Our house is sounding very 19th century, very tubercular, lots of coughing, as we are both fighting off colds. This week-end, I've often thought of John Keats, who got up every morning, coughed up a bit of his lungs, and then went to work writing the poetry that he knew he didn't have much time to write.
I've spent part of the week-end reading, since it was a low energy week-end, with both of us fighting off colds. When the Booker Prize was announced back in December, I wanted to read Paul Lynch's Prophet Song; I'm all in for a good tale of dystopia. But I knew the library wasn't likely to have it in time for me to read it before my fall semester kicked into high gear, so I promptly forgot all about it.
I'm not sure what reminded me that I wanted to read it, but I was able to get it easily from my public library. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to tolerate the lack of publishing niceties, like paragraph breaks and quotation marks. I adjusted to the very long paragraphs much more easily than the run together dialogue.
There were parts of the book that I skimmed over, in part because it was difficult to follow, in part because I was ready to get on with it, to find out how it all turns out once the building dread is done. Perhaps at some point I'll go back to see what I missed. But life is short, so probably not.
I know that I will be thinking about the ending in the weeks and months to come. I was expecting something devastating, and I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that I was not disappointed.
The book is poetic in places; I am not the first to recognize the similarity to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, about which I said that it was the most breathtakingly beautiful prose about the apocalypse as anything I had ever read. In terms of plot, though, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is the best dystopian novel I've ever read. In so many ways, Butler's book is the best book I've ever read.
I woke up this morning wondering if someone could create an apocalyptic narrative in poetry form. I know the answer is yes. I don't think it will be me, but wheels are turning.
So far, those turning wheels are producing lines, not sustained poems, and certainly not a sustained narrative. But I'm happy for poetry inspiration of any kind. There are so many days when I do not feel like "a real poet" anymore, whatever that means. It seems the publishing world is collapsing on many fronts, and poetry has always had a precarious perch in the publishing world.
So let me celebrate my inspirations where I can. Let me close with some lines that came to me this morning, lines that may become a final poem--or several different poems!
One stays near the coast,
freedom in the form of a boat.
One disappears into the mountains.
in tangerines, bright baubles
in a battered, wooden bowl.
Your house has several heating
sources but who will purify
the water raining down from a sooty sky?
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