rihanna--Birthday Cake, Whale Road Review
Poets Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib and Barbara Crooker have wildly different takes on the celebration of passing years.
rarely is it a good idea to tell someone when they have appeared
in a dream that came to you during a long and hot
week. You know, the kind of week where you do not sleep
much, and instead drag your fingertip along the fluorescent
graves. The kind of week where you say how or oh,
not again. This week, the politician on television says that we are fighting
a different kind of war and I wonder if this means
the kind where everyone returns to their homes unburied, a candle
pushed into a sheet of sugar for every year they’ve missed.
I think I’m saying that a different kind of war is maybe not a war
at all, but then what here would keep us up at night.
I shake my worry for the born and unborn alike out
of a pill box and swallow it with a glass of water. And I hesitate
to say this, friends. But when I finally let go and closed my eyes…
FULL TEXT HERE (Pinwheel Journal)
the body, as it ages, its mystery and majesty,
the scars, the lines, the silver threads
unwinding. I no longer care about air-brushed
perfect people in glossy magazines. I want to celebrate
the real: weak ankles courtesy of afternoons
chasing a puck on a frozen pond. Thighs, more Venus
of Willendorf than Kate Moss or Twiggy. Upper arms
that wobble like jello no matter how many reps
I do at the gym. Belly that stretched big as a watermelon,
then spit out (how did that happen?) sweet pink babies.
Breasts that fed them, rivers of thin blue milk.
Yes, I’ve made the turn onto the unpaved road,
where fat yellow leaves hang overhead. Things…
FULL TEXT HERE (Whale Road Review)
05 Tuesday Dec 2017
Posted in 2sDay Poems
Tags
#2sDayPoems, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alchemy for Cells& Other Beasts, Copper Canyon Press, Empty Mirror, Entre Rios, Fairytale Review, Little Spells, Maya Jewell Zeller, Oceanic, The Woman Who Eats Soil, women poets
Today’s #2sdayPoems brings together selections from Maya Jewell Zeller’s “little spells” at Empty Mirror and Aimee Nezhukumatahil’s Hao Fenglas poem from the Green Issue of Fairytale Review. Scroll to the end for a little bonus podcast.
sweet girl made of dust & water/ please leave
jewelry at home/ wear open, loose clothing/
this will not hurt a bit/ possibly we will ask you
to don this gown/ you are going to experience
a small dose of ionizing radiation/ you will not
feel it at all/ but possibly you will see the way…
from Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts (Entre Rios, 2017)
What can the unfortunate insect do
if it is found wanting in weight?
A pill-bug rolls into a bead of silent news.
The damselfly can bend a petal
back without leaving her mark. Trickster.
There is a woman named Hao Fenglas
who cupped soil to her lips
for over seventy years. In the hem
of her blouse, in the roll of her pant leg,
she brings back a crumble of earth.
Knives stripe a feathered neck
in the kitchen for a thin broth so no one
hears her first….
forthcoming collection: Oceanic (Copper Canyon)
28 Tuesday Nov 2017
Posted in 2sDay Poems
Tags
#readNDN, #readwomen, Bad Indians, California Indians, Chumash, Deborah A Miranda, Essenlen, Gloria Bird, Greenfield Review Press, guest post, Indian Cartography, Native American Heritage Month, Native American Women's Poetry, prose poems, Reinventing the Enemy's Language, Spokane, Stories I Tell My Daughter, The River of History, Trask House Press, What We Owe, women poets
So sad to be wrapping up this special Native American Heritage Month series of #2sDayPoems. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have, but even more importantly, I hope that you have found some NDN poets you really love. Feel free to write a guest blog post if you did!!
I love to hear from you fabulous readers. The poetry community is more fun as it grows!
Ok, enough on that tangent. Here’s today’s poets:
Deborah Miranda (Esselen/Chumash) has written a fascinating “tribal memoir” about her own Esselen family group and California Indians in general, titled Bad Indians that I recommended in another post. She also has several collections of poetry out. The one that I find myself returning to is Indian Cartography (Greenfield Review Press, 1998).
“Stories I Tell my Daughter” is one of my favorite poems from the book. She also blogs at–you guessed it –Bad NDNS on blogspot.
Poet and critic Gloria Bird (Spokane) released a powerful collection of prose poems called The River of History (Trask House Press) in the late nineties. Today’s poem “What We Owe” is from that work.
Another interesting read is Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North of America, which she co-edited with Joy Harjo.
21 Tuesday Nov 2017
Posted in 2sDay Poems
Tags
#readNDN, #readwomen, Catching Cooper, Copper Canyon Press, Crazy Brave, DiveDapper, Joy Harjo, Mojave, Muscogee, Natalie Diaz, Native American Heritage Month, native american poetry, Native American Women's Poetry, NPR, Patterns in Mudhills, Secrets from the Center of the World, Stephem Strom, University of Arizona Press, When My Brother Was An Aztec, women poets
I am so impressed by Natalie Diaz (Mojave). Not only does her poetry make me feel like I’m falling off a cliff–in a good way, of course–but her work in preserving the Mojave language gives me hope for other endangered Native tongues.
If you don’t have her first collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon, 2012),get it. And be anticipating the release of her second collection, also with with Copper Canyon, that she teased in this late 2015 interview at DiveDapper. You’ll find links to several of her new poems there.
But the one I wanted to share with you today is “Catching Cooper“. You won’t be the same after you read it.
Okay, if you’ve spent any time on this blog, you’ve seen this woman. Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) opened the door to Native American poetry for me and continues to be my poet-hero. Get all her books immediately, seriously, like right now.
The poem I’m sharing today is from Secrets From the Center of the World (Univ. of AZ press), which pairs her poems with the photography of Stephen Strom.
This is “Patterns in Mudhills“.
OMG! So beautiful. Check out her interview at NPR about finding her voice and her memoir Crazy Brave. Oh yeah, she reads a few poems there too.
