Keri’s Poem in Honor of National Poetry Month

Buttercups and Daisies

 ~Mary Howitt

Buttercups and daisies-

Oh the pretty flowers,

Coming ere the springtime

To tell of sunny hours.

While the trees are leafless,

While the fields are bare,

Buttercups and daisies

Spring up here and there.

 

Ere the snowdrop peepeth,

Ere the croscus bold,

Ere the early primrose

Opes its paly gold,

Somewhere on a sunny bank

Buttercups are bright;

Somewhere ‘mong the frozen grass

Peeps the daisy white.

 

Little hardy flowers

Like to children poor,

Playing in their sturdy health

By their mother’s door:

Purple with the north wind,

Yet alert and bold;

Fearing not and caring not,

Though they be a-cold.

 

What to them is weather!

What are stormy showers!

Buttercups and daisies

Are these human flowers!

He who gave them hardship

And a life of care,

Gave them likewise hardy strength,

And patient hearts, to bear.

 

Welcome yellow buttercups,

Welcome daisies white,

Ye are in my spirit

Visioned, a delight!

Coming ere the springtime

Of sunny hours to tell-

Speaking to our hearts of Him

Who doeth all things well.

Poe’s Children: The New Horror: An Anthology Reviewed by Tiffany Chacon

“Poe’s Children: The New Horror: An Anthology” by author Peter Straub is an amazingly diverse collection of short stories by many of horror’s favorite sons (and daughters).  This is Straub’s attempt to show case what he considers “the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.” Included in this fantastic smorgasbord of the outré are:
The Bees Dan Chaon
Cleopatra Brimstone Elizabeth Hand
The Man on the Ceiling Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem
The Great God Pan M. John Harrison
The Voice of the Beach Ramsey Campbell
Body Brian Evenson
Louise’s Ghost Kelly Link
The Sadness of Detail Jonathan Caroll
Leda M. Rickert
In Praise of Folly Thomas Tessier
Plot Twist David J. Schow
The Two Sams Glen Hirshberg
Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story Thomas Ligotti
Unearthed Benjamin Percy
Gardner of Heart Bradford Morrow
Little Red’s Tango Peter Straub
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet Stephen King
20th Century Ghost Joe Hill
The Green Glass Sea Ellen Klages
The Kiss Tia V. Travis
Black Dust Graham Joyce
October in the Chair Neil Gaiman
Missolonghi 1824 John Crowley
Insect Dreams Rosilind Palermo Stevenson

Many of these titles would not generally be classified as “horror” per say by purists of that genre; however those that did differ lent a very special flavor and an almost ethereal theme to the other more classic horror titles in this collection.  One of my favorite stories was Stephen King’s “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet” (1984)—this story features a writer who suffers from the paranoid delusion that an imp inhabits his typewriter. It illustrates the infectious nature of insanity and the danger and devastation that it awards to those unlucky enough to have caught this contagion.
All in all the collection “Poe’s Children” is an excellent anthology.

If you liked this title you might want to try:
“History Is Dead: A Zombie Anthology” edited by Kim Paffenroth
“Dark Delicacies” edited by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb
“The Years Best fantasy and Horror” by Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, and Ellen Datlow

Tiffany M. Chacon
Library Associate II- Circulation Supervisor

Erika’s Poem in Honor of National Poetry Month

Count Dracula Doesn’t Know He’s Been Walking Around All Night with Spinach in His Teeth

Will someone please just tell him?  It looks so undignified.
The zombies almost mentioned it.  The Headless Horseman tried.
But when he said, “Vhat are you staring at?” they lost their nerve and lied.

It’s been stuck in there for hours now.  It’s getting kind of sick.
I would offer him a toothpick, but he gets this nervous tic
if you ever come too close with any kind of pointed stick.

Well, really.  Can you blame us if we don’t know what to say?
His castle has no mirrors, so I guess it’s there to stay.
What was a vampire doing eating spinach, anyway?

Rex, Adam.  Frankenstein makes a sandwich and other stories you’re sure    to like, because they’re all about monsters, and some of them are also about food…Orlando, FL:  Harcourt, 2006.  Print.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS Reviewed by Stefanie Edwards

Relating the experience of a nine year old boy named Bruno in 1942 Nazi Germany, Boyne attempts to show what the events of the time might have looked like through the eyes of a child. This was one novel I couldn’t quite get a grip on. While I understand what the author was trying to do, I was left empty and unsatisfied.

With the first third of the novel Boyne introduces the various characters, Bruno’s family: Father (high ranking official in the Nazi army), Mother, Gretel (eleven year old sister), along with the various help that is employed to maintain their five story home in Berlin. When the family leaves their home to accompany Father at his new assignment in a place called “Out-With”, everyone must adjust to the new surroundings. While young Bruno can sense the cold, harshness of the environment, he doesn’t understand why. Why a fence divides his family from all the other children. Why everyone on the other side is wearing the same “striped pajamas”. My dilemma with this scenario is buying into the complete naivety and ignorance with which Bruno is portrayed. The gimmick with his not being able to pronounce various words and ideas of his native tongue (such as “Out-With” in place of “Auschwitz” and “fury” in place of “Fuhrer”) is an absurd attempt at irony, especially considering that the pun only works in the American language which they were obviously not actually speaking.

The tedium of listening to a nine year old’s narration began to set in as I reached the second third of the novel, but I admit I was curious enough to want to finally meet “the boy in the striped pajamas” who finally was introduced far too far along in the story. Meeting young Shmuel, sitting on the other side of the fence during an exploration of the grounds one day, turns out to make the long, lonely days in this new place more bearable and even pleasantly exciting for Bruno…and the reader. After many days of meeting and long talks at the fence, Shmuel and Bruno learn that they have many things in common and begin to question why a fence should come in the way of their newfound friendship.

It becomes pretty predictable where the story is going at the last third of the book but I felt too committed in the story to stop. Considering the subject matter of Boyne’s fable, one obviously expects a heart-wrenching, tear-jerking experience. Now, I am by nature an empathetic person who admittedly will readily express such feelings even for fictional characters. The characters in this story are not only supposed to represent a possible reality; the final fate of the two young boys was a terrible one to consider… yet I felt nothing but a matter-of-fact sense that this was “sad”.

Ultimately Boyne failed to develop the characters in a way that I could truly relate with and in turn become truly emotionally invested in. Apparently Boyne wrote this novel in its entirety in only two and a half days on an impulse… perhaps this lack of considerable thought is why there is something missing.

Tiffany’s Poem in Honor of National Poetry Month

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out!

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She’d scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown Bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Grisly bits of beefy roasts…
The garbage rolled down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall…
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold french fries and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sarah Cynthia Slylvia Stout said,
“Ok, I’ll take the garbage out!”
But then, of course, it was too late…
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sarah Stout
And always take the garbage out!

Silverstein, Shel. Where the Sidewalk Ends. 1st. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. Print.

And if you’d like to hear Shel Silverstein read his poem click here.

Stefanie’s Poem in Honor of National Poetry Month

KUBLA KHAN, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

---

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced; Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves: Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 't would win me That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.   “Kubla Khan” written in 1798, is a dream vision, a fragment of a longer poem Coleridge saw in a dream but could not remember in its entirety (he claimed in the preface to the poem that it dissolved from his memory when someone knocked on his door as he was trying to transcribe the poem; Coleridge also wrote that the dream came about while he was under the influence of laudanum, a form of opium that was legal in England at the time).  “Kubla Khan” is more about the creative and imaginative processes and a mystical view of nature than any conventional subject matter, and was likely influenced by Coleridge’s infatuation with fairy tales as a child, as the first five lines of the poem can attest. (World Poets, Volume I; pg. 253) -STEFANIE EDWARDS, LIBRARY ASSOCIATE II

Linette’s Poem in Honor of National Poetry Month

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.

Part Four: Time and EternityXXVII

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,	5
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;	10
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,	15
The cornice but a mound.
Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.	20

- from Bartleby.com

This is one  of my favorite poems.  It depicts death as something not to be feared.  She has made her peace with it and follows death willingly.  I get the feeling that she has lived a long life and is ready for what follows.  These days Death is too often characterized as brutal and gruesome thanks to video games, movies and television.  It’s kind of nice to read a poem and see it in a whole new light.

Linette Neal, Librarian I

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THE DOGS OF BABEL Reviewed by Stefanie Edwards

As a neighbor responds to the anxious, curdling howl of Lexy’s beloved Rhodesian ridgeback, Lorelei, Lexy’s body is found at the base of an overgrown apple tree in her backyard.  The investigation rules out suicide and concludes that the incident was an accident.  Struggling to come to terms with this untimely death of his wife, however, an unsettled feeling leads Paul Iverson to begin an investigation of his own.  Searching for answers, he replays and analyzes any conversations, events, or signs that Lexy may have been trying to give him.  Upon this candid reflection we find that his life was based on seeing things the way he wanted to rather than the way they really were.  Now he must decide whether it’s better to live with the fond memories he had created on the surface or to dig into the ugly truth.

Iverson determines that the only way to know what really happened is to ask a witness, someone who was with Lexy before, during, and after that horrifying afternoon…Lorelei.  A linguistics professor, Iverson comes up with the idea of teaching his dog to talk.  Despite the dismay, ridicule, and expressed concerns of his friends and coworkers, Iverson becomes consumed with this undertaking.

The reading becomes a bit disturbing when Iverson learns about and meets with an underground organization that experiment with animal linguistics.  While artfully capturing your curiosity to discover the possibilities of science, Parkhurst reveals the dark extremes to which man often takes it.  I personally was horrified when a spectacle of a “successful” experiment was finally unveiled.  Here Parkhurst leaves the reader to judge whether finding the answers Iverson is seeking is truly worth the cost.

From the simple appreciation of the loyalty of a pet, to the empathy for any suffering creature (man or beast; emotional or physical), Dogs of Babel draws out many different levels of emotions.  Between Iverson’s reflections of memories with Lexy and his obsession with getting his dog to speak, Dogs of Babel ultimately boils down to a brilliant narration of a man’s realization that some questions are best left unanswered.

REVIEWED BY: Stefanie Edwards, Library Associate II

April is National Poetry Month

“Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture.” – from Poets.org

 

In honor of National Poetry Month we’ve created a display featuring poetry for all age groups:  children, teen & adult.  There’s something for everyone!  In addition, the Spring Lake Library Staff will post some of their favorite poems this month.

 

For more information on poetry and National Poetry Month visit these sites:

Poets.org – Poetry, Poems, Bios, & More

Poetry (Library of Congress)

The Poetry Society