50 Book Blog: Reviews 9, 10, and 11

The 50-book warpath continues, and this time the bodies on the battlements include a rapturous poetry read by a Pulitzer Prize winner, a tiresome tale of unrealistic romance from the former editor of Time, and a practical guide for writers that is sure to inspire.



Earlier Poems, by Franz Wright
"But this wasn't poetry it was something else," writes Kenneth Koch in his poem 'To Psychoanalysis.' Though Wright didn't win the Pulitzer for Walking to Martha's Vineyard until after Koch's death in 2002 -- and I'm not certain if the two ever even met -- this simple line speaks vivdly to Wright's ability to achieve a grandure in his poetry that transcends mere text on the page.

By turns haunting and illuminating, Wright's poetry is replete with ghosts lingering on dark roads and empty rooms echoing with voices long since departed. And when not immersed in it, the poet writes with a tense anticpation of the supernatural, air sucked from his lungs like "the stillness before trains."

Similar to his 2006 collection God's Silence (read), these poems -- spanning from 1982 to 1995 -- embody a unique type of hopefulness, as one who finds himself at the very depths of despair and takes a small but palpable comfort in the knowledge that it cannot get any worse. Wright's work is made all the more powerful by the fact that it is from these depths where the poet writes. And it is in the very darkest of environments that we encounter his most vivid images: the "upright piano filled with rainwater" sitting outside the abandoned barn, or the Poe-esque "cellar door you have to open" and, nearby, the dug-up "blindfolded skull." And it's not all macabre -- he once describes the smile on someone's face as "the velvet depression left by a jewel" -- dark, yes, but undeniably beautiful imagery, and it makes each line of this and every Wright collection a wholly engrossing poetic experience.

Beginner's Greek, a novel by James Collins
I've never read Jane Austen, but that Kurt Anderson's inside-flap endorsement of Beginner's Greek likens the novel to the classic romance author makes me never, ever want to bother. From what I know of Austen, her work balanced compelling romantic plots with realism and scathing social commentary. Collins, however, dragged out a mediocre and predictable love story sustained merely by vastly overwritten passages, primetime-dramady histrionics, and overwhelmingly mundance characters.

At first, I thought that perhaps I wasn't the target demo for this book: though written by a male author and centered on a male protagonist, the treacly, "gee-whiz" sentiment and high-society navel gazing reads like chick-lit. But as I drudged further into the book's dense 441 pages, I couldn't find a single character whom I believed would ellicit a positive emotional response from any reader. Everyone is so humorlessly polite and forgiving -- whether abandoned by a wife, or punched in the face by a colleague, or deceived by a best friend -- and every subplot is so predictably, neatly tied up in the end that it makes for a long, frustrating read. The book-jacket description alleges that this is a comedy of manners, but the humor is compeltely lost on me, and the cliched manners of the upper-crust give no depth to an already superficial story.

Jane Austen, ma'am, you may roll over now.

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, by Roy Peter Clark
"Writing should flow from the good writer," says Clark in the intro to the Writing Tools paperback edition -- and in the ensuing 250+ pages, he provides hints, tips, clues, examples, and anecdotes that act as a decongestant to even your most infectious case of writer's block. From rudimentary tips to overarching habits, Clark reminds you to employ the basics that you forgot over time (like avoiding passive voice), and gives a name to those techniques you sometimes spot in your reading, but could never quite enunciate what was so important about it (like Chekhov's Gun).

An earlier, rougher vesion of Clark's indispensible advice lives on LifeHack.com -- it's legit and free, so you can guiltlessly check out his list of 50 tips list before picking up the paperback (Little, Brown, 2006). Indeed, the hardest part about reading Clark's helpful collection will be stopping yourself from leaping mid-page to the nearest desktop and start cranking out a chapter, essay, or blog piece.

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As always, thanks for reading, and I look forward to your reviews of these books -- or your suggestions as to what I should be reading next. Being that this is National Poetry Month, the next edition of the 50 Book Blog will contain a series of short recommendations on a few new collections, as well as some of my all-time favs.

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Chris Steib is the author of one-and-a-half novels that no one has read, because no one has been gracious enough to published them (yet). He enjoys the Helvetica sans-serif family of graphic fonts and taking arms-length photos of himself.