This is one of those books I’d heard about for years. I knew it was a groundbreaking work, but I never really thought about checking it out until last month. I was looking for a different book in the YA section of one of my local libraries (Keturah and Lord Death, by Martine Leavitt; I […]
So, I’ve been spending more time these past few months over at IB, but I promise I haven’t forgotten La-La Land. New Postcards are on the way, including reviews of the 80s classic Annie on my Mind, by Nancy Garden, and the more recent Lost Voices trilogy, by Sarah Porter. In the meantime, I present the following video discussion between myself […]
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Alice on Board. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012. 288 pgs. Kindle Edition. . . . . . . . . Or: Adventures on the Murphy’s Law Cruise Or: Alice McKinley’s Guide to All the Problems You Might Encounter While Working on a Cruise Ship and How to Handle Them. [...]
Today’s Double features two mermaid books, and you know what that means – the return of the Tide Metaphor! First up, Seanan McGuire. One Salt Sea. New York: DAW Books, 2011. 354 pgs. A few disclaimers: I follow and occasionally interact with the author via her LiveJournal blog. Whereas, like most people, I usually start [...]
Juliet Marillier. Cybele’s Secret. New York: Knopf, 2008. 424 pgs. This is the sequel to Marillier’s Wildwood Dancing, set six years later and focused — seemingly — on much more this-worldly intrigues. Paula, the second-youngest of the five dancing sisters, is invited to join her father on a merchant voyage from Transylvania to Istanbul, where [...]
WARNING: This post contains significant levels of nostalgic melodrama, tempered somewhat with retrospective sarcasm. Also, possible spoilers for any of the books mentioned (see hover text). Proceed with caution. . . . . . . . . Ah, Sweet Valley. It’s more than just a town; it’s a state of mind. A mind filled with drama, and [...]
Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. 383 pgs (including the Tony Tanner intro). Oh la, the time carriage has arrived!—and the driver is most impatient to return to her native era. Time to don my literary nerd bonnet! Or: Buckle up, kids – academicky post is going to be academicky. . . [...]
By: Claudette Young,
on 4/24/2012
Skírnismál, one of the poems in the Poetic Edda. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Everyone knows love and its opposite. There are love poems galore because each person experiences it differently. On the flip side, each person has experienced the other side of love; the one that brings pain/suffering instead of continued joy.
Poetic Asides asks participants in its Poem-A-Day Challenge to tackle the subject of love today. It’s Two For Tuesday with a call for a love poem and an anti-love poem. Wait for it. The scramble is on, with the upshot being poets throwing poems by the handful into that cyber ring.
I have to ask forgiveness on this one, for it brings both aspects together into one poem. I hope you enjoy it. Later I’ll probably feel guilt and do at least one more poem for the day.
Memory serves to recreate that moment
When temptation and speculation began
With a look, an accidental touch, a word.
Wearing your autumn fire in your hair
You smiled with dark brown eyes,
Laughing at something said by another.
I watched, knowing love again
Within a heart made cynical by life.
That moment when you turned and sighed,
Snuggled, saying you wanted to be kissed.
Ah, how could you know my thrill in that
Instant of being wanted by languid request.
A time of sweet refrain marched to its tune,
Leaving me unprepared of its ending too soon.
Guilt and hurt reprised tamped cynicism,
Bringing an understanding of full meaning,
To one who’d never been allowed this life
With another to share all my joys and strife.
© Claudette J. Young 2012
Penni Russon. Undine. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2006. Random House Australia, 2004. 326 pgs. Please forgive the following cheesy and way-too-obvious metaphors, but the experience of reading Undine was like being in the ocean. My overall feelings about the story moved back and forth like a tide, and in some of those ebb moments I [...]
Lisa Mantchev. Eyes Like Stars. New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2009. 356 pgs. I’m counting this in the Fantasy category of “Quest the second,” in the Once Upon a Time challenge. SETTING: The Théâtre Illuminata, where all the plays ever written are performed not by actors, but by the living, breathing characters themselves. PEOPLE: Bertie [...]
I liked it. There were some issues, but overall I liked it. What I loved: Jennifer Lawrence’s performance — her reactions, her facial expressions, were very believable and true to Katniss. Woody Harrelson as Haymitch. I honestly hadn’t known who’d play that part, but as soon as he entered the train car, I happily replaced my [...]
Two more for the End-of-the-World challenge: Hester Velmans’ Isabel of the Whales and Welwyn Wilton Katz’s Whalesinger. Hester Velmans. Isabel of the Whales. New York: Scholastic, 2005. 181 pages. Isabel is out-of-her-mind psyched for her school’s annual fifth-grade whale watch. Her friends tease her about her whale “fetish” — her room is filled with stuffed [...]
Suzanne Collins. Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic, 2009. 391 pages. Suzanne Collins. Mockingjay. New York: Scholastic, 2010. 390 pages. Note: These books deal seriously with war and oppression, and contain a number of violent, gory, disturbing scenes. Not recommended for middle-school age and younger readers. Picture me yesterday morning, butt glued to the armchair as [...]
By: Pearl Lee,
on 8/27/2010
I was walking Toby this evening when he suddenly veered to the right and began pawing at this mound of dirt near an apple tree. As I bent down for a closer look, I realized that it was an empty bottle of Pinot Noir, with its slim neck sticking up above the ground. I was afraid that if I left it alone, another furry creature would come by and possibly crack the bottle open and injure itself. So, I pulled it up out of the ground.
Inside, I found this wine-stained piece of paper, whose contents I’m about to share with you in this post. I don’t know who it’s written by or where it came from, but I do hope that this wasn’t the only bottle buried near my home.
From the moment I realized that the pink-tinted light was fading from my eyelids, I grew excited. Excited to see you. We’ve been separated for ten years now, and it’s been ten years too long. How have you been without me? Were you watching over me every day and night, tasting my bittersweet tears of happiness and pain while I played with our grandchildren? Or do emotions too, exist in heaven, and you found it too difficult to be physically apart from me so you secluded yourself into the room that promised the “passing of ten years in three seconds?” I hope I don’t sound conceited—but you, of all people, know that I didn’t ask that question out of self-pride. I merely asked because it’s what I would have done, if I had to spend ten years away from you.
When we were young and brash, we loved each other fiercely and passionately. But my mother always said that passion love is a fire love, and fires don’t stay lit unless we tend to them. “Fire loves,” she said, “Are not forever, are not steady; they are too extreme. If not cared for, they die down. If given too much kindle, they rage into an inferno that consumes all of the life around it.” We were naïve and busy; completely mesmerized by one another but deeply enthralled in our own activities. We let that fire go.
But our love was different, too.
And that is why I believed it was so hard for me to forget you; impossible for me to watch you blow away like the mere ashes left after a beach bonfire, for me to move on to another fire pit.
Towards the end of our fire love, I had realized that I didn’t want sole fire love in my life. I wanted something more natural, more secure. I thought I didn’t find it with you, so I left. Looking back now, do you think I made the wrong decision? Or did we need the break in order to discover what we truly meant to one another? There wasn’t a day where a memory of you did not flash before my eyes.
During our time apart, I searched for the love that my mother described as the best kind of love: water love. Water is simple, pure and, in a river, flows steadily and quietly. It’s a peaceful love. And I did find this love, with someone else, while we were apart. But my mother never mentioned to me that this stream of water love could also overflow, choke, and drown the surrounding life that feeds into it. I thought this was the type of love that was true, the type of love that I had been waiting for, so I ignored the thunderstorms and the rain. I sat nearby and watched helplessly as the water inched rapidly higher. I permitted myself to be drawn into its currents over and over and allowed its water to enter my lungs on so many occasions. And I almost succumbed entirely to its black depths. But I, whose lion sign slumbered deeply for years, finally rose and cried out against such constriction. Too much water, I learned, suppressed life.
After so many years in the land of perpetual moisture, I ran away, stopping at the base of a tall, old tree, whose leaves were glittering with dew underneath the diamond sky. It was there that I rested and replenished, squeezing my lungs of the remaining black water. One morning, while my face was tilted to count the blessed rays of the sun against my skin, I heard footsteps behind me. And then
By: Chud Tsankov,
on 5/25/2009
By: Rebecca,
on 4/28/2008
Amanda Smith Barusch, PhD, has been teaching and researching in the field of aging for over 25 years.
Most of those were spent on the faculty of the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. She now serves as Professor and Head of Department of Social Work and Community Development at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Her most recent book, Love Stories of Later Life: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Romance, uses original research to question what love and romance mean in seniors’ lives. The book is both a glimpse into a world many people didn’t know existed, that of romantic love in later life, and an important tool designed to increase self-awareness and relationship-building. In the post below we excerpt from the beginning of Love Stories of Later Life.
Romantic experiences define character in ways that are so subtle that they might go undetected and so varied that they defy generalization. Love opens the door to our potential and helps shape the people we become. The work reported in this book describes four ways that love shapes our lives and ourselves.
First, the intense unsettling experiences that come with romantic love create opportunities for personal insight. Coupled with self-reflection, intense romantic experiences can teach us about ourselves, our needs, our vulnerabilities, and our demons. …these lessons can change a person’s approach to life and to love.
Second, love is a training ground for relationship skills. We inevitably learn from interactions with our partners. Usually, these lessons are adaptive, teaching the value of compromise and the importance of reciprocity. We learn how to communicate our love. Particularly in late life, we confront the boundaries of our personal control and we learn about letting go. But damaging lessons arise when romantic interactions are marked by abuse, neglect or manipulation, which can teach us to devalue our selves and retreat from engagement with others.
Third, love stretches us beyond our comfort zones, revealing capabilities we did not know we had. We see this in the uncharacteristic acts committed when we are deeply infatuated. Desperately in love, we discover personal capacities we never knew were there. Love can also stretch us by exposing us to different ways of being, as when we meet a person unlike anyone else we have ever loved and, in loving them, are transformed.
Finally, love changes the very course of our lives. Our choice of romantic partners can determine what jobs we pursue, where we will live, whether or not we have children. In midlife, people who have not experienced love as they have long imagined it may set out on a quest – some might call it a “midlife crisis” — to satisfy this burning need.
As a gerontologist, I have long felt the most interesting part of human development takes place in late life. Some changes are so gentle and slow that we do not notice them for decades. And most young people have too much on their plates to spend time in contemplation. Besides that their reminiscences are awfully short! Late life provides the opportunity and the perspective to observe changes that romantic love has made in our lives and our persons. Then one day we turn around and realize that even in life’s final decades some of us are still changing!
By: Destiny Mae,
on 10/21/2007
Skipper loves comic books and he has a ton of them in his room.He loves a comic book series called "The Masked Mutant" which is about a mutant who is trying to rule the universe!But then one day when he is going to the library he sees this really weird place it was kind of cool too it was reddish pink and had yellow and blue in it too..It looked like The Masked Mutant's secret headquarters!!!Did the Masked Mutant really live in this town??
What I like about the story is it is really awesome that this kid collects comics,most people these days don't collect or keep comic books anymore his comic books are cool it would just be nicer if R.L used "The Tick" or Spiderman" or "Batman" then that would be really awesome.What I also like about the story is the story seemed so long!Lots of stories seem really short and not really much of a story.
Did I get anything wrong re: May and Jazz’s relationship?
Interesting…and the sun will come out tomorrow….
Yay! The sun is always welcome :)