Cat Thursday is on hiatus this week. See you next week!
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Monday, March 20, 2023
Our Wolves by Luanne Castle - Review
I really loved this slim volume of poetry. These are poetic "stories" derived from the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Anyone who knows me knows I love fairy tales and retellings of the tales. The tale is used effectively with unique portrayals of Red, and the wolf. The wolf is an abusive father, a killer, a sex offender...many precarious scenarios. Yet not all the poems portray Red as a victim.
I don't think I've ever read a collection quite like this. I have an extensive poetry collection and I know I will be returning to this volume again and again.
Love this quote at the front of the book:
"The wolves in the woods have sharp teeth and long claws,
but it's the wolf inside who will tear you apart."
--Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister
Some of my favorites were:
What Happens in the Dark When It's Cold Outside
You All Been Waiting for a Wolf Confession
How to Digest the Wolf
Your Sonnet
In Our Wolves, poet Luanne Castle navigates the timeless story of “Little Red Riding Hood” in a compelling collection of sharp, memorable poetry. Familiar tales are ageless for a reason. Their magic is that they can easily be transformed to explore subjects of abuse, danger, sexuality, self-sufficiency, and interpersonal relationships in a way that makes these challenging topics palatable to readers. Trying to find the reasoning behind Red’s traumatic adventure, as well as using it to comment on contemporary events, Castle creates taut narratives and sympathetic monologues to show how the story shapeshifts with the teller. Here, we hear from the wolf, the huntsman/woodcutter, Grandmother, townspeople, and Red herself. Not just a victimized or innocent child, Castle’s Red also appears in wiser (and sometimes older) incarnations that are knowing, rebellious, resilient, and clever. This technique subverts stereotypical conventions and shows that Red’s story “is not so very different from yours / and yours and yours and yours and yours.” Filled with atmospheric power, dynamic portrayals, and bright imagery, Our Wolves will haunt you long after you’ve returned from its woods. -Christine Butterworth-McDermott, author of The Spellbook of Fruit & Flowers
In this recasting of the Little Red Riding Hood tale, Luanne Castle’s wolves are not the wolves skulking in our imaginations. Her poems challenge our senses, bounce from view to view, shifting their focal points. Grandmothers and red-coat-wearing girls may or may not bear guilt. Indeed, Granny may be the Wolf. Or the Wolf may be a father, pulling down panties to slap bare skin. The story is told “to search / for who, not why. It’s all about blame.”; Which is, of course, only one truth lurking within this fable. The poems in Our Wolves burrow under your skin and into your flesh. They don’t let go, no matter how you scratch; they’re unsettling, magical. Relentless. Unforgettable. -Robert Okaji, author of Buddha’s Not Talking
“Perhaps you were wrong.” In these imaginative and evocative poems, expectations are subverted, and flat, centuries-old characters are brought to life in both amusing and startling ways. Castle tells the old story of Red Riding Hood from new angles and perspectives, creating a multitude of responses from the reader, eliciting from us everything from moments of cringing to laughter. Most interestingly, Castle subverts the predictable and achieves complexity by using an unlikely combination of forms and mixed modes–from the more traditional lineated lyric and narrative poems to the unexpected Haibun and Abecedarian, using every technique available to create this lively and memorable book. These poems invite us to confront what we take for granted and then let loose our own inner wolf to bite in and savor them all–one well-crafted word at a time. -Kimberly K. Williams, author of Sometimes a Woman and Still Lives
Luanne Castle lives in Arizona, next to a wash that wildlife use as a thoroughfare. She has published two full-length poetry collections, Rooted and Winged (Finishing Line Press 2022) and Doll God (Aldrich/Kelsay 2015), which won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Poetry. Kin Types (Finishing Line Press 2017), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Our Wolves (Alien Buddha Press 2023) is her second chapbook. Luanne’s Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, American Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, River Teeth, TAB, Verse Daily, Saranac Review, and other journals.
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Cat Thursday - Bratty babies
Monday, March 13, 2023
Classics Club Spin #33
My spin selection is
Where Angels Fear To Tread - E.M. Forster
I finished the last spin. Let's see if I can do it again.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
- Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
- Werewolf, Montague Summers
- The Centaur, Algernon Blackwood
- Vampires and Vampirism, Montague Summers
- The Human Chord, Algernon Blackwood
- Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
- The Witch of Ravensworth, George Brewer
- In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires, Raymond T. McNally, Radu R. Florescu
- Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot
- The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
- The Collector, John Fowles
- The Devils of Loudon, Aldous Huxley
- Grendel, John Gardner
- The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson
- As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
- Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol
- Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
- Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
- Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for Witches, Warlocks, and Covens, Paul Huson
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (117) Tove Jansson
The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author, pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.
Although known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance.
Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945), during World War II. She said later that the war had depressed her, and she had wanted to write something naive and innocent. Besides the Moomin novels and short stories, Tove Jansson also wrote and illustrated four original and highly popular picture books.
Jansson's Moomin books have been translated into 33 languages. (Goodreads)
Thursday, March 2, 2023
Cat Thursday - The mischief never ends
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Cat Thursday - Not amused
Friday, February 17, 2023
Thoughts on The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir
I found this book enthralling, though admittedly this is a topic of which I have always had a great interest.
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Cat Thursday - Enjoy the Ride
Thursday, February 9, 2023
Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (116) Angela Carter
The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author, pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.
Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature.
She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, where she claims in Nothing Sacred (1982) that she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised." She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972). She was there at the same time as Roland Barthes, who published his experiences in Empire of Signs (1970).
She then explored the United States, Asia, and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son.
As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in Shaking a Leg. She adapted a number of her short stories for radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987). She was actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings, The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Wolf's Orlando, an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003).
At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives.
Her novel Nights at the Circus won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature.
Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer. Her obituary published in The Observer said, "She was the opposite of parochial. Nothing, for her, was outside the pale: she wanted to know about everything and everyone, and every place and every word. She relished life and language hugely, and reveled in the diverse." (Goodreads)
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Cat Thursday - Groundhog Day
Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and often hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Annie Dillard's The Writing Life (Classics Club Spin #32)
I finished my Classics Club Spin! Glory be! I would also like to mention that I have revised my Classics Club list yet again. Check it out here.
Since I am starting work on the first draft of my novel, I especially appreciated this passage:
"For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. If you were a Zulu warrior banging on your shield with your spear for a couple of hours along with a hundred other Zulu warriors, you might be able to prepare yourself to write. If you were an Aztec maiden who knew months in advance that on a certain morning the priests were going to throw you into a hot volcano, and if you spent those months undergoing a series of purification rituals and drinking dubious liquids, you might, when the time came, be ready to write. But how, if you are neither Zulu warrior nor Aztec maiden, do you prepare yourself, all alone, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary morning." pp.46-47
She discusses how we, as writers, can never find anything written about "your fascination with something no one else understands." She says, "because it is up to you."
"The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity." --Anne Truitt
"The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity." --Anne Truitt
I saw somewhere someone had given this book a low rating and called her Annie Dullard. I did not find this dull at all. In fact, there were even some funny moments. While reading the scene between her and the sheriff (p. 54), I found myself chuckling. She is rather witty.
To Dillard, writing is something that is life itself. She quotes Evelyn Underhill late in the book: "He goes because he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail: knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life."
For those of us compelled to write, we must do it. It sometimes may take years, we may never be published, and yet, we must write.
Thursday, January 26, 2023
Cat Thursday - Too funny!
Sunday, January 22, 2023
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