The Day the World Ends by Ethan Coen: Review

Have you ever read a book that, more than anything else, sparked insane curiosity about the author?

If not, take a gander at lauded writer-director Ethan Coen's newest poetry collection The Day the World Ends.  You might be surprised by the persona this collection appears to convey, and I guarantee you'll be intrigued.

It's possibly inevitable that when reading any poet's anthology, we'll be tempted to infer much (too much) about the character of the poet.  After all, this is perhaps the most intimate genre, and - at least in my experience - it often reveals more about the psyche of the poet than he or she may even apprehend.

And, trust me, this book will tweak your curiosity in that regard.  I mean, we think we know the guy somewhat: Fargo, Raising Arizona (my personal favorite), Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, and No Country For Old Men are modern American classics, no?  He wrote them, right?  So we can infer much about his tastes and interests via these films, can't we?

Really though, not so much.  Perhaps.

Ethan Coen.

Simply by viewing the Coen brothers' most popular cinematic offerings, you might assume that this writer isn't afraid to dirty his hands in the baser aspects of human nature.  And you'd be spot-on correct.

But all you'd have to do is read this collection to come to new conclusions.  Juxtaposing the pastoral with the profane, here, Ethan Coen offers a much more intimately personal vision than any character-driven film could provide. 

Yet any conclusions we readers might come to may be all wrong.  As I read through this collection, I vacillated between feeling that I was encountering a somewhat puerile and slightly self-obsessed ego and that I was being duped, manipulated by a trickster masquerading as that mind.  Was Ethan Coen having a go at me or was this really his thinking, his parsing of the world in words?

Either way though, I did feel intrigued.  And, for the moments I was reading his poems, be they ever so bawdy limericks or poignant free verse reflections on the fleeting nature of inspiration, I also felt diverted and occasionally charmed, especially by his less metrical, less forced-rhyme-y, and - for this reader - more earnest offerings.

If you're a fan of the Coen brothers' films, then this collection of poems will certainly provide a new perspective on a brilliant cinematic mind.  Sample the poems at The Day the World Ends page on Amazon. or on scrbd.

I'm grateful to its publishers, the Broadway Paperbacks imprint of Crown Publishing, for offering me a copy to review.

MFB,
L

My action:  One reminder from Mr. Coen's collection?  A poem can be about anything, no matter how mundane or conventionally unlovely.  So while I'm home sick today, in the few moments I'm lucid, I'm planning to visually scan each room I'm in and then gently plumb my memory for at least fifty new poem-prompts about quotidian or unlikely topics.  Then I'll try exploring a few, just for the puzzle-ish fun of it.  Possibly when I am possessed of wider mental bandwidth, though.

To Join The Lost by Seth Steinzor: What She Read Review

I'll say this: I admire Seth Steinzor for pursuing his passion with this book.  His own admiration for Dante's Divine Comedy shines on every page of this unique new fiction, and his desire to bring that master work back to modern life is certainly a laudable one as well.

To be sure, To Join The Lost, Steinzor's modern re-imagining of Dante's Inferno, returned me to that classic with a contemporary spin.  If such an updated literary undertaking is on your agenda this year, then you might find this narrative poem a worthy read.

Chock full of 20th century historical references (imagine Dante's Hell peopled with the likes of Bobby Kennedy, Adolf Hitler, and James Joyce, among others), Steinzor's journey with Dante as his guide funhouse-mirrors the famous poet's own fictional journey.  Plot parallels abound, and I suspect that at least a passing acquaintance with the original would benefit any reader considering this new work as well. 

Happily for me, I recently re-acquainted myself with a light-hearted graphic reimagining of the Divine Comedy, and I did read a more "serious" translation back in college, so I found this contemporary version fairly easy to follow and even grinned from time to time at Steinzor's recastings of Dante's 'crimes and punishments'.

All in all, this happened to be one of those reading experiences when I wanted to find more personal and intellectual satisfaction in a book than I did, but I do not necessarily fault Mr. Steinzor for it.  I do believe that this work could offer much to the right person at the right time, so if you're already a fan of Dante or hoping to find a more accessible entry into his work, you might pick this one up and give it a go. 

Ready to sample a chapter?  Head on over to Seth Steinzor's website.

Want a second opinion?  Hop onto the To Join The Lost blog tour.

Ready to buy?  Here's how.

MFB,
L

p.s. Gratitude to TLC Book Tours and to Mr. Steinzor for offering me a perusal copy.

My action:  Mr. Steinzor's work has convinced me: I simply must return to Dante again this summer.

I feel like I've betrayed my best friends.

                 

Rumi, Coleman, Vincent:  I'm sorry.  You didn't deserve it.

And I'm beginning to see that for me, it's best not to read an entire anthology at once: All the poems blur together and I find myself frustrated by the ones with which I don't connect.  Do you ever feel the same?

This week, I went cover to cover with 20th century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Lyrics and Coleman Barks's volume of translations of the 13th century Sufi mystic poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi entitled Rumi: Bridge to the Soul. 

Beautiful poems pepper the Millay collection, and Rumi's ecstatic cryptic verses - in Barks's perfect tone - are like the most beautiful Pilobolus dance you've ever seen: seeming inscrutable but emotionally mesmerizing. If you experience them on their own terms without over-thinking them, you'll find yourself deepened spiritually without understanding exactly how you got there. 

And in some ways, the Millay poems - many excerpts taken out of their context for this collection - felt similarly disorienting and - to be honest - a bit thin and trite, and sadly without much psychic payoff.  That's possibly less a measure of their innate value than of what happens when an editor clips snippets from whole works and when a reader moves swiftly from one to the next.

So, I'll restate: I do believe I did all these poems a disservice by attempting to swallow so many at once; my own gluttony brought on literary indigestion.

Ordinarily, when I encounter a poem on its own, I offer much more of myself to it, freely giving my attention from start to finish, fully expecting beauty and brilliance.  Slamming through these collections in a fit of voracious consumption didn't allow for that opening to individuals. 

In fact, when I was half way through this feast, I asked a book-blogger pal on ActionReaders.com for advice on how to keep focused on each poem, and she suggested taking two minutes out to reflect and summarize after each one.  This helped quite a bit, but still, the experience in memory feels and looks like a big clump of grass clippings mowed down and piled up.  All the tiny new clovers and buttercups, the verdant stems of new grass stretching toward the sun that poems should be have collapsed in my memory due to my own overly programmatic attempt to raze them all at once, in neat little rows, en masse.  You can take the reader out of suburbia, but... I suppose.

Actions:  
1. I will attend to my own process and - at least for the time being - seek out a poem a day, all year long, but let go of the misguided need to read whole books of poetry. 

2. Heartened by last week's Poem In Your Pocket Day, I'm looking to team up with a few intrepid bloggers to establish a weekly Sunday Poem Hop... That way, we can say hello to each other on what's a fairly leisurely day for most, and do a quick peruse of fine poems to return to all week.  Anybody out there want to ante up early?  We'll start on May 1st!

MFB, one at a time,
L

Want a taste of the Rumi & the Millay, one or two pocket-worthy poems?

Poem In Your Pocket Day tomorrow. Today: "Thanks".

And my thanks to the wonderful Jackie of Jackie Is Reading for offering this poem not only to us bloggers but to her entire school!  She performed it in honor of National Poetry Month, and blogged about her experience as well as all the other actions she's taken on poetry's behalf this month.

I hope you'll consider stopping by tomorrow to join us with your own contribution for our Poem In Your Pocket Day Challenge.

And, no, you don't have to sign up, nor must you have a blog or website, in order to participate!  Just stop on by, post your poem, and invite your friends to do the same.   Then hop around blissfully gathering word-bouquets from around the world.

MFB,  and looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!

L

Here it is:

Thanks

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

smiling by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is

                                 - W. S. Merwin

From Migration: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Copyright © 1988 by W. S. Merwin. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

p.s.  Bonus for Pocket Poem Participants:  If you email me (actionreaders@gmail.com) or sign up as a member & then join our group at ActionReaders.com, I'll enter you to win one of the two stellar poetry collections pictured above.

Bright Wings defy words.

Here's a book you would have thought couldn't lose:  Billy Collins edits poems about birds - both modern and classic - while David Allen Sibley provides the gorgeous watercolor-gouache illustrations. 

And yet.

A book of poems is a dark wonder.

A bird is a light spark.

Bird by bird cannot equal word by word.

This is what I learned.

We come upon birds one - or perhaps a flock, and a few - at a time.  So maybe 100 is too many, too much: stunning in aggregate, but overwhelming when we attempt to pick out one, then one, then one, and admire each for its singularity. 

Surfeit.  That may be at play here. 

And then of all 100 in such a large flock, there are bound to be the singularly beautiful, hardy specimens as well as the ruddy runts.  Maybe that happened too.

Yet I also wonder if with Collins's choice to purposely leap over the 'best of the best' (you won't find "The Wild Swans at Coole" or "The Windhover" or "Stripping and Putting On" here) to leave room for the plethora of lesser-read choices, he may have stumbled.  Turns out, it's not enough to write an earnest, clean poem describing a bird.  Instead, you need the richness, the resonance of a poem that's about whatever it's about and luminous on its own terms, but fueled by - or simply brushed by - the magic of the bird. (like the aforementioned Yeats and Hopkins and Swenson ones)

Some of the poems here are like that, but many are just poems with birds as subjects and very few sing through to the soul the way you'd want a poem to do.

Among the strong elements that still made Bright Wings worth reading, and for which I'm giving it a four out of five stars (my reasoning: a book of decent poems turns out to be far richer and deeper a reading experience than a slight, light thriller or comedy any day - and it lasts longer too.  Plus, this would make a lovely and thoughtful gift for any bird- and poetry- loving friend.):

*  Collins's introduction is worth the price of admission: He's such a strong prose stylist and briefly takes us on a tour of bird poems over the centuries, muses on why we so often try to capture these ineffable beings on paper.
*  Sibley's illustrations, though in this case somehow less awe-inspiring than when I gaze at his bird books, which I could do for hours, occasionally sing.  (If you don't have his bird books, know this: they are a wonder, and worth the investment for inspiration alone.  Start with his field guides, if you live in North America; otherwise, his guide to birds published by Audubon will do nicely.)
* Remembering how strong Jane Hirschfield's poems can be, and Mary Oliver, and David Wagoner, and Robert Penn Warren: worth the ride. 
* For me - and of course, poetry can be the most subjective of reading experiences - about 1/3 of the poems offered insight, something new and potentially enduring.  Perhaps my expectations for the whole collection were a tad too high is all.

And here's another thing I learned, and learning's why we read, in part:  The wonder of birds is ineffable in almost every case.  So just enjoy them as they are, pen your own poems for your own view, and let them go.  If a birdish poem works, truly moves through to a surprising truth, then the Muses have blessed you.  But don't think that just because birds are inspiring, your poem will be inspired.  You can't hold the winged ones for long anyway, and if you try and succeed, a captured bird's a bittersweet triumph after all.

Now:  a poem from this anthology that defies the trend I described earlier.  It occurs in the intro., and stunned me speechless.  I hadn't run across poet Ruth L. Schwartz before either... Finding her might be well worth wading through all the rest...

"The Swan at Edgewater Park"

Isn't one of your prissy rich people's swans
Wouldn't be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms
   in its tidal fringe
Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
   into the body of a Great Lake,
Swilling whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,
While Clevelanders walk by saying Look
   at that big duck!
Beauty isn't the point here; of course
   the swan is beautiful,
But not like Lorie at 16, when
Everything was possible - no
More like Lorie at 27
Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,
Her kid with asthma watching TV,
The boyfriend who doesnt' know yet she's gonna
Leave him, washing his car out back - and
He's a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and
It's not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he
Really does, he loves them both -
That's the kind of swan this is.

What'll I do?
1.  Look up what's happening at Audubon.  Then, next month, attend one local Audubon meeting, and/or volunteer for Audubon in some way.
2.  While in CA, make sure to take a birding walk in the Baylands.
3.  Draw a bird this week.  Post the results in my March Story.

MFB on bright wings,
L

Get it at:

FYI:  Girl power scale... 35 poems by women, 76 poems by men.  Just counting...