ELLB4: Text TransformationThis coursework unit requires students to choose two literary works from the selection of prescribed authors in this powerpoint and transform them into different genres.

This powerpoint will take you through the prescribed authors that you can choose from. Remember that you have to choose two texts and that these must be from different genres.

POETRY

GEOFFREY CHAUCERKey Works (14th

Century)- The Canterbury

Tales- The Parlement

of Foules

Style: • Middle English• Use of the

vernacular• Frame story

narrative• ‘Rhyme • Royal’

Chaucer is best known as the writer of ‘The Canterbury Tales’, which is a collection of stories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury; these tales would help to shape English literature. The text contrasts with other literature of the period in the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell and the varied characters who are engaged in the pilgrimage. Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, perhaps as a result of the incomplete state of the work. Chaucer drew on real life for his cast of pilgrims.

The "Parlement of Foules" (also known as the "Parliament of Foules", "Parlement of Birddes", "Assembly of Fowls", "Assemble of Foules", or "The Parliament of Birds") is a poem by made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza and is interesting in that it is the first reference to the idea that St Valentine’s day was a romantic day for lovers.

Extract from The Canterbury TalesWhere can ye saye in any manere ageThat hye God defended mariageBy expres word? I praye you, telleth me.Or where commanded he virginitee?I woot as wel as ye, it is no drede,Th’Apostle, whan he speketh of maidenhede,He said that precept therof hadde he noon:Men may conseile a woman to be oon,But conseiling nis no comandement.He putte it in oure owene juggement.For hadde God commanded maidenhead,Thanne hadde he dampned wedding with the deede;And certes, if there were no seed ysowe,Virginitee, thane wherof sholde it growe?Paul dorste nat comanden at the leesteA things of which his maister yaf no heeste.The dart is set up for virginitee:Cacche whoso may, who renneth best lat see.But this word is nought take of every wight,But ther as God list yive it of his mite.

JOHN DONNE (16th-17th Century)Style: • Metaphysical• Use of extended

metaphors• Paradoxes, puns and

analogies. • Common subjects:

love, death and religion.

Key Poems:- The Broken Heart- The Flea- Divine Meditation- No Man is an Island

DEATH BE NOT PROUD

Death be not proud, though some have called theeMighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,And Death shall be no more, death thou shalt die!

JOHN DONNE (16th-17th Century)Style: • Metaphysical• Use of extended

metaphors• Paradoxes, puns and

analogies. • Common subjects:

love, death and religion.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

No man is an island,Entire of itself,Every man is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the less.As well as if a promontory were.As well as if a manor of thy friend'sOr of thine own were:Any man's death diminishes me,Because I am involved in mankind,And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

ROBERT BROWNING (16th-17th Century)Style: • Dramatic

Monologues: convey setting and action but also reveal the speaker's character

KEY WORKS• Porphyria’s Lover• My Last Duchess• The Laboratory• The Pied Piper of

Hamlin

"Porphyria's Lover" is Browning's first ever short dramatic , and also the first of his poems to examine abnormal psychology. In the poem, a man strangles his lover – Porphyria – with her hair; "... and all her hair / In one long yellow string I wound / Three times her little throat around, / And strangled her." Porphyria's lover then talks of the corpse's blue eyes, golden hair, and describes the feeling of perfect happiness the murder gives him. Although he winds her hair around her throat three times to throttle her, the woman never cries out. Extract:That moment she was mine, mine, fair,Perfectly pure and good: I foundA thing to do, and all her hairIn one long yellow string I woundThree times her little throat around,And strangled her. No pain felt she;I am quite sure she felt no pain.As a shut bud that holds a bee,I warily oped her lids: againLaughed the blue eyes without a stain.

ROBERT BROWNING (16th-17th Century)Style: • Dramatic

Monologues: convey setting and action but also reveal the speaker's character

KEY WORKS• Porphyria’s Lover• My Last Duchess• The Laboratory• The Pied Piper of

Hamlin

My Last Duchess: The poem is set during the late Italian Renaissance. The speaker (presumably the Duke of Ferrara) is giving the emissary of the family of his prospective new wife a tour of the artworks in his home. He draws a curtain to reveal a painting of a woman, explaining that it is a portrait of his late wife; he invites his guest to sit and look at the painting. As they look at the portrait of the late Duchess, the Duke describes her happy, cheerful and flirtatious nature, which had displeased him. Eventually, "I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together." He now keeps her painting hidden behind a curtain that only he is allowed to draw back, meaning that now she only smiles for him. Throughout the whole poem you get the sense that the Duke owns his wife.EXTRACT:That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (19th Century)Style: • Religious and sexual

oppression• Meditations on

death and loss in the Romantic tradition

KEY WORKS• Goblin Market• A Birthday• Eve• Remember• When I Am Dead

Goblin Market: Rosetti’s most famous work. Although it is ostensibly about two sisters' misadventures with goblins, critics have interpreted the piece in a variety of ways: seeing it as an allegory about temptation and salvation; a commentary on Victorian gender roles and female agency; and a work about erotic desire and social redemption. EXTRACT: Morning and eveningMaids heard the goblins cry:"Come buy our orchard fruits,Come buy, come buy:Apples and quinces,Lemons and oranges,Plump unpecked cherries,Melons and raspberries,Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,Swart-headed mulberries,Wild free-born cranberries,Crab-apples, dewberries,Pine-apples, blackberries,Apricots, strawberries; -

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (19th Century)Style: • Religious and sexual

oppression• Meditations on

death and loss in the Romantic tradition

KEY WORKS• Goblin Market• A Birthday• Eve• Remember• When I Am Dead

When I am dead, my dearest

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me;Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree:Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet;And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain;I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain:And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set,Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

EMILY DICKINSON (19th Century)Style: • Extensive use of

dashes and unconventional capitalization

• Idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery

• Ballad stanza• Themes of

flowers/gardens, morbidity and Christianity

Behind Me Dips Eternity

Behind Me -- dips Eternity --Before Me -- Immortality --Myself -- the Term between --Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,Dissolving into Dawn away,Before the West begin --'Tis Kingdoms -- afterward -- they say --In perfect -- pauseless Monarchy --Whose Prince -- is Son of None --Himself -- His Dateless Dynasty --Himself -- Himself diversify --In Duplicate divine --'Tis Miracle before Me -- then --'Tis Miracle behind -- between --A Crescent in the Sea --With Midnight to the North of Her --And Midnight to the South of Her --And Maelstrom -- in the Sky --

EMILY DICKINSON (19th Century)Style: • Extensive use of dashes

and unconventional capitalization

• Idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery

• Ballad stanza• Themes of

flowers/gardens, morbidity and Christianity

Key PoemsHope is the Thing With FeathersBecause I Could Not Stop for DeathTis So Much JoyBehind Me Tips Eternity

Because I Could Not Stop For DeathBecause I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,And I had put awayMy labor, and my leisure too,For his civility.We passed the school where children played,Their lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.We paused before a house that seemedA swelling of the ground;The roof was scarcely visible.The cornice but a mound.Since then 'tis centuries but eachFeels shorter than the dayI first surmised the horses' headsWere toward eternity.

EDWARD LEAR(19th Century)Style: • Humour• Verbal invention of

language• Manipulation of the

sounds of words• Use of neologisms

In 1846 Lear published ‘A Book of Nonsense’, a volume of limericks that went through three editions and helped popularize the form. In 1865 The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple was published, and in 1867 his most famous piece of nonsense, ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ was written.

Extract from ‘THE QWANGLE-WANGLE’S HAT’

On the top of the Crumpetty TreeThe Quangle Wangle sat,

But his face you could not see,On account of his Beaver Hat.

For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide,With ribbons and bibbons on every side,

And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace,So that nobody ever could see the face

Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

WILFRED OWEN(19th- 20th Century)Anthem For Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

WORLD WAR I poet

Style: • Gritty realism• Writing from experience• Use of speech and

present tense to create sense of urgency

• Half rhyme• Assonance and

onomatopoeia to create sounds of war.

Key Poems:Strange MeetingThe ShowDulce et Decorum EstMental CasesFutilityAnthem for Doomed Youth

WILFRED OWEN(19th- 20th Century)WORLD WAR I poet

Style: • Gritty realism• Writing from experience• Use of speech and

present tense to create sense of urgency

• Half rhyme• Assonance and

onomatopoeia to create sounds of war.

Key Poems:Strange MeetingThe ShowDulce et Decorum EstMental CasesFutilityAnthem for Doomed Youth

Futility

Move him into the sun -Gently its touch awoke him once,At home, whispering of fields unsown.Always it woke him, even in France,Until this morning and this snow.If anything might rouse him nowThe kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?Was it for this the clay grew tall?- O what made fatuous sunbeams toilTo break earth's sleep at all?

JOHN BETJEMAN (20th Century)Style: • Humorous• Satirical• Based on observations of

everyday life• Christian influences• Focuses on the ordinary

Poetry CollectionsMount Zion (1932)Continual Dew (1937)Old Lights For New Chancels (1940)New Bats in Old Belfries (1945)A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954)Poems in the Porch (1954)Summoned By Bells (1960)High and Low (1966)A Nip in the Air (1974)

Extract from DIARY OF A CHURCH MOUSE

Here among long-discarded cassocks,Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,Here where the vicar never looksI nibble through old service books.Lean and alone I spend my daysBehind this Church of England baize.I share my dark forgotten roomWith two oil-lamps and half a broom.The cleaner never bothers me,So here I eat my frugal tea.My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;My jam is polish for the floor.Christmas and Easter may be feastsFor congregations and for priests,And so may Whitsun. All the same,They do not fill my meagre frame.

GRACE NICHOLS (20th Century)Style: • Culture of Guyana

(Carribbean) is a key motif.• Lyrical• Comment on issues of race• Repeated stanza structure• Oral story-telling tradition

Poems and Poetry Collections• Praise Song for my Mother• Hurricane Hits England• I Is a Long Memoried

Woman (1983)• Picasso, I Want My Face

Back (2009)• Startling the Flying Fish

(2006)

Extract from ‘Hurricane Hits England’It took a hurricane, to bring her closerTo the landscapeHalf the night she lay awake,The howling ship of the wind,Its gathering rage,Like some dark ancestral spectre,Fearful and reassuring:Talk to me HuracanTalk to me OyaTalk to me ShangoAnd Hattie,My sweeping, back-home cousin.Tell me why you visit.An English coast?What is the meaningOf old tonguesReaping havocIn new places?The blinding illumination,Even as you short-Circuit usInto further darkness?

SEAMUS HEANEY (20th Century)Style: • Saw poetry as ‘an engine

for personal and cultural change’- wrote particularly on the ‘troubles’ in Ireland

• Concerned with the past• Largely focused on rural life• Focused on real-life detail• Tries to emulate natural

speech- concerned with the sound of language.

Some of Heaney’s Poetry Collections• Death of a Naturalist• Door into the Dark• District and Circle• Human Chain

Extract from ‘Death of a Naturalist’

All year the flax-dam festered in the heartOf the townland; green and heavy headedFlax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottlesWove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,But best of all was the warm thick slobberOf frogspawn that grew like clotted waterIn the shade of the banks. Here, every springI would fill jampotfuls of the jelliedSpecks to range on window-sills at home,On shelves at school, and wait and watch untilThe fattening dots burst into nimble-Swimming tadpoles.

U.A.FANTHORPE(20th Century)Style: • Some use of monologues• Juxtaposition• Concentrates on minor

characters• Tenderness and dignity

with difficult content of some poems e.g. the collection Side Effects was influenced by her working in a psychiatric hospital.

Some of Fanthorpe’s Poetry CollectionsSide Effects (1978)Standing to (1982) Voices off. (1984) Neck-verse (1992) Safe as House (1995)Consequences (2000)

Extract from ‘Case History: Alison (head injury)’

I would like to have knownMy husband's wife, my mother's only daughter.A bright girl she was.

Enmeshed in comfortingFat, I wonder at her delicate angles.Her autocratic knee

Like a Degas dancer'sAdjusts to the observer with airy poise,That now lugs me upstairs

Hardly. Her face, brokenBy nothing sharper than smiles, holds in its smilesWhat I have forgotten.

She knows my father's dead,And grieves for it, and smiles. She has digestedMourning. Her smile shows it.

I, who need remindingEvery morning, shall never get over whatI do not remember.

BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH (20th Century)Style: • Poetry strongly influenced

by Jamaican music and literature

• Political poet• Use of dialect to influence

language choices• Use of questions

Zephaniah’s Poetry CollectionsPen Rhythm (1980)The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985) CCity Psalms (1992) Inna Liverpool (1992) Talking Turkeys (1995) Propa Propaganda (1996) White Comedy Wicked World! (2000) Too Black, Too Strong (2001)

No ProblemI am not de problemBut I bare de bruntOf silly playground tauntsAn racist stunts,I am not de problemI am a born academicBut dey got me on de runNow I am branded athletic,I am not de problemIf yu give I a chanceI can teach yu of TimbuktuI can do more dan dance,I am not de problemI greet yu wid a smileYu put me in a pigeon holeBut I a versatile.

These conditions may affect meAs I get older,An I am positively sureI have no chips on me shoulders,Black is not de problemMother country get it right,An just for de record,Sum of me best friends are white

ALFRED TENNYSON (19th Century)Style: • Poetry strongly influenced

by classical mythology• Domestic situations and

references to nature• Onomatopoeia, alliteration

and assonance• Victorian in terms of order

and morality• Themes of grief, loss and

melancholy.

Key poems:• The Lady of Shalott• In Memoriam• The Charge of the Light

Brigade• Crossing the Bar

An extract from ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’ Was there a man dismay’d?Not tho’ the soldier knew Someone had blunder’d: Their’s not to make reply, Their’s not to reason why, Their’s but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d

CAROL ANN DUFFY (20th-21st Century)Style: • Unconventional attitudes

to topics• Often unconventional

forms used• Love is often at the centre

of her poetry• Myth and fairytale

references often used• Form of dramatic

monologue often used

Poetry collections:• Rapture (2005)• The World’s Wife (1999)

ORIGINALLYWe came from our own country in a red roomwhich fell through the fields, our mother singingour father’s name to the turn of the wheels.My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,the street, the house, the vacant roomswhere we didn’t live any more. I staredat the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.

All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenuewhere no one you know stays. Others are sudden.Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,leading to unimagined pebble-dashed estates, big boyseating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose toothin my head. I want our own country, I said.

But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel onlya skelf of shame. I remember my tongueshedding its skin like a snake, my voicein the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only thinkI lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first spaceand the right place? Now, Where do you come from?strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.

SYLVIA PLATH (20th Century)Style: • Confessional poetry- centred

around personal emotion• Personal and nature-based

depictions featuring, for example, the moon, blood, hospitals, foetuses, and skulls.

• Emotions are often passion, anger and despair.

• Interpreted as dark in its tone as the poems are almost autobiographical in terms of describing mental illness.

Poetry collections: • The Colossus and Other Poems

(1960)• Ariel (1965)• Three Women: A Monologue

(1968)• Crossing the Water (1971)• Winter Trees (1971)

THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetaryThe trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were GodPrickling my ankles and murmuring of their humilityFumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.Separated from my house by a row of headstones.I simply cannot see where there is to get to.The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky –Eight great tongues affirming the ResurrectionAt the end, they soberly bong out their names.The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.The eyes lift after it and find the moon.The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.How I would like to believe in tenderness -The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.I have fallen a long way. Clouds are floweringBlue and mystical over the face of the starsInside the church, the saints will all be blue,Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (18-19th Century)Style: • Romantic poet (with a capital

R)- themes of transience, melancholy, death and mythology.

• Uses common everyday language to create poetic images

• Wrote both narrative poems and conversational poems

Key Poems:Narrative poems:• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner• Kubla Khan• Christabel

Conversational poems:• Frost at Midnight• The Eolian Harp• The Nightingale

The Nightingale: A Conversational Poem

'Most musical, most melancholy' bird!A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!In nature there is nothing melancholy.But some night-wandering man, whose heart was piercedWith the remembrance of a grievous wrong,Or slow distemper, or neglected love,(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,And made all gentle sounds tell back the taleOf his own sorrow) he, and such as he,First named these notes a melancholy strain.

And youths and maidens most poetical,Who lose the deepening twilights of the springIn ball-rooms and hot theatres, they stillFull of meek sympathy must heave their sighsO’er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learntA different lore : we may not thus profaneNature’s sweet voices, always full of loveAnd joyance!

JOHN KEATS (18-19th Century)Style: • Also a Romantic poet (with a

capital R)- themes of transience, melancholy, death and addiction

• Uses sensory images• Focus on nature• References made to Greek and

Roman mythology• Use of exclamation marks to

show emotion

Key Poems:Narrative poems:• Isabella or The Pot of Basil• The Eve of St Agnes

Conversational poems:• Ode to a Grecian Urn• Ode to a Nightingale• To Autumn

Extract from ‘Ode to a Nightingale’

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

BILLY COLLINS (20th-21st Century)Style: • Conversational, witty poems• Collins stated that his poems

were: “suburban, it’s domestic, it’s middle class, and it’s sort of unashamedly that.”

• Use of metaphor• Focus on the ordinary• ‘American’ in terms of voice

Key Poems:• Horoscopes for the Dead

(2001)• Aimless Love (2013)• The Art of Drowning (1995)• The Apple that Astonished Paris (1988)

THE GOLDEN YEARS

All I do these drawn-out daysis sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridgewhere there are no pheasants to be seenand last time I looked, no ridge.

I could drive over to Quail Fallsand spend the day there playing bridge,but the lack of a falls and the absence of quailwould only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.

I know a widow at Fox Runand another with a condo at Smokey Ledge.One of them smokes, and neither can run,so I’ll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.

Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.

RAYMOND CARVER (20thCentury)Style: • Minimalist poet• Poetry influenced by ‘gritty

realism’- sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people—often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people.

Poetry Collections:Near Klamath (1968)Winter Insomnia (1970)At Night The Salmon Move (1976)Fires (1983)Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (1985)Ultramarine (1986)A New Path To The Waterfall (1989)Gravy (Unknown year)

THE OLD DAYS

It was then that I remembered

back to those days

and how telephones used to

jump when they rang.

And the people who would come

in those early-morning

hours to pound on the door in

alarm. Never mind the

alarm felt inside.

I remembered that, and gravy

dinners. Knives lying

around, waiting for trouble.

Going to bed and hoping

I wouldn't wake up.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI (20thCentury)Style: • Prolific underground writer• Used his writing to depict the depravity

of urban life and the downtrodden in American society

• His main concerns are experience, emotion, and imagination in his work, using direct language and violent and sexual imagery.

• Use of free verse and declarative sentences

Poetry Collections:Flower, Fist, and Bestial Wail (1960)Crucifix in a Deathhand (1965)At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968)You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire. (1999)The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps (2001)Slouching Toward Nirvana (2005)The Pleasures of the Damned (2007), The Continual Condition (2009)

A Smile to Remember

we had goldfish and they circled around and aroundin the bowl on the table near the heavy drapescovering the picture window andmy mother, always smiling, wanting us allto be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry!'and she was right: it's better to be happy if youcanbut my father continued to beat her and me several times a week whileraging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn'tunderstand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: 'Henry, smile!why don't you ever smile?'

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was thesaddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,they floated on the water, on their sides, theireyes still open,and when my father got home he threw them to the catthere on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mothersmiled