On a break

This blog started as a way to fill time at a job at which I was woefully underused. Things have changed in the nearly four years since I started this.

I have books and books and books that I’ve read that I haven’t written about because there are so many other things demanding my attention. I also want to read obscure books that don’t get a lot of attention when I do write about them and I find myself rethinking my book choices over and over — should I read for myself or for the blog? Sometimes I can’t even enjoy something I’m reading because I’m reviewing it in my head.

And there are things of my own I want to write.

All that leads to the headline: I’m taking a break. Maybe I’ll be back, maybe not, but if I’m on an announced break, I’m not going to feel guilty about not posting regularly. It’s time to simplify.

Thanks to those who read this and encouraged me.

Ron

A poem about that thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

So wrote Emily Dickinson more than 100 years ago. Over the years people have questioned what this agoraphobic spinster was hopeful about. It’s a question that still resonates today — where do you find hope when everything is stacked against you.

Detroit-based poet Jamaal May explores hope in its many forms in his 2016 collection “The Big Book of Exit Strategies.” Feathers, wings and birds appear often in these poems that spring from hunger and devastation and racism and all the other issues that come from living in poverty in the wealthiest country in the world.

How books can make things better

Let’s be honest. America is quickly becoming a shithole country. The steady drone of stupidity coming from Washington, D.C. is deafening. And it’s February in Michigan with all the dreary gray that comes with it. And, of course, there’s what happened yesterday in Florida.

But today’s book was read before a teenaged gunman killed 17 people as they sat in class. It’s interesting, as people across the country ask why, how relevant Thornton Wilder’s 1926 classic “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” still is.

Patti Smith and a life well-lived

I am late to the party on Patti Smith —rocker, reader, poet, artist, writer. In 2015, I read a glowing review of her book “M Train” and checked it out of the library., but never got around to reading it.

Flash forward to a couple months ago when I came across an audiobook of it, and thought I’d give it a try. One of my sons was exploring her old albums so her name must have been subliminally planted in the front of my mind. Plus, I was in a melancholy mood and, because this was a book about her grief over the death of husband, Fred Sonic Smith, I thought it would be just the ticket.

What I discovered is a remarkable person, a writer of depth and whimsey, and someone I wish I had known about years ago.

Leaving childhood behind, a poem for my daughter

Today my daughter, the youngest of our four children, turns 14.

The only girl, she is tough, funny, smart, caring, thoughtful and beautiful. As I do with all my kids, I worry about her. She will be in high school in the fall, and kids are mean. She’s going to be exposed to things and people and feelings there I have to close my mind to or I’ll go crazy.

She needs me less and less for the everyday things like shuttling to and from activities, but the truth is, she’s been leaving me since she learned to walk. And I’ve had 13 years to come to terms with that and practice in letting go with her three brothers. It doesn’t make it easier. Today’s poem by Linda Pastan lets me know I’m not alone in this feeling.