Sunday, June 8, 2014

This Book Will Change Your Life - The Dark Cave Between My Ribs by the Loren Kleinman.

We read our horoscope this week, which is not something we do every week, which is neither here nor there, except that we are being self-conscious, which is self-absorbed, and not becoming, not remotely, especially when our intent is to talk The Dark Cave Between My Ribs by the Loren Kleinman. Than again, maybe that is the point. The horoscope read, "...in the coming days I suspect a great deal of beauty will explode into you. Why? I think it's because you're more receptive than usual to being delighted and enchanted. The triggers could be anything..." Anything. We rarely read poetry. And while we are drawn to pain, we tend to eschew, if not outright avoid, literature about Nazi atrocities, violence against women, terrorism, or the killing of children, for example, and maybe especially, the Beslan school hostage crisis, where so many children were murdered. Any and all of which may be a weakness of ours, blind spots in our ability to better understand the world. All of which is to say, Loren Kleinman writes poetry and her language is that of violence interwoven with longing and loss, memory, and the search for love. And it is beautiful, and aching, and a reminder that not only can we find, and make, beauty in the darkest places, but that without access to these dark places, how we can know what love, humanity, and justice even look like? It's a sad, twisty, and unnerving question, but Kleinman seeks to answer it, word after word, and page after page, and in doing so changed our lives, as she will yours.

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