Read Miracle at St. Anna

Inspired by 60secondreview.blogspot.com, a blog that respects that your time is limited and that you are interested in the new and different, be it books, musics, or products.

Ever get so caught up in someone else's story that you are there? You feel yourself a participant or bystander in the action. Your heart races when danger is imminent and you're awash with relief when the group reaches relative safety. James McBride's Miracle at St. Anna does just that. Descriptions of war and beauty and human suffering that can only be experienced in one's innermost parts reverberate in the mountains and foothills of the Italian landscape. The dramatic, descriptive prose manages to maintain an element of suspense that keeps the reader/partaker feeling as though the novel is perpetually leading up to something (in a good way). The Buffalo Soldiers, like McBride's proud uncle who inspired the book, aren't simply characters, they are undeniably human with flesh that wounds and bleeds red blood, hearts that pound with joy in pleasant moments and sorrow at loss, and minds that are forced by circumstance to grapple with unholy realities. Read Miracle at St. Anna and experience an oft-ignored part of the Good War.

P.S. – Then watch Spike Lee directed movie adaptation released in 2008 with the tagline -

World War II has its heroes and its miracles.

Newspaper Blackout: Austin Kleon

Newspaper Blackout Poetry - redacting newspaper articles with a magic marker to make poems -  is becoming a popular activity for teaching poetry in English classrooms. Blackout poems, said to be part of the new “remix” culture, are a great entry point for students who keep poetry at arms length and an inticing task for readers and writers alike.  Writer and cartoonist Austin Kleon has created a collection of this "found poetry" or "altered text” in his poetry collection Newspaper Blackout, forthcoming from HarperCollins this month (April 2010). 

Visit his website for samples of poems from the book and checkout his blog for drawings and new blackout poems.  I came across a few poems that I found especially intriguing.  One, machine and memories, I'nve included here in its original form:

AUSTIN KLEON is a writer who draws. His He has drawn for clients such as Austin City Limits and South by Southwest. He works a day job designing websites, and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Meghan and their dog Milo. You can see his work online at www.austinkleon.com.