Two poems, a movie, and another David Sedaris collection

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"House Fire" by Allison Seay (poem from Born Magazine, originally published in Blue Mesa Review, No. 18, Fall 2006)

"Advice for Women on the Graveyard Shift" by Karen J. Weyant (poem from Broadsided Press, May 2009)

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)

La Tourneuse de pages (English title: The Page Turner), in French, directed by Denis Dercourt and starring Déborah François as the adult Mélanie Prouvost, Catherine Frot and Pascal Greggory as Ariane and Jean Fouchécourt, and Antoine Martynciow as Tristan Fouchécourt. This was not the best film I've ever seen, but the music alone is worth the price of admission (or rental, I guess, in this case). It was billed as a thriller and I was expecting a climax along the lines of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, but this was much more subtle.

A Few Books and a Few Movies

Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor by Perri Klass (Basic Books, 2007)

Naked by David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1997)

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2004)

Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays by David Sedaris (Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 1994) [though in reality I'd more strongly recommend the essays, especially "SantaLand Diaries"]


Instead of linking these books anywhere, I'm going to take an opportunity to recommend IndieBound, which has a pretty slick Indie Store Finder located at http://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder.


Now, a few movies:

The Painted Veil, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, directed by John Curran and starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts as Walter and Kitty Fane.

Synecdoche, New York, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard, Catherine Keener as Adele Lack, Samantha Morton as Hazel, and about a thousand other people. Maybe literally. This movie was huge in scope and subject matter, though maybe you could boil it down to a discussion of the meaning of life and death. I found it a little intense.

Lost in Translation, written and directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Bill Murray as Bob Harris, Scarlett Johansson as Charlotte, and Giovanni Ribisi as John, Charlotte's husband. I saw this again recently. It didn't have quite the same effect this time, largely because I had seen it before, I think, and knew where it was going. But I still think that Sofia Coppola very effectively recreated the quiet, lonely world that seems so intimately entwined with extended bouts of insomnia.

A Little Poetry (and Fiction) for Poetry Month

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"Inside Joke, Explained: Jerry" by Scott Garson (short fiction from The Northville Review)

"Poem for the Adoptive Mother" by Amanda Auchter (a poem from Linebreak, April 29, 2008)

"At the Optometrist's Office" by John Hodgen (a poem from Slate, November 28, 2006)

And two pieces of short fiction by Tai Dong Huai, whose story "Backwards" appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review:

"Thirteen" by Tai Dong Huai (SmokeLong Quarterly, Issue 23, December 15, 2008)

"Clasp" by Tai Dong Huai (The Rose & Thorn, Spring 2009)

The Spring 2009 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2009 issue of the journal features fiction by Matthew Grice, Tai Dong Huai, Lydia Williams, Arrie Brown, and Jozefina Cutura; an essay by Suzanne Cope; poetry by William Robert Flowers, Leslie LaChance, Sarah White, Gregory Lawless, Roger Jones, Ruth Foley, Steve Klepetar, Linda King, Lyn Lifshin, James Richard Brown, Chris Anderson, and Asha Choubey; and artwork by Mikel Glass.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

Four Films

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Two (at least obliquely) about writing:

Ficción (English title: Fiction), in Spanish, directed by Cesc Gay, written by Tomàs Aragay and Cesc Gay, and starring Eduard Fernández as Àlex, Javier Cámara as Santi, Montse Germán as Mònica, and Carme Pla as Judith. I liked this film so much that I watched it again the next day, though my sympathies were different the second time around.

Comme une Image (English title: Look at Me), in French, directed by Agnès Jaoui, written by Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui, and starring Marilou Berry as Lolita Cassard, Jean-Pierre Bacri as Étienne Cassard, Agnès Jaoui and Laurent Grévill as Sylvia and Pierre Millet, and Keine Bouhiza as Sébastien. This was the second time I had seen this film as well. The first time, I have to admit that I couldn't relate to it somehow and found Lolita less than sympathetic as a character. However, this time, I thought that it was an interesting take on what it means to be successful as a writer, parent, spouse, and person in general.

The other two were darker in terms of subject matter but visually stunning:

Da hong deng long gao gao gua (English title: Raise the Red Lantern), in Chinese, directed by Yimou Zhang, written by Su Tong and Ni Zhen, and starring Li Gong as Songlian, Caifei He as Meishan (Third Wife), Cuifen Cao as Zhuoyan (Second Wife), and Shuyuan Jin as Yuru (First Wife). This film was absolutely gorgeous.

Aimée and Jaguar, in German, directed by Max Färberböck, written by Max Färberböck and Rona Munro, and starring Maria Schrader as Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar), Juliane Köhler as Lilly Wust (Aimée), and Johanna Wokalek as Ilse.

Poem: "Gate C 22" by Ellen Bass

At gate C 22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like satin ribbons tying up a gift. . . .

[Continued on the website of The Missouri Review,
where "Gate C 22" by Ellen Bass was published in 2002.]

A Few Books, Mostly Memoirs

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Despite loving Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, I hadn't read any of her books that dealt more with religion than writing. Recently, though, I read all three of them, and found that, like Bird by Bird, each was at least as much memoir as how-to manual.

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Trust me when I say that this was the first time I'd ventured into the Religion section of a bookstore for some new reading material.
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Also very late in the game, I finally read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. I'd had two of his books on my shelves for years; I'm now moving on to the second (more recent) one.

A few months ago, I bought a book of essays that was supposed to be witty and wonderful, and I don't know--it just didn't work for me. I plowed through the entire book trying unsuccessfully to understand what the reviewers were raving about. So I tried not to pay attention to all the hype about Me Talk Pretty One Day to avoid being similarly disappointed, but this book was terrific.
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I meant to add this to one of my blog posts a long time ago: a chapbook from Dancing Girl Press called The Terrible Baby, a collection of poems by Rebecca Cook. The cover is what initially drew me to that particular chapbook; it's a painting by Lauren Matthews Levato called "Maternal." (The second draw was the tantalizingly provocative title of the chapbook.)