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The Vaster Wilds, In The Distance, book reviews

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The Vaster Wilds Lauren Groff Riverhead Books, September 2023 In the Distance Hernan Diaz Riverhead Books, March 2024 I wanted to slip out a quick review of these titles. My Christmas vacation was spent reading. I think in one week I read four books. It was lovely— You know, with all the snow and cold, hot tea and chocolate, cozy slippers, warm blankets, putting my feet up in my Tiny House. I was blessed. I’ve been a fan of Groff for a while. I love her Florida stories and the novel Matrix , not so much her highly-acclaimed Fates and Furies . In fact, that novel put me off so much, I thought I might not return to her work. But every time I hear of a Florida hurricane (which is frequent) I think about her short story collection, Florida . Also, I think I might have been at the Sewanee Writers Conference in a critique group with her. She looks so familiar in her author pic. It seems that Groff’s interests are varied and far-ranging. All her books are different, coming from, I’m sur...
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The Rest is Memory, a book review

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The Rest is Memory, a book review Lily Tuck Liveright Publishing Corp. 2025 I’ve written before at the blog about Lily Tuck . Tuck never seems to do just one thing; her work spans/defies categorization. The title, taken from a Louise Glück poem, NOSTOS, dwelling in the subterranean of memory: “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.” Glück/Tuck. Tuck is a master of the hybrid, meta novel. A mix of memoir, fiction, Wikipedia, fate and fairy tale. In this small book (114 pages) she employs cruel irony, omniscient voice, pathos, twists and wishes. Things are not always as they appear: there is senseless evil, random goodness, power play showing winners and losers. All the elements of what makes a story and history. It all starts with a photograph of a concentration camp inmate. The small prisoner, overwhelmed in her striped jacket with shorn head, stares into the lens. The camera captures her soul.   Tuck works outward, painting a fictional picture filled in ...
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Popping Corn, a memory trigger

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When I was out in Eugene, Oregon on my sojourn I bought a Whirly-gig Popcorn Popper at the thrift store. When I lived in Chicago it was a nightly thing to popcorn for a bedtime snack, while watching TV, or instead of dinner. There was rarely an evening when someone wasn’t in the kitchen making popcorn. The pan was blackened, stained with old oil, never washed. Always there were bits of old popcorn seeds, white stuff, the flimsy shells of past poppings left in the bottom. It was like an archaeologist excavating a dig to clean the thing out. So to find a “new” one, not broken in or seasoned by prior use was a real find. Every time I used the popper I would think of my Chicago neighbors, the Bocks, who used the Whirly-gig popper as much as I did. They LOVED popcorn. One time I called Elanor after popping a big bowl, forgetting the time difference between West Coast and Eastern time—she answered immediately worried. It was hard to explain between chewing mouthfuls: I was just thinking ab...
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Long Distance Calls

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Remember when you had to use an operator to call long distance, to place a call? Remember asking to call a friend you met at camp and your mother nixed the idea, saying it’s too expensive, meaning you only call long distance if it’s an emergency. Your parents used to call the grandparents every Sunday and everyone huddled around the one phone in order to say hi, tell them what you wanted for Christmas, birthday, you know, emergencies. If a relative from out of town called, Mom and Dad immediately assumed someone had died or been in a car wreck. It was never about anything as frivolous as just talking. Or remember when rates were cheaper on weekends, late at night—that’s why they waited to make a call, hoping the person on the other end would be at home. Remember when you worked summers at Yellowstone National Park and would call your mother from the parking lot as you crossed from the employee dorm to the inn at Old Faithful. In the often chilly morning, the dry air tickling your nose...
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Waiting in a Snowy Wood

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 Waiting in a Snowy Wood Riding our bicycles Through a fog-hushed snowy wood A train horn echoes We wait, the sound fills the air Grinding down all around us The above is a tanka, a Japanese form I’m revisiting after my class, The Road to Haiku. In a previous post  I outlined the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable scheme. Truthfully, anything can be a form see renga, sonnets villanelles, and the rondeau. Consistency is the secret sauce. Regardless, the form forces us to search for different words instead of taking the first one that comes to mind, it forces us to pay attention to sound. With a specific word/syllable count we have to make choices—often for the stronger adjective, verb. It makes us slow down, dwell with the piece, ask ourselves, What exactly do I want to communicate? Emphasize the sensory. The context or story behind the story is Jack, my 3-year-old grandson, and I like to ride our bikes in the woods near our house. He on a child’s balance bike and me on mine. Believe me,...
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