Reviews with TLC

The Tradition by Jericho Brown is an unapologetic exploration of tradition and the breaking of tradition in human lives.  The Tradition is as good as the other books of Brown's poetry I've read. His word choices feel intentionally designed to immerse the reader in his poems in ways that can elicit tears, smiles, squirms, fears, and joy sometimes within the same poem. Brown's use of language, observations on society, and life experience to illustrate both connection and disconnection spoke to both my heart and my mind. The Tradition speaks to the experience of being human in a world that doesn't always value humanity. Check back soon for my thoughts on other books I'm reading including: Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography  by Dominic Streatfeild Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style   by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell How to Fly (In Tend Thousand Easy Lessons): Poetry  by Barbara Kingsolver Reviews will be posted as I finish these books. Disclosure: This blog...

We Want Our Bodies Back: Poems by Jessica Care Moore is filled with poems that reminded me that every body is beautiful even when that beauty is obscured, denied, or unseen. Moore details the joys and the abuses the body encounters throughout life with an unassailable emphasis on the bodies of women, the bodies of people of color, and particularly women of color. We Want Our Bodies Back is sometimes a plea, sometimes a demand, sometimes a celebration in this collection of poetry that balances strength, beauty, and vulnerability in its calls for justice and acceptance and sometimes just to be seen. Moore reminds us that every unique body has things in common with every other body. We Want Our Bodies Back is a strong, beautiful statement of rebellion in a world where people's bodies are overpoliced, overlooked, and overexposed. Check back soon for my thoughts on other books I'm reading including: Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography  by Dominic Streatfeild Pity the Reader: On Wr...

  A Gift of Shadows by Stephanie Stamm continues the story of Lucky and her friends from The Gift of Wings . Stamm weaves mythology into a story that is at once exciting, enlightening, emotional, and engaging. A Gift of Shadows illustrates how the truth lies in how power and knowledge are used rather than power being clearly good or bad. Stamm gently challenged my resistance to the changes Lucky was going through and had me alternately cheering her on and chastising her. New characters come into play further challenging Lucky's perception of who to trust and what her role is in the battle between good and evil.  A Gift of Shadows pits good against evil while subtly demonstrating that what appears good isn't always good and what appears evil isn't always evil. I finished reading A Gift of Shadows and immediately felt an urge to read book three... Hopefully, it'll be coming soon... Check back soon for my thoughts on other books I'm reading including: Cocaine: An U...

Above the River: The Complete Poems by James Wright is a collection of poems that span life's ups and downs. Wright makes the mundane poetic with some beautiful turns of phrase. Above the River includes poems that are immersive and approachable as well as poems that feel just beyond reach in a way that made me reach for them. Wright's poems often feel incredibly personal and other times just as impersonal. At times, it was hard to discern the truly personal from Wright's observations of other people's lives. A group of translations in the middle of the book were interesting but still my least favorite part of the book. Some of the prose pieces in the latter part of the book left me wanting more and others were a struggle to get through. I was initially drawn to Wright's work because of Wright's connection to the Ohio River because I grew up on the Kentucky side of the Ohio not too far from the river, and was thrilled to see poems about the region as well as re...

Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer by Julia Cameron works off the same principles as The Artist's Way . I opted not to do the exercises as prescribed because I do my own version of self-care to handle my writing life. I think this is the important thing to take away from this book. YOU have to find your own path. This was Cameron's path and she finds it satisfying. Yours might look very different. When I tried Morning Pages years ago when I read The Artist's Way , I found they stifled my creativity. I have a few problems with this book. The first is there is an underlying message throughout that if you don't do it Cameron's way, you can't be successful. Another is the underlying implication that everyone who has ever tried her method is successful. There's also her insistence that all successful creativity should be credited to a higher power and all failure is the fault of the artist. While Write For Life overall didn't work for me, I did...

The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer is an interesting and inspiring workbook that reiterates that self-compassion is a way of life not a goal to be met. Neff and Germer gently remind the reader that to be self-compassionate is to constantly notice where one needs self-compassion many times in the book. The exercises in this workbook pushed me to think about events in my life and accept my feelings about those events with compassion instead of judgment but also to approach my judgment with compassion. As I worked through the exercises, old issues I'd thought long resolved resurfaced and reminded me that suppressing isn't the same as dealing with things. Facing these with self-compassion rather than judgment was a helpful exercise. That said, I also found it hard to relate to some of the exercises and felt like I just worked through them without much depth because they felt...

Zikora by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an immersive short story filled with emotional moments that are as messy as the human experience. Filled with love, loss, and family issues, Zikora wraps a frayed ribbon around the ties that connect human beings. I felt Zikora's pain and disappointment as well as her passion and kindness. I longed for her to find her voice and her footing even as her insecurities and waffling decisions brought consequences beyond her control. Adichie created complicated characters that were alternately hard to love and hard to hate making them all the more human including Zikora herself. Zikora reminds us all that we are products of the lives we lead and the lessons we learned from those lives. Check back soon for my thoughts on other books I'm reading including: Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer  by Julia Cameron Above the River: The Complete Poems  by James Wright The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook  by Kristin Neff and Christopher Ge...