Bloom Books

If you like William Blake you're in for a treat. There are also poems and prose from the greats such as Milton, The Four Zoas, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Byron. It's a lovely selection.

Not many books of poetry are enacted as vividly in the cinema of the mind as John Kinsella's "Peripheral Light." Nearly 150 pages of poems, arranged without any overt sense of chronology or categorization into "new" and "selected," spool out a brocade of violence, labor, danger, natural presences, hardship, and beauty in (primarily) rural Australia. Poems set later in the book also make jagged forays into political and linguistic territory, although these generally tend to leave less of a strong impression on the ear and inner eye.

Kinsella's strengths-narrative pacing, internal echo, startling images dense with subtext, a reserved irony and skepticism, and lush, lucid description-combine most effectively in poems that focus on the difficulties of hacking farms out of the voracious outback, where one misstep-one overlooked skeleton weed or wild radish-can ruin generations: "One year the farmer asked us if we / felt guilty for missing one & hence ruining / his would-have-been bumper crop. . . . Speaking for myself, / I've included in my lexicon of guilt / the following: what I feel today / will I feel tomorrow?" ("Skeleton weed/generative grammar"). Salt, sheep skulls, screaming black cockatoos and red dominate a landscape all the more intimidating for its poising on the brink of surreality. It would be less troubling if it were simply not real, but there is no evading its perfect naturalness: "The orchard, canker-bound and fading-Australian / Gothic. A bladeless windmill remonstrates / with a warm wind as it singes / oranges scattered in bitter wreaths / of deadwood, scale, and vitrified leaves." ("Black Suns"). Or, in "Warhol at Wheatlands": "outside, in the / spaces between parrots & fruit trees / the stubble rots & the day fails / to sparkle." Or, in "Wheatbelt Gothic or Discovering a Wyeth": ". . .a mat of hay spread over the ooze / of a dead sheep that is the floor / of the soak (blood-black beneath the skin, / bones honeycombed), crystallised with salt." In such a place, humanity is backed into desperate corners, and grief, bickering, and sacrifices of questionable efficacy seem to rule ("The Silo", "Why They Stripped the Last Trees from the Banks of the Creek", "Anathalamion").

Kinsella does not simply sing elegies and gothic lays, however. He opposes structuring energies against the threat to survival, especially light, memory, and family: "Sometimes I sit on Deep Water Point jetty / and remember the time we spent / considering what lies below / the glistening surface. . . having to answer to no more / than the weather, / small fish, and an urge to be free" ("Approaching the Anniversary of my Last Meeting with my Son"); "Prayer goes somewhere / and is not lost and expects nothing back. . . . Most of the family is there and words are said / and those who can't attend wait for news of the dead / as now it is all about memory" ("Funeral Oration").

Although he crafts wonderful rhymed stanzas in many poems, Kinsella also employs a kind of free-verse form that fails into the superfluity of his subjects. On first reads, these poems seem strangely unfinished to an American eye, but they reveal, in their open structure, an asymmetry that parallels the overabundant energies of the natural world. Taken singly, any of these poems might seem quite strange, but in this worthy collection they act as mirror-slivers in a vivifying mosaic. Part John Clare, part Gary Snyder, part Derrida, Kinsella's work is powerful and distinctive.

Costume jewelry was produced in large quantity from about the end of the 19th century until about the 1970s to meet the desire of the growing middle classes for decorative accessories less costly than the diamond, gold, and other precious metal jewelry of the wealthy. Though costume jewelry is still being made, collectors are drawn to pieces from this earlier period. For awhile, in the 1980s, costume jewelry was overshadowed by ethnic jewelry. This interest related to multiculturalism and the more recent globalization continues today. Though there are enough serious collectors for the traditional costume jewelry market to remain active. Bloom suggests that with the "opening of mass production in the Far East" with the related emergence of large new consumer markets, there may be another expansion of costume jewelry similar to the first, original period.

Bloom's five-page introductory chapter succinctly covers just about everything the beginner would want to know. It has sections on an overview of the field, pricing, attribution, buying, and how to care for pieces. The glossary at the back too is particularly helpful to the beginning collector or dealer, and has some terms new to even advanced collectors. The book is for the most part a Gallery, though, with costume jewelry grouped by types--necklaces, bracelets, charms, earrings, and others. Captions to the bright color photographs identify the piece, note significant features, and give a price range. All in all a good, up-to-date reference on this category which has gained in popularity in recent years.

This is one of the best books on manners for young children. It is engaging and effective. I am a preschool teacher and have used various books to get the point across, but this one does it best!

The Program Administration Scale is a valuable tool. It is unique in that it looks not simply at the environment of a program, but at the leadership "values" of the program. The responsibility of a quality program often ends at the classroom door. With this tool, we see how a manager effects a program's quality.

Provides very detailed and specialized information, though it is rather old; updated versions of this book can be accessed via the web on the publisher's website (as well as Neuropsychopharmacology: The Fifth Generation of Progress). If you can afford it, it's worth having as a collectable at the very least.

This version uses footnotes too much. Every little unclear word is attached to a footnote. It's very distracting when reading and takes you away from this book. A lot of the words don't need to be footnoted, I guess the editor thought that the people who would read this would be idiots.

This is a compelling love story that goes far beyond physical attraction. An intellectual romance that transcends anything you could imagine. It is also a story of personal growth, as the main character is on a journey to find herself. The author leaves you hanging on to every word and wanting more. The book does have a rather abrupt ending. But that's the author's point, to leave the conclusion to the reader's imagination.

Review of Play: Endgame

Premiere: 1957

By: Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

The play "Endgame" is set in a single room with only four characters. The two main characters (Hamm and Clov) bicker throughout. The other two characters (Nagg and Nell) are in trash cans in the room and someone needs to life the lids to talk to them. Nagg and Nell are Hamm's parents. Outside of the room it seems that either the earth is uninhabited or else the outside world is entirely void.

Hamm (Hamlet?) is decrepit, blind and immobile. Hamm depends on Clov (Clown?) for everything. Clov serves him food and medicine and gives him warm covers. Clov serves Hamm grudgingly.

Although Nagg and Nell (Nag and Hell?) are Hamm's parents he shows no warmth or feeling toward them. They show no humanity or awareness of the world. There is no interaction between parent and child that would indicate human feeling. Nagg and Nell
(Nag and Hell?) are just stage props to reinforce the premise that time stopped passing and the universe is a void. Nell's death invokes no sense of loss making the audience wonder if she was really alive at the start or was her trash can actually an urn for her ashes. Perhaps the voices of Nagg and Nell are faded memories.



Waiting for Godot

Krapp's Last Tape




I completely enjoyed and highly recommend this book.

In this course, Professor Bloom covers (as the title suggests): Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra. He goes play by play in chronological order, devoting the most time (three lectures each) to Hamlet and King Lear.

His analysis focuses mainly on characterization, offering insights especially into the characters of Juliet, Iago, several major and minor characters in King Lear, and (of course) Hamlet. He also occasionally offers historical information about the writing or production of the play when this is helpful in illuminating the material.

He also spends a good deal of time analyzing the plot structure of some of the plays, particularly Hamlet.

The best lectures, I thought, were those on King Lear, which added significantly to my understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of that play, already my favorite of those discussed in this course.