Sympathy, American History, We Wear the Mask

One extra day of Black History Month this year, so I'll close it out with some thoughts and some poems:

Today's BHM trivia contest question at school pissed me off:
"Who killed Martin Luther King?"
Yes, knowing this person's name is knowing some history. But how many other, better things are there to know?

Forget his name, never speak it again, let it rot like his soul was rotten. Let's not sing the names of murderers. Let's close our fists around their syllables and plunge our hands deep in the mud and drown them.

And let's lift up the poems on our voices, because it's only one month until National Poetry Month! (formatting is funky--always is when I cut and paste from poets.org)
by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas! When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, And the river flows like a stream of glass; When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, And the faint perfume from its chalice steals-- I know what the caged bird feels! I know why the caged bird beats its wing Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars And they pulse again with a keener sting-- I know why he beats his wing! I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,-- When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings-- I know why the caged bird sings!

American History
by Michael S. Harper
Those four black girls blown up in that Alabama church remind me of five hundred middle passage blacks, in a net, under water in Charleston harbor so redcoats wouldn't find them. Can't find what you can't see can you?

..>

We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

Peter Cameron's SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU

Saturday night I finished this amazing book by Peter Cameron. It's one of those stories that summaries fail, so I won't even try. This review does pretty well, Brian Farrey's review on Dispatches from an MFA-Seeking Writer, but it seems to me that this story is so well-told that telling what it's about doesn't say much about the book at all.

Furthermore, even though I've given you that link, I'll say that I think it's better to read Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You without knowing anything that's going to happen. Not that what you read in a review will spoil it, it's just that my preference is always to avoid knowing too much about a book before I read. I want to be open to the most subtle bit of surprise. I want the story to reveal itself. I want to guess and predict. I want to let the writing tell the story.

And this one is the kind of book that you can read the first page and know you want to keep reading.

What I will say here is that the book is hilarious and smart. Protagonist/narrator James slays me with his observations and Cameron just kills me with his dialog. James is a kid (18 years old, in the summer before college) with some serious issues, but despite how impossible he is, I believed that he was either right on or I sympathized completely despite the fact that I knew he was fucking up.

And the way Cameron begins with such a strong, endearing voice and "gotta read this passage aloud to your friend" humor, then gradually reveals the story with precision and restraint . . . What can I say?

I wish I could write like this!

Books from High School English

WHAT BOOKS FROM ENGLISH CLASS DO YOU HATE?

WHICH BOOKS DO YOU LOVE?

I read THIS BLOG about how much Teen Book Reviewer hates Holden Caulfield and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I wondered:


What other books that I love do you hate? Or maybe you love them, too?

I loved these, and more, often because I had great English teachers who taught the books with love. It wasn't until college that I thought we over-
analyzed, but I come from a family of English majors. I expected the great books to be great, I assumed that they would lead me into mysterious and sublime realms, and they usually did.


Other titles I remember are Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar; poems by Robert Frost; Arthur Miller's The Crucible; Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury; The Plague by Camus; How to Kill a Mockingbird; The Odyssey; Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury, Paul Zindel's The Pigman, and many more!

Some were pretty difficult, and Walden I loved not just because of the ideas (or ideals), but because Mr. Nelson was so intense about it that I really wanted to understand and live the ideals.

But enough about me. Maybe I was just a little English teacher in the making!



I got lots of great comments on the subject at my myspace blog, but you should go to to Teen Book Review and comment.