Poem of the Week

For St. Paddy’s Day some Irish poetry

No Fixed Plans

March

By Patrick Kavanaugh

There’s a wind blowing
Cold through the corridors,
A ghost-wind,
The flapping of defeated wings,
A hell-fantasy
From meadows damned
To eternal April

And listening, listening
To the wind
I hear
The throat-rattle of dying men,
From whose ears oozes
Foamy blood,
Throttled in a brothel.

I see brightly
In the wind vacancies
Saint Thomas Aquinas
And
Poetry blossoms
Excitingly
As the first flower of truth.

View original post

 

The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles

The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles tells the story of a man who lives on a coast far from anyone else. His mission is to find and fetch bottles from the ocean that contain messages and deliver them. One day he gets a bottle but he can’t figure out who it’s for. The hero’s journey is to figure out who it’s for.

The strength of this simple story is it’s muted illustrations which capture the wistful story.

Because the tone is melancholy and there isn’t much exposition about why the hero’s life is so sad, I’m not sure many children would enjoy it, but it’s a quick read with nice illustrations.

 

On Dr Seuss’ Controversy

 

Too Cool to be Forgotten

I thought Alex Robinson’s Too Cool to be Forgotten would be a quick read. For me it wasn’t. It never grabbed me so it took a couple weeks to finish.

In Too Cool to be Forgotten a middle aged man who’s getting cancer treatment undergoes hypnosis and is transported back to his sophomore year of high school. He sees this as weird, but also a chance to refuse an offer of a cigarette at a party and thus possibly undo his lung cancer. While back in time, he often tries to share his adult insights with his peers, but his pearls of wisdom are ignored.

While there were some interesting parts, the book was too gloomy for me, but many enjoy that vibe. I’m not that interested in high school anymore so the book left me cold.