literature | ZETEO

Regeneration – Voices of protest in World War One

November 14, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link] [email_link] As the European Powers commemorate the Armistice that ended World War One, little attention is paid to those who spoke out against the carnage when it was going on. Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy focuses on the poet and British army officer Siegfried Sassoon, who made a public declaration against the war in July 1917. Sassoon, who had been decorated as a war hero, wanted to be court-martialed in order to publicize his opinions. Convinced by his friend Robert […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: literature

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The Blue Cardigan Blues

November 11, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

It is always interesting to come across a poem whose structure is just as important to its development as its diction. Such is the case with poet Anne Carson’s piece “Father’s Old Blue Cardigan” below. The message of the poem is clear and forceful, the more so because its line breaks and verse structure cascade down into the denouement. And in that final line, the work’s major themes of death and childhood are wrung together by the open revelation of a third theme that we’ve sensed […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: lit, literature, poetry, writing

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Of Plants and Sex: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Novel

November 8, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link] [email_link] “It puzzles me,” wrote Anonymous, in his introduction, “that we are all bequeathed at birth with the most marvelous bodily pricks and holes, which the youngest child knows are objects of pure delight, but which we must pretend in the name of civilization are abominations–never to be touched, never to be shared, never to be enjoyed! Yet why should we not explore these gifts of the body, both in ourselves and in our fellows? It is only […]

Categories: Caterina Gironda, ZiR • Tags: literature, sexuality, women

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Nun Fun

November 4, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

There are a few ways to tell that you’ve “made it” as a poet. One of these is getting a piece published in The New Yorker. For Los Angeles-based poet Suzanne Lumis, however, getting published in the most recent edition of the magazine is simply one more confirmation of having unequivocally “made it.” Lumis is a highly respected, veteran writer, educator and champion of the arts in the L.A. region. She works with kids, with college students, and with her community at […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: literature, poetry, reading, writing

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Learning to read again (Mrs Dalloway)

November 2, 2014 by William Eaton

Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him to specify. For many years I had a fairly steady reading habit, […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: French, literature, reading, Virginia Woolf, writing

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Rose: Mining and Murder in mid-Victorian England

October 31, 2014 by William Eaton

Have you ever wanted to go down a mine shaft? Like miners do, on an open lift? Plunging a mile down into the bowels of the earth? With highly combustible methane gas and its deadly chemical cousin carbon monoxide a threat at every instant? Me neither. But when I picked up Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Rose, set in the Lancashire coal mining town of Wigan, I couldn’t stop reading. The story chronicles the return to England of the mining engineer […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, literature, women

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Mixed Feelings

October 28, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

As an emotion, “mixed-feelings” catches a bad rap. But having mixed-feelings about a poem is actually a valid, and valuable, emotional response. It means something in the poem worked for you, but, at the same time, something else didn’t. There is a grey area, imprecision, ambiguity even. All spaces in which poetry thrives. The following poem, written by poet Kevin Young, leaves me with such mixed-feelings. I know the poem has merit, but at the same time, it bothers me. There […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, horses, literature, poetry, reading, writing

All That Is – life, love and the pursuit of happiness

October 24, 2014 by William Eaton

James Salter’s novel All That Is was a national bestseller in the US last year. A translation is now on the bestseller list in France. I was drawn to it by the taut, tense opening lines describing the experience of Americans in the Pacific during World War Two: All night in darkness the water sped past. In tier on tier of iron bunks below deck, silent, six deep, lay hundreds of men, many faceup with their eyes still open though […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: literature, love, travel

A Pot of Bones

October 21, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

Natasha Trethewey is one of those rare poets that everybody seems to like, despite her massive commercial success. Massive, that is, in terms of poetic commercial success, which is timid at best. Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize for her book Native Guard (2006), written about an all-black regiment that fought in the Civil War. She was later named U.S. Poet Laureate, twice. Her work deals principally with race in America. Trethewey’s parents were a mixed-race couple living in Mississippi in […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, literature, poem, poet, poetry, reading, work

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Tag: literature

Regeneration – Voices of protest in World War One

The Blue Cardigan Blues

Of Plants and Sex: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Latest Novel

Nun Fun

Learning to read again (Mrs Dalloway)

Rose: Mining and Murder in mid-Victorian England

Mixed Feelings

All That Is – life, love and the pursuit of happiness

A Pot of Bones