Hate That Cat

Sharon Creech’s Hate that Cat is a super quick read, perfect if you have a book report due tomorrow and hadn’t started a book. Though Creech’s Walk Two Moons is among my favorite novels for children, Hate that Cat didn’t grab me.

Evidently, Hate that Cat is the second book in a series. The hero writes letters to his favorite teacher and shares all his thoughts about poetry, cats, dogs, and writing with the teacher. The book introduces young readers to poets like William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allen Poe. The most interesting facet of the book was that the narrator’s mother is deaf and he can sign ASL.

For a mature reader, there isn’t much in the theme that isn’t well worn ground. The book doesn’t delight readers of all ages, which is a hallmark of the best of children’s literature. The narrator seemed like a cookie cutter Creech hero, but one who shares little of his personality or background.

 

A Poem for Veterans’ Day

In Flanders Fields

 

9/11 Poem

For 9/11, Jack Buck’s poem

Since this nation was founded … under God
More than 200 years ago
We have been the bastion of freedom
The light that keeps the free world aglow
We do not covet the possessions of others
We are blessed with the bounty we share.

We have rushed to help other nations
… anything … anytime … anywhere.

War is just not our nature
We won’t start … but we will end the fight
If we are involved we shall be resolved
To protect what we know is right.

We have been challenged by a cowardly foe
Who strikes and then hides from our view.

With one voice we say, “There is no choice today,
There is only one thing to do.

Everyone is saying — the same thing — and praying
That we end these senseless moments we are living.

As our fathers did before … we shall win this unwanted war
And our children … will enjoy the future … we’ll be giving.

 

Poem of the Week

Here’s flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age

William Shakespeare

 

Poem of the Week

Dog Around the Block

by E. B. White

Dog around the block, sniff,
Hydrant sniffing, corner, grating,
Sniffing, always, starting forward,
Backward, dragging, sniffing backward,
Leash at taut, leash at dangle,
Leash in people’s feet entangle—
Sniffing dog, apprised of smellings,
Love of life, and fronts of dwellings,
Meeting enemies,
Loving old acquaintance, sniff,
Sniffing hydrant for reminders,
Leg against the wall, raise,
Leaving grating, corner greeting,
Chance for meeting, sniff, meeting,
Meeting, telling, news of smelling,
Nose to tail, tail to nose,
Rigid, careful, pose,
Liking, partly liking, hating,
Then another hydrant, grating,
Leash at taut, leash at dangle,
Tangle, sniff, untangle,
Dog around the block, sniff.

 

Poem of the Week

New Year’s Eve

A.E. Houseman

The end of the year fell chilly

    Between a moon and a moon;

Thorough the twilight shrilly

    The bells rang, ringing no tune.

The windows stained with story,

    The walls with miracle scored,

Were hidden for gloom and glory

    Filling the house of the Lord.

Arch and aisle and rafter

    And roof-tree dizzily high

Were full of weeping and laughter

    And song and saying good-bye.

There stood in the holy places

    A multitude none could name,

Ranks of dreadful faces

    Flaming, transfigured in flame.

Crown and tiar and mitre

    Were starry with gold and gem;

Christmas never was whiter

    Than fear on the face of them.

In aisles that emperors vaulted

    For a faith the world confessed,

Abasing the Host exalted,

    They worshipped towards the west.

They brought with laughter oblation;

    They prayed, not bowing the head;

They made without tear lamentation,

    And rendered me answer and said:

“0 thou that seest our sorrow,

    It fares with us even thus:

To-day we are gods, to-morrow

    Hell have mercy on us.

“Lo, morning over our border

    From out of the west comes cold;

Down ruins the ancient order

    And empire builded of old.

“Our house at even is queenly

    With psalm and censers alight:

Look thou never so keenly

    Thou shalt not find us to-night.

“We are come to the end appointed

    With sands not many to run:

Divinities disanointed

    And kings whose kingdom is done.

“The peoples knelt down at our portal,

    All kindreds under the sky;

We were gods and implored and immortal

    Once; and to-day we die.“

They turned them again to their praying,

    They worshipped and took no rest

Singing old tunes and saying

    “We have seen his star in the west,“

Old tunes of the sacred psalters,

    Set to wild farewells;

And I left them there at their altars

    Ringing their own dead knells.

 

Poem of the Week

God’s Grandeur

by Gerald Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

For Milosz’s Birthday, a Poem

Account

BY CZESLAW MILOSZ

TRANSLATED BY CZESLAW MILOSZ AND ROBERT PINSKY

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,

Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,

Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,

The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,

The time when I was among their adherents

Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,

If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,

I was driven because I wanted to be like others.

I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.

For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

Berkeley, 1980.

Related articles

• Miłosz at the edge where there is no I or not-I.
• Two Centers – on Memory & Exile in Czesław Miłosz’s Essays Ii: Usage and Acclimatization, Or, Destiny As Memory
• Gift, poem by Czeslaw Milosz
• Czeslaw Milosz: A Poor Christian Looks At The Ghetto
• The Witness of Czeslaw Milosz 1 by Jeremy Driscoll

 

Poem of the Week

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

By Pablo Neruda Translated By Mark Eisner

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

 

Poem of the Week

To Daffodils

by Robert Herrick
Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.