The sun is shining: summer reading

The sun is shining.  People have cautiously put away their winter coats and left their gloves at home. It is that short time in Michigan, that precious time between the basement freezer and the frying pan.  

And we all have finals. Papers. Exams. Presentations.  Our lives are put on hold as our determination, smarts, and self-worth are put to the test. 

So instead of talking about what is in my backpack or my bed stand (schoolbooks and empty coffee mugs), I shall look forward to better things. Here is my summer reading list:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I love Margaret Atwood. I once heard her speak and she was so hilarious, so poignant and so intelligent. My sister and I got our beloved copy of The Blind Assassin signed, but were too in awe to actually speak to her. I also love sci-fi and love stories. Oryxand Crake is both those things. It is the tale of a post-apocalyptic world mutated by unscrupulous genetic engineering and a love triangle, I understand, is somehow involved. I’m excited to see how Margaret Atwood pulls it all together.

Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon  

I saw this book on the New York Time’s Best of 2012 book list. It immediately attracted my eye. Far from the Tree is about parents with children that are far different from themselves, parents of prodigies, schizophrenics, and more.  I’ve come to the age where I am self-aware enough to be afraid of turning into my mother. I’m hoping this book will give some helpful. On a more serious note, within the premise I detect a question I think most college students have asked themselves or will ask themselves: are we fated to live like our parents?

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

At first, I did not want to read this book. The main character has cancer in it. Cancer.  The plot device of plot devices to create drama, make a hero sympathetic and play on the audience’s emotions through their fear of death. Yet far too many people have recommended it to me for me to continue resisting the inevitable. Moreover, the author is on youtube, and he’s quite awesome. So I’ll give it a try. But I will look at the end of the book first to be prepared for any deaths.

Special Powers and Abilities by Raymond McDaniel and Thunderbird by Dorothea Lasky

I have a confession to make. I don’t like most poetry. I’m extraordinarily picky, and I’m not even one of those annoying people who don’t think it’s a poem if it doesn’t rhyme.  My issue with poetry is that it can often be esoteric and pointless, or formulaic and pointless. However, my increased involvement with Xylem and all the wonderful poems you guys have submitted has made me want to try harder to appreciate poetry.  The only poetry books I’ve managed to read on my own are Meditations in an Emergency and Ariel.  In my poetry appreciation development, I am the picky eater trying to expand my tastes to include things other than the old stalwarts of macroni and cheese and chocolate milk. So I’ve decided to read two books of poetry, to take some tiny bites towards expanding my diet.  Special Powers and Abilities by Raymond McDaniel, a faculty member here who I heard speak, is the first. It is a work of poems inspired by superheroes. It sounds just strange enough that I won’t get bored, but not so pretentious that I’ll rage-quit. The second, Thunderbird, by Dorothea Lasky just jumped out at me on the Boston Globes’s Best of list with these lines:

And the townspeople, they say to you/ That they may have seen/ A monster/ But no no I was only the dawn.”

On that note, I remember the “dawn” is coming: in other words exams.  I want to wish you all best of luck with your finals and also thank all of you who came to Xylem Live. It was truly a special night. All the people who shared their music, poetry and prose reminded me just how talented and creative this campus is and all the people who made up the audience reminded me how welcoming and warm this campus is too.  The performances and turnout were fantastic. And we gave away over a hundred Xylem magazines. So snatch one up if you see it because they are going fast.

–Julia Adams, Xylem Copy Manager

Xylem Live: The Release Party!

Xylem 2012-2013 is about to be hot off the press! We hope you’ll join us as we let the creativity phlo(em) next Friday March 29th, 2013.

We’ll be celebrating our latest publication with readings from the authors, art on display, live music and refreshments. This event is open to the public, and copies of the new Xylem issue will be available to all interested readers for free. 

We’re hosting our release party at the Work Gallery on State Street. Doors open at 7:00 pm, with readings and musical performances starting at 7:30 pm. Click here for more info on the gallery.

Can’t wait to see you there!

On my nightstand, in my backpack, and in my suitcase

Happy spring! Or happy soon-to-be spring! I am writing from the sunny state of Colorado, awaiting my flight back to Michigan. I guess spring is already a part of my skin at this point. I am choosing not to speculate about the presence (or lack thereof) of snow on the ground in Ann Arbor. But after spending my spring break hiking mountains and unwinding in hot springs, alas I am ready to begin my final few months as a Michigan undergrad. Holy.

Surprisingly, this final semester has left me with more time than usual to read for pleasure. So I’ve let my book fantasies and lists run free. What’s on my nightstand, in my backpack, and in my suitcase now….

On my nightstand

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. This short novel (really a novella) by the Italian writer Calvino is a gem and an imaginative wonderland. The novel is divided into several sections imagining different versions of city…or the same city? It reminded me how cities are our backbones and our playgrounds, all we can imagine. What if every urban project started from reading this novel by Calvino? What would our cities look like? How would they change? It’s a quick read but such a worthwhile one. I’d recommend listening to slow jazz while reading the tale. It creates quite the dynamite experience. Oh the places you’ll go…

And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.” “When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice.” “To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.” “You should then begin each tale of your travels from the departure, describing Venice as it is, all of it, not omitting anything you remember of it.” 

The lake’s surface was barely wrinkled; the copper reflection of the ancient palace of the Sung was shattered into sparkling glints like floating leaves.

“Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

Where is your “Venice”?

Fun home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. This one was highly recommended by one of my roommates, and so much so that I was slightly skeptical. Warning: it’s a graphic novel (I didn’t realize it was a graphic novel until I started reading and noticed every page was a comic…) But, it is wonderful nonetheless. A difficult and complex read, the novel alludes to literature and myth and various art forms, and traces back and forth in time, following the relationship of Bechdel to her father.

In my backpack

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders. This is a wild and wacky collection of short stories by the wonderfully talented Saunders. I am about half way through the collection of 12 stories, and it has been delightful and hilarious to get inside this man’s brain. Thus far, the stories have dealt with issues of advertising, media infiltration, and science fiction-y elements. A personal favorite so far is the story “Jon” from the first half of the collection. Next on my queue from the public library: Saunders’ newest collection Tenth of December.

Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard. Oh what a treat! I had previously read her essay “Living Like Weasels” from this nonfiction narrative collection. I bought this one from a street bookseller in Ann Arbor, the man who sometimes sells on State St. in front of Amer’s. I originally intended to gift it to my dad for his birthday because the dedication in the front is for Gary, and that is my dad’s name. Instead, however, I found another more suitable book for him. This one stayed with me, in my backpack and in my suitcase and on my nightstand for a long while.

Travel everywhere.

Read this Dillard collection.

And finally, in my suitcase…the readings we really take with us…

This is mandatory reading….an essay by William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness.” Search it anywhere on-line. This fella is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A divine thinker. An environmentalist, of sorts. A researcher on the interactions of humans with the natural world. This essay is exploratory, a boundary-pusher. It seriously engages readers to think about what it means to live with the wildness of our own homes. Just go read it now, really, it is only 20 pages. I know everyone can take a break for 20 pages…

Oh so much more to share! I just cannot stop.

-Emily Caris, senior, Xylem Submissions Co-Manager, English major and Urban Studies/PitE minors

On my Nightstand: Classics

When I was about nine years old, my grandfather gave me what became my most treasured posession to date: a beautiful, 100th year anniversary edition, hardcover copy of Gone With the Wind. I had never read the book before, and the ~2,000 pages felt absurdly heavy in my childhood hands. I thanked my grandfather politely, ran upstairs, and shelved it.

I didn’t open that book again until three years later, the day before my twelfth birthday. It’s weird how you remember the details when such an amazing book is involved, right?

Anyway, I decided to crack open the pages and read Gone With the Wind. The cover was really pretty, after all. For the next week, I could not stop reading. Never before had I been so wrapped up in a book that has always been considered a “classic.” I always had the childish notion that classics were for academic reading, and contemporary fiction was for leisure reading. Never had I thought that the two could merge together.

But now, older and wiser (I hope), I realize that some books written decades ago still have thematic relevance in my daily life, and so I enjoy reading them. And some books written days ago still have the literary technique of those “classics.” Here are some of my favorite classics.

 

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: So much more than a historical romance, this book follows stubborn but charming Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara before and afetr the American Civil War. The best part of the novel is that Scarlett is simply not a likable character, and yet the reader feels her tragedy as if it is their own pain. Well written, a beautiful read. 

 

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: I admit it; I did not like this novel the first time I read it. Another romance, Austen manages to perfectly capture the essence of a relationship’s beginning. Her characters are imperfect, and their position all too realistic- her novel is highly relevant, even now.

 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: The novel is a journey, an attempt to understand the human condition. The plot is essential, of course, but even more compelling are the blunt, almost-too-easily-understood statements that describe something that never changes: society, perhaps, or arrogance, love, marriage, freedom.

 

I hope you all come out of your shells and look into some other classics, too! And just a shoutout; Dawn Treader on Liberty St. has plenty

 

Not on My Nightstand, But in My Backpack

How rare and delightful it is for me to read something for school that I really, genuinely enjoy. This has become especially apparent to me as my coursework for linguistics has become more intense; long articles about syntax in Chinese or more obscure languages like Warlpiri often make reading a chore or even a nightmare for me. So when my French professors assign texts by authors like Marjane Satrapi or Annie Ernaux, I’m thrilled. Even reading Jean-Paul Sartre seems like a treat to me sometimes, which is probably not a very good reflection on my definition of fun…

At any rate, I would highly recommend the following books to anyone who needs some high-quality French reading (or French reading translated into English, of course!):

Embroideries (Broderies) by Marjane Satrapi
Satrapi is most famous for her graphic novel/film Persepolis, but even if you aren’t familiar with her work this book is fantastic. It is also presented as a graphic novel with really beautiful and often comical black and white illustrations, and it documents a group of Iranian women having tea together and sharing stories about love, sex, and men. This book is a really quick read and provides insight into the private lives of the women featured in the novel, such as Marjane’s grandmother, mother, aunt, and their friends and neighbors.

Shame (La honte) by Annie Ernaux
I first read Annie Ernaux for a French class a couple years ago, and I immediately fell in love with her writing. Her style is lacking in embellishment, but her attention to detail (especially in describing very ordinary, mundane situations) is astonishing. Most of Ernaux’s work is autobiographical, and this book is no exception. It tells the story of how her family’s social and economic status impacted her life as a young girl growing up in northern France, and how her origins became a source of shame for her. I also recommend her book Exteriors (Journal du dehors), which is a collection of journal entries about everyday contemporary life on the outskirts of Paris.

Some other great French authors/poets/playwrights I think are worth checking out are:

• Jean-Dominique Bauby
• François Bégaudeau
• Marguerite Duras
• Anna Gavalda
• Jean Genet
• Hervé Guibert
• Bernard-Marie Koltès
• Jacques Prévert

Bonne lecture!

~Cecilia (Senior, French/Linguistics major, Xylem’s Submissions Co-Chair)

On My Nightstand: poems, poems

In a Cafe

I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread

as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking

at the photograph of a dead lover.

–Richard Brautigan

Comforting things: my fuzziest blanket. The window cracked open. A handful of milk candy wrappers on my nightstand, spelling out a delicious and handsome sweet on my tongue. Falling asleep to poems, poems. 

Like Emma mentioned last week, it’s so rare for me to find time to read simply for leisure. But I’ve started this ritual every night where I read one poem or two before going to bed while eating one milk candy, and some days, this read-&-sweet goodnight pattern kind of blooms into my daily miracle.  

So. Poetry on my nightstand this week:

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, by Richard Brautigan. Crazy collection of poems published in the 1940s. And also, is the home of the poem I quoted above. Brautigan is incredible and also insane. Many of his poems are fairly short, yet they are all tucked with stunning observations about the world. In one of my favorites, The Chinese Checker Players, he wrote:

When I was six years old

I played Chinese checkers

   with a woman

who was ninety-three years old.

She lived by herself

in an apartment down the hall

   from ours.

We played Chinese checkers

every Monday and Thursday nights.

While we played she usually talked

about her husband

who had been dead for seventy years,

and we drank tea and ate cookies

   and cheated.

–Richard Brautigan 

!!! I hope you are stuttering exclamation points. This is the kind of poetry Brautigan feeds you: lines stuffed with endings that just kiss you hard on the mouth. 

(A side note: Brautigan also wrote one of my favorite prose poetry books, In Watermelon Sugar, a fictionalized narrative on a post-apocolyptic world, and characters’ struggles to define and love such a world.)

Another poetry book worth noting: Teeth, by Aracelis Girmay. I saw Aracelis perform in Ann Arbor a few years ago, and decided to begin writing poetry because of her. Yeah. She’s pretty lovely. Her poetry is infused with images that flip and sing and scald. Her poems rotate between diving into the political, to small day-to-day blessings. In one of my favorite poems by her, Ode to a Watermelon, she blesses the fruit. Now every time I slice a watermelon, all I do is think:

I love you your color hemmed
by rind. The blaring juke & wet of it.
Black seeds star red immense
as poppy fields,
white to outsing jasmine.
Again, all that green.

and later:

Sandía, día santo,
yours is a sweetness
to outlast slaughter:
Tongues will lose themselves inside you,
scattering seeds. All over,
the land will hum
with your wild,
raucous blooming.

–Aracelis Girmay

Oh, shoot. Thank goodness for Aracelis.

Finally, a must: Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, by Patricia Smith. A book erupting with dynamite sticks. I was insanely lucky to be at the Chicago book release party for this event last March. Patricia writes to cleanse and to dirty you up – in all the best ways possible. Many of her poems in this particular volume deal with familial and racial pride, spark, and struggle. I’m a HUGE advocate of her work! She’s got sass and strength all fried up inside this book. Plus, there’s some crazy delicious references to Southern food within many of her poems (cornbread lovers out there!? where you at!)

To end, mark your calendars! PATRICIA SMITH IS COMING TO ANN ARBOR on November 29 for this year’s Poetry Night in Ann Arbor! (At Rackham Auditorium, doors will open at 7pm) Both PATRICIA SMITH and SHIRA ERLICHMAN (another wonderful poet and songwriter!) will be the featured poets of this year’s event. If you love being swept over by some serious joy and feeling like you are built completely out of sugar, I HUGELY recommend you to come to this annual event! There will be youth performers from the Neutral Zone’s VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, and University of Michigan U-Club slam poets. Finally, Patricia and Shira will be releasing a book for the event, published by the Neutral Zone’s Red Beard Press! More info on all this goodness to come.

 

Enjoy the week, wonderful people! Go read poems and giggle and fall in love!

Carlina Duan - Sophomore, English major, Xylem’s Layout Chair 

On My Nightstand

I used to read for fun. And then I became a college student. When reading for classes tops 600 pages a week, reading for fun becomes a luxury. Most weeks my personal reading is limited to skimming The New Yorker at the gym and maybe reading a chapter of a novel as I’m falling asleep or eating breakfast before class.

My reading list is a growing problem, in that it is growing at a rate faster than I could ever possibly hope to read. I need to read those canonical classics- Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, and how have I not read The Scarlet Letter yet? But at the same time, I want to read all sorts of contemporary fiction- The Tiger’s Wife (Tea Obreht), This is How You Lose Her (Junot Diaz), and even The Casual Vacancy (J.K. Rowling).

As such, my nightstand is always precariously stacked. This is what’s in my current pile:

 Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon: I haven’t started this yet, but it’s on the list for my immigrant fiction class, so I’ll be reading it soon. As an added incentive, Alexander is coming to the University on November 29^th for a roundtable and reading. I’ve heard great things about his work, and I love the opportunity to ask authors questions about their craft.

My Father’s Daughter by Gwyneth Paltrow: I have a slight cookbook obsession. I’m a vegetarian, and as such I’m always looking easy and appetizing veggie options. While this cookbook isn’t strictly vegetarian, almost all of the recipes have adapted versions that are vegetarian or vegan. I’m very intrigued by the vegan brownie recipe and the homemade black bean burgers.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Leviathan: I read two chapters of this in September and haven’t touched it since. I like John Green’s fiction and I’m a regular watcher of his weekly vlogs on YouTube, however I’ve only read David Leviathan’s most recent book The Lover’s Dictionary. The book centers on a straight teen and a gay teen that share the same name and the resulting overlap of their two lives.

 My Antonia by Willa Cather: If I’m being honest, this has been on my nightstand since June. I’m a fan of Willa Cather generally, and I especially love her short stories and novel Death Comes for the Archbishop. It’s amazing to me that I haven’t read this, probably her best-known publication. I started the first chapter and I’m intrigued, but I haven’t really had the time I’d like to devote to this. Maybe over Thanksgiving break?

 The rest of the stack:

Percival’s Planet Michael Byers

Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Unaccustomed Earth Jhumpa Lahiri

On Writing Well William Zinsser

The Swan Thieves Elizabeth Kostova

Lord of the Flies William Golding

 

~ Emma Kruse (Junior, English major, Xylem’s Advertising Manager)