Two Books of Poetry for Your "Ready to Buy These" List

The cover photo is from the 1960s ... the author's family.

 

It's a tough time economically in America. That's not new. Sure, a lot of people owning houses and raising children in the 1950s and 1960s felt like their American Dream had come true, and they even had retirement packages for later.

But the 1930s involved plenty of crushing poverty and despair, and the 1940s saw Americans sacrificing for global warfare. The 1970s? After the Vietnam War ended, it seemed things would get easier. Buying a house with a young family felt normal then.

Things have changed. 

For a lot of us (outside the billionaires group), spending money can be kind of scary, because it's so hard to know whether we'll "have enough" to see us through the years ahead. 

Do you keep a list -- on paper, in your phone, or in your thoughts -- of the treats you're going to indulge in?  I have a very basic wish list that includes upgrading my mattress and, when I can't push the lawnmower as well, maybe opting for a riding version. 

Fortunately, as a writer, books aren't on the optional list. They are necessities. I recharge the word fountains by savoring the really good stuff that other people put on paper.

If you get discouraged, have days when "the blues" settle in, are still recovering from some challenges of childhood or adult "big losses," books might be on your necessities list, too.  Or, of course, among the "let's have a treat today!" options.

Recently I bought new mysteries by Jane Harper (superb Australian writer) and Tana French (Irish, and because I reread her books once a year or so, they are really worth spending for), as well as Charles Todd. I did buy this year's Louise Penny Three Pines novel. And I have some things to say later this weekend about Sujata Massey's fifth mystery that features young woman lawyer Perveen Mistry (this one's 1922).

And sure, I recommend those authors, and often review crime fiction at KingdomBks.blogspot.com, one of my other blogs.

But I'm slow to purchase poetry, because I want it to always be the kind I'll be re-reading. (Did we mention economic tough times?) I want to savor it, maybe learn from it, feel grateful that the poet can pull together thoughts and feelings in ways that confirm my own, even lift me up.

Which brings me at last to the point: Get yourself a copy of AMERIGUN by Anne Marie Macari.

Never heard of her? Well, how many of those crime fiction novelists I listed have you heard of? One or two? That's not because the others aren't terrific ... it's because advertising budgets get slanted to the books that the publishers figure will make a Big Profit. Which might not be the case for this slim 67-page collection. Since it's amazing, beautiful, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking, I guess we'll have to share word of AMERIGUN with each other!

Writing forty years after her brother Edward's death by self-inflicted gunshot -- which he explains, maybe through a "medium," was an accident -- Macari faces the role of firearms among us. Yes, of course, the clever machine called a handgun (my second husband, R, a gunsmith, adored their mechanisms) can't fire its deadly round without a person's hand involved. 

But Macari allows the American gun -- AMERIGUN -- itself to take on personality. One of the poems reads:

Sometimes I see the gun entering
the room   it is smiling and has come

from a different world made
of materials I don't

understand.    When it calls you
with its steely music how

can you resist its metal grip grazing
your skin like another

hand warming yours —

Macari goes on to the sexuality of the gun (the way cigarettes have been; remember those Marlboro ads, the ranch hand leaning back provocatively against a horse, cigarette in his fingers, held low by his hips and holster or close to his lips). She touches discreetly, feather-light, on the firearm as American symbol. Spills some sorrowing statistics of children's gun deaths, lets anger flicker among her fireworks of phrases. Weaves in the losses of people who've shaped her life since her brother's death -- including other poets you may recognize. 

And at last, because she is one of our poets who values and can sing the words of life's enormous beauty, she brushes her fingers against forgiveness, that sweetener of painful memory.

Go ahead, treat yourself. The book costs less than dinner out, and will satisfy much longer. 

* * 

Oh, that second book to carry on your list and get around to buying soon? It's mine -- THRESHOLDS -- where you and I get to share and reflect the transitions of our lives. Let me know if you'd like a signed bookplate mailed to you, wherever you are, or visit northeastern Vermont and maybe we will cross paths. No firearms involved in this collection, but I promise to salute my "ex" by allowing them into a later group of poems, already gathering. 

 

Friendship, Books, and the Delights of Writers' Community

As any "pro" book reviewer will tell you, you're "not supposed to" be friends with the person whose book you're reviewing. On the other hand, as most mystery authors today will confirm, it's a small world out there for authors who choose to support each other ... so, sooner or later, you're going to be acquainted. My own revised guideline is: Speak the truth, for the reader, and it will be OK.

The connections among authors mean more than just talking about each other's books. They reassure deeply as we all reach the same challenges in the Writing Life: how to be a loving family member while reserving time to put pen (or computer) to paper; how to best credit those who contribute to the work; how to promote work without sounding like a puffed-up peacock; how to surf the changing marketplace without selling one's soul. These friendships matter intensely.

This spring I reviewed the new and fascinating Pennsylvania Dutch historical mystery by Charles Fergus with much pleasure -- he lives about 10 miles from here and I'm slowly getting acquainted, more so with the books than the person (he's as private as most of us writers are, and his use of a trauma of his own life in the new mystery is a courageous risk to take, and one that paid off in making the book really good). Here's the cover, along with the review:

But Charles (Chuck to friends) has the honor of launching TWO books this year, in totally separate genres. To keep things honorable, I purchased a copy of his other 2019 book, MAKING A HOME FOR WILDLIFE, and have it in one of my reading "corners" of this place, so I can enjoy it and absorb the information. But, life being what it is, I haven't made time to review it. So it was a delight to see this review this morning by Gary Moore, who writes knowledgeably on outdoor topics for our regional paper The Caledonian-Record. It solves my quandary of how to handle reviewing this nifty title, while also letting me tip my hat to both Charles Fergus and Gary Moore. Nicely done, friends!

Explosive Material: The Young Adult Mystery

Did you ever read Tom Sawyer in the original version -- not condensed or modernized? How about Huckleberry Finn? These are now mentioned often as prototype "young adult" novels, along with To Kill a Mockingbird. And the reason they are classified in this way is simple: The characters in them are not yet grown up, and they experience a marked change in their lives: one often described as a loss of innocence.

I think it's important to notice that these labels and even this "loss of innocence" are relatively recent concepts. When I was a kid, the Mark Twain books were seen as accessible (if you were willing to work hard at reading them), but not sorted into "adult" and "young adult." Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court could be fit reading for anyone who could stick with the pages -- although clearly, you'd get more from Twain's bouts of satire if you were a more experienced reader.

Today's "young adult" (YA) category is generally recognized as especially the creation of librarians (as well as teachers) who wanted to offer worthwhile material for teens without pushing them into emotions they weren't yet ready to experience -- like the self-doubt that can result from reading sexually explicit material at too young an age, or the callous disregard for loss of life that marks some thrillers. YA material also has often involved recognizing the challenges most teens face: how to stay true to yourself in the face of peer pressure, how to avoid the cost of substance abuse, how to separate from parents without losing "home."

One of the books most recognized as an enduring YA novel is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. It shaped some of my ideas about what it is to be a young woman, a scientist, and a brave person. I still keep a copy on my shelf. In her 1983 Newbery Award acceptance speech for this book, the author said:

Because of the very nature of the world as it is today our children receive in school a heavy load of scientific and analytic subjects, so it is in their reading for fun, for pleasure, that they must be guided into creativity.

She added, quoting from another author, that we help our children avoid a limited universe "by providing them with 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.'"

Even newer than the YA novel is the special genre of the YA mystery.  A good one has to include the elements that make a mystery for "grownups" worth reading: a plot that makes sense, twists that are both surprising and believable, characters who risk something and who make choices that matter. And a good dash of suspense and tension! Plus for the YA area, the mystery also has to be what L'Engle called "explosive material." I can stand behind that statement firmly. "Explosive" in this way doesn't need to mean objectionable or even shocking -- but it must mean that the reader experiences a possibility of change and growth.

With those challenging aspects in mind, I'm glad to welcome two new YA mysteries to the shelf. One, by Michelle Gagnon, is sci-fi crossover, in which a half dozen teens from various nations find themselves abruptly waking up in an emptied world where dinosaur-size monsters are hunting them. Published by Soho Crime, Gagnon's STRANGELETS compels the teens to share their pasts and wrestle with each other, to discover what has pushed them into this frightening situation -- and whether there is a chance to have their familiar world back again, ever. Criminal activity has indeed taken place. And courage is required. I like Gagnon's earlier thrillers very much, both the adult ones and the YA medical thrillers (Don't Turn Around and Don't Look Now). To me, STRANGELETS pushes the boundaries of the medical thriller, with plenty of intriguing science and tons of suspense. Seventeen-year-olds Sophie and Declan became part of my world while the book lasted. I do think this one is closer to sci-fi than to the traditional medical thriller, but ... it didn't bother me after the first few pages. Above all, Michelle Gagnon is a powerful storyteller and if she wants to call this one a thriller, well, I'll bend a bit.

The second is a firmly traditional mystery, in a less conventional setting: Jacquelyn Mitchard's WHAT WE SAW AT NIGHT. If the title evokes a hint of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon), I think that's no accident -- because in Mitchard's book as well as Haddon's, the people we care about are separated from the rest of "us" by conditions of difference that arrived with their genes. In Mitchard's book, Allie Kim and her best friends Rob and Juliet suffer from xeroderma pigmentosum, a "severe allergy to sunlight." (The scientist part of me insists on clarifying: The condition actually means that the body cannot repair damage caused by ultraviolet light. But hey, if we can call alcoholism an allergy to alcohol, I guess the allergy motif works here, too.) The result of this shared disorder is that the three teens mostly emerge at night. Add their fascination with the discipline and daring of parkour -- an extreme sport -- and Allie, Rob, and Juliet take to climbing tall buildings in the dark. Inevitably, they see something criminal. But they're up against a very crafty psychopath with the skills and knowledge to make the teens appear to be the guilty ones. Not only that: It looks like Juliet is being compelled to submit to abuse, with her friends as hostages.

Mitchard demonstrates that the ages of YA protagonists can actually increase the tension and risks of a thriller; the decisions that Allie Kim faces are indeed explosive, stirring up fresh importance of life. I'm glad there's clearly going to be a sequel!

So, let me wrap up this long-ish post by saying: If you have a favorite YA mystery or novel ... is there something about it that's explosive in this way? Share, if you feel so moved.