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What I've been reading: Books No. 41-42
Aug. 18th, 2020 01:09 pmBook No. 41 was "Selected Poems" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I didn't know much about Dunbar before I read this collection, except that he was a black poet and one of his poems inspired the title of Maya Angelou's memoir, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." I enjoyed this brief volume that is not meant to be comprehensive but rather a sampler of Dunbar's poetry, with a brief introduction that puts his life and work in historical context.
I agree with some other commentators that his works in Southern Black dialect are better, on the whole, than the ones written in standard English. Many of the standard English poems felt stilted, and the imagery and rhythm of the dialect poems are generally livelier. It sounds like a blues song if you read some of his dialect poems out loud, and I love the poems that tell stories. There are exceptions to the rule, however. I really liked one of his standard English poems, "A Summer's Night," especially the lines "Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park/ and hither hastening, like rakes that roam/ with lamps to light their wayward footsteps home/ the fireflies come stagg'ring down the dark."
Among my favorite poems from this collection in dialect were: "An Ante-Bellum Sermon," "A Banjo Song," "A Negro Love Song," "Signs of the Times," "When Malindy Sings," "Little Brown Baby," "A Letter," "A Cabin Tale," "Li'l Gal," and "Possum." Among my favorites in standard English were "Sympathy" (the poem about the caged bird), "A Summer's Night," "Dinah Kneading Dough," "The Haunted Oak," and "Theology."
Book No. 42 was "The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America", eds. Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman. The editors published a collection of essays by immigrants living in the UK and later decided there should be a U.S. edition, and it's the latter one that I read. Wow, what a knockout collection! I recently saw a friend say she hasn't learned her lesson with anthologies, that inevitably there will be good ones and some clunkers. But I thought every single essay in this collection was 5-star. I personally connected better with some and less with others, but they were still all well worth reading.
I felt "Juana Azurduy Versus Christopher Columbus" by Adrian and Sebastian Villar Rojas was a bit more academic in tone (including footnotes) than some of the other less formal essays, and it also didn't reference the U.S. very much except in passing. That's generally not a problem, but the volume is supposed to focus on immigration to the U.S. so it was a bit of an odd fit. Another GoodReads reviewer strongly disliked "Tour Diary" by Basim Usmani, but it was actually among my favorites, largely because it distinguished itself from the other essays in format and tone. As I was reading it, I just kept saying, "Wow, another excellent one!" after every single essay. Highly recommended.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
I agree with some other commentators that his works in Southern Black dialect are better, on the whole, than the ones written in standard English. Many of the standard English poems felt stilted, and the imagery and rhythm of the dialect poems are generally livelier. It sounds like a blues song if you read some of his dialect poems out loud, and I love the poems that tell stories. There are exceptions to the rule, however. I really liked one of his standard English poems, "A Summer's Night," especially the lines "Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park/ and hither hastening, like rakes that roam/ with lamps to light their wayward footsteps home/ the fireflies come stagg'ring down the dark."
Among my favorite poems from this collection in dialect were: "An Ante-Bellum Sermon," "A Banjo Song," "A Negro Love Song," "Signs of the Times," "When Malindy Sings," "Little Brown Baby," "A Letter," "A Cabin Tale," "Li'l Gal," and "Possum." Among my favorites in standard English were "Sympathy" (the poem about the caged bird), "A Summer's Night," "Dinah Kneading Dough," "The Haunted Oak," and "Theology."
Book No. 42 was "The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America", eds. Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman. The editors published a collection of essays by immigrants living in the UK and later decided there should be a U.S. edition, and it's the latter one that I read. Wow, what a knockout collection! I recently saw a friend say she hasn't learned her lesson with anthologies, that inevitably there will be good ones and some clunkers. But I thought every single essay in this collection was 5-star. I personally connected better with some and less with others, but they were still all well worth reading.
I felt "Juana Azurduy Versus Christopher Columbus" by Adrian and Sebastian Villar Rojas was a bit more academic in tone (including footnotes) than some of the other less formal essays, and it also didn't reference the U.S. very much except in passing. That's generally not a problem, but the volume is supposed to focus on immigration to the U.S. so it was a bit of an odd fit. Another GoodReads reviewer strongly disliked "Tour Diary" by Basim Usmani, but it was actually among my favorites, largely because it distinguished itself from the other essays in format and tone. As I was reading it, I just kept saying, "Wow, another excellent one!" after every single essay. Highly recommended.
( The other books I've read so far this year: )
