Euphoria

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Greenwood said collating the book has been “therapeutic and beneficial” to the team, a “blossoming of all these lovely moments”.

F.s. Yousaf's Euphoria is a polyphonic, poly-visual journey that ruminates on the human experience from multiple vantage points. Inside the silent abyss, there's a symphony of light. At times, the sadness is overwhelming but the collection is carried by the ambition to find and occupy a space between sadness and joy, to a least temporarily balance the scales of contemporary life. It was just me and my body,” Ward recalled. “I was out hiking in the woods, and there was no one around besides a bunch of animals – and they’re just kind of vibing and doing their thing.” Nell’s lover, Bankson, by comparison, is sensitive, gentle, lonely, and as passionate about anthropology as Nell is. It’s impossible not to feel sorry for him when he expresses how lonely he often feels and to not adore how he treats Nell. Robert Frost’s Poemscontains all of Robert Frost’s best-known poems-and dozens more-in a portable anthology. Here are ‘Birches,’‘Mending Wall,’‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’‘Two Tramps at Mudtime,’‘Choose Something Like a Star,’ and ‘The Gift Outright,’ which Frost read at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.” The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), Translated by Stephen MitchellLoosely based on the experiences of real-life anthropologists Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson, Euphoria is a captivating work of historical fiction. Set in the 1930’s Territory of New Guinea, the setting is exotic and the various cultures in the region are intriguing. I became immediately interested in learning about the tribes living along the Sepik River right along with the fictionalized characters Nell Stone and her husband Fen, and the depressed and isolated Andrew Bankson. These three are drawn to one another; and their interactions, both professionally and romantically, are well developed and quite irresistible. I admired Nell and could feel such empathy for her at times as she struggled not just to understand the people of New Guinea, but humanity itself. “I think above all else it is freedom I search for in my work, in these far-flung places, to find a group of people who give each other the room to be in whatever way they need to be. And maybe I will never find it all in one culture but maybe I find parts of it in several cultures, maybe I can piece it together like a mosaic and unveil it to the world.” The novel is told from Bankson’s point of view, which I found very appealing as his character was more approachable to me and lent an air of nostalgia to the story. Snippets of Nell Stone’s diary entries are also interspersed throughout and add additional perspective to the narrative.

Selected Poems]contains one hundred of Cummings’s wittiest and most profound poems, harvested from thirty-five of the most radically creative years in contemporary American poetry. These poems exhibit all the extraordinary lyricism, playfulness, technical ingenuity, and compassion for which Cummings is famous.” The Selected Poemsby Federico Garcia Lorca (1898–1937) That’s the beginning of this gem! I was a goner before I knew what hit me. Don’t worry, the book isn’t full of dead babies, but it’s full of life and gorgeous writing and intriguing characters and I can’t end this sentence because I can’t stop raving about this book. The story is mostly told by Bankson in a first person narrative where I got a sense of his personal losses, his frame of mind, and his feelings for Nell. Nell’s journal entries are interspersed and they reflect her deep commitment to the people she is studying, especially the women and children and a sense of how she feels about the people in her life . We only learn about Fen, my least favorite character, through these narratives. While I went into this thinking it would be Nell’s story, I ended up thinking that it was as much Andrew’s story. He was my favorite character and I have to admit I fell a little in love with him. Greenwood recalled how Quindrie had “so many great pitches coming through” when they were looking for contributors. He thought many of the original submissions were “sweet” and “nice”.Anna Akhmatova is among the most moving and revered voices in Russian literature. A poet of passion and conscience, she was persecuted after the Revolution and under Stalin, but chose to remain in Russia and bear witness. Her works capture a rich emotional world – poems such as ‘A Ride’ and ‘By the Seashore’ reflect a complex attitude to love or explore the duality of her own nature, while others, such as ‘Courage’ and ‘In 1940’, evoke the horrors of war.” The Selected Poetryby Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) Despite the inevitable strife among the threesome, there is a wonderful point in the story when they work together on a euphoric epipany of ideas as they try to map various cultures according to dominant sets of characterics; i.e. possessive, aggressive; caring yielding; pragmatic, managerial; creative, nonconformist. Should they map genders separately? Could the scheme work for individual personality types? I loved that section. They told PinkNews that their comic explored something “equally thrilling and embarrassing” to them – intimacy. Sarson explained that “sex and coming out have much the same vibe” to them.

Like an album of photographic negatives, this book is transformed by light, inhabited by family, illness, mortality, and faith. There is a brooding intelligence here, radiant with fireworks and emergency flares. One of America’s most celebrated poets—and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923—Edna St. Vincent Millay defined a generation with her passionate lyrics and intoxicating voice of liberation.” 100 Selected Poems by E. E. Cummings (1894–1962)

I hate books that waste their potential. The premise of Euphoria is excellent and could've been unlike anything else, but every single one of its plot points is underdeveloped. It paints an incomplete portrait of tribes in New Guinea and of an anthropologist’s fieldwork. The “passionate love triangle” promised in the summary is quite unpassionate and more of a side plot. This love triangle also doesn’t threaten the three main characters’ lives, careers, and bonds, as the summary states. Here’s a perfect example of a book that’s won a handful of prizes but isn’t necessarily deserving of all the accolades. Then there's a love triangle. I'm not automatically opposed to love triangles like some readers are. Generally, I'm opposed to love triangles that don't make sense for the story. With Euphoria, although I'm not sure the love triangle was necessary, it doesn't feel shoehorned in the way triangles in other stories are. However, its portrayal is just not very good. Tension is weak, only simmering under the surface, never reaching a boiling point of intensity. If you want to get more poetry into your life, why not start with some of the best poetry books there are? I’ve compiled a list of books by the best poets I know to help you jump-start your reading. In some cases, I’ve chosen individual volumes that best represent an author’s work, and in others, I’ve chosen the “selected works” or similar to give you a broad overview.

A poet of astonishing range and inventiveness, Williams was at once a daring formal innovator, one of the band of modernists who transformed American poetry, and an intimate, sometimes savagely frank chronicler of the life and landscape of his native New Jersey.” Trilogyby H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961) Young’s frank music speaks directly to the reader in these elemental poems, reminding us that the right words can both comfort us and enlarge our understanding of life’s mysteries.” Wade in the Water: Poemsby Tracy K. Smith (1972–) A quote I enjoyed was “There are times when I wanted the worst for you, Hoping you would understand The roots of my thoughts. I needed you to feel the pain I held, But here I am Praying you never feel like I did. Hoping no one ever sees you Like the way you saw me.” I was fond of these words strung together because I’m aware that at times I feel this type of emotion and others feel it as well. Laird’s piece was inspired by a poem they were “randomly presented with going home from work one evening” called “Your Life” by Andrea Gibson. They said the poem “changed absolutely everything for me” as it was “said with such love for oneself that it completely flipped my perspective on myself”.They are in another world, and King takes us there wholly and makes us recognize the difference this environment makes for them. The other small nit is that Nell has a broken ankle but manages to climb up and down ladders. Maybe the writer should have given her a broken left wrist or something, because I just didn’t buy that she could climb a ladder with a broken ankle.