Monday, February 16, 2009

2 Novels: One about Identity Theft, the Other, a May December Romance



T.C. Boyle's 2006 novel Talk Talk is about one woman's experience with identity theft. I've heard ads on the radio about how to protect your identity. I never thought much about this type of crime until I read Boyle's book. The book made the whole experience frightening. You will find out it REALLY can happen to anybody!

I read the book quickly. I wanted to know if the deaf woman and her boyfriend (they took it upon themselves to find the thief) would catch him. There were a lot of scenes in cars which made the book seem like one big car chase between cops and robbers.

Here are two reviews.

http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2006_08_009663.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401222.html






"Gabriel Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He has written numerous books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude (I will never forget this story) and Love in the Time of Cholera. Memories of My Melancholy Whores, his latest novel, is a 115-page, strangely erotic, and spiritual masterpiece. The man is a great writer, but I don't have to tell you that."


Memories of My Melancholy Whores is about more than the relationship between a young prostitute and a ninety year old man. Read more http://www.eclectica.org/v10n4/glixman.html



Friday, February 13, 2009

Inspire Me Thursday- Lace- Happy Valentines Day

E.P. Glixman

The challenge this week at Inspire Me Thursday is lace. Here is my poem in progress, my first draft. Since it is Valentines Day, I thought about hearts and flowers and lacy things. I guess Cupid loves lace. It is everywhere on this holiday.


Angela's


You might think you've entered a room
where everything is covered
with luxurious lace. You are right
You've entered a space with signs on walls
that read
for the demure, the daring, the darling
The room is full of searching people like your neighbor
eighty year old Mrs.Rodriguez
hiding her Valentines Day hearts and flower thong
trimmed with neon pink lace in her bony hand
No one would have ever guessed

This is the way the world should be everyday
a shopping spree - a surprise-
All women are madonas goddesses
mistresses of the dark
in black lace and high heels
and
then there are the women who are told
not to be women
who need to take care
of their
deepest yin


This store is not a place of weeping and sighs
of threats and phrases
I am leaving you
Don't expect child support
And it is not a place where you pick up dry cleaning
or tell the judge how your significant other cheated

It is a place of
Revelation
Emancipation
Freedom
A declaration

I am a lover of lace and soft things
at Angela's Lingerie store



E.P. Glixman




Monday, February 2, 2009

Robert Frost " Versed in Country Things" Poems and New England Winter Photos

photo by a.coven
photo by a.coven

photo by a.coven




Robert Frost lived and wrote in New England for part of his life.

"Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony."

Read more about Frost at

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

A few memorable poems.

DUST OF SNOW

by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.




Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


An Old Man's Winter Night
by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

From "Mountain Interval", 1916


I bought this book of Frost's poems and B.A. King photos years ago. I often re-read it. I find it inspiring. See more of King's black and white photos at this link.
 
https://bytonyking.com/index.php?cPath=16