Tag: poetry

Quote for the Day: August 12th, 2021

Home Body by Rupi Kaur

i want a parade

i want music

i want confetti

i want a marching band

for the ones surviving in silence

i want a standing ovation

for every person who

wakes up and moves toward the sun

when there is a shadow

pulling them back on the inside

People in the book world are always giving Rupi Kaur a hard time. They say her poetry isn’t actually poetry. It’s too sanitized. It’s too accessible. Well pardon the f&$! out of me, but I don’t think you should need an MFA to be able to access poetry. Maybe it’s jealousy? Maybe they’re pissed that Ms. Kaur is out here stacking up paper while twelve people in the entire world are telling them they’re the next Emerson? I don’t know and I don’t really care. If something someone reads resonates with them and makes them feel something, then damn the literati and their thinly-veiled colonialism. Mazel tov.

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

All Aboard the ARC: Machete: Poems by Tomás Q. Morín

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

I’m going to be honest with you. When I first started reading Morín’s forthcoming collection Machete, I didn’t think I was going to like it—and then it snuck up on me. Pretty soon, I couldn’t stop drinking in words, even when they were sharper than a mouth full of knives. Machete is one of those collections poised to become era-defining, and I think if we somehow make it past climate change and the threat of nuclear proliferation we’ll remember it as one of the essential works of the pandemic. With its tonal shifts, manic ebullience, and hyper focus on finding the sublime in the quotidian, it is the perfect read for a world that has been forced to stand still even while it’s on fire. I can’t wait to put it in people’s hands.

Machete: Poems is due to be released on October 12th of this year and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

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

Quote for the Day: July 24th, 2021

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

One of the reasons I love Mary Oliver and her poetry so much is she gives you, me, all of us, permission to be the most authentic versions of ourselves. We can shed the artifice, the smoke and mirrors, the self-flagellation. We can allow ourselves to exist without imposing legalistic strictures on who we are and how we’re supposed to behave. We can be wild, in the purest sense. And how freeing that thought is.

We can shed the artifice, the smoke and mirrors, the self-flagellation. We can allow ourselves to exist without imposing legalistic strictures on who we are and how we’re supposed to behave. We can be wild, in the purest sense.

Sometimes I read Mary Oliver when I need a dose of self-forgiveness. The world teaches us to feel shame, to loathe and condemn, but that is not in our original design. It is okay to just be. For anyone looking for a good place to start reading Mary Oliver’s oeuvre, I’d personally recommend Devotions, because it includes work from all of her previous collections of poetry.

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

All Aboard the ARC: A Fine Yellow Dust: Poems by Laura Apol

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

Expected Release Date: August 1st, 2021

Publisher: Michigan State University Press

Review

Losing someone you love is hard. Losing a child is arguably the worst thing that can happen to a person during their lifetime. Losing a child to suicide is nearly unimaginable, at least until it happens to you.

In A Fine Yellow Dust, Laura Apol has given us a chronicle in verse of her first grief-year, filled with staccato bursts of anguish, confusion, longing, and finally, a tacit acceptance. She shows us that grief is not a process that ever really reaches completion, but instead is something that you learn to carry with you, and how writing through your pain can be both a deliberate act of remembering as well as a testament to what you’ve lost. Reading Apol’s collection brought to my mind people I’ve lost over the years, and in remembering them through her words, I became a little lighter, a little freer, myself. Please read this.

She [Apol] shows us that grief is not a process that ever really reaches completion, but instead is something that you learn to carry with you, and how writing through your pain can be both a deliberate act of remembering as well as a testament to what you’ve lost.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Fine Yellow Dust: Poems is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

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

Quote for the Day: July 22nd, 2021

here is my hand. i am not afraid of the night.

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems by Sonia Sanchez

When I first read the collection from which today’s quote is taken, I had a hard time getting through it. Some of the poems, some of the lines, made no sense to me. I do not like the feeling of grappling for purchase in the dark. I prefer spotlights lighting my path, illuminating the forest floor—guiding me home. I didn’t get it.

I do not like the feeling of grappling for purchase in the dark. I prefer spotlights lighting my path, illuminating the forest floor—guiding me home.

I mined the depths of the page, demanding it to reveal its secrets to me. But you can’t make demands of poetry any more than you can make demands of God. I had to be patient. I had to listen, utilizing sound when sight proved elusive. There is nothing more satisfying in the entire world than allowing a poem to reveal to you its truths. Some poems I have read dozens of times, over handfuls of years, before they have deigned to speak to me. It’s always worth the wait.

…you can’t make demands of poetry any more than you can make demands of God.

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

Quote for the Day: July 21st, 2021

BY EMILY BERL/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX.
MYLES PHOTOGRAPHED IN WEST HOLLYWOOD IN 2016.

Movies have caused me to become / an artist. I guess I simply / believe that life is not / enough. I spin dreams / of the quotidian out of words I / could not help but choose.

I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems by Eileen Myles

Myles has always, ever since they first came on the scene, been a master of language. I love the way the artist’s prerogative is characterized here, as something that cannot be chosen, that some other force outside one’s consciousness does the choosing for them.

I love the way the artist’s prerogative is characterized here, as something that cannot be chosen, that some other force outside one’s consciousness does the choosing for them.

I remember reading years ago about someone asking Stephen King why he wrote such horrific stories, and his reply being something along the lines of questioning them as to why they thought he would be able to choose what he wrote.

There is something magical about writing, about any creative outlet really, and also something grueling—fierce and terrible and insistent. Sometimes there’s something you just have to get on paper or you know you’ll combust. A character or a line or an image, something fleeting yet enormous, that demands to be made flesh. So you obey. You commit to memory the thing that lives inside you and hope that eventually it will be sated.

Sometimes there’s something you just have to get on paper or you know you’ll combust. A character or a line or an image, something fleeting yet enormous, that demands to be made flesh. So you obey. You commit to memory the thing that lives inside you and hope that eventually it will be sated.

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

All Hail Halsey: New Baby, New Beats

Ashley Frangipane, otherwise known as global superstar Halsey, has been quite busy lately. They dropped their third full-length LP Manic in January of last year. 2020 also brought us collaborations between Halsey and Kelsea Ballerini (the other girl), Juice WRLD (Life’s a Mess; R.I.P.), and Marshmello (Be Kind).

As if this wasn’t already a bountiful Halsey harvest, she also released her first collection of poetry, I Would Leave Me If I Could, in November.

Now, Halsey has welcomed their first child with boyfriend Alev Aydin, named Ender Ridley Aydin. Emergent motherhood must bolster creativity in some way, because shortly after giving birth, Halsey also surprised us with news of the release date for their new album, due out on August 27th, titled If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. Just from the title alone, we can probably anticipate fare we’ve come to expect (and adore) from Halsey: angst tinged with tenderness, stories of survival, and declarations of love steeped in her own mythos.

Just from the title alone, we can probably anticipate fare we’ve come to expect (and adore) from Halsey: angst tinged with tenderness, stories of survival, and declarations of love steeped in her own mythos.

How are we supposed to handle all of this? I know 2020 gave a lot of us more time to create, but I don’t know if I can emotionally process new bodies of work by Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, and now Halsey all in one year. This isn’t even mentioning Red (Taylor’s Version) due out in the fall, which is sure to make mincemeat of our hearts. If only I could get someone to fall in love with me and break my heart before then, so I could really appreciate the album the way it was meant to be appreciated.

I guess I’ll have to find a way to cope. It looks like Adele and Rihanna are hell-bent on making us wait for new material, and at this point I can only say thank God, because that would really be too much.

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

Quote for the Day: July 18th, 2021

Give me refuge from my craze

Let there be understanding where there was once

anger

Let me be disciplined where I used to be

impulsive

Let me be strong when I want to cave in and cry

Help me to forgive but retain the wisdom that

pain has taught me

Give me solace when my mind knows no rest

Stop the self-indulgent need to seek vengeance

What I have allowed to diminish me thus far

doesn’t deserve the power

I want to love life like I once did

All of this is powerful, but the part that really resonates with me is Help me to forgive but retain the wisdom that pain has taught me. It reminds me of the words by Ovid, Someday this pain will be useful to you. And why should we expect any less of pain? After all, isn’t the only benefit of pain the knowledge we glean from it? In the moment, it shatters us, but what matters is what we create from the shards. Someone somewhere is going to read this and roll their eyes, but let them. Pain teaches us how to be in pain—how to survive it, to make it through to the other side.

In the moment, it [pain] shatters us, but what matters is what we create from the shards.

Every day, someone in the world makes it through something they thought would be unendurable; wear those moments in your life like armor. And I’m not just talking about physical pain. I’ve had three kidney stones, and not one of them was more painful than the unrequited loves I’ve held close at night while crying silently into my pillow.

Every day, someone in the world makes it through something they thought would be unendurable; wear those moments in your life like armor.

What I want for you, what I want for myself, what I want for all of us, is to quit suppressing the truths that pain teaches us. Pain will be there no matter what, and if we allow it to make us stronger, it might hurt a little less the next time. Take care, my friends.

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