Reading four things in snatches tonight and last night:
Dark Under Kiganda Stars by Lilah Hegnauer
Book of My Nights by Li Young Lee
Collected Poems, Jane Kenyon
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Have not read much of either Lee or Kenyon before – just the odd piece here and there. But I liked what I read, which is why I went to the trouble of ordering whole collections.
I think I’m having a bad night because the Li Young Lee is not striking me well at all – feeling him thin and trying too hard and soooo abstract. In an airy Rilke-esque, Khalil Gibran-esque here is great wisdom sort of way that makes my head hurt. Lots of talk of night and dark and thirst and home and love and truth and almost no pictures. Jane Kenyon is solider, much more texture and more to actually grasp, clever and craftsmanlike, whimsical. But not exciting. The one that unsettles and puts me on edge in a good way is the Lilah Hegnauer, whom I’d never heard of. A young Catholic volunteer from Minnesota teaching school in rural Uganda writes poems about her experience – trying to walk in her students’ shoes; puzzling over social practices she cannot accept; caring about and feeling what is joyful and difficult for them. Milton is cool as ever, at least some of the time, and he’s playing an anchoring North Star sort of role between the other three. (I’m not reading Paradise Lost all over again, by the way – the horror! I hear you say – I just got my own copy in the mail so am going through it and scribbling on all the best bits while I still remember where they are. I’m still totally a Lucifer fan.)
