Category Archives: Literature

“Thoughts in a Zoo” by Countee Cullen [w/ Audio]

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They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
 Survey each other's rage, and pass the hours
 Commiserating each the other's woe,
 To mitigate his own pain's fiery glow.
 Man could but little proffer in exchange
 Save that his cages have a larger range.
 That lion with his lordly, untamed heart
 Has in some man his human counterpart,
 Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped,
 But in the stifling flesh securely trapped.
 Guant eagle whose raw pinions stain the bars
 That prison you, so men cry for the stars!
 Some delve down like the mole far underground,
 (Their nature is to burrow, not to bound),
 Some, like the snake, with changeless slothful eye,
 Stir not, but sleep and smoulder where they lie.
 Who is most wretched, these caged ones, or we,
 Caught in a vastness beyond our sight to see?

“A BLOCKHEAD” by Amy Lowell [w/ Audio]

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Before me lies a mass of shapeless days,
 Unseparated atoms, and I must
 Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust
 Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays,
 There are none, ever. As a monk who prays
 The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust
 Each tasteless particle aside, and just
 Begin again the task which never stays.
 And I have known a glory of great suns.
 When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire!
 Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire,
 And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs!
 Split is that liquor, my too hasty hand
 Threw down the cup, and did not understand. 

“The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

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I shot an arrow into the air,
 It fell to earth, I knew not where;
 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
 Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
 It fell to earth, I knew not where:
 For who has sight so keen and strong,
 That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
 I found the arrow, still unbroke;
 And the song, from beginning to end,
 I found again in the heart of a friend.

BOOKS: “The Man with the Compound Eyes” by Wu Ming-Yi

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The Man with the Compound EyesThe Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This book is at once a work of eco-fiction, literary fiction, and speculative fiction. The story revolves around a pair of characters whose worldlines become intertwined when the Pacific Trash Vortex is spun out, crashing into the Eastern shore of Taiwan. “Riding” the trash vortex is Atile’i, a member of a remote Pacific Island where second sons (of which he is one) are exiled to the sea to ensure the tiny island’s population doesn’t outstrip its resources. Atile’i is found by Alice, an academic who moved to a rural area of the Eastern shore and who is in an extended period of grieving the loss of her son and [common law] husband. Their union helps them each in the process of finding closure for their respective traumas.

There is a secondary story involving supporting characters, but at its heart, the book is about how an unlikely pair is brought together by environmental factors. That said, the secondary story does offer the reader insight into the indigenous population of Taiwan, a number of tribes whose relation to the island has been overshadowed by both the huge numbers of Chinese immigrants and the various agents of colonization (i.e. Europeans and the Japanese.)

I found this book to be highly readable. It manages to highlight environmental perils without being preachy in a way that detracts from the intensity of the story (and, thus, which reduces the effectiveness as a tool of persuasion.) [This being a line that some other eco-fiction writers have been unable to walk, such that they dissipate the power of story through a need to virtue signal, tribe signal, and finger-point.]

I’d highly recommend this book for readers of literature in translation, eco-fiction, literary fiction, or anyone who likes an interesting story.

View all my reviews

“Sonnets from the Portuguese 43” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning [w/ Audio]

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
 For the ends of being and ideal grace.
 I love thee to the level of every day's 
 Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
 I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
 I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
 I love thee with the passion put to use
 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
 With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
 Smiles, tears, of all my life, and, if God choose,
 I shall but love thee better after death.

“Bright Star” by John Keats [w/ Audio]

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Source: NASA
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art --
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
 And watching, with eternal lids apart,
 Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
 The moving waters at their priestlike task
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
 Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --
 No -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
 And so live ever -- or else swoon to death.

BOOKS: “The Banished Immortal” by Ha Jin

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The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Li Bai is considered to be one of China’s best poets of all time, writing during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD,) a time swole with poetic greats. However, it’s not just a prolific collection of extant masterpieces that make Li Bai worthy of a biography intended for a general audience. Li Bai was also a compelling character. He was, at once, a drunk and a genius; a swordsman of some skill and a card-carrying Daoist. It’s not just that he could edit drafts into brilliant poems, but he was said to be gifted at spontaneously spouting clever verse. He was constantly struggling to gain a post in government, but failed time and again. Even when his poetic renown became so great that he was given a post in the Imperial court, he was disappointed to find that it was largely ceremonial and that he would have no great impact on anything. He had a stunning fall from grace when he aligned with the wrong side during a civil war and was lucky to have been exiled rather than executed.

Ha Jin, a prominent present-day Chinese author best known for the novel Waiting, does an excellent job of exploring Li Bai’s life. What I particularly enjoyed is that Ha Jin (a poet himself) discusses how events in Li’s life spurred some of his great poems (which are often included in whole or in part.) Ha Jin is also careful to make clear when biographical accounts diverge, and there are many unknown or disputed details of Li’s life. In fact, there is a bit of a mythology around Li Bai, as one might guess from the title – which refers to a nickname bestowed upon the poet based on the belief that he was a Daoist immortal.

I’d highly recommend this book for readers of biography, those interested in Chinese history, or those who are intrigued by rebellious poetic souls.

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“Grass of the Ancient Plains” by Bai Juyi [w/ Audio]

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Lush grass covers the plains.
  One year it withers; the next, it thrives.
 Wildfires burn, but not to eradication.
   With Spring winds, it's rejuvenated. 
 Its aroma floats in to subdue derelict paths.
  Vivid green overtakes the ghost town.
 I say farewell to departing friends
  as intense feeling swells within. 
In Chinese [Simplified]:

离离原上草  一岁一枯荣
野火烧不尽  春风吹又生
远芳侵古道  晴翠接荒城
又送王孙去  萋萋满别情

“Trees” by Joyce Kilmer [w/ Audio]

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I think that I shall never see
 A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
 Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
 
A tree that looks at God all day,
 And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
 A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose busom snow has lain;
 Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
 But only God can make a tree.

“O sweet spontaneous” by E.E. Cummings [w/ Audio]

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O sweet spontaneous
 earth how often have
 the
 doting
    
    fingers of
 prurient philosophers pinched
 and
 poked

 thee
 , has the naughty thumb
 of science prodded
 thy

  beauty  how
 often have religions taken
 thee upon their scraggy knees
 squeezing and

 buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
 gods

  (but

 true 

to the incomparable
 couch of death thy
 rhythmic 
 lover

  thou answerest 

them only with 

  spring)