Favorite Books: Part Two

Here's Part Two. I got a poem or two finished while I was on vacation in Florida and I'm almost finished with this second short story (by that I mean the second short story I have finished since graduating college...not that I had solid endings to any of those but I digress). It looks like it's going to be around 30 pages double-spaced. I'll try and post an excerpt when i get it finished.

NEON VERNACULAR: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Yusef Komunyakaa

THE MUSIC THAT HURTS

Put away those insipid spoons.

The frontal lobe horn section went home hours ago.

The trap drum has been kicked

down the fire escape,

& the tenor’s ballad amputated.

Inspiration packed her bags.

Her caftan recurs in the foggy doorway

like brain damage; the soft piano solo of her walk

evaporates; memory looses her exquisite tongue,

looking for “green silk stocking with gold seams”

on a nail over the bathroom mirror.

Tonight I sleep with Silence,

my impossible white wife.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Brother, brother, what are you saying? I mean, you have blood on your hands!” Dunya cried in despair.

“The blood that’s on everyones hands,” he caught her up, almost in a frenzy now, “that flows and has always flowed through the world like a waterfall, that is poured like champagne and for the sake of which men are crowned in the Capitol and then called called the benefiters of mankind!”

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE by Peter Weiss

...man has given a false importance to death

any animal, plant, or man who dies

adds to Nature’s compost heap.

because the manure without which

nothing could grow, nothing could be created.

Death is simply part of the process.

Every death, even the cruellest death,

drowns in the total indifference of Nature.

Nature herself would watch unmoved

if we destroyed the entire human race.

SATURDAY by Ian McEwan

Who could ever reckon up the damage done to love and friendship and all hopes of happiness by a surfeit or depletion of this or that neurotransmitter? And who will ever find a morality, an ethics down among the enzymes and amino acids when the general taste is for looking in the other direction?

THE INFERNO by Dante Alighieri

Their sighs, lamentations and loud wailings
resounded through the starless air,
so that at first it made me weep;
Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
words of pain, tones of anger,
voices shrill and faint, and beating hands,
all went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

REDWALL by Brian Jacques

Matthias gasped with shock as a giant horse galloped past, its mane streaming out, eyes rolling in panic. It was towing a hay cart which bounced wildly from side to side. Matthias could see rats among the hay, but these were no ordinary rats. They were huge, ragged rodents, bigger than any he had ever seen. Their heavy tattooed arms waved a variety of weapons - pikes, knives, spears and long rusty cutlasses. Standing boldly on the  back-board of the hay cart was the biggest, fiercest, most evil-looking rat that ever slunk out of a nightmare! In one claw he grasped a long pole with a ferret’s head spiked to it, while in the other was his thick, enormous tail which he cracked like a whip. Laughing madly and yelling strange curses, he swayed to and fro skillfully as horse and wagon clattered off down the road into the night. As suddenly as they had come, they were gone!

HAMLET by William Shakespeare

'Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood

And do such bitter business as the bitter day

Would quake to look on.

TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

KING LEAR by William Shakespeare

When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.

OTHELLO by William Shakespeare

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, 

Is the immediate jewel of their souls: 

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; 

But he that filches from me my good name 

Robs me of that which not enriches him 

And makes me poor indeed.

ANGELA’S ASHES by Frank McCourt

The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk.

MAUS: A SURVIVOR’S TALE by Art Spiegelman

BELOVED by Toni Morrison

Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite?

THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of travelers abandoned in the road years ago. Boxes and bags. Everything melted and black. Old plastic suitcases curled shapeless in the heat. Here and there the imprint of things wrested out of the tar by scavengers. A mile on and they began to come upon the dead. Figures half-mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Take my hand, he said, I don’t think you should see this.

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE by Stephen Crane

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.