Aug 10
24
Green Revolver Review
Green Revolver by Worthy Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins once told an audience that the study of literature, especially of poetry, is the study of death. Whatever a poem’s apparent subject—love, trees, soup—it’s the certainty of loss that powers the tensions holding a poem together. South Carolina Poetry Initiative prize winner, Worthy Evans, feels this loss in his debut poetry collection, Green Revolver, which examines work, family, war, and social contracts. Among the lively play of metaphors, alternative personas, and surrealistic narratives is a tense blend of alienation, angst, love, and even humor.
Green Revolver is divided into three sections, although the same topics inform them all. Anyone who has ever toiled in a corporate cubicle of motivational posters and stain resistant carpet will recognize the absurdity of “Instructions” in this snippet:
If you determine that work procedures
prevent the practice of processing,
treat the request as an inquiry.
Submitting a problem ticket
dismisses this appeal, but must
initiate from inside the QIC…
…treat the duplicate as
hyperlink for the existing
appeal…
Repeat.
Unlike Peter in the 1999 film Office Space, Evans has obviously gotten the memo on TPS reports. He hijacks corporate jargon and tunes the p, s, and t sounds to create music, humor, and parody. The final word, “Repeat,” is a curt reminder of existential despair.
Marriage comes under observation in “Sunset.” It begins, “The man and his wife walked up to the/canyon lip and he said It’s good,/not great. But the book said to do it/so here we are.” The people under scrutiny are never named, but the sense is that they are emblematic of many couples. The speaker reports, “The man said he and/the wife got married and later looked/to the west as it stood before Lake/Pontchartrain.” The man calls the woman “the” wife, not “my” wife, a small but important choice of the poet’s to hint at a bit of emotional distance and that “wife” is a sort of informal job title like “the pizza guy.” The speaker even introduces her as “his wife.” Recalling the view at the lake the man asserts, “That was better,/and so was this place in Australia.” There is a white space pause between verses and the next verse focuses on the wife. “The wife until this point had been silent./She was always the framer and picture/hanger for her husband,/she told me as/we were walking back to the gift shop/to look at posters, postcards and/screensavers of what we had just seen./I believe I’ll take this one, she said.” This brief encounter could be interpreted as sweet or incidental. Evans’ self-effacing record of the couple suggests a habit of consuming revisionist personal history. The “one” the wife takes at the gift shop is not the one she and her husband have experienced. Actual experience and memory are not up to her aesthetic standards so she substitutes a better, photoshopped version. Extending the unspoken cynicism, it is easy to assume the wife edits, crops, frames, and hangs glossy improvements in other areas of the couple’s lives. Both “Instructions and “Sunset” demonstrate the loss of meaningful productivity and the defeat of authentic memory by mass produced products.
Green Revolver includes poems which make use of male sports culture. Evans blends his knowledge of this culture with his understanding of the military in “The Lesson.” Having been a sportswriter and a combat engineer with the Army, he has credibility and fluency in this area. Although some of the poems in this book are written in the first person, “The Lesson” again makes use of a detached narrator.
Four hundred trainees bound for war
filled sections H through K in the ballpark,
ready to take in a game.
Time to pitch security notions
and pulling guard to watch college
boys in summer leagues
…take a break and beat each other with
wooden bats and tricks rubbed up in the dirt.
The trainees holler the Soldier’s Creed
at attention, and got to the pitcher in
the fifth. His slider down and in went too far,
too hot to handle for his catcher, who
pounced a mitt on the ball just as
the runner at second jumped for third. Catcher rifled
too hard around the right-handed batter
and the bullet sailed away from the third
baseman and into left…
As soon as it’s noted the college boys will be beating each other and using dirty tricks, it appears that summer baseball and war begin to overlap. Rifling and “the bullet” add to the idea. The poem then continues at a good clip:
Leftfielder threw
to catcher but by then our runner rounded
the bag and set his sights on home. When
the ball bounced back in, the run was on
the board. Some pats on the back…
When did the runner become “our” runner when he sets his sights for home? If he’s our runner, who are we? Who is the speaker now? Is he a college boy, trainee or both? “Set his sights” is a metaphor for aiming at something you are going to shoot, so the overlap carries forward. The home run is transformative as the point of view changes so the trainees are now promoted to soldiers and the pitcher has learned a lesson. War and baseball are not dissimilar: the opposing team is just another enemy and can’t a baseball game become training for war?
The poems discussed above are only a few of Worthy Evans’ shrewd riffs on the human condition. Readers will discover among the ballads of existential angst, the surprise of genuine affection without sentimentality, and the ordinary paired with dark whimsy. Evans’ first book combines Office Space with Fight Club and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Some of the poems in Green Revolver left me with more questions than answers. Others seemed to end in a poetic cul-de-sac of non sequitor. But this is Evans’ point of living in modern America: even as people gain connections via technology, they are losing pieces of themselves. In Green Revolver, life never contains clear answers and that even if you are a contributing member of society, you can still feel distant and alienated from your fellow human beings.
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Aug 10
5
Second Blooming for Women Review
Second Blooming for Women: Growing A Life That Matters After Fifty by Kathleen Vestal Logan and E.L. (Betsy) Smith, Ph.D.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Many women fear turning fifty in our society. After all, beauty fades, health deteriorates and friends start dying. Why would anyone look forward to turning fifty with all of these losses? According to Kathleen Logan and Dr. Betsy Smith who wrote the comprehensive, Second Blooming for Women: Growing a Life that Matters after Fifty, there’s a lot of gains to look forward to in life’s second act. In this book the authors use the extended metaphor of flowers, soil and root systems to illustrate the blossoming of the mature years; this is a period of time for women to take charge of their lives and take advantage of the possibilities. What are these possibilities? They can include starting a new career, developing a talent that has lain dormant for years, or making a concerted effort to forgive and let go old habits that hold you back from your potential.
Both of the authors are lifecoaches with every chapter packed with inspiring advice you’ll want to keep it handy when you need a pick-me-up when life throws you a challenge. Logan and Smith invited a diverse cadre of women to share their perspectives throughout the chapters, which insures that this book never feels too academic. Besides the personal stories from the round table of women, the authors themselves also share their lives and experiences with the reader. Logan and Smith alternate chapters, having selected their chapters based on their individual expertise. Logan’s chapters focus more on the why you should bloom (“Are You Root Bound? Embrace Change”) while Smith’s chapters give you the how (“Annuals: Inventory Your Skills”). At the beginning of each chapter is original floral artwork from Lyda Toy, captioned with a definition of that flower, which sets the tone for the text that follows. For instance, there’s kudzu at the front of Logan’s chapter of “Weeds: Pull Them to Improve Your Garden’s Yield,” which is one of most powerful sections in the book. In “Weeds,” the reader learns how to strive for excellence instead of perfection while working to clear debt, addictions, abuse, and blame from her life. At the end of each chapter, exercises and resources follow, so the reader always feels supported and the learning can continue beyond the initial reading.
Beginning with a history of the American woman’s struggle for equality, Logan ends this chapter by stating, “As a group, those of us over fifty will live longer than previous generations, are healthier, have more money, are better educated, can access a virtual world with computers, have built a wide variety of skills, and are accustomed to planning our own lives. But there are few models or guidelines for us, so we’ll have to create them as we go.” Women over fifty have seen so many changes that they may need a road map to figure out what to do next and Second Blooming is that map.
Smith addresses values and vision statements and defines the difference between a skill and a talent. She says, “Unlike talents and strengths, which are more biologically based, skills can be taught, learned, and often transferred from one situation to another.” Talent is what you’re born with and skill is what you develop as you live your life. The reader is encouraged to take several skill-identifying tests including the Clifton StrenthFinder inventory, which is available for purchase. After identifying her strengths and talents, the reader is then asked to express her life purpose. All of these concrete activities are designed to help women over fifty feel empowered and able to steer the next segment of their lives with passion and determination.
This book encourages women, not just those fifty and up, to take pride in their individual gifts and to move beyond thinking of themselves as just a pretty face, gorgeous legs or long blonde hair. Reaching fifty is not a death sentence; it is a milestone that must be honored and cherished because the next chapter is going to prove amazing. It does take courage to turn fifty and to be bold with your life, but what are you going to lose? Your life matters. Logan says, “Like bulbs your dreams are awaiting their season to burst forth in colorful abundance. It’s time to let those bulbs poke through, time for you to bloom. Dreams don’t have expiration dates.”
Read more about the authors, Kathleen Vestal Logan and E.L. (Betsy) Smith, Ph.D. at their site, http://secondbloomingforwomen.com
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When was the last time you heard this?:
- You’re wasting your time writing this garbage
- You’re just a dreamer!
- Why do you think anybody cares what you have to write?
- Nobody in your family ever did this before!
- When you fail, you’re going to be a laughing-stock and look at all of the time you wasted!
- You failed before and you’ll fail again—don’t even try!
Writers are moody, on drugs and their families abandon them. You don’t want to become like that, do you?
If you have but it’s only come from your head, then you’ve been visited by the Inner Critic! As writers we constantly hear the Inner Critic because we’re doing something that’s not traditional “work.” We hear the IC because it’s trying to talk us out of being creative and different. Perhaps it’s saying that the world doesn’t need another poem or that we’re recycling an old idea no one will want to read about again. As writers, we will always find the IC lurking around corners and it’s our job to control it so it doesn’t control us.
What is your inner critic?
It’s an internal voice that nags, warns or shames you out of things you want to do. Basically it’s a survival instinct against criticism and rejection designed to keep you in your comfort zone, i.e. watching TV rather than work on your novel. It’s the adult to our creative child. It’s our fear of failure and of making a big mistake. On that note, the bigger the plan, the bigger the IC’s nags.
But here’s a news flash for you: all writers are failures; they just know how to tame their inner critic through learning about it, recognizing it and forgiving themselves.
The IC loves giving you Negative self-talk. There’s a strong connection between
perfection and procrastination that feeds into the IC’s wicked maw. Here are a few examples:
Ex: this project has to be perfect or they’ll all think I’m dumb. So I’ll not start it until I get more research done
Ex: If I can’t do it right, then I won’t do it at all, so the piles of paper can still collect dust on the kitchen table
How Do We Manage Our Inner Critic: Learning, Recognizing and Forgiving
I. Learn
What does this critter called the Inner Critic look like? Give it a face. Is it your former French teacher, your mother, a demon with a long scarlet tail?
As mentioned earlier the Inner Critic likes to hang around corners, but he/she doesn’t like to have the center stage. When you start keeping tabs on your critic, or shining a light on your IC, it’s suddenly not as powerful anymore.
You can do this via writing down when the IC appears and even keep a log. Use Post It Notes, too, to see where these criticisms are coming from. What time of day do they seem strongest? Do they come after you’ve worked all day or after dinner?
Note: if you ignore your Critic, it will grow like dam waiting to burst. Keep tabs on it, say hello to it, but don’t take it seriously!
II. Recognize
When you hear it start to chatter, be the Boss of your Critic, thank the Critic for his/her time and then send it packing!
III. Forgive Yourself
Replace the Critic’s negative talk with a positive affirmation, such as “I am a creative person who is bursting with new ideas!”
You’re not perfect and you never will be, but so what? You’re a wonderful, competent person. Strive for excellence instead of perfection and you’ll likely accomplish more with less stress. Next time tell yourself, “I will strive for excellence” instead of “it has to be perfect”
Forgive yourself for all of your past mistakes and for all of your future mistakes. Let go of your self-branding or what your third grade teacher told you about being undisciplined. Tell yourself: maybe I am or maybe I’m not undisciplined, but in any case I’m forgiven and I can do better!
Don’t let yourself get into your own way on the path to success! As a writer, you’ll always have the Inner Critic in your life, but you can manage the Critic and do your own thing anyway. Grab the life you deserve and don’t let a silly Inner Critic stifle your passion and creativity to prevent you from being the amazing writer you are meant to be!
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