From the Gram: Do I Need More Books?

As Ariana Grande once famously sang, “I see it. I like it. I want it. I got it.” Was Ariana in a bookstore? I mean, probably.

What a silly question, right? You can never have too many books. People in my life have frequently called me a book hoarder, but I’d like to think I’m a book curator. I am telling the story of my life via the books I choose to own and display. Whether or not that’s just making an excuse, I really don’t care at this point. As Ariana Grande once famously sang, “I see it. I like it. I want it. I got it.” Was Ariana in a bookstore? I mean, probably.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Poem for the Day: September 25th, 2021

Tongues by Justin Danzy

Becoming the raspberry stain on the pink of your cheek,
a tongue’s soft landing spot. Becoming the empty ritual,
what can’t be said. Becoming intercession, my language
becoming yours, the blessing of tongues. Becoming the river
in the belly, implanted language, dead boy’s song. Becoming dry
with manhood. Becoming the doors we’ve closed, those I’ve learned
to open with a tongue. Becoming seen in the body, witnessed, becoming
clarity, the fear of it. Becoming the name I’ve been given,
the honorific, a placeholder. Becoming postured
to my Father’s dilemma, the inherited tongue. Becoming
what I wish I could be on my own. Becoming kept,
becoming stolen, becoming made free to leave when I am not yet ready
to go. Becoming the might of what we serve, the oft-
invisibled. Becoming don’t look back, pillar of salt. Becoming idoled.
Becoming possessed. Becoming the body’s mettle, the tongue’s chisel.
Becoming compass. Becoming the help that I needed, my Father’s hidden
forgiveness. Becoming the secrets I hope to taste in you,
the wounded tongue, braided blood covenant. Becoming forbidden’s
starting point, a bold beginning, the flaying of what I do not yet know I believe.

“Tongues” appears in the September 2021 issue of Poetry, which is now available to buy from newsstands everywhere or to read on the Poetry Foundation’s website.

Quote for the Day: September 25th, 2021

Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer’s day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Quote for the Day: September 24th, 2021

I am still trying to understand how we can think so highly of someone else and so little of ourselves. So, when it feels like every breath leaves a bruise and your hopes are set on the love returning, just know that I wish I could hold you when the darkness feels too great. I wish I could comfort you and remind you the sun will reappear. I wish you could see that all the scars are a reminder; you will survive the ache.
Courtney Peppernell, Pillow Thoughts IV

I apologize that today’s quote is coming later than usual. Life has been pretty hectic for the past couple of days but I want you all to know that I very much appreciate you taking time out of your busy days to read the stuff I post here. All my love, forever and always.

Poem for the Day: September 24th, 2021

*White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006* by Donald Hall

Affirmation by Donald Hall

Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Donald Hall (1928-2018) was considered one of the preeminent writers of his generation. He authored more than fifty books across several genres but he is most well known for his poetry. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2010, which is the highest honor the United States government bestows upon artists and arts patrons.

White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems, 1946-2006, the collection from which today’s poem is taken, was published in 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and is now available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Poem for the Day: September 23rd, 2021

*My Village: Selected Poems 1972-2014* by Wu Sheng and John Balcom (Translator)

American Citizenship by Wu Sheng and John Balcom (Translator)

Out here in the sticks
You rarely encounter such genius:
"Come, come, come to Taiwan U
Go, go, go to the US"
Words passed with envy from mouth to mouth
Giving the hometown high hopes

Then I heard you've become an American citizen
You're very busy
With house payments
Credit cards
You rarely have time to write home
You must know unspeakable hardship
At home, mother
Is busy as always
Covering our tuition
Doing never-ending farm work
                season after season
For you to study abroad and
Leave the family in debt

You ought to remember
                at the end of the year you left
Father, who struggled all his life
In wind and rain, in sorching sun and bitter cold
Died in a car accident
Leaving all life's difficulties
To mother, who can't even read
For more than ten years,
                From morning till night
Our illiterate mother
Has had so much
She wanted me to write and tell you
—how she worried about you

And I ought to tell you
Every time there's a wedding in the village
Mother insists
I write your name
In the register
Because you are the eldest son
Our older brother

You left your backward hometown
More than ten years ago
To become an American citizen
In every airmail letter home
You express your disappointment and anger
At your unsuccessful brothers and sisters

Yes, we've all disappointed you
You're ashamed of us
Like this small plot of land
This stupid plot of land
Which provides you no sense of pride or glory
Because we are unwilling to study
Those proud ABCs
We're only willing to work, struggle and sweat in silence
In our homeland
I heard you've become an American citizen
You're very busy
You must have suffered great hardship
I don't know if you miss mother
                The way she misses you
She's growing older thinking about you
Do you ever think about
The potatoes we ate as kids?
They were cheap and tasty
I don't know why
You are so busy in that foreign land
And for whom

1978

My Village: Selected Poems 1972-2014 was released in 2020 by Zephyr Press and is now available to order wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

All Aboard the ARC: Feel Your Way Through: A Book of Poetry by Kelsea Ballerini

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Kelsea Ballerini is the third singer-celebrity in recent memory to release a poetry collection. Following Lana Del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass and Halsey’s I Would Leave Me If I Could, Ballerini’s Feel Your Way Through is as much a memoir as it is a collection of poetry. It is also delightfully unpretentious and genuine in a way one wouldn’t necessarily expect from an artist who has achieved such success at such a young age.

Poignant, haunting, and yet never overly melancholy, Feel Your Way Through leads the reader on a journey with Ballerini chronicling her life up until now, with all of its fierce loves, heartbreaks, hard knocks, and triumphs. The title itself is revealing and may carry multiple meanings for both readers and Ballerini herself. Feeling one’s way through could refer to moving along a path which you can’t see clearly, so you have to rely on your gut and your instincts to keep from stumbling. It also could be taken more literally, urging readers to lead with their hearts even when it hurts.

Written with a seasoned songwriter’s ear for rhythm, this deeply heartfelt and startlingly intimate collection is sure to delight long-time Ballerini fans as well as people who haven’t listened to her music.

Written with a seasoned songwriter’s ear for rhythm, this deeply heartfelt and startlingly intimate collection is sure to delight long-time Ballerini fans as well as people who haven’t listened to her music. I can confidently say that this is a book I’ll be eagerly putting in the hands of my customers.

Feel Your Way Through: A Book of Poetry is due to be released on November 16th, 2021 by Ballantine Books and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Quote for the Day: September 23rd, 2021

*Normal People: A Novel* by Sally Rooney

Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.

I think part of Sally Rooney’s magic is that she sometimes expresses the most profound truths about the human experience in the simplest language, in a way that makes you want to close the book, look up at the wall, and mouth wow over and over again. Her sentences are more prayers than anything else.

Poem for the Day: September 22nd, 2021

[The house was just twinkling in the moon light] by Gertrude Stein

The house was just twinkling in the moon light,   
And inside it twinkling with delight,
Is my baby bright.
Twinkling with delight in the house twinkling   
with the moonlight,
Bless my baby bless my baby bright,
Bless my baby twinkling with delight,
In the house twinkling in the moon light,
Her hubby dear loves to cheer when he thinks
and he always thinks when he knows and he always   
knows that his blessed baby wifey is all here and he
is all hers, and sticks to her like burrs, blessed baby

Today’s poem is taken from Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas which was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1999. It is available to order wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter and Instagram @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: September 22nd, 2021

Elegance is achieved when everything superfluous has been discarded, and the archer discovers simplicity and concentration; the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful. The snow is lovely because it has only one color, the sea is lovely because it appears to be a completely flat surface, but both sea and snow are deep and know their own qualities.

The Archer was published in 2020 by Knopf Publishing Group and is available to order wherever books are sold.