I’ve got a lot of reading to do… May 29, 2009
Posted by catiporter in Poetry.trackback
…so forgive me if I dig in a for a little while!
A couple of weeks ago I forked out $45 in overdue book fines (don’t ask) in order to be able to check out the books I need for my field study, which will be introducing Marilyn Nelson and Molly Bendall’s readings at the upcoming residency. I’m supposed to read everything they’ve ever written (or something approximating that) and write a couple of pages as an intro to their work. I now have seventeen books sitting on my desk.
Here is what I have so far (in the order that they’re stacked) for Marilyn Nelson:
**For The Body
*A Wreath for Emmett Till
Fortune’s Bones
Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color
The Homeplace
Pemba’s Song (a ghost story)
The Thirteenth Month
Magnificat
The Freedom Business
*Mama’s Promises
The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems
The Cat Walked Through the Casserole
The Fields of Praise
Carver – a Life in Poems
(*these ones I’ve finished ** this one I’m working on)
Here’s what I have for Molly Bendall:
After Estrangement
Dark Summer
Ariadne’s Island
The residency starts June 18th, and I need to present drafts of both intros beforehand. So — I’ve got a lot of reading to do.
I doubt that I’ll be able to forgo Scrabble and Wordscraper and WordTwist, etc., on Facebook — I’m sure I’m going to need those brain-breaks — but I probably won’t blog again until I’m through. But certainly I’ll have lots to blog about as the residency nears & occurs.
If you have any suggestions for further reading on either Marilyn or Molly, or want to point me to something important in their work that I may miss otherwise (I can be pretty dense), I would greatly appreciate it.
***
In the meantime, I will leave you with cats. Yes, more cats. Our rescued kitten-turned-naughty tween has a litter of younger siblings that we’re feeding. Mama kitty got herself knocked up again. I need to get her to let me near her so I can catch her and get her fixed. But those kittens are awfully cute. At this rate we should have about a dozen new cats a year — that is, until the kittens get knocked up, and then the numbers will go up exponentially. We’ll be drowning in cats.
Any suggestions on taming feral cats are of course welcomed. It’s tempting to get a dog just to dissuade them from camping out in our yard, but that just pushes the burden off on someone else.
Spooky looks just like his mama.
Yikes, 17 books and an intro in, what? three weeks? OMG, y you certainly need to just let the tumbleweeds blow through your blog (I stole that from someone else).
Best to you in this grand endeavor, Pat
Quick! get momma spayed! Use a humane trap if you can’t get near her.
http://www.neighborhoodcats.org
when we lived in downtown riverside we were able to catch the feral cats using those humane traps. the humane society didn’t want them, said they absolutely would not take any more cats, but we left them there anyway, apologized for overwhelming them, and made a little donation.
Thanks for the list of books by Molly and Marilyn. I have none to add but appreciate the introduction to these writers.
As for the cats, we use Havahart traps baited with tuna. You may have to free various wrong cats, possums, and skunks–depending on your neighborhood–but we’ve had success.
Good luck!