Daily Archives: April 2, 2009
April is National Poetry Month…
I thought I’d celebrate with a few poems each week this month from my personal collection. Here’s the earliest poem I have which I wrote back in 1989…
An Ocean Scent
1989
As I walk along the beach
Counting shells each by each,
I smell the salt in the water there,
And spot the seagull drifting in the air.
I fill the heat of the crisp summer day;
I spot a crab near the ocean’s bay.
I see the image of the reclusive boat
Smashing the rocks, not staying afloat.
I would join it if I knew how;
I cannot swim; I’ll do it right now.
Who’s concerned about me being alive?
I walk to the cliff and take a quick dive…
No one will have to know
about this undoubtful day,
Until my body joins the crab
near the bay.
I only wrote two poems that year, that I have on record. And the other was called “Suicide.” I promise I was a happy child. I don’t know what I wrote such sad stuff. Here’s one from 1990 with much lighter spirit…
THE LITTLE BLUE JAY
1990
I heard a soft singing voice one sunny day,
I looked in a tree and saw a little blue jay;
He whistled here and then whistled there,
His wonderful song soon filled the air;
Nature sang back, and the sun kept him warm,
The trees gave him shelter from the terrible storm;
That’s when I felt little drops hit my head;
I think that crummy bird will soon be dead.
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
Like many reviewers, I thought The Lace Reader showed great promise but was ultimately disappointing. In the beginning, I settled into a haunting story about Salem witches, psychics, and readers who saw visions in the patterns of lace. I became a friend of Sophya, the lead character who returns home to bury the aunt who raised her. The sea, the islands, the dogs, the tea, the mystics, the calvinists…Brunonia Barry reeled the reader in with great mystery and intrigue. Then something went wrong.
Sophya, called Towner, obsesses over her twin sister who committed suicide. She begins to date Rafferty, the local cop. Rafferty is caught up in the case of a missing girl feared dead. Sophya is haunted by her past love and by her abusive father who leads the crazy religious locals. The middle of the book pulls the reader in a million directions with no hope in sight. Sophya’s real mother remains a distant figure and the reader forgets all about Eva, the dead aunt.
A big section of the book is Sophya’s childhood, packed full of random days that should have been laced throughout the book rather than all packed into about 30 pages. The author also switches between first person narrative when Sophya was telling the story, and third person narrative when we were looking at Rafferty’s actions. While this style is okay, it ultimately made the story disjointed and made it hard for the characters to actually connect.
I wouldn’t call it a “sixth sense” type ending like many other reviewers have mentioned, but it’s sad that the A-ha! moment happened in the last twenty pages of the book. I indeed felt cheated and felt like I’d wasted too much time and too many pages building up to the lackluster climax.
I really wanted to love this book. If only I could read lace…it would probably tell me not to waste my time on this one.
