Tag: poetry

Dr Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets

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Dr Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos (Insta)

Genre: contemporary YA

Setting: New Jersey

I read it as a(n): hardback

Source: library

Length: 310 pp

Published by: HMH (5 March 2013)

Her Grace’s rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Dr Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets is the story of a boy, James Whitman, who, like many of us, deals with anxiety and depression. Hi beloved older sister, Jorie, got expelled from school and kicked out of the house and now struggles to afford her shitty apartment, which is better than homelessness, which is still better than living at home with their abusive parents. James knows he needs therapy but his parents won’t pay for it and he can’t afford it. So he has Dr Bird, a pigeon that lives in his head who he talks to. 

At its core, this book is just another coming of age book with angsty teens front and center. Under its surface, there are layers of thought and troubles and the need to lean on others for help. When James’s friend/crush asks him to help her find some of Jorie’s poetry for the school journal, James discovers that Jorie’s pain was deeper than anyone knew. The Brute and The Banshee, as he thinks of his parents, seemed determined to blame Jorie for everything bad about their family. James feels a load of guilt for that because he knows some of the things that happened were his fault and he never stepped up to admit it. He feels he let Jorie down and didn’t protect her. He misses her and gets anxious when he doesn’t know where she’s living. The administrators at their school are fairly stereotypical boors, morons, or outwardly stern but inside fluffy and sweet and just want to help. I found them fairly irritating and largely irrelevant. 

James himself is weird, a social reject who likes to hug trees and recite poems. His favorite poet is Walt Whitman, in part because they share a surname. When I started reading this book, I was not at all sure I would like it because – and I cannot stress this strongly enough – I fucking HATE Walt Whitman. Hate him. What a weird, arrogant, self-important old man. I’m glad he’s dead so he can’t write ANY. MORE. So I started reading this with some trepidation because I just hate Walt Whitman. The only thing he wrote that I don’t mind is “Oh Captain, My Captain,” and that is literally only because of the movie Dead Poets Society. Hate him.

So I was surprised that I actually enjoyed this book as much as I did, considering that James is always rattling off Whitman quotes, or making up his own poetry that is Whitmanesque. Or yawping. He fucking yawps. Just no. But whatever gets you through the day. It worked for James and for this book, so whatever you gotta do, I guess.

I cheerfully confess that I picked this up from the library only because I read somewhere that it is supposedly becoming a movie and it has Jason Isaacs and I will watch anything with him in it, even if there’s a lot of Whitman. I couldn’t find a release date for it which makes me sad. I want to see a new Jason Isaacs movie. But it is also sadmaking since there can really be no other role in this story he could play except the abusive asshole dad. I suppose he could be one of the boorish asshole school admins, but it doesn’t seem likely. Regardless, I hope the film comes out soon. 

I would recommend this to folks who are really into YA. I liked it well enough but at the end of the day, it was just another YA book to me. Nothing really came as a surprise, though it was very nicely written.

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#NotYourPrincess

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#NotYourPrincess cover#NotYourPrincess edited by Lisa Charleyboy (Twitter, Insta) and Mary Beth Leatherdale (website, Twitter)

Her Grace’s rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Genre: nonfiction, women’s voices

I read it as a: hardback

Source: library

Length: 109 pp

Published by: Annick Press (12 Sept 2017)

A collection of poetry, essays, art, and songs by Native American women, this slim book contains multitudes. Some of the entries look into the past, into abuses and humiliations the creators or their family endured, and some look forward into a more hopeful future. A nicely eclectic collection.

I like the glimpse into the experiences of American Indian/First Nations women. It is horrifying how badly they have been treated and difficult to read. But I think the best way to learn more and educate myself about things I have no experience with is by reading the experiences of those who have gone through it. It sounds trite to write it out like that, but it is a fundamental part of how I read now; I do not know the experiences of Indigenous women or Black women, and I can’t really understand what it is like to experience the racism or fear or humiliation that so many of them have endured. Reading about it in their own words is the best way to learn.

I liked how varied this compilation was. However, I found the actual format to be off-putting. It is a physically huge book, like a giant magazine or something, and is impossible to stuff into a purse. If I were a student wearing a large backpack everyday, that would be one thing. But the dimensions of this were 9×11.5 inches and it’s just…big. Also, while the individual contributions were all excellent, the book as a whole didn’t feel like it had a proper flow to it to blend and merge from one section to the next very easily. It actually felt somewhat incomplete, as though there were pieces missing from each section as well as from the overall book. It sadly makes me a little hesitant to pick up another book edited by Charleyboy. 

I would give it 3 stars in honor of the women who contributed to it, but the book itself as a whole would probably only get 2. 

Favorite part/ lines (potential spoilers!):

  • Patriarchy is quite simply the systematic oppression and regulation of women’s bodies, minds, and spirits. … In Indigenous culture, Indigenous women and girls are sacred, known as life-givers, as independent, as autonomous, as decision-makers. (“Reclaiming Indigenous Women’s Rights”, Nahanni Fontaine (Anishinaabe), p 25)
  • “I rather you be terrified than think,” she warns, “that you can beat the wrath of Mother Nature.” (“Falling,” Natanya Ann Pulley (Navajo), p 36)
  • You are allowed to cry/ You are allowed to scream/ But you are not allowed to give up./ If you ever need a hero/ Become one. (“Dear Past Self”, Isabella Fillspipe (Oglala Lakota), p 98-99)

 

Fig Tree in Winter

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38465750._sy475_Fig Tree in Winter  by Anne Graue (WEBSITE, TWITTER)

Her Grace’s rating:  5 out of 5 stars

Genre: poetry

I read it as a: paperback chapbook

Source: my own collection

Length: 36 pp

Published by: dancing girl press (2017)

As part of the 2019 Read Harder challenge, I chose this book to complete the task for ‘read a collection of poetry published since 2014.’ I am the first to confess that I rarely read poetry and I am often confounded by it. However, in the interests of full disclosure, Anne is a friend of mine so it felt natural to want to use her book to complete this task; friendship aside, though, I find her poems to be beautifully feminine and strong as well as challenging. 

Anne was the person who taught me what found poetry is. I was delighted to learn this, because it was something I had done for ages and ages, from childhood, and just didn’t know there was a real name for it. I find it to be a really stunning form of art and would like to learn more about it, maybe even try some of my own, just for a new thing to hang on my library wall if nothing else.

I don’t really know how to review poetry. I think that this collection, though, has a strong theme of feminism and lost innocence to it. Many of the poems evoke feelings of nostalgia for our younger selves, for wishing we had known then what we know now, and more than a little disappointment and heartbreak at the way things turn out in the end. My favorite poems in the collection are ‘A World Divided’, ‘the asylum’, and ‘The Cure for Thinking’. These, to me, sum up so much of a woman’s experience that it is a little shocking to find in such a few brief lines.