Art - Books - The Writer

A Book a Week for a Year 2019

Kathleen Matson Blurock 

I was watching INSIDE BILL’S BRAIN and there was Bill Gates lugging a very full bag of books to his office and the narrator said he reads 150 pages and hour and I say WHAT?  I am going too slow. How many pages do I read? I time myself. Turns out, it’s between 35 and 40 pages an hour depending on the book, which means a 350 page book takes about 10 hours to read. So if I read an hour a day or more it will take 7 to 10 days to finish. That is NOT a book a week. 

Now when I go into a bookstore I start to look for thin books. I start to think about time and what I can disappear into, what I can learn from, what I can educate myself with in thick books and thin. I stare at Moby Dick on the shelf next to my bed, where I am stuck on page 240 of 625 since 2017 as many times I had to stop and google the types of whales, the ships, the people, the distances traveled. 

I’ve read 51 books which almost gets me to my goal of a book a week for the year. I need one more. Again I look at my bookshelf and find THIS IS WATER, a 131 page commencement address by David Foster Wallace, small sentences on each page so I go fast. I am going to hit my goal. I’ve got to have a goal. I’ve got to throw my hat over the stone wall in order to figure out a way to retrieve it.

                “We work in the dark 

we do what we can 

We give what we have 

Our doubt is our passion 

                and our passion is our task. 

The rest is the madness of art.” 

            - Henry James 

I’m doubtful. I’m passional and I am in the dark, struggling to feel my way toward what I don’t know. I find out by reading. That is my task. 

For a year I have read essays, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, but mostly novels, mostly lovely stories, well told stories that take me -  the reader -  inside a world and my world slips away, dissolves for a while, takes a back seat while I discover Tennessee Williams’ make shift living quarters by the Hudson in his early New York City days, or Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s protagonist Victoria Jones whose childhood was spent in the foster care system and finds her connection to the world through flowers and their meaning in THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. I’ve laughed at film director John Waters’ outlandish raunchiness in MR. KNOW IT ALL. I’ve been gobsmacked by the historical research Adam Nicholson did to present the centuries old roots and landscape of his beloved SISSINGHURST in southern England, and I have been awestruck by Anita Brookner’s HOTEL DU LAC, winner of the 1984 Booker Prize, a masterful portrait of a woman who goes away - to the Hotel du Lac - to find herself and in the process actualizes herself into herself. My prize for book of the year. 

These stories are all worthy. 

I read the biography of Lee Miller and was shocked at her abrupt shift from girl hood at 8 - when she was raped by a family friend and given syphilis - to New York Conde Nast model, noted surrealist, photographer and Man Ray’s muse.

I read Vita Sackville West’s ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSES, Michelle Obama’s BECOMING and Raymond Carver’s CATHEDRAL. 

I have read books about Nazis, bullfights in Spain, England and it’s landscape, New York, celebrity biography, women’s freedom and the truth deep inside our souls. 

And then, toward year’s end, in Montana, I take the slow left hand turn into stories of Native Americans:  Tommy Orange’s THERE THERE, David Grann’s  KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, (characters so fascinating this story will be filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s next project) books of indigenous people and their struggles in wide open prairies and stark snow-covered mountains, and where there is no THERE THERE in Oakland, California.

After all that, I like to clear my palette with Charles Bukowski, a great American poet whose lines are broken so well that before you know it, you’ve read a poem which is really a mini movie. Bukowski goes right to the bone and as I read I feel clarity about myself and my position in myself. I admire his direct accuracy and understanding of the world. 

This is my 2019 list - mostly American and British writers. Thanks to Bill Gates I am reading more but my wonder is why haven’t I written my list down before? 

2019 A Book a Week for a Year

Title       Author

The Nest        Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

The Girls Emma Cline

Method Writing Jack Grapes

Stranger on Earth Richard Jones

Cathedral Raymond Carver

WONDER Kathleen Matson Blurock 

Moise and the World of Reason Tennessee Williams

The Artists Way Julia Cameron

Selected Stories Dorothy Parker 

Becoming Michelle Obama 

All of Us Raymond Carver

The Sanctuary of the Soul Yogananda

Gift from the Sea Ann Morrow Lindberg 

Pocket Pema Chodron         Pema Chodron

The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Men Explain Things to me Rebecca Wolnit

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark

Fewer Better Things Glenn Adamson 

Hotel Du Luc Anita Brookner 

Start Where You Are Pema Chodron 

Falling Slowly Anita Brookner 

Love is Blind William Boyd 

Lee Miller Biography Carolyn Burke 

Virginia Woolf Bio Alexandra Harris 

Altered States Anita Brookner 

Living by Fiction Annie Dillard 

The Language of Flowers Vanessa Diffenbaugh 

Art Lessons Deborah Haynes 

Mr. Know It All John Waters 

Sissinghurst, An Unfinished History Adam Nicholson 

Elements & Origins Margaret Tait

England, England Julian Barnes 

English Country Houses Vita Sackville-West 

Heat and Dust Ruth Prawer Jvabalah 

Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 

Then and Now Diane Keaton

In the Garden of Beasts Eric Larson 

The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 

ME - Bio Elton John 

Swimmer in the Secret Sea William Kotzwinkle 

There There Tommy Orange 

Ethan Frome   Edith Wharton 

Olive Again Elizabeth Strout

Killers of the Flower Moon David Grann 

Ninety Nine Glimpses of 

Princes Margaret Craig Brown

Prairie Fever Michael Parker

Trust Exercise Susan Choi

On Drinking Charles Bukowski 

Calypso David Sedaris

SISSINGHURST                         Vita Sackville-West

New Poems Book 4 Charles Bukowski  

This is Water                                            David Foster Wallace

National Poetry Month - William Carlos Williams

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

National Poetry Month - Kathleen Matson

Writer, photographer, blogger and poet Kathleen Matson Blurock lives in Los Angeles, California, Livingston, Montana and Pittenweem, Scotland.

Lucky to have my poem chosen for the window of SAX & FRYER, oldest store in Livingston, Montana. Opened 1883, one year after the town was founded.

A Place to Hide

That summer I found places to hide 

around the neighborhood.

The metal tubes stacked

on Grimes’ lot behind our house

was one of my favorites. 

I sat in one on rainy days, 

smelled the air, 

and would not be bothered. 

I hid under the stairway 

and read comic books 

in the neighbor’s hall closet.

I sneaked in the back door, 

turned on the light,

and sat under jackets and coats 

in privacy.

From the backseat floor 

of Mom’s ‘41 Chevy, 

I rolled down the window, 

and watched ants crawl 

over the tops of pink and white peonies 

that lined the driveway. 

I found places to hide 

so I could be alone.

I found places to hide 

from my father’s anger.

I found places to hide 

where I listened 

to what the rain had to tell me,

or the ants,  

or the peonies, 

still my favorite flower. 

National Poetry Month - Marc Beaudin

This piece is excerpted from Notes from the Grizfork: A Year of Watching in Montana's Paradise Valley, Poems & Observations 

by Marc Beaudin 

This piece gives you Montana. 
Thank you Marc Beaudin of 
Elk River Books. 

Elk River Books

I wake this morning to another dusting of snow on the high mountains, but down here in the valley, the day grows warm like a Michigan Indian summer – memories of youth sanctified by age. The magpies scatter as I step from my cabin and a red-shafted flicker clings to the uppermost branch of a dying willow. Later in the day, a raven holds the identical spot. So too, red gives way to black in our rivers and blood.

Click here to read "Notes From the Grizfork" 

https://crowvoice.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=5cc173b7cd4b08f1b7f94e5dc&id=4889f46693

National Poetry Month - Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni - Internationally renowned poet and A University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. Along with Virginia Fowler, they have created the Fowler-Giovanni fund: "The Answer is Yes: Fowler-Giovanni English Department Program Endowment." The Answer is Yes to the value of celebrating people from underrepresented groups; Yes to artists and scholars; Yes to students just finding their voices; Yes to the arts and humanities; Yes to people who will use and remember Giovanni's work; Yes to Virginia Tech as a place where the arts and humanities thrive. 

And talk about thriving........I have read this poem ALOUD for many years. 

Thank you Nikki. Thank you Virginia.

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why) 

by Nikki Giovanni

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
    the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
    that only glows every one hundred years falls
    into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
    drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
    to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
    the tears from my birth pains
    created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
    out the sahara desert
    with a packet of goat's meat
    and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
    so swift you can't catch me
    For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
    He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
    as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
    jesus
    men intone my loving name
    All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
    the filings from my fingernails are
    semi-precious jewels
    On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
    the earth as I went
    The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
    across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
    except by my permission
I mean . . . I . . . can fly
    like a bird in the sky . . .


www.nikki-giovanni.com

National Poetry Month - Charles Bukowski

One of 100 greatest poets worldwide.

Born in Germany and raised in Los Angeles, Bukowski is known as the barfly.

Time magazine called him "a laureate of American lowlife."

Funny, true and heartbreaking, Charles Bukowski's work is not to be missed.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

Charles Bukowski

Travel - Sissinghurst Castle - The Timeless Magic of Vita Sackville-West and husband Harold Nicolson's renowned Castle and Garden

Nestled in Kent, two miles north-east of Cranbrook lies this iconic castle and garden.

It's name recorded as early as 1180, Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson fell in love with Sissinghurst and moved here in 1932.


"Sissinghurst has been a moated manor, an Elizabethan mansion, a spa, a prisoner-of-war camp, a work-house, a hamlet for farm workers and an allotment garden. Today it is a relic, more than halved in size and bearing the scars of much ill-treatment, yet calm, beautiful and unified in its latest reincarnation as a house standing in isolated brick segments in one of the loveliest gardens in England."

                                  - Nigel Nicolson

The tower, where Vita Sackville-West had her study.

Several buildings within the garden date from the original Tudor period. The Priest house is available to hire through the National Trust cottages.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle/

78 steps…shallow steps I might add.

The tower room above her study was filled with an exhibition of family history, and V. Sackville-West's poem of Sissinghurst, with a voice over of the poem being read by her.

Quite good to hear her voice.

 The view of Kent from above.

The walled garden.

The long library which houses over ten thousand books.

Painting of The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West   by Hungarian painter Philip Alexius de Laszlo, 1910.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vita_Sackville-West

 The white garden.

 Enormous white peonies and foxgloves.

The lady herself, photographed by Cecil Beaton on the steps of the tower 1956.














Now part of The National Trust, Sissinghurst is open April - October.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle/