Reading update

[asakiyume]

I added two new books to my reading mix: Breath Warmth & Dream, by Zig Zag Claybourne. I enjoy the author's social media posts (when I happen to see them, which isn't that often), and he and C.S.E. Cooney are big mutual fans. So I decided to try something of his, and so far, I'm enjoying it. It's told in a leisurely way, and I like the characters. Here, Khumalo, a powerful witch who's waiting for her daughter to return from a sea journey, talks with a beggar woman at the harbor:

“You’re so tall,” Orsys remarked.

“Do you like that?” Khumalo said kindly.

“I do.” When Orsys smiled, every wrinkle on her sun-bleached face moved like sudden lightning flashes, brightening the old woman’s visage immeasurably.

“How many people have come off ships hoping to see your smile, dear one?” said Khumalo.

I'm reading this as an ebook, which means the other ebook I've been reading, The Apothecary Diaries, is taking a temporary back seat.

Then there's also Butter, by Asako Yuzuki. I was intrigued by osprey_archer's review, but it's not a book I'd pick up for pleasure. However, it **is** the sort of book I'd read in my book group, and I had to pick the next book, so I've picked it. Only in the beginning pages, but enjoying it so far.

Neruda's Book of Questions isn't the sort of thing I read cover-to-cover; I prefer to dip in. How will I know when I'm done, though? What if there are ones I keep on missing? A Problem.

As I dip into it just now to find something to share, I'm coming across ones I *don't* like: they're opaque to me, or the images or juxtapositions don't speak to me.

But I like the bottom half of one:

Why do [waves] strike the rock
with so much wasted passion?

Don't they get tired of repeating their declaration to the sand?

And I like the whole of this one:

You don't believe that dromedaries
keep moonlight in their humps?

Don't they sow it in the desert
with secret persistence?

And hasn't the sea been lent
for a brief time to the earth?

Won't we have to give it back
with its tides to the moon?

He uses questions in the negative a lot.

Comments

[radiantfracture]

I wasn't familiar with the Book of Questions, so thank you -- I am having a similar experience, I think, in that some questions strike to the heart of me, but the ones they are gathered wtih may not (ex. a train in the rain still seems a happy thing to me).

But -- it looks like an interesting strategy to discuss in class.

[asakiyume]

I would love to hear how it goes!

With all writing, there's what the writer does and how the readers perceive it, and I feel like some things--like this--are much more inkblotty than others (meaning, I think these poems will provoke reactions, likes and dislikes, that are more idiosyncratic and personal).

I'm wondering about his different moods when writing these.

And also I'm thinking about their arrangement. Several ocean-themed ones are grouped together. Is this building a theme, or covering different aspects, or something else?

There's a lot to think about.

[sartorias]

I dolike those Neruda examples, though I don't find his work generally to be compatrioty, so to speak.

[asakiyume]

I've known him by reputation only up until now!

This was apparently his last work, still unpublished when he died. On balance, I think I like more of them than I dislike (though I'm finding a fair number that I'm pretty meh on). I like the *idea* of the questions very much.

When you say "compatrioty," do you mean something like on a wavelength you can understand?

[sartorias]

Not only understand but find appealing.

[asakiyume]

What a great concept--will have to adopt the term!

[athenais]

Oh that first excerpt! I might want to try that one.

[asakiyume]

I'm very early on in it--less than 10 percent--but so far, so good!

[osprey_archer]

I hope your book group likes Butter! It's such a good book group book (I say, having no book group experience): lots of opportunities for discussing different takes on the characters and on the ending etc.

I liked the food descriptions so much I actually tried one of the recipes, the hot rice with cold butter, but I think I should have gone all out and gotten fancy butter for it.

[asakiyume]

When your ingredients are butter and rice, yeah, why not splurge on the butter! --But as I'm sure the book must say, part of the whole thing about butter on rice in Japan is that rice is always supposed to be ~ pure ~ You take a mouthful of it, then a mouthful of your side dishes (your pickles or your fish or whatever). Having stuff on, or in, rice, is so Not Japanese. ... um... except for sushi rice, which has flavored vinegar and sugar so... IDK, really. But so yeah: having rice with butter on it is SO DECADENT. (I am sure the story goes into this, right?)

[osprey_archer]

I don't remember exactly what the book says about butter-on-rice as a cultural phenomenon, but the description made it sounds so lushly decadent that I just had to try it. So it might get into that? I expect you'll get more layers of meaning out of the rice and general food parts than I did, because you know more about Japanese culture. A lot of what I got was "mmmm that sounds good. And so does that! And that too! I'm so hungry now!"

Editing to add: and there's also definitely stuff about the meaning of food in a culture that prizes thinness.

[light_of_summer]

I like those bits of Neruda's work—thanks for sharing them!

I had Neruda mixed up in my mind with Victor Jara, another martyred Chilean artist-activist, who was depicted in a big mural on a cultural center in a neighborhood where I lived for several years.

You've given me the impetus to get the two artists at least somewhat straightened out in my mind. In the process, I learned that the story I'd heard about Jara's death, some forty years ago (which the mural illustrated), was probably more inspirational / propagandistic than accurate, though both what I heard then and what I just read in Wikipedia are gory stories. I had wondered if the story I'd heard was physically possible...

[asakiyume]

This prompted me to learn more about Victor Jara--thank you!

Also, I went looking for pictures of murals of him, and there are quite a few--though none of the ones I saw depicted his murder at the hands of the government. You're right about the Wikipedia entry. Whoa. Many such cases, but reading about any of them chill the blood.

[light_of_summer]

Very chilling, particularly since our own country's hatchet-people may or may not have started "disappearing" people.

Here's the mural I meant—this is the earliest image of it that I could find online.

The mural was refurbished and partially redesigned about twelve(?) years ago. This is the most complete photo I could find online of the new version.

The version of the story about Victor Jara's death that I originally learned, (and which I think must have inspired this mural), said that the soldiers who detained him (and many others) cut his hands off and taunted him to sing, and he did lead the other detainees in an oppositional song before he bled out.

So, there is no one actually shooting him in this mural, but his hands are detached, still seemingly playing his guitar, and his mouth is open in song. The mural is called "Song of Unity."

[asakiyume]

I hadn't seen this mural in my image search, but I had seen another one with hands detached, but hadn't understood the significance. Thank you for explaining!

[sovay]

“How many people have come off ships hoping to see your smile, dear one?” said Khumalo.

I like that.

Don't they get tired of repeating their declaration to the sand?

That looks to me like an invitation for the reader to argue.

[asakiyume]

I like that

Me too; it warmed my heart.

That looks to me like an invitation for the reader to argue.

I agree! I can hear the poem, the start of it. All the reasons and ways the waves have to argue...