Anne Sexton Poetry

A brief change of pace for the blog, Carpebiblio offers a piece on the poet Anne Sexton. She suffered from a series of mental issues resulting in attempted suicides. She was successful on October 4, 1974. Today, doctors would prescribe a medicine cabinet full of drugs, but in 1960, she wrote about her troubles in poetry. She wrote about intimate subjects, her husband, her family, and many dealt with sexual liaisons. Her writing was her cure, she wrote about her depression and struggles with mental illness.

During her life, the expectations and roles of women in the United States evolved. She struggled with being a good wife and mother that cared and nurtured the family, like the world expected of her. When in reality, she wanted a career and independence. Her writings reflect this inner struggle. She wrote about topics pertinent to women such as adultery, menstruation, masturbation, and abortion.

Some of the analyst readings suggest this struggle manifested itself as a sexual hunger. However, her life also corresponds to the invention of the pill, and a sexual revolution in the United States. Today her actions ad writings may not seem as shocking or controversial as they did in the early sixties. They still may not be fully embraced or accepted by society, but they might not be considered as shocking. While her works may have been controversial, she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967.

Sexton builds her collection of poems, Transformations, around the children’s stories of the Brother’s Grimm. She turns the stories into a series of modernized poems looking at the actions of women in society and sex. Among others, she modernizes Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel. You won’t get these confused with the Disney version.

The reader will not confuse Sexton’s collection of Love Poems for an Elizabeth Barrett Browning collection. Instead you will find For My Lover, Returning to his Wife, In Celebration of my Uterus and The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator.  In the late sixties, the sexual revolution was in full force, and even polite society talked about subjects once considered taboo.

Not many people read poetry. Their experience with poetry is the lame and tame reading teachers forced them to read in high school. Sexton’s brand of poetry may change your opinion.

Bok Tower Garden Blooms

Bok Tower Gardens provides carillon music and flowers year round. Many people may think of Florida summers as too hot to spend time outdoors, and too hot for flowering plants, but that is not the case. This past weekend the temperatures only achieved the high eighties, he writes with a grin. Below are pictures of just four of the many plants offered by the gardens in late summer and early fall. If you get hot, the museum, gift shop and cafe offer opportunities to take a break from the heat. In the cafe, I generally go for an ice cream cone or chicken salad on a croissant.

Beauty Berry

'Disney' Red Ginger Lily

False Blue Ginger

Black Pearl Ornamental Pepper

Galloping Gourmet Gets His Hands Gritty

The Galloping Gourmet, the PBS gastronomic tease, Graham Kerr, turns over a new leaf with fresh and healthy concoctions. In his Growing at the Speed of Life, he charms us with his wit and gardening adventures. However, his gardening tips make gardening sound much more difficult than reality. The book’s strong point, as the reader would expect, rests with his cooking tips.

Learn how to prepare fresh nutritional gastronomic treats from the garden. I learned many things including how a microwave works and why it changes the textures of foods. I also learned some tips on boiling potatoes and steaming veggies. I was surprised to find out, I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. In the boiling section, he suggest slightly boiled peas with a few mint leafs, and a touch of sugar. I had to try it. Tasted great.

The recipes start on page 62 and run through 294. Kerr provides the reader with recipes for everything grown in the garden including vegetables, grains, fruits and spices. My mouth is salivating for some bumbleberry strudel.

The latest food craze involves eating lots of different fresh food items. They contain lots of micronutrients and antioxidants. According to Whole Foods, Bok Choy and Kale contain some of the highest cancer fighting micronutrients. Kerr’s devotes a section to each of these. The reader learns the growing conditions for each crop as well as pest complications. He gives us nutritional information, and three to four recipes for each.

These days I try to not eat processed or preserved foods. Markets provide just about every fruit and vegetable fresh year round. When items are in season, I try to buy local since they generally have a better flavor and nutritional value. If possible try to grow some of your own. I grow container tomatoes, much better flavor than the supermarket.

Tonight I will be dining using one of Kerr’s recipes, salmon with fresh cucumber sauce. As Kerr says, dine FABIS (fresh and best in season).

Rosa Parks Bus

James F. Blake  bus driver's seat

Behold the infamous seat from which James F. Blake told Rosa Parks she needed to move to the back of the bus on December 1, 1955. While Montgomery City Code, chapter 6 section 11 gave Blake the right to tell her to move, her subsequent refusal sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and began the civil rights movement in the United States.

The Montgomery Improvement Association elected pastor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to president of their group and leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott movement. King’s success in Montgomery gave him the momentum to strive for more rights for African Americans.

Consider the situation, what if Blake had been easier going, and hadn’t enforced the rule. He may have lost his job, but the boycott may not have occurred, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. may never have gotten involved in the civil rights movement.

Rear Seat of the Bus

Secondly, this was before cell phones. The event happened on a Friday afternoon, during rush hour. Imagine today, a bus driver pulling over with a full load of passengers to use a phone and wait for the police to arrive so they could arrest Rosa. Do you think, it would happen today?

It is simply amazing, how Rosa Parks’ refusal, and the subsequent actions worked together to result in one of the most important events in U.S. history. Rosa Parks was not the first rider to refuse to move. It had happened on other buses in Montgomery, but none had the same result. For some reason, Rosa Parks’ refusal galvanized the community to work together to end legal segregation.

After the incident Rosa Parks and her husband lost their jobs, and could not find employment in Montgomery. Today, people consider her a hero, but in 1955 many people in the United States considered her a troublemaker or worse. The Parks moved to Detroit, where she died at the age of 92 on October 24^th, 2005.

It was on the Cleveland Avenue Bus, number 2857 that Rosa Parks and James F. Blake had their encounter that made history. The Henry Ford Museum paid $492,000 for the bus, and an additional $300,000 to restore the bus to its mint condition. The bus is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum.

(Pictures and text by Bruce G. Smith)

The Cleveland Ave Bus number 2857

Nevada Barr’s, Burn deals with a difficult subject, and one that generally makes people mad or at least uncomfortable – child molestation, kidnapping, and child prostitution. She digs into the pedophile trade. Who needs vampires, when you have pedophiles?

The story starts in Seattle and shifts to New Orleans. Anna Pigeon, Barr’s main protagonist and a National Park Ranger needs some well-deserved rest and relaxation. She rents a place from her friend, Geneva, a blind blues singer, who also works for the park service with the heritage musical program in the French Quarter.

Barr knows New Orleans, and she passes that knowledge along to the reader as they follow Anna through the shadier streets hunting for a pair of missing children.  The children have possibly become sex slaves.

This book is down and dirtier than Barr’s previous books. It’s a raw story, and she makes the reader feel uncomfortable. She forces the reader to experience the horror of children being forced into heinous acts and positions by the City’s powerful and elite.

This was a difficult book to read because of the content and the style. Barr used three voices in the beginning and the book did not flow. Once Anna and Jordan met the book flowed better, and the story progressed quickly. Burn’s content challenges the reader to take action on the issue of pedophilia, to scream out at the atrocities perpetrated against children in our society.

According to the Counter Pedophilia Investigative Unit, 67 percent of all victims of sexual assault reported to law enforcement agencies were under the age of 18, and 34 percent were under the age of 12. One in seven victims of sexual assault were under the age of 6 (www.cpiu.us). The CPIU site seems to have the most reliable statistics, I could not find reliable statistics regarding underage sex slaves.

Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon

Nevada Barr’s primary protagonist, Anna Pigeon makes a great character. She is a gun-toting National Park Ranger. Pigeon may be short in stature, but big on guts and independence. Her travels have taken her all over the United States. She has been out west, north to Isle Royale, and south to the Natchez Trail. She has explored caverns, fought alligators and braved the Lake Superior winters.

Burn is Barr’s current book, and places Anna Pigeon in harm’s way in New Orleans. The town is slowly recovering from Katrina, but Pigeon finds herself the recipient of a possible curse. Read the book to find out. Anna is in New Orleans to recover from harrowing escapades in Texas and Isle Royale. She is looking for a little relaxation in the Big Easy, but instead she finds a stinky situation underneath the town’s recently applied veneer. Burn will be coming out in paperback May 24^th.

Barr currently lives in New Orleans with her husband and assorted cats and dogs. Her resume includes a stint in the National Park Service serving at the places she now writes about. She also has some formal training as an actress, and worked in the business for eight years. Nevada Barr was born and raised in, drum roll, Nevada. Hmmm, imagine. In addition to her writing, Barr also paints. Her artwork is online at Paper Tiger Productions, Art by Paxton, the alter ego of Nevada Barr.

Aspiring Author Tip: An article by Susan Larson in the Times-Picayune, March 26, 2009, quotes Barr, “Every story has already been told. The only thing you can bring to it is whatever is idiosyncratically yours.”

Alex Kava - Damaged

Alex Kava writes psychological suspense novels.  She published her first book A Perfect Evil in 2000. FBI profiler, Maggie O’Dell hunts down a child serial killer in Platte City, Nebraska. Nick Morrelli, local lawman on the scene assists Maggie in many ways despite local family complications.

Ten years and eight O’Dell novels later, Maggie’s a seasoned veteran. She’s been exposed to biological hazards and majorly twisted serial killers. In the beginning of Damaged, we find Maggie washing off cerebellum spatter from her latest case. No sooner does she get out of the shower, and the FBI sends her to Pensacola, Florida to investigate miscellaneous body parts packaged like deli meat and packed in an ice cooler floating in the ocean.

For good measure Kava adds Homeland Security, FEMA, Coast Guard and military to the government soup to keep the plot interesting. However in a rare literary occurrence the various departments actually play well together. Wounded veterans from Afghanistan in the military hospital suffer from an unknown disease that is proving fatal, and a category 5 hurricane bears down on Pensacola. O’Dell must determine if a serial killer stalks the beach, and if so solve the case before the evidence washes away.

Kava’s next book, Hotwire, is scheduled for release in July 2011. Maggie O’Dell gets called back to Nebraska to investigate the mysterious death of a group of high school students. Meanwhile on the East Coast a deadly mysterious disease infects an elementary school. Could the two incidents be related? Probably.