Book Review--"Shy Creatures" by Clare Chambers 5/5 stars.

Shy Creatures is a marvelous and sometimes heartbreaking yarn about a man discovered hidden away in a tumbledown old house with his elderly aunt. An argument has caused neighbors to call the authorities, and they find the heavily bearded, nearly naked, and apparently mute man in an upstairs bedroom. He and the aunt are removed to a mental hospital where we meet a young art therapist named Helen and a married doctor for whim she falls. (Yes, I know, sounds trite about the affair, but the author has a real knack for drawing it in such a way that it's interesting and enlightening.)

The book wavers between 1964 (the novel's "present") and flashbacks that go ever further into the past to tell the tale of how William (the man discovered in the old house) came to be where he was. It turns out that he is not mute, he just only talks when it suits him. His backstory is extremely entertaining and heart-tugging, and his progress at the hospital--and Helen's as well--makes for a fine story. I loved it.

Mister Barbenstock

 

Mr. Barbenstock had eaten one of his students--

a little girl who sat in the third desk, 

far right row, a tiny ladybug in a hand-me-down jar.

There was a flurry of shrill criticisms from yappy parents,

the kind who weep at every brown leaf

and drive their sissy-ass cars to carnivals on Sunday.

Mr. B (as he was known at Grimoire Elementary)

stood out like bloody steak atop a birthday cake--

this bearded, uber-correct male among the ewes.

How many had he done this to? demand school paper reporters,

caps askew in the rough and tumble of a performative press conference.

What evil lies unsuspected beneath blah blah yadda yadda.

Mr. B. hears hummingbirds in his head; they alone can understand

his infinite lovesickness, lugubrious as an engine leak

in his smoking, whirring, damaged heart, hurting him.

His life has become a kind of constant translation--

bathtub to oceanside, mini-Cooper to Graf Zeppelin,

vacant, fidgety students to roaring throng of weird cryptids!

Mr. Barbenstock blinks. The prosecutor is asking for a cardinal number

denoting his victims. Everyone has grown up in a matter of moments.

It's a math problem! He begins to instruct, his forte where he hides.

________________

for Word Garden Word List--Richard Blanco. 

Music: The Temptations I Can't Get Next To You

Word Garden Word List--Richard Blanco

 

Hello my little unread volumes! It is time once again for a new word list poetry prompt! This time our source is How To Love A Country,  poems by Richard Blanco. Your faithful but slothful, no-account, do-nothing hostess is only half way through her current read, and so I had to select something else. Delving into my poetry shelf, I found this one. I have not read it and so can supply no review. I only know that Mr. Blanco was an inaugural poet for Barack Obama. 

This poetry thing that we do is such a funny animal. It isn't like novel writing, or journal ism, or jotting down one's thoughts on events. Poetry is some mixture of dreams, imagination, hard truth, form (or not), rhyme (or not), and somehow saying the things that cannot be said as well in any other way. It is a way of making the universal personal, and the personal universal. It is the art of not saying a thing directly, but somehow saying it all the more clearly for that. It's magic, light as a feather and heavy as a jackhammer. It exposes lies even as it is filled with invention. It's a helluva thing and I love it. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and perhaps do what your hostess has not done, and read Richard Blanco! This prompt remains active until next Sunday. Note: please no haibun. 

And now, your List:

audacity

bearded

cardinal

children

cure

eaten

erase

exactly

exile

hummingbirds

infinite

jazzy

lovesick

prayer card

sea

sissy-ass

sky

translation

veil

yappy

Lady Poet

 

Who changed you, water lily, who betrayed

and left your leaves to sway half-drownëd here?

Your moon-dazed face is pale, night-sick, afraid.

Water lily so wounded, so austere.

You of many stems but a single face--

no voice at all except poems water-writ.

Who muddied the stars of your secret place,

and forced such a sorrowful alphabet?

________

A rispetto poem for What's Going On?--"The Dark" 

Music: the late Marianne Faithful Sad Lisa

Word Garden Word List--Across the River and into the Trees

 Hello my little Venetians, and pardon me for being a little bit early in getting this posted. In the breakneck pandemonium that is (not) my daily life, I got it twisted and thought it was Sunday when it was only Saturday. Oopsy. No matter! Our source this week is a novel that I just finished yesterday, Across the River and into the Trees  by Ernest Hemingway. Those who know me know that I love Papa, both the author and my own papa, who loved Hemingway and passed that on to me. I love his concise style. 

I have already read up most of his more celebrated works, and so I picked this one to read. Published in 1950 when Hemingway was past his glory days and writing narrators who were basically himself, I was disappointed in this one. Set in Venice, it's about the love affair of a 50-year-old colonel and a 19-year-old young woman. If that weren't cringe enough, he calls her "Daughter" and they spend most of their time with him telling her war stories and her being fascinated. And of course, the colonel drinks any time he is awake and possibly in his sleep as well. He is dying and that lends a bittersweet air to the tale, but that wasn't enough to make it believable or moving, in my view. I will say that, despite his talents having rusted, he is still Hemingway, and his writing, despite uncharacteristic lapses, is still wonderful in places. I don't recommend this book, but it's fine as a source for our List, and I am glad to have read it, even though I didn't enjoy the reading of it that much, if that makes sense. (There is also a beginning and ending section about a duck hunt, in which the narrator uses a hen tied to a string so that she will call and lure the ducks overhead to come in and be shot. All Renata, the love interest in this book, ever does is adore her older lover, and his destruction is entirely self-inflicted, but it does not surprise me that Hemingway at his worst would use this device.)

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and visit Venice, it's a wonderful place from all I hear. This prompt stays active through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

ages

ceiling

dreams

drink

ducks

forget

fruit

handsome

ice

lovely

messiness

pine

rough

sleepy

stones

telescope

uniform

Venice

water

wind

Oasis

 

Well ducks, it was the place to gather in those days.

There were ceiling fans that made one think 

that Baron Von Richtofen might fly in at any moment. 

I wondered whether a man wearing coveralls had to climb

 up on a ladder each morning

to heave the blades into motion.

They served a concoction of fruit, gin, crushed ice,

the low notes from Hernando's Hideaway, and who knew

what else. It tasted like children's party punch

but made our high perches start to  pitch

on the rough seas beneath our jelly legs.

Down some white stone stairs, there was a blue pond

someone had stocked with mallards, as green and gold

as my jewelry. They were free to fly

but could never leave--the desert

would have turned them to cardboard.

We slept with scorpion nets. One night I dreamt

that a handsome man in a uniform of water lay with me,

told me my hair was good rope from India, and

that I had been a snake charmer

in a previous life. He kissed me and it stung.

Ah, love, there you are looking at me through your new

telescope, your young face behind the lens like an egg.

I gave up gin, and traveling, and most other things long ago.

Now I'm talking to you with my bird beak,

free to choose but forbidden to leave

except via packing box, to be sent by air mail over the dunes

to the oasis bar, c/o my younger self, cash on delivery, payable

in florins, code phrase "wing walker." The Baron will be there waiting.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Across the River and into the Trees

Music: Hernando's Hideaway

Iris Indigo

 

Iris Indigo used to sing on shore and shipboard

with the voice given her by some broken, incandescent god

now and in the hour of her death, amen. 

Loved by the moneyed and shanghaied, 

tuxedoed and tommyrotters,

Iris Indigo

indiglorious

into everything,

indi gone. 

_______

for dverse quadrille monday "indigo"

Music: Melody Gardot La Llorona