Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen by David Canmer

I'm delighted to review a debut poetry collection released in April by David Cranmer, who was an early member of our Book Review Club. David is perhaps better known as the editor/publisher of Beat to a Pulp webzine, but he is also an accomplished poet with a most original voice. 

Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen is both eclectic and true to the complex backstory of the poet. David is an Army veteran and a risk management advisor who has worked in Haiti. His opening poem "The Inconsiderate" is a disturbing account of murder in Port-au-Prince. The focus shifts from the corpse to his mother to show the added cruelty of lost compassion:

"The weeping woman is mother of the deceased

But they do not flinch - it is lost on them

How they are treating her son's remains

Like the trophy hunters of some big game."

The subsequent poems are by contrast far more quotidien but no less skilled in their execution. My favorite was the amusing "No Line for a Common Thread" about a typical commute by train, which strikes a universal cord, all the more resonant for the contrast of wartime life before it:

"Temporary exchanges

Signifying little to nill

Just daily superfluous asides

Make up a shared human experience"

Darker are the poems of drinking to escape. One notes how alcohol can be like a vine strangling a tree. There are memorials to murder victims and a sad ode to losing one's mother to Alzheimer's Disease. Lighter are the poems celebrating the poet's love for his wife and their young daughter. 

Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen reveals the troubled soul of a veteran, trying to integrate back into civilian life. Despite the horrors of the past, he tries his best to be a good husband, father, and son. The book is dedicated to his daughter, but in this short collection is a poem for everyone. Nice cover too! It's available on Amazon in print or ebook/Kindle Unlimited.

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@Barrie Summy

A Book Lover's Birthday Gift: waging battle in verse

Birthday celebration with my brother, my mother, my father, and me - photo by my sister-in-law Sumie Nobunaga Lamport

My dad must have been my age now when I called him
"an old man." Late on a ski day, he'd taken the intermediate slope rather than following me down an icy double-black diamond with hazard signs.

My dad retaliated by quoting poetry at me,

"I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?"

My groaning did not stop his recitation.
My dad - and T.S. Eliot - had the last word.

Or so he thought.

Jump ahead in time. I was now the mother... 

...of a teenager who leaves me in her snowy wake. 

Her grandpa had a big birthday. What should we give him?

My dad started the tradition of giving stupid gifts. Before I moved to Oxford, England for a one-year sabbatical, he gave me a mug featuring the six wives of King Henry VIII. When hot tea was poured, their heads vanished.

For my paternal jester, I considered a poetry collection written in invisible ink, but a beautiful edition of T.S. Eliot's poetry would be more classy.


In Portland, Maine I found an antiquarian bookstore, Carlson & Turner. Although T.S. Eliot died years before my birth, 1965 was not quite ancient enough for a leather-bound volume. The bookseller offered to rebind a 1970s edition, which I found at Yes Books. He rolled out reams of dyed leather and sheets of marbled paper. He'd spent decades mastering the classic art of bookbindery. His gorgeous samples with gold lettering were out of another century. The supple leather was soothing in hand.

This was the gift for my dad: "Time for you and time for me."

 A Love Song from J. Alfred Prufrock and me

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

I don't usually like memoirs or books written in verse, but I loved Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Born in 1963, Jacqueline grew up in both the north and the south. Her childhood memories are captured in free-verse poems. The reading experience was like flipping through a family scrapbook with warm nostalgia tempered by sorrow.

An excerpt from "the blanket"

So the first time my mother goes to New York City
we don't know to be sad, the weight
of our grandparents' love like a blanket
with us beneath it,
safe and warm.

During hard times, Jacqueline and her siblings lived with their working class grandparents in South Carolina. Civil rights legislation had repealed the Jim Crow laws, however racial prejudice lingered.

"ghosts" 

In downtown Greenville,
they painted over the WHITE ONLY signs,
except on the bathroom doors,
they didn't use a lot of paint
so you can still see the words, right there
like a ghost standing in front
still keeping you out.

Young Jacqueline grew up with mixed messages. Her grandmother tells her to sit at the back of the bus to avoid trouble, but her mother encourages Jacqueline to be proud of who she is. In "the right way to speak" her mother whips her brother for saying "ain't."

You are from the North, our mother says.
You know the right way to speak. 

This lesson about the importance of language was not lost on the children. However, Jacqueline was a mediocre student. She was a disappointment to teachers who knew her brilliant older sister. Still, even as a child, Jacqueline wanted to be writer. Her poem "composition notebook" is an ode to her dream in the face of sibling rivalry:

And why does she need a notebook? She can't even write!

For days and days, I could only sniff the pages,
hold the notebook close
listen to the sound the papers made.

Some poems were three lines and others were three pages, but all were easy to read. Although Brown Girl Dreaming is being marketed for readers aged ten and up, a younger reader would need explanation about the historical context. An adult would appreciate the literary references to Langston Hughes and to Robert Frost, whose styles influence Jacqueline's poetry. It's a book with wide appeal to readers of all ages.

Although I wouldn't usually recommend this strategy, you should start this book at the end. The author's note places her work in context, and there are charming photos of Jacqueline and her extended family. As I met the characters, I enjoyed flipping back to the photos. The cover is gorgeous too.

Brown Girl Dreaming is on the short list for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and many expect it to win that and the Newbury Award. It would make an excellent addition to the middle school/junior high classroom or library. My one disappointment was that the memoir didn't follow the future MG/YA author beyond elementary school. I'm waiting for the sequel.

Reviewer's Disclosure: I bought the beautiful hardcover edition at Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine without compensation. Photo is of my backyard on Sunday after our first snowfall of the season. Happy Snowvember!

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@Barrie Summy