The Color Master by Aimee Bender - A Glowing Review

 

Read this book.  Read this book.  Read this book.

 

 

Every once in a while I'm fortunate enough to get a book (to my bookaholic, bookslut delight, this one was an Advance Reader's Copy) that blows my mind...not often...not even semi-often, because I'm a jaded reader.  I've been reading since the age of 5...for over 50 years.  My brain is overflowing with words, plots, poems, stories, books, and madness to boot.   And don't ever think that books can't be poetry.  These stories are pure poetic prose.  I read some dark detective novels that are pure poetry (James Lee Burke comes to mind and Robert Crais).

 

But this book of short stories by Aimee Bender is magical and yes, original.  As I said in my Amazon review (the first one under the book):  If you're looking for a book full of stories that will make you see the world around you differently, then this is the book for you. These stories astonished me with their ingenious originality. 

 

I'm going to quote a page from my favorite story, "Tiger Mending":

 

"Watch, Sloane whispered.

 

I stood behind.  The two women from the front walked into view and settled on the ground near some clumps of ferns.  They waited.  They were very still-minded, like my sister, that stillness of mind.  That ability I will never have, to sit still.  That ability to have the hands forget they are hands.  They closed their eyes, and the moaning I'd heard before got louder, and then, in the distance, I mean waaaay off, the moaning grew even louder, almost unbearable to hear, and limping from the side lumbered two enormous tigers.  Wailing as if they were dying.  As they got closer, you could see that their backs were split open, sort of peeled, as if someone had torn them in two.  The fur was matted, and the stripes hung loose, like packing tape ripped off their bodies.  The women did not seem to move, but two glittering needles worked their way out of their knuckles, climbing up out of their hands, and one of the tigers stepped closer.  I thought I'd lose it; he was easily four times the first woman's size, and she was small, a tiger's snack, but he limped over, in his giantness, and fell into her lap.  Let his heavy striped head sink to the ground.  She smoothed the stripe back over, and the moment she pierced his fur with the needle, those big cat eyes dripped over with tears.

 

It was very powerful.  It brought me to tears, too.  Those expert hands, as steady as if he were a pair of pants, while the tiger's enormous head hung to the ground.  My sister didn't move, but I cried and cried, seeing the giant broken animal resting in the lap of the small precise woman.  It is so often surprising, who rescues you at your lowest moment..."

 

from:  "The Color Master" by Aimee Bender, pages 34, 35

 

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I'm going to leave you there in hopes you'll buy her book (or get it from your local library) and read the rest of this brilliant story and all the other fabulous stories in this book.  My next favorite is the title story, "The Color Master".  It made me see differently.  Literally SEE with new eyes.  It glows with a rainbow of colors...There are 15 stories in all and each, in its own way, is a startling revelation.

 

We're having an entire rare, stormy, rainy week here in the swamps...perfect reading weather.  School starts here this week, so I also think of this as back-to-school weather...I'm headed off to read more of "Open Field - 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets", an amazing book overflowing with great poetry by my friends from the great frozen North.  I highly recommend it.

 

 

 



 

My favorite poet on earth is from Canada.  ;-)

 

xo,

Marion

 

 

"From every book invisible threads reach out to other books; and as the mind comes to use and control those threads the whole panorama of the world's life, past and present, becomes constantly more varied and interesting, while at the same time the mind's own powers of reflection and judgment are exercised and strengthened."  ~Helen E. Haines

 

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Some Jack Gilbert

I've been knee deep in the poetry of Jack Gilbert this week.  I went through my poetry books (no small task as I have over 300 books of poetry) and found two of Mr. Gilbert's.  I haven't been able to put them down since stumbling upon them...metaphorically and literally.  Below are two of my favorite poems out of hundreds of favorites. 

(August has sashayed into Louisiana hot, humid and steamy.  She always was a sultry, sizzling bitch and continues to live up to her bad reputation.  But the dragonflies and hummingbirds are plenteous and the tomatoes still giving freely of their fruit.  I pluck them from the plant and eat them like apples, juice dripping down my chin. My shirts are stained. I can think of no finer luxury in this life.)  xo

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Older Women
By Jack Gilbert

Each farmer on the island conceals
his hive far up on the mountain,
knowing it will otherwise be plundered.
When they die, or can no longer make
the hard climb, the lost combs year
after year grow heavier with honey.
And the sweetness has more and more
acutely the taste of that wilderness.

from:  "Jack Gilbert:  Collected Poems", page 173

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The Danger of Wisdom
By Jack Gilbert

We learn to live without passion.
To be reasonable. We go hungry
amid the giant granaries
this world is. We store up plenty
for when we are old and mild.
It is our strength that deprives us.
Like Keats listening to the doctor
who said the best thing for
tuberculosis was to eat only one
slice of bread and a fragment
of fish each day. Keats starved
himself to death because he yearned
so desperately to feast on Fanny Brawne.
Emerson and his wife decided to make
love sparingly in order to accumulate
his passion. We are taught to be
moderate. To live intelligently.

from:  "Jack Gilbert:  Collected Poems", page 330

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Waking This Morning by Muriel Rukeyser

Waking This Morning
By Muriel Rukeyser

Waking this morning,
a violent woman in the violent day
Laughing.
Past the line of memory
along the long body of your life
in which move childhood, youth, your lifetime of touch,
eyes, lips, chest, belly, sex, legs, to the waves of the sheet.
I look past the little plant
on the city windowsill
to the tall towers bookshaped, crushed together in greed,
the river flashing flowing corroded,
the intricate harbor and the sea, the wars, the moon, the
planets, all who people space
in the sun visible invisible.
African violets in the light
breathing, in a breathing universe.      I want strong peace,
and delight,
the wild good.
I want to make my touch poems:
to find my morning, to find you entire
alive moving among the anti-touch people.

I say across the waves of the air to you:
today once more
I will try to be non-violent
one more day
this morning, waking the world away
in the violent day.

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Thank you, dearest Erin, for mentioning this poem to me.  I hunted it down because I don't think I've ever read it before and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I owe you one.  :-)

It's a much-needed rainy Saturday here in the humid swamps of luscious Louisiana.  (The dragonflies are dancing between raindrops, swirling and dive-bombing like glittering, winged jewels---one of the top perks of living near a swamp is their prolific presence.)  It's been pretty dry this summer, but not today.  There are few things more luxurious than waking to dark skies & rain on a day you don't have to get out of bed, but can lie there listening to the rain pattering on the roof and the sound of distant thunder.   

I have to get back to my reading.  Later!

xo,
Marion

"How many a (wo)man has dated a new era in his/her life from the reading of a book."  ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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"A house without books is like a room without windows."  ~Heinrich Mann

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A Few Words For the Visitor in the Parlor by Olena Kalytiak Davis

An old, lace-winged friend of mine...

A Few Words For The Visitor In The Parlor
by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Every time you wish the sky was something happening to your heart, you lose twice.

Mother kept sending me back to the kiosk. Where they wrapped the paper in fish. Pivovarov and the other artists, they were worried. The blood was Ukrainian and it was all over the place. Go and wash your face. No, no one said anything about auto-workers. I am simply saying to you what my mother said. I am simply saying what Pivovarov painted: Go and wash your face. People are coming soon. It is not good for them to see you looking like this.

I slept the afternoon, but you know what Breton says: I was not in the mood for visitors. Picture yourself inside that word. And yes, my house is a word, but my words, aren’t they words also? Today, the sky just wouldn’t happen. Today, I was blind sided. Neither pain, nor its powdered absence. Like most days, I became the kitchen sill. I’m simply saying what I always say: what is lace-winged cannot be strong.

My wedding dress hangs at the end of things. It’s the kind of thing you think while sitting on someone else’s couch. There is something elegant implied by length. Or: So this is a living room, what was I thinking. Grass stains where the peach-colored silk drank in the ground. But when I get home the urge to clean immediately leaves me. Alone, I can only think of visiting those plain and exotic places. Oh, my cloud covered heart.

She was a branch covered in hoarfrost. I must forgive myself. Something clings to the whore’s hem. Dear visitor: you divide your age in two then square it by a dying mother. I am always gathering her up in my arms. Believe me, you never forget someone that thin. You start remembering the way that summer lay differently on top of that year. The hood burns you. I tried driving as gently as I could, but you know, the road had last winter inside it, the winter before. That drive was painful, just look at her face. You remember because someone starts talking about time. Someone says time, time is like water. Someone says: There was once a living room made entirely of death.

Today, the sky was white. And the ground was white, too. Yet, I could tell them apart. They were that easy to distinguish.

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*Bold sentences are two of my favorites ever... - Marion, brawling w/pain & losing

 

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 From her amazingly perfect book:  "And Her Soul Out of Nothing" by Olena Kalytiak Davis

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The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider

Rose after rain.

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
how the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
how the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
or toes. How soles of feet know
where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
of ordinary things, how clothes
wait respectfully in closets
and soap dries quietly in the dish,
and towels drink the wet
from the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

from 'Another River: New and Selected Poems'

_______________________________________

The secret of life:  there are no ordinary things.  xo

_______________________________________

"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."  ~Grandma Moses

Dinner Plate Hibiscus

The first bloom. . . there is hope!!  I planted four colors: white, dark pink, light pink and red.  No matter how many flowers I plant, it always amazes me when they actually come up and grow.  :-)

 

 

Another miracle flower, my first Hibiscus.  It's magnificent in the morning sunlight.

 

 

Like magic...one day it's not there, and the next, this glorious flower.

 

 

Sun-dappled and juicy, it fills me with wonder.

 

 

 

As long as there is life, there is wonder:  flowers, birds, dragonflies, cicadas, cats, trees, clouds, sky, stars, moon, words, books, poetry, family, friends, love. . .

 

xo,

Marion

 

 

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud

was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  ~Anais Nin

 

 

Grief by Stephen Dobyns

 

GRIEF
by Stephen Dobyns

Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.

Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.

I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.

"Grief" by Stephen Dobyns, from Velocities

 

 

If You Forgot Me by Pablo Neruda

My ferns, blocking the heat and shading the carport.

IF YOU FORGOT ME
By Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.       
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Daylily in my front yard.

 

My favorite Rose.

 

Happy Summer Solstice in Pictures

a quote I liked and copied into my notebook

storm coming - for Annie Marie

my favorite new watercolor paints from dollar tree

a little redhead checking out my miniature typewriter table

my hood, more or less

angel-wing begonia's blushing flowers

one of my many to-be-re-read piles

Molly (Blythe) with her new John Lennon tee-shirt

a rose is a rose is a rose...

Love Poem to No-One In Particular by Mark O'Brien

photo from Pinterest

Love Poem to No-One in Particular
By Mark O'Brien

let me touch you with my words
for my hands lie limp as empty gloves
let my words stroke your hair
slide down your back
and tickle your belly
for my hands, light and free flying as bricks
ignore my wishes and stubbornly refuse to carry out my quietest desires
let my words enter your mind
bearing torches
admit them willingly into your being
so they may caress you gently
within

 

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This movie is about the poet, Mark O'Brien, who lived most of his life in an iron lung after contracting polio at the age of 6.  It's based on an article he wrote for "The Sun" magazine  about sex and the disabled and about his experiences with a sex surrogate.

 

The article is here if you'd care to read it:

 

http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/174/on_seeing_a_sex_surrogate

 

 

I laughed and cried through most of the movie.  It's the most touching, beautiful movie I've seen in a very long time.  It'll change your life...for the better. 

 

xo,

Marion

 

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"For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time." ~Isabel Allende

 

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"A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face and the egg is frowning and looking put out. The egg mutters to no one in particular, "I guess we answered that question." ~Author Unknown

 

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