I asked my friends what poems they liked... (and of course, a few that I like...)

Hymn of Breaking Strain by Rudyard Kipling

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell

The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

in Just by e. e. cummings

Strawberries by Edwin Morgan

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond by e. e. cummings

Humanity i love you by e. e. cummings

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Home Burial by Robert Frost

Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy

The Perfect High by Shel Silverstein

Marriage by Gregory Corso

Death Wants More Death by Charles Bukowski

Full Moon by Robert Hayden

Full Moon and You're Not Here by Sandra Cisneros

The Fury of Sunsets by Anne Sexton

Street corner college by Kenneth Patchen

The Tragedy of the Leaves by Charles Bukowski

Calling the Rain Spirit by Red Hawk

Harlem by Langston Hughes

Lament for my Cock by Jim Morrison

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

The Sleepers by Walt Whitman

Canto XIII by Ezra Pound

The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden

Overheard on a Salt Marsh by Harold Monro

Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling

Tactics and Strategies by Mario Benedetti

after the party by Julio Cortazar

The Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias by Federico Garcia Lorca

Life Chant by Diane diPrima

Rant by Diane diPrima

Factory by Antler

Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

When You Are Old by W. B. Yeats

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

A Cradle Song by William Blake

Windchime by Tony Hoagland

Winter Stars by Larry Levis

O Captain!  My Captain!  by Walt Whitman

Fog by Carl Sandburg

Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Last Night I Drove A Car by Gregory Corso

Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

I asked some friends what poems they liked...

A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud

Bluebird by Charles Bukowski

only small things by David McLean (pg 3)

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

Dreams by Langston Hughes

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

Van Gogh by Mike Meraz

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

My Brother Sam Is Dead gets two thumbs up

I love young adult novels.  I crave them like air and chocolate.  Yes, I realize I am far past young adult reading, but there is something in their simplicity that catches me suddenly in another dream world.  They are not often mentally-challenging; there is no heightened language, but there is something stark in their nakedness: illustration.  Not illustrations, although, yes, some of them have those, too.  But illustration in their imagination.  In order to capture the insane ADD attention of a kid, a young adult novel has to be daring, dangerous, breath-taking, imaginative, inventive, engrossing... no wait!  I can still come up with more adjectives!

You get the picture.  And in order to write and read a young adult novel, you have to be able to get the picture.  So here is my latest that I just finished reading, James Collier's and Christopher Collier's My Brother Sam is Dead.  Obviously the ending isn't a mystery or a shocker, as I'm sure you can tell what happens by the title.  But what's engrossing is how you get to that point.

This particular book is a young young adult novel, although I will say it's got some fairly graphic moments for kids too young.  The story takes place in the years leading up to and subsequently following the American Revolution in Colonial New England.  Okay, I know, that's been beaten to death, but this one is different: it doesn't choose a side.  The story revolves around the unrest within our own country, not so much with the British, but with the Continentals, Patriots, and Tories, and with their treatment of one another.  Its historical accuracy is mind-blowing, but more so, the question it raises is important: who's right in war?  Both sides are right and both sides are wrong here, each equally doing awful things and each equally raising good, valid points.  No one wins, nothing gets resolved, and everyone loses.  It's sad; I cried.  Yet, there's a revolutionary feeling of empowerment and excitement running throughout the story that makes you a little excited yourself.

The Scarlet Letter is a doozy

I finally finished reading The Scarlet Letter.  I know, I know, but somehow I managed to escape it in high school.  My life was blissful until recently when I decided I needed to endure the classics in order to consider myself well-rounded.  I really wanted to read The House of the Seven Gables, but knowing Letter came first and that Gables was Hawthorne's response to the public's outcry at his dismal, if blasphemous, take on the morbid East Coast, I figured I should read them in order.  But hey, I've lived there.  I've seen Salem.  And I'll say that, although it takes me fewer words, Hawthorne has it just about right in Letter. 

I knew this was not going to be a pleasant read, as obviously everyone knows by now the general story behind this bleak cover.  What they might not know, however, is that there is nothing like Nathaniel Hawthorne to make you hate language and that this guy goes on and on and on for two chapters to describe one wall.  Everyone is whiny, the man she loves is a weird wuss, the man who's supposed to be seeking revenge is cryptic and complicated to the point that you miss the point, and everything is descriptive with very little interaction.  The few moments of saving grace come just after the middle of the book when we finally get some dialogue going between the characters. 

My big suggestion to you, if you must read this, is just sit down and get through it as quickly as possible.  You don't need to read "The Custom House" portion at the beginning unless you hate your life; all it tells you is that Hawthorne, while working in the Custom House, came upon the actual fabric of the scarlet letter (although not really... I know, right!?) in an abandoned room upstairs.  Yup, forty pages just for that.  The first half took me months to read because I kept picking it up, putting to down, picking it up, getting frustrated, forgetting what had already happened, losing track of which man was which and whom was whom and what was what, then putting it down, not wanting to pick it back up.  I got more enjoyment out of the second half after reading it on an airplane with no escape but the drooling, oversized man next to me.  So I was pinned, and that actually helped me get into it a little bit.  But no tears, no remorse for Hester's stupid life or anyone's pointless death.  The whole thing is just brutal, in story and in language.

I now have no desire to read The House of the Seven Gables.   Maybe during my next menstrual cycle when I hate myself.