The Early Poems of Ezra Pound

As a school girl and early college student I would peruse the library shelves of poetry and bring home anything that caught my interest, totally without guidance. As a college freshman I discovered Ezra Pound's shorter poetry collection Personae from New Directions and some of those poems have been favorites ever since, particularly the Cathay poems. The Dover edition of Pound's early poems contain many of my favorites.

In these early poems Pound assumes a mask, an identity, of another personality that reveals both a unique character and universal truths. Voices include warriors bored with peace to gorgeous love poems.

The poems include settings in the Middle Ages, the Crusades, translations from Latin, Provencal, Italian, Chinese, and Spanish first published in Personae (1909), Exultations (1909), Ripostes (1913), Cathay (1915) and "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" (1920).

The Cathay translations are both exotic, being from the early Chinese, and poignant explorations of shared human experience. The Song of the Bowmen of Shu, 4th c. B.C. by Kutsugen, is an outpouring of grief and homesickness by weary and hungry soldiers grubbing for fern-shoots. The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter, a translation from Rihaku, tells the heart-breaking loneliness of a teenage wife whose husband has been gone five months. And my favorite, the Exile's Letter, is a story of friendship and nostalgia that catches my heart with every reading.

"And if you ask how I regret that parting:
      It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end
      Confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees here
      to seal this,
And send it a thousand miles, thinking." 
Exile's Letter

Latter I was challenged about liking Pound's poetry when he was a Fascist and locked up as insane. I knew nothing about the man at the time. I was a naive reader who read the poems as art suspended in atmosphere, standing on their own.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Early Poems of Ezra Pound
Dover Publications
Publication March 18, 2016
$2.50 paperback
ISBN: 9780486287454

Crayon Quilts

Esther Aliu has been trying her hand at crayon tinting, and so is a lady from  my weekly quilting group. I have had a long love affair with crayons. So when I found out about crayon tinting on fabric I had fun trying it out! These quilts were made about 12 years ago. I used Prang crayons and heat set the color by laying paper towels or muslin over the crayon.

These Scotties are from vintage embroidery patterns.

 I based these animal designs on  vintage greeting cards.

This May Flower Fairy from A Year With the Fairies is hand colored and embroidered.

Sunbonnet Sue is colored with fabric paint pens and is bordered with vintage feed sacks.

Bunny Children is a vintage pattern available at Sentimental Stitches.

 Children of the World is a vintage pattern I found online.

 

My friend Judy made this cute quilt.

Have you colored on fabric?

Pax Romana and Ephemeral Power: Augustus by John Williams

Octavius was chosen by Julius Cesar to be his heir and successor. He was a teenage when Julius Cesar was murdered on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 BC. He became Augustus, emperor or Rome, a deity, and the founder of two hundred years of Pax Romana, temporarily ending the internal warfare for power that had troubled Rome.

Augustus by John Williams shared the National Book Award with John Barth's Chimera. I read Barth's book at Adrian College but had never heard of Williams until I bought a sale ebook of Stoner, a book that still ranks as one of my favorites read in recent years. My son gifted me William's last novel Augustus.

The story is told through letters between those close to Augustus, his enemies, and his family. In the beginning we hear others write about Octavius; in the last part we hear Augustus speak for himself.

The power of the novel is not in plot but in the subtle revelation of the cost of power. The boy Octavius is journeying with his boyhood friends when he hears of the death of Julius Caesar. His life is no longer his own. He knew his destiny was to change the world. Rome was deep in conflict for power. He raised an army and ended the 'tyranny of faction' at age nineteen. What he accomplished in his seventy-six years amounts to a miracle: he created an empire at a the cost of friendship, family, and friends.

Augustus sends his beloved daughter and only child Julia into exile to save her life when her friends and lovers are implicated in a plot on his life. The most powerful man in the world died ailing and existentially alone, knowing that his stepson Tiberius was poised to take over. He ponders on how man does not choose his fate but is propelled by necessity.

When we read of Julia's life and how she was a sacrifice to Roman peace, and of her discovery of love with the man who used her and led to her exile, it is heart breaking. Even more powerful are the thoughts of an aged Augustus considering his life, any man's life and the lessons learned.

Even after forty years of Pax Romana, Augustus sees the seeds of Rome's fall. Prosperity and security has not dulled the people's appetite for warfare, played out in the gladiator rings of blood and death. Augustus knows that power is ephemeral, and so is peace and plenty.

"Rome is not eternal...Rome will fall...the barbarian will conquer....There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die." from Augustus.

Read an interview about the book at LA Review of Books:  https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/john-williamss-novel-augustus-conversation. "Williams is like a medium who calls forth the voices of the dead, ever-poised on the thin edge of triumph or humiliation, for whom it is eternally now." "The book is a miracle: it shouldn't work, no way it should work---an epistolary novel about Rome's first emperor, told in the ancient yet natural and varied voices of all the key players?--and yet it succeeds beyond all measure."

How William Shakespeare Changed the Way you Talk

Shakespeare changed the way we speak. But do we know the origin of the phrases that have become household words?

It was with great excitement that I opened Jane Sutcliffe's book Will's Words about the phrases and sayings inherited from William Shakespeare. It is beautifully illustrated by John Shelley.

As I was reading the book written for Third and Fourth Grades I was wishing I could have read it to my son when he was that age. He would have loved the detailed illustrations showing London teeming with houses and people, the views of the Thames and London Bridge with boats of all sizes carrying people across the river, the aerial views of the city and The Globe, the crowds with their ruffed neckwear and doublets. There is a great cutaway of the Globe showing all the actors and stage hands putting on A Midsummer's Night's Dream, using trap doors and dangling a fairy over the stage.

And while my son studied the detailed illustrations I would have taught him about the importance of Shakespeare, an introduction to the Bard.

The book opens in 1606, a time when people sought an escape from their daily lives and the theaters offered plays six days a week. Except during an outbreak of the plague when they were shut down. We read about the theater goers, what the experience was like, and about the actors and the stories they told. We learn that Will wrote comedies that made the audience laugh themselves into stitches and tragedies about foul play that made their hair stand on end.

It ends with the publication of the 1616 first Folio, without which Shakespeare's words would have been lost.

Included is an author's note of how she came to write the book, a bibliography and a time line of Shakespeare's life.

The long and the short of it is that you'll get your money's worth out of this book!

NOTE: BOLD print words are included in the book Will's Words.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Will's Words How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk
Jane Sutcliffe
Charlesbridge
Hardcover: 987-1-58089-638-2
E-book ISBN:
978-1-60734-855-9 EPUB
978-1-60734-856-6 PDF
Publication Date: March 22, 2016

Pat Sloan Visits Town

I went to the Great Lakes Heritage Quilters meeting this past week to see Pat Sloan. She gave a lecture on her quilting life. Pat has been seriously quilting since 1992 and in 2000 left her job to make her hobby full time. Pat has authored 30 books and designs fabric.

 I get her newsletter and have seen her patterns and books. It was great seeing her quilts up close and personal.

Pat learned hand piecing with cardboard templates making traditional quilts. Inspired by antique quilts and folk art she developed her own style. She combines piecing and easy fused appliqué.

Pat is one of 83 designers offering 100 free blocks in their Splendid Sampler. Some of the guild members are participating and displayed their blocks. Learn more here.

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe

Growing up in the Dark Ages of the 1950s I had to search hard to find female role models. Not that my teachers were not great; I admired them immensely. I longed for women who were heroic and brave--and not fictional. In junior high I read began reading biographies: Jane Addams, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, Joan of Arc. And I have been reading biographies of women ever since.

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe by Elaine Showalter is a biography that, unlike the biographies of my childhood reading, portrays a woman both driven and intelligent and flawed and human. I liked it immensely.

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) is remembered today for writing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a rousing anthem with powerful, Biblical inspired words. Otherwise most know little about her. Her poetry, plays, and failed opera did not pass the critical eye or become timeless. Her activism as an abolitionist and suffragette now is forgotten. She worked for abolition of the death penalty and prison reform, education reform, immigrant rights, Indian affairs, worker's rights, and was instrumental in the creation of Mother's Day and the Association of American Women. In her youth she was called the 'Diva' for her sparkling wit, beauty, and intelligence; in maturity she was the 'Mother Superior' of Boston philanthropy and 'the grand old lady of America'.

Julia was born to wealth and had a top-notch education. She studied French six hours a day. Her vocal teacher was from the Italian opera company. Her father had commissioned Thomas Cole for The Voyage of Life , a series of four allegorical paintings depicting the stages of life. Julia met the greats of her time including Longfellow, Dickens, Margaret Fuller, and Charles Sumner. Still, her father kept a strong hold on Julia and she felt bored and yearned for a fuller, freer life. She became a vegetarian, secretly read George Sand, and spent her nights writing. Julia's life altered with her father's death; she adopted his strict Calvinism and was depressed for two years. Finally her friend brought her to Unitarianism and freed from guilt she bloomed. At twenty-two she was a beautiful 'bluestocking', a Diva, an heiress. And unmarried, both longing for love and fearful of childbirth with it's threat of death and the chains that came with childrearing.

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe came, literally, into her life 'a noble rider on a noble steed'. He was devastatingly handsome, a 'manly man', commanding and stern. He was eighteen years her senior, like Lord Byron was a hero in the Greek Revolution, had pioneered work in education of the blind, and was admired as a philanthropist. Samuel and Julia were both intelligent, passionate, idealistic--they should have been a perfect match. But the honeymoon ended on the honeymoon. Sam could never get past his image of woman as help-meet, mother, the angel in the house who should want for nothing more than house and home. And Julia chaffed against his tight hold, fighting for the right to a voice, artistic expression, and equality in every form. Their marriage was a failure.

Julia was an anomaly: her husband entertained John Brown in his home and she supported abolition, but also felt that slaves needed to be 'raised up' by European culture into civilization and wrote disparagingly of Southern slaves. During the Civil War she was part of a group that had gone to see the troops outside of Washington, D.C. On the long ride home she sang to entertain the men and her companions. A friend suggested she write new words to the song John Brown's Body, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Showalter's book was engrossing and fast reading; I devoured it in two days. Julia was a complex woman, the best kind to read about. I enjoyed learning how critics reviewed Howe's literary works during her life, then tracing changing views of her work across time. I was fascinated by Howe's secret manuscript about a hermaphrodite's life, now perceived as an expression of the angst and struggle that Howe and other Victorian age women endured.

I received a free ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read Howe's works on the electronic archives at http://www.juliawardhowe.org/writings.htm

The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe: A Biography
by Elaine Showalter
Simon & Schuster
$28.00 hard cover
Publication March 8, 2016
ISBN:9781451645903

Marooned in the Arctic: Ada Blackjack's Extraordinary Life

In 1921 a top secret expedition of four Canadian men and one Inuit woman set out to occupy Wrangle Island in Siberia to claim it for Britain. Several Inuit families who were to go were no shows, but Ada Blackjack desperately needed the $50 a month salary and decided to go alone. Her son had tuberculosis and as a single mother Ada needed to find money for his medical treatment.

Ada was born in 1898 near Solomon, Alaska. Her father died when she was eight and her mother sent her to a Methodist mission in Nome. She was taught English, basic reading and writing skills, and the Christian religion. Ada never learned traditional Inuit skills, except for having a skill of turning animal skins into clothing. That was her purpose on the expedition.

At sixteen Ada married  Jack Blackjack and they moved to the Seward Peninsula. Ada suffered six years of abuse and starvation from Jack. Two of their children died, Bennett developed tuberculosis, and Jack deserted the family. Ada divorced Jack and took Bennett to Nome where she cleaned houses and sewed to support them. Bennett needed medical care which Ada could not afford and she took him to the Methodist orphanage for care.

Ada heard that the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was organizing an expedition. He had hired Errol Lorne Knight, Frederick W. Maurer, Milton Galle, and Allan R. Crawford to carry out the secret mission. Stefansson told the men that the Arctic land could support a comfortable life, that game was abundant, and settlement by Europeans the goal.

Marooned in the Arctic by Peggy Caravantes tells the story of  the doomed expedition. All four men perished, and Ada had to survive alone until she was rescued two years after her arrival. Caravantes points that the men were totally unprepared and overly optimistic. They failed to provide adequate food for the long winters. They had forgone buying the boat needed to reach the ice floes where their prey could be found. As the men fell ill with scurvy and starvation, Ada learned to set trap lines and shot a rifle, chop the wood, and nurse the men--all while suffering loneliness, cultural isolation, fear of polar bears, homesickness for her son, and scurvy.

After Ada's rescue she faced pubic notoriety and the pressure to provide answers to the men's fate. She was lionized and dehumanized, had another son, fell ill with tuberculosis, and died in poverty in 1983.

Ada's story has all the elements of a great story. Adventure, pathos, racism, strength, maternal love, cultural imperialism, and Arctic exploration. Caravantes has done her research. But this book meant for ages 12+ lacks emotional connection, vitality, and excitement. It reads like an encyclopedia article with too much telling. The characters don't live. For instance, we are told that the ill and dying Knight wrote a melancholy letter but we don't know what he said.

The book has sparked an interest and I want to know more about Ada.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The True Story of Ada Backjack, the "Female Robinson Crusoe"
by Peggy Caravantes
Women of Action
Chicago Review Press
$19.95 hard cover
Publication March 2016
ISBN: 9781613730980