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Timothy Green and Jamey Hecht at the Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica The Barnes & Noble on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica looks like a nice enough place when you first enter. Seems quite civilized. Unless you are a human being with bodily functions that need to be addressed. No bathrooms for the [...] Why did I write a poem about the Menendez brothers? Because the LA Times was having a poetry contest at some point in 1992 and I was feeling ballsy that day. The contest rules told me to write three poems about LA. So I gave them my Los Angeles triptych; three poems, one about the Menendez brothers, [...] Review by Jean Goldsmith  Marilynne Robinson, author of "Housekeeping", "Gilead" and "Home" I just finished the book “Housekeeping”. I loved this book so much first off for her use of language, vocabulary, just the way she puts words together and describes things. She writes in a way that is understandable intellectually, but also in a way where you can actually FEEL. It’s almost like a surreal use of language, which creates a feeling in the reader that goes beyond reason. Robinson’s use of metaphors and similes is like poetry; she has unique ways of describing things. Like on page 53: “…that she smelled dully clean, like chalk, or like a sun-warmed cat.” The story itself was so interesting and amazing in that Ruthie and Lucille did not have a “normal” life, due to so many sad circumstances, starting with the death of their grandfather, then the older ladies coming to try to raise them, and the suicide of their mother, and finally with their Aunt Sylvie and her strange behavior and lifestyle, which was strange but not strange; it was just the way she was. There was this thread of commonality between the family members, almost like the way mental illness can be common in a family, but this “thing” seemed to be “passed on” among them by their experiences with losing family members. The amazing thing about the story was that the losses of family were never dealt with as grieving, or sorrow. It was never described as such. It was just life. This is almost summed up for me on pg. 152 in my edition: “To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole.” This is a basic Pâte à choux with a ton of cheese incorporated and so what you end up with is an intensely cheese flavored cream puff. The bourbon or joint is optional, it’s just to make the process more interesting. Here we go, thanks to my Great Aunt Dorothy…  Timothy Green, author of "American Fractal" and editor of "Rattle - Poetry for the 21st Century" This thing is huge. You can see the numbers printed in the newspaper but when you get there and actually see it, it’s overwhelming. So many booths are saturated with piles of people that it’s difficult to tell what is in them. The signs on each booth are consistently white with blue text, no variation in font, color or graphic. I’m sure that the condo association would be happy but it makes it difficult to tell what the booths are about. Yes, I know, you want to know about the food. As did I. Once you park and sail the shuttle through Westwood Village and get to the festival, you’re ready for refreshments of some sort. Well, I was anyway. I’m not sure why I was surprised that it was all corporate. You can choose from such things as California Pizza Kitchen, Panda Express, Rubio’s, etc. You’re not going to find Thomas Keller here or the creative chef from down the street, but the food choices are not horrible and no more of a rip off than one would expect from this sort of thing. $10.00 for a Thai Chicken Pizza from California Pizza Kitchen or $7.00 for a cheeseburger and chips from the burger joint. Pretty mediocre, but not horrid. My cohorts and I shared a pizza just to get us through until we had time to get the lay of the land. Continue reading LA Times Festival of Books – April 25, 2009 These are very tasty little meat pies made with ground sirloin, raisins, almonds, and a lovely combination of spices and flavors… A very simple and easy way to prepare asparagus, bringing out the natural flavor without killing it… I had a dream the other night and when I woke up I actually remembered it in sharp detail. That is very unusual for me, I usually wake up thinking about whatever the hell it was I did the night before, trying to remember exactly what it was I said and making a list of the necessary mea culpas. Hmmm, I really should know what the plural for that is. However, this is a dream sequence and so I’m not doing any research… [...] |
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