Amazon.com: Akethan's review of The Evolution of Reptilian Handbags and Ot...

"She's a window through which power flows..."

Overall, a very strong collection. When asked to review, the comparative influences to Gaiman and the like made me give it a chance. Now that I've finished the collection, I saw glimmers of other authors I love to read such as Charles De Lint and Michael Moorcock.

I didn't like each entry, but in combination, this work earns a 4-star rating. Some entries did add to the display of Lamaga's imagination at play - if they'd been stand-alones, they would have been skippable. The title tale in particular, "The Evolution of Reptilian Handbags." Stronger were tales like "What Kind Are You?" and "Waking the Dreamer" ("The snake did not deceive Eve -- Eve was the snake."). These wrapped up nicely, but did make me hope that there's a larger future in the worlds Lamaga has built here. "Mr. Happy the Sharpshooter" offers as neat a twist as any classic Twilight Zone. The brittle beauty which sublimes to stony strength was well-played in "Medusa" ("After you left I turned to stone..."; "...shedding this house...") and "Black Crater, White Snow" - which called mind Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". Distorted pasts meet wavering futures in "Purple House" - not one of my favorites here but good for evidence of Lamaga's breadth. I loved the "What the Dalai Lama Said" ("...blue flats sliding over the industrial carpet like water bugs on a pond."). The weaving of the personal with the universal was direct and beautiful. A favorite passage captures love for a thing that repels or abrades, impossibly well: "I remember loving her in that moment (though never since), the way you love something that is completely alien yet perfect in itself, like a crocodile or an exploding star." The collection closer "Invisible Heist" similarly provides a sense of going out into the brightness, into whatever comes next with arms wide open.

But it was "The Seduction of Forgotten Things" that cinched this book for me. This story hit so many of my reading pleasure centers - the urban fairytale in perfect form: the sad taming of a wild thing, the decay that turns what was tame into a changeling, lost horizons, an inspection of what naming things, owning things does to the thing desired and the one claiming rights. Isabelle pushes and pushes her found friend, Alejandro, her wild thing: "All the yesterdays. Back and back. What did you do?" This exploration of "what's in a name" shows up in "What Kind Are You?" - but is better shown in this story. Think a darker "My Fair Lady" or perhaps the origin of "Beauty and the Beast".

There's good poetry in Lamaga's pen and I'll keep an eye out for future releases.



Amazon.com: Akethan's review of The Evolution of Reptilian Handbags and Ot...:

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Satyrday

"Keep a leash on your runaway tongue..." Meet the hero of this story: Deirdre - bravest of the ravens. She steers the course of this story and changes every character's path. I loved this book as a kid and in moving through my old boxes, gave it a re-reading. It's aged beautifully. Reading it now, I thought a lot of the "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" which I've loved as well, although that is a much more recent tale. From the outset with the Owl's ballsy kidnapping of the dreaming moon all the way through the terrifying muck of the endless swamps and dead forests - beautiful, succinct writing. I especially loved the play between the satyr, Matthew and both his charge, the human, Derin, and the silver fox/nymph, Vera. But it's the raven, Deirdre, whose determination, focus and sense of what will be lost if the Owl prevails that captures my heart. She never stops pressing for the freedom of each and every creature in the world. Again and again and again - she puts all others above herself. To quote the moon, "I have learned about humility and bravery. ... I have learned that there are creatures in this world who care about something other than themselves." Spellbinding.

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Satyrday

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Elidor

"His mane flowed like a river in the moon: the point of the horn drew fire from the stars. Roland shivered with the effort of looking. He wanted to fix every detail in his mind for ever, so that no matter what else happened there would always be this." It's been a number of years since I read Garner's books. I pulled them out and started into ELIDOR. Turns out - I didn't remember any details of this book in the series, so it truly was a new reading to me. Like so many of my favorite writers, Garner fits enough plot and character into 145 pages whereas many writers can't make a clean work in 500 pages. Written in the late '60's and my copy a reprint from the early '80's - it has a definite Narnia plot running - thin walls between our world and another that is being swallowed by darkness and needs the help of four siblings (David, Nicholas, Helen & Roland). A shift between the two worlds - a hunt for magical treasures is followed by a return to normal life at home and the slipping away of whether it ever happened at all. Similarities - but this story runs darker than Narnia. And the reminders of their adventure keep jabbing at these kids - bursts of static electricity, phantom silhouettes in the rose garden, some serious harassment of these folks front door and mail slot and even a handful plastic prizes: "Are you saying Malebron's sending us souvenirs from Hong Kong?") While the kids turn skeptic, Roland alone packs enough faith to keep the whole bunch on the right track and the story takes some clean, sharp turns - before clipping off abruptly. Geek notes: Had to go online and look-up a few things (dolmen -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmen / and even found their old house address at 20 Fog Lane, Manchester: mappable). I'll be on into reading the next book in the series and see if it keeps me guessing, too.

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Elidor

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Killing With The Edge Of The Moon

I came across a short story by Attanasio in an '07 sci-fi/fantasy magazine - and really was taken with the amount of story and rich description he could pack in so few pages (he's a monster with description). In looking up other books, this is the first one I went to - liking the summary of magic, faerie, doors between worlds, and keen to meet the Black Dog. Attanasio's style holds true: these 150 pages hold more thoughtful writing and depth of detail than Twilight can manage in 550. Less is more. "For an instant, she seemed woven of light." The keen way Nedra is stitched together and contrasted with her waifish, initially disconnected granddaughter, Flannery arcs nicely as their relationship and understanding of each other grows through experience and exposure. Poor, hapless Chet's transformation from nerdling into young warrior: "All I wanted was to go to the spring dance with her -- and now we're already at death do us part." The line between our world and the Otherworld - distinct at times and blurrily overlapping at others, "in dreams, where the two worlds bleed together." The allure of the easy way - even if its self-destructive or outright false. Great, sharp details are called out for the dragon's lair: "The acetylene brilliance illuminated clotted arches and stalactite lofts of a gruesome cathedral." The story holds neatly together as a written work and (but for a swelling "ta da" moment in the last chapter) avoids made-for-the-big-screen sloppiness that a lot of current fantasy is fouled by. As "dogs love to fetch a good bone", I will fetch more works by Attanasio.

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Killing With The Edge Of The Moon

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened: Allie Brosh: 9781451666175: Amazon.com: Books

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened: Allie Brosh: 9781451666175: Amazon.com: Books:

"I yearned for attention and approval, and I couldn't exactly afford to be picky about how I earned it." Brosh is brutally comic and straightforward. The raw nature of the stories offset by the cave-like sketches strikes a balance. The material runs dark. I read some reviews that call this needed - the author finding creation through pain. "Sweet, semidigested success." I think I stand closer to a reviewer that neatly coined "circular self-flagellation". Brosh just can't get enough of telling you - hammering home - just how sh*tty and awful she really, really is. I don't ding her for being honest or self-aware, there were many places in the book that resonated with me. "Dogs' Guide" really brings this point home for me: Brosh is her dogs / her dogs are her. We are animals: it's just our element of self-awareness, the worry of social perception (shame) that keeps veneers in place and creates society. Brosh is reaching out in this book - if awkwardly - "interacting with you." The glimmers of hope, no matter how pounded down, are the best. "Lost is the Woods" does a sharp job of seeing Brosh through her mother: "her natural sense of direction was no match for the sheer amount of directions there are." I loved "The Parrot" - and aunt Laurie who "had a soft spot for chaos." The best aspects of this book expose the painfulness of connection and open a conversation about how real and raw our feelings can be and trying to come to terms with the monsters hitching a ride. "There's nothing love and hope can't fix." And that alone is an "unexpectedly exceptional thing."

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of The Schoolgirl's Atlas (New Women's Voices...

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of The Schoolgirl's Atlas (New Women's Voices...:

"The world on paper..." - I first encountered Morris's poetry in the Gay & Lesbian Review. It featured her poem "Cliffside" and I wanted to read more of her poetry. While that poem is not in this colle
ction - this collection is filled to the brim with very personal and trusting moments that I enjoyed. Morris's directness and honesty in her style is what hooked me. Right from the opener: "Desire became a country where I lived," Morris invited me in to her journey. Sparks of individuality are paired with shared experiences: "for everything is almost about to happen", "I left the ocean for you", "The list is the affliction / My foremothers brought out of Egypt" and -

"Don't toy with it/
It is the work of decades
In a bowl."

I have re-read this chapbook several times over the last two weeks. I want to pass this along to a friend - so another is going in today's cart for order.

Poem: 1081, The Wood, and Goodbye (ef)

Through the back window
come the backyard
across its spanse
come the wood
and in the back
of my mind
was the knowing
that I should
get my coat, my scarf, my gloves
and walk there,
run there
this above –
for this may be the last time –
it’s been that way before…
where first Gina & I ran,
and took it all so fast
when stung back by the nettles
we wandered into by accident,
that was among the last.
And where in a later Summer
we went wild
and in the wood went deep
took to hunt its very spirit,
all the magic we could keep
and worked well
and worked true
what Gina & I couldn’t do –
that was among the last.
And when Grandma Fenner passed away –
we wouldn’t go
so at Grandma Betty’s we stayed –
and ran out into the woods
to find the right trees
and loose our dreams again.
Where once I saw a deer or two
and heard dogs and other noises,
here now I see the snow
and wait –
when next I came it was
mom & I alone…
and Great Grandma Detty’s funeral…
I wandered through the
wood for hours and
kicked up leaves
and cried for all the silly things
in my silly life
that had died
and all the stupid confusion
I sometimes feel inside…
that still sometimes comes to pass,
that feeling
that I have not felt for the last –
for as I stand here staring,
through the back window
comes the backyard
across its whiteness –
the wood stares back.
It looks so tiny
in Winter,
in adulthood.
No reason to ride on uncle’s shoulders
above the nettles & vines…
no need to run with sisters
in case one gets lost
though I feel it’s true
these things would be nice.
I stare out at the wood
and it’s been put up for sale:
the wood, the yard, the house –
that I should
grab my coat and fly there
and let those lonely limbs
take me in again
but I make excuses
too tired, too cold, the wind –
that was among the last…
so lost, so cold, confused –
I press against the glass –
and promise
the weeping wood
to remember
what I won’t forget…
their names –
I whisper them softly,
“…Mother Tree, Fallen Bridge, and
          the Field…”
I wave to them weakly –
          Goodbye,
for this may be the last time.

12.25.93 / eaf

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Call Me by Your Name: A Novel

Amazon.com: Akethan's review of Call Me by Your Name: A Novel

"Grow up. I'll see you at midnight." This book won me over - but I was well-near 1/3 in when it happened. The stream of conscious angst of a teenager - swinging from highs to lows and back - was neatly done, but almost drowned out any compassion for young Elio. Elio vibrates with constant need offset by awkward uncertainty. It is so raw and so real, to me, it was painful to read and struck close to home.

The author's writing at all times is sharp and fantastic. It calls up some great lines and fantastic images: "youth has no shame, shame comes with age"; "I was circling wagons around my life"; "unreal joy, joy with a noose tied around it"; "I'm tied up in so many knots that I need the Gordian treatment"; "all that remains is dreammaking and strange rememberance".

What made this story a keeper - was it's Narnia moments: "It never occurred to me that I had brought him here not just to show him my little world, but to ask my little world to let him in." - "where I dreamed of you before you came into life." The truth in the notion that in opening up to anyone - there's that fear of having what is mine rejected or having what is mine doing the rejecting. The heart versus the brain versus the spirit. And the award of acceptance: "two nights ago you added an annual ring to my soul." The story holds strong with that effect - and its counterpoint: "time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more."

The growth of Elio through his opening - in heart and in spirit - is great to follow as he ages and progresses through his love and his understanding of his love for Oliver.

Poem: ELOPEMENT PACKAGE 310 (ef)

Congratulations, you’ve just purchased Package 310:

Supernatural Opponents: The Maiden in the Tower.

Excellent choice, young lovers!

Renowned champions of consensuality,

We propose:

A custom elopement for one flaxen-braided maid and one bramble-blinded prince.

Get your pulse racing with a daring escape from an all-inclusive

Yet somewhat isolated tower - in your choice of silver or stone.

Find yourself pursued by your selection of villainess, be it ogress, fairy or sorceress.

Send your pursuer packing with a scattering of our proprietary blend of enchanted nuts.

(Once released, most nuts convert to dog, lion or wolf.

Actual results may vary. Selection based on seasonal availability.)

From there, we’ll tend to all but the basest of your remaining unanswered wants:

Treat your coiled, rumpled plaits to a scalp massage, color and trim

(Those split-ends look like they’ve been clambered on for a hundred years, my dear).

Sate your appetites with our award-winning regional wines and a hearty meal

featuring our signature breadsticks and all the parsley pesto you can handle.

Then, my osculating oddballs, you’re on your own -

Off to explore what remains of your Ever After,

And that is certainly not covered by the limits of our package warranty.

Against the hopes pinned on one’s future,

Most any prince is rarely ever matched fairly.

Even more challenging to be paired with such a lass

Whose hair requires more than a little letting down.

10.09.13 eaf

POEM: By the River, by Penny Harter

This is the final day of years of sweetness.
                                      Petrarch

You have been gone a year.
The taste of you has stayed with me
these twelve months, your honeyed warmth
lingering on my limbs.

Today, I sit on a floating dock by the river,
listening to the faint hum of insects as I enter
a rippling that flows from a center
I have yet to find.

For your last meal, you wanted sweetness—
lemon sorbet in a paper cup— and I watched
the nurse spoon it into your waiting mouth
as if you were an infant, watched you savor
a sweetness that would carry you out.

It is autumn again, and the trees have begun
their fierce burning. Remember how we
walked through scarlet and gold, stooping
to pick up the best of the fallen? How I sent
some to my mother just weeks before she died,
sealing them in an envelope with the kiss
of my saliva?

Today, I give our sweetness to this river,
send it out on floating yellow leaves
that flicker on the water like candles
for the dead.
 
© Penny Harter

            From Recycling Starlight, in-press with Mountains & Rivers Press, 2010.

POEM: Peekabo, I Almost See You, by Ogden Nash

Ogden Nash ~ Peekabo, I Almost See You


Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your
     arm long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you
     said Good evening to his grandfather clock under the
     impression that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP,
     and you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and
     he says one set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and
     Keats's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello to
     strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put
     on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your
     reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because
     without them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such misshaps, they would try the patience of an
     ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
     years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.

Source: http://www.ogdennash.org/poems/peekabo_i_almost_see_you.htm

POEM: Maybe, by Richard Blanco

Maybe -- a Poem by Richard Blanco

for Craig

Maybe it was the billboards promising
paradise, maybe those fifty-nine miles
with your hand in mine, maybe my sexy
roadster, the top down, maybe the wind
fingering your hair, sun on your thighs
and bare chest, maybe it was just the ride
over the sea split in two by the highway
to Key Largo, or the idea of Key Largo.
Maybe I was finally in the right place
at the right time with the right person.
Maybe there'd finally be a house, a dog
named Chu, a lawn to mow, neighbors,
dinner parties, and you forever obsessed
with crossword puzzles and Carl Young,
reading in the dark by the moonlight,
at my bedside every night. Maybe. Maybe
it was the clouds paused at the horizon,
the blinding fields of golden sawgrass,
the mangrove islands tangled, inseparable
as we might be. Maybe I should've said
something, promised you something,
asked you to stay a while, maybe.

Source: http://www.richard-blanco.com/looking-for-the-gulf-motel/maybe.php

Poem: FIREFLY, RTE 8 (ef)

(Knox to Plymouth)

With a spasm of bright lime twinkle

It broke its flight on the windshield

A pinprick supernova

Crackling into skittered pathways

Of fading green fire

Surprised and saddened

The road ahead deepening

Steady yellow dashes

No further signals.

07.22.13 eaf

POEM: Homemakers, by Pablo Miguel Martinez

When two men make a home
it is more than board
and wire and stone; it is
a puzzle, an address
for neighbors' scorn, this
the husband and husband know,
so they frame their home with care
and well-tended beds --
bearded irises, starry
corn-blues. This is how 

they make it new.

These men will gripe and cook
and such, but mostly they will love -- 

they will love in that Genesis way,

before the hissing and the shame;

they will let music play

in formal spaces, they will stir 

the breeze with uncued kisses,

then shush the night

with circles traced

on gym-tamed places.
This is what two men do
when they make a home:
they vow to crumple blueprints,
they vow to make it new.

-- Pablo Miguel Martinez

[featured at http://www.glreview.com/issue.php?issueid=95]

Poem: Veteran (ef)

In years of shared service
We are friends.
By unguarded moments - 
Stealthier than recollection
We are captured.
Within limits without seconds
The heart's wandering borders & boundaries
Are not contested by their absence.
It is the container they present:
Interstitial walls,
Permeable in solution.
Challenges answered with
Incanted hellos and
Seals restored after
Harbored farewells.
That stronger love
Fed sweetness and spirits
Yet fendered with spears.
10.14.12 - eaf

'a little bit' by Stuart Crowther

Poem: Forecast (ef)

Just now - the opening of Spring.
Yet with an oracle's reflex
a flower's lashes flutter,
divining Summer's end:
spindliest shadows -
licorice whips -
gangliest basil.

eaf

POEM: Fighting Fire, by Michael Montlack

I first felt it that afternoon in your family room
when you offered me your toy chest's newest claim--
the red plastic bullhorn, a miniature of your fireman father's,
a birthday gift for his only son:
Ten years old and nearly half my size!

Go on, take it! your voice projected,
the hollow horn's mouth aligned with your own
like a kiss I could see inside,
one that amplified some unspoken urgency,
a pre-adolescent emergency:
my own inner fire.

Really, take it, you said. He can get me another.

Were you casting off some hand-me-down
or trying to please me, your new pal?
I worried and wondered
if all my desires were as easily sensed.

I didn't want someone else's present.
What I wanted was that kiss.
I was just scared
someone might hear.
So I buried it one night in my backyard
and prayed for your father's forgiveness
then swore I'd never again take
a gift I was not ready to accept.

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide (Nov 1, 2007)
COPYRIGHT 2007 Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc.
Copyright 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Poem: Waxy & Battered (ef)

Waxy and battered - weary we return
Television sparks and invades the room
Done skiing - spent with numbness & burnt by snow
A shortcut across the years, back to Maine
Single-pane storm-clouded windows
Heaving with frost & heavy plastic
Thoughts swathed in so many layers
Flying wild into the wind, then avalanche
We cut trenches across the plainness

Until our legs, arms & lungs surrender
This is the art of retreat:
The warmth of a hot shower, catnap,
Belly-filling meal & tannic, sating wine,
Sleep-inducing sex.
A wish you'd been in my deeper past.

03.01.08 ef

POEM: The Astronomical Hen, by Cynthia Zarin

re-posted from Poetry Foundation & Poetry Magazine on Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Like hearts marked out but not yet colored in,   

Each of her feathers has a black edge,   

as if an India-ink mantilla stretched

from uncleaved neck to her fantail. The pen,   

homemade, spilled some darkness now and then.   

She doesn't lack for suitors. Poor rooster,

who pours his own loud heart out to her,   

surely his begging does no more than force   

her to peck out a crooked tattoo in the dirt

of the pen. Is she stumped, sad, anorexic?   

It's perfectly clear she doesn't lay eggs.   

Can it be she's simply in love with herself?

Her eye obsidian, eye of the world,

at night she watches the stars drop from shelf   

to shelf, to minor études she unfurls

in her head. By day she hunts and re-pecks   

the pinprick holes of her intricate sketch.   

If she's done by dusk the first stars can rise.

Cynthia Zarin, "The Astronomical Hen" from The Watercourse. Copyright © 2002 by Cynthia Zarin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Watercourse (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)