Surviving Breast Cancer Now!

Breast cancer re-aligns your priorities. The importance of family, friends and time to be with them and do things you enjoy become paramount.

I was glad of the opportunity to re-read Bill Bryson’s “Made in America” The book is reviewed here: https://bookreviewstoday.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/made-in-america-by-bill-bryson/. The text is an entertaining compendium of possible and less possible word origins. Does “okay” come from Martin Van Buren’s nickname, Old Kinderhook? Or from the fact that Andrew Jackson was reported to write “oll korrect”? Or is it from the Greek ollakalla(all good)? Bryson offers a cogent discussion of sexism in the language, and there’s a lot of orthography, etymology, and toponymy. But this isn’t just a book about language. It’s also a bestiary of American pop culture, many of whose stereotypes Bryson debunks (a back-formation from Buncombe County, N.C., of course): Ellis Island, in its original splendor, wasn’t half bad; the Puritans enjoyed a good time just like the rest of us; and Ray Kroc hadn’t the inventiveness of the Brothers MacDonald, after all. Bryson tells us a lot we surely never thought about. There’s the cost of sending a letter by Postal Express and the reason for the bump on the fuselage of the Boeing 747. “Debugging” of computers began, we are told, on the day 50 years ago when a moth entered a Navy computer. There are, however, some facts that aren’t facts. Bryson places the Polish-born British writer Joseph Conrad among the group of Americans whose names were changed from awkward foreignness. And, surprisingly for a lexicographer, he indulges in the popular confusion of the 18th-century “long s” and the modern “f.” This offering won’t replace the popular works by Flexner, much less the majestic Mencken, but the style is engaging and the narrative diverting. An index is appended, but there is no useful list of words and phrases.

If, as Winston Churchill has it, England and America are two countries divided by a common language, here’s some disarming help sent by a Yank from the other side of the pond.

Gerry McGrath’s first collection of poetry is published in his book “A to B”. It is reviewed here: https://bookreviewstoday.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/from-a-to-b-by-gerry-mcgrath/. He read from this when he came to visit a meeting of wkwriters. 

As well as being a highly visually stimulating poet, Gerry McGrath is also a poet concerned with humanity, with nature, with love and loss and how the prosaic and the poetic interact in day to day life.  The use of unconventional metaphors and similes gave many pleasant surprises as I saw things expressed in a way in which made perfect and beautiful sense however strange. Gerry McGrath describes ‘Untamed Lightning, Knees like Emaciated skulls, the sky…clean-shaven, Drowsy sail-cloth of your skin, Gossamer rain, Zany Butterflies, Pastry Roofs and Nicotine Grass.’ These are just a few examples of the arresting imagery which runs through this poetry collection. Some of the poems are as delicate as the ‘gossamer rain’ described by McGrath in the poem Sycamores. His poem Elegy appears in full here: https://survivingbreastcancernow.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/time-to-recover-watching-reading-listening-sharing/

I liked the later poems in this collection more than the earlier ones, although I do not know whether this was because they carried more depth of feeling or because by the time I reached them (I was more accustomed to and in tune with the poet’s tone of voice. The poems Secrets and Gift, which explore the art of writing poetry, struck me as particularly interesting as the creative process is highly individual to all writers and it is always interesting to be given a glimpse at how a poet writes. In Secrets he refers to a poet beginning with nothing and holding it ‘until it bleeds a secret’ a metaphor I found at once eerie and beautiful. In the poem Gift he refers to the way in which poets have the gift to observe ‘tiny immensities’, a gift which Gerry McGrath certainly has.

I think that ‘Tiny Immensities’ is such a beautiful and truthful phrase that it would make a good name for this collection of poetry, better than the current title A to B, which I found slightly off-putting. I understand that the collection was called A to B as it represents a journey, yet I feel that this title does not do the work as a whole any justice. The poem A to B from which I guess the title was taken, is my least favourite poem in the entire collection. In the poem McGrath tells us about butterflies, red-backed beetles and a dead marten but ends with ‘But let me tell you about the butterflies.’ While I realise that this premature ending was intentional I didn’t like it and felt let down that the poem did not go on to tell us about the butterflies as it seemingly promised to do. It only occurred to me later that this might refer to the other poems in the collection, some of which are as vulnerable and glorious as butterflies.

Some of the poems, particularly in the latter third of the book, were not so much poems, but snapshots of incidents, told in prose as precise as poetry. This was most apparent in the poems Busy, Currency, A Milky Sunlight, Two Friends, Mint Tea, Blue Light and Basics. I liked these almost poems best of all for the simplicity and honesty with which they were laid out and the way in which they all told an entire story in a snap shot. The scarcity of the language meant that by using fewer words McGrath was actually able to say more by imbuing his words with a deeper sense of meaning. The poem busy portrays someone cutting the poets hair while hearing about her Grandmother’s worsening condition. The combination of the prosaic ‘hair-clippings went flying out’ with the tragic ‘age, infirmity, depression, were all getting the better of her, pulling her down’ creates a beautiful sense of pathos, which runs on through the poems in this collection.

Every day is precious. Sometimes, in this blog, I may sound ungrateful. I am not. I know how lucky I am that my disease was found and treated early. I just do not like some of the results of my treatment. Still, it has made me slow down and given me time to spend time with those I love. Reading new books and some old favourites, sharing these with my family and friends and listening to all their views.

Valerie Penny