A Writer in the Moment

My first piece of Mail Art

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:47:00 +0000

1/21/10 Poem - Grey Sparrow Journal

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:44:00 +0000

LAUGHING WITH FATHER
by Elizabeth P. Glixman

http://greysparrowpress.net/WinterPoetryGlixman.aspx

The Poetry Bomb Project- Poetry to the People

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:23:00 +0000

If all goes well my poem and many others will be in this project.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1768073198/the-poetry-bomb

Collages, Mail Art, Artist Books- All Exciting Artistic Possibilites

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:46:00 +0000

An Oldness Crept Into the Walls Last Night
Series about Ancestors and Roots

I am considering how to use these words and images in non-traditional ways.

Images in Color and in Black and White- Fall Makes Me Think of Color and the Absence of Color

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:44:00 +0000

All work copyrighted by E. P. Glixman
Cannot be copied without my permission.

Ron McLarty Interview in October Issue of Eclectica: I Didn't Know the Veteran Character Actor I Saw on TV and in Films Was a Talented Writer...

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:40:00 +0000

UNTIL NOW.....

Read my interview with actor and writer Ron McLarty here
http://www.eclectica.org/v13n4/glixman_mclarty.html

and check out new poetry, fiction, book reviews, op-ed pieces and interviews in October 2009 Eclectica.

http://www.eclectica.org/v13n4/toc.html

Video-Poet Clare Shaw Reads from Some Girls' Mother

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:54:00 +0000

http://www.route-online.com/?s=+Some+Girls%27+Mothers&x=15&y=10

"In this highly acclaimed book and live literature event, six daughters speak openly and passionately about mother and daughter relationships.

Some Girls’ Mothers features stories from Suzanne Batty, Anne Caldwell, Nell Farrell, Char March, Clare Shaw and River Wolton.

Do daughters step into their mothers’ shoes? How does this central relationship colour women’s lives? The tales in this anthology address these questions with honesty and vigour, weaving humour and warmth into the telling of small but significant tragedies.

Celebrated poets, the writers showcased here explore daughterhood and motherhood in their own unique styles. They speak out in prose that fizzes and crackles, throwing light on these questions and many others. The stories offer a unique set of insights into this relationship. You’ll find plenty to uncover in this irreverent but heartfelt take on an age-old subject.

'Touching, wounding, humbling' - Simon Armitage

'Beautiful writing. A lovely mix of poignant and funny material, it will touch so many chords with so many mothers and daughters' - Polly Thomas (read less)
In this highly acclaimed book and live literature event, six daughters speak openly and passionately about mother and daughter relationships.

Some Girls’ Mothers features stories from Suzanne Batty, Anne Caldwell, Nell Farrell, Char March, Clare Shaw and River Wolton"

"Vegetable Love" Poem by Barbara Crooker Read by Garrison Keillor on the Writer's Almanac- I Love This Poem!

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:06:00 +0000

www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedailygreen/images

Poem- Vegetable Love

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/08/23

13 Poets (I am one) Interpret the Word "Marked" in the Blossom Bones Summer Issue.

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:52:00 +0000

http://www.blossombones.com

Journey - Poetry Anthology Eden Waters Press

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:48:00 +0000

http://edenwaterspress.com/current_issue

Journey Anthology includes work by Peter Krok, Mike Amado, Ed Galing, Halima Sussman, Helen Bar-Lev, Phillip E. Burnham, Phil Levy, Susan Tepper, Tom Sheehan, Elizabeth P. Glixman and many others.

From Editor Anne Brudevold

"Our second anthology Journey is a huge success, in the eyes of the critics who have read the galleys and and I hope it will be with you and the public. We think it is a beautiful book inside and out. The content is thought-provoking, funny, luminous, mysterious and covers all the emotions and brings up important issues. It's beautiful to look at. It's beautiful to read."

UPDATE! Taking Poetry Public by Kiki Anderson- Poets and Writers Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Adam Robinson founded the outdoor journal Is Reads. My poem A Mother and Son Conversation is part of the current issue that is posted in public places in Baltimore Maryland. I love the idea that my poem appears in an unlikely place. Not a book. I don't know who read it, if anyone read it and I don't know if the wind blew it away. The randomness of the viewing is exciting. A person might walk into a rest room or by the side of an abandoned building and see a poem never having any interest in reading poetry. What a surprise. It is like finding something ( a jewel, a needle in a haystack, an irritation, a zen koan, nonsense, profundity) in an unexpected environment. Perhaps it has a momentary effect on the reader's consciousness even if only the utterance of the words, What's that doing here? An interaction has taken place.

The online issue my poem is in is not up yet. Enjoy the previous issue.

Is Reads website www.isreads.com.

And read an article about Adam and his outdoor journal in Poets and Writers Magazine

My poem was posted in these two spots among many others.

http://www.nashvilleisreads.com/glixman.html

http://www.baltimoreisreads.com/glixman.html

Charles Olson- "What do you see? What is happening where you live?"

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:09:00 +0000

You can watch Polis Is This about poet Charles Olson at
http://www.polisisthis.com/ . I have an interest in Olson's work for many reasons.

One: He was born in my hometown in Massachusetts along with other notable poets such as Stanley Kunitz and Elizabeth Bishop.

Two: I love Gloucester, Massachusetts. The Maximus Poems were inspired by Olson's love of Gloucester.Gloucester is a beautiful place even though it has changed dramatically in the last four decades. Going to Gloucester on a day trip when I was a teenager was like going to a new world where nature ruled. The air was clean. There was an abundance of light. I felt invigorated. The smell of the sea and the fish, the weathered buildings, the fishing boats, the ocean, the quaintness of it all spoke of another time when people lived off the land, respected it and had roots in community. It was this sense of an enclosed community that held onto tradition that intrigued me.

Three: Olson believed in people's ability to shape their world.

Four: It seems he didn't care what people thought of him ( he was a bit eccentric) and he was humble. He was outspoken, eccentric yet humble. Hmm. Seems like a contradiction. I gathered this from the film Polis Is This.

Five: He had a station wagon that had no reverse. When asked why, he said no one should go backward in life.

I often think that many great poets are like mystic sages, visionaries or teachers who show things to us we do not see because we do not have the capacity or sensitivity to see things as they are in this world. Or because we are stuck in our solo vision of things. Olson gives the people who read his work a different view of what people can achieve.

Info on Charles Olson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970), was an important 2nd generation American modernist poet who was a crucial link between earlier figures like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, a rubric which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Subsequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the Language School, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He is credited as one of the thinkers who coined the term postmodern. Across the Atlantic, these various poetic movements have exerted a deep and ongoing influence on an important array of alternative and experimental writers, including Roy Fisher, Edwin Morgan, and Geoffrey Hill, behind whose works lurks Olson's ghost of language-driven inventiveness."

Info on poems from poets.org

"He began work on his opus, The Maximus Poems, in the mid-1940s, and continued to expand and revise them until his death in 1970. Formally similar to Ezra Pound's Cantos, the Maximus poems are, in Olson's words, "about a person and a place."

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5964

April 24, 2009 - Do you love to draw whether free hand or on the computer? On June 6, 2009 ( Drawing Day)show the world your drawings.

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:57:00 +0000

Edward Gorey's drawings
One of my favorite " drawers" is Edward Gorey. I love his black and white drawings for their designs, textures, and humour (often bizarre or horrific).

Photos of Edward Gory
http://www.phobos-deimos.com/Edward_Gorey/Main/Edward_Gorey_Pics.htm

He did the illustrations for the intro to the PBS Mystery series.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/mystery/game.html

Make your own lines on a surface.
READ ABOUT DRAWING DAY

Poem- Kim Addonizio- What Do Women Want?

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:10:00 +0000

Kim Addonizio- What Do Women Want?
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171221

Slate
http://www.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/2936214.aspx

Kim Addonizio- Video Readings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkiZfPPY6HE&feature=related

March 27, 2009 Listen to Thomas Lux Talk about Poetry on the Paula Gordon Show .I Don't Know who Paula Gordon Is but Thomas Lux is a Unique Poet

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:42:00 +0000

God Particles is my introduction to Thomas Lux' poems. I am not sure how I feel about them. I do know that the title poem "God Particles" made an impression on me. I too wonder if God takes pity on us humans for our inadequacies.

The poems in God Particles do not shy away from the depressing and the ugly. Despite this they are life affirming to read. They are compassionate poems.

Here is a poem from the book

The Hungry Gap-Time

late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down
by the plow, the hoe, rake,
and worry over rain.
Chicken coop confiscated
by the rats and the raptors
with nary a mouse to hunt. The corn's too green and hard,
and the larder's down
to dried apples
and double-corned cod. We lie on our backs
and stare at the blue;
our work is done, our bellies flat.
The mold on the wheat killed hardly a sheaf.
The lambs fatten on the grass, our pigs we set
to forage on their own—they'll be back
when they whiff the first shucked ears
of corn. Albert's counting
bushels in his head
to see if there's enough to ask Harriet's father
for her hand. Harriet's father
is thinking about Harriet's mother's bread
pudding. The boys and girls
splash in the creek,
which is low but cold. Soon, soon
there will be food
again, and from what our hands have done
we shall live another year here
by the river
in the valley
above the fault line
beneath the mountain.

Thomas Lux

God Particles
Houghton Mifflin

I really liked what Thomas Lux says about poetry in this interview on the Paula Gordon Show.

Lux gives credit to performance poetry for our culture's recent renewed interest in poetry and talks about why poets write.

Read the rest-Audio Interview
http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/lux/

Blogger's Unite * Women's History Month- Immigration

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:15:00 +0000

My grandmother as a young woman

People came to the U.S. seeking freedom of expression and economic opportunity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (THE SECOND WAVE: European Immigration from 1850-1920). http://www.memory.loc.gov/learn/educators/workshop/european/wimmlink.html

My grandmother was one of these people. She immigrated from Lithuania with her parents and sister. Later in her life at the age of fifty due to financial hardship, she opened her own business and in the spirit of many immigrants achieved her own American Dream as a small business owner.

My grandmother worked hard. She had an independent spirit. She represents to me all the hard working women who came to the United States from Ireland, Germany, China, Italy, Eastern Europe during this wave of immigration who paved the way for more equal rights for all women in the U.S. These women who worked in factories, shops, were housewives, supported their husbands' dreams, and or manifested dreams of their own are role models for women of all ages. Many young women in the United States today do not know what their grandmothers and great grandmothers went through to be able to work, vote, or garner equality.

Check these sites out to learn more about the "famous" and "not famous" remarkable women who paved the way for us all. In the twenty-first century women and their families are immigrating to the U.S. They will contribute to the ongoing story of History in new and unique ways.

Photo Essay

Gifts of Age: Portraits and Essays of 32 Remarkable Women

by Charlotte Painter

http://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Age-Portraits-Essays-Remarkable/dp/0877013683

Film

Women Make Movies Films by and about Women
A Place Called Home - Women and Immigration

"This extraordinary collection features titles that celebrate the lives and achievements of immigrants in the U.S. and explore ongoing struggles of immigrants today. Includes new release MOTHERLAND and the acclaimed ADIO KERIDA (GOODBYE DEAR LOVE)"

http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/collect18.shtml

Poetry

Emma Lazarus, Poet of the Huddled Masses

by Jacki Lyden

"In her poem The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus created what stood for years as an American credo. You know the words: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

The words of the poem were engraved on a bronze plaque hung in the Statue of Liberty museum 20 years after her death. To many, the verse expressed the governing U.S. attitude toward immigrants: welcome. But today, a new debate over immigration is dominating the political debate."

Read the rest

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6359435

Miriam's Daughters: Jewish Latin American Women Poets
Majorie Agosín

Not only have I carried and continue to carry the languages of my ancestors, but I have also many names. Because I was born in the United States, my mother named me Marjorie, like the character in Howard Fast's novel Marjorie Morningstar. In Chile I was called Margarita; at home Magita; and at the Hebrew school, Miriam.

- Marjorie Agosín -

http://www.lasculturas.com/lib/rv/rvbkMiriam.htm

Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been :New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora

Edited by Persis M. Karim
Foreword by Al Young
A powerful collection that speaks to history, immigration, and the emergence of a new international literary voice

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1557288208/qid=1145424983/sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/002-3373945-6044804?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Other Links of Interest

Immigration Learning Page Library of Congress
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_immigration.php

The Statue of Liberty: Ellis Island Foundation- Inc.
http://www.ellisisland.org/Immexp/index.asp?

Karen Tei Yamashita Novelist- Brazil- Maru
http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-1566890004-0

Interview with Karen Tei Yamashita
http://www.eclectica.org/v11n4/glixman_yamashita.html

2 Novels: One about Identity Theft, the Other, a May December Romance

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:45:00 +0000

T.C. Boyle's 2006 novel Talk Talk is about one woman's experience with identity theft. I've heard ads on the radio about how to protect your identity. I never thought much about this type of crime until I read Boyle's book. The book made the whole experience frightening. You will find out it REALLY can happen to anybody!

I read the book quickly. I wanted to know if the deaf woman and her boyfriend (they took it upon themselves to find the thief) would catch him. There were a lot of scenes in cars which made the book seem like one big car chase between cops and robbers.

Here are two reviews.

http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2006_08_009663.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071401222.html

"Gabriel Garcia Marquez received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He has written numerous books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude (I will never forget this story) and Love in the Time of Cholera. Memories of My Melancholy Whores, his latest novel, is a 115-page, strangely erotic, and spiritual masterpiece. The man is a great writer, but I don't have to tell you that."

Memories of My Melancholy Whores is about more than the relationship between a young prostitute and a ninety year old man. Read more http://www.eclectica.org/v10n4/glixman.html

Inspire Me Thursday- Lace- Happy Valentines Day

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:05:00 +0000

E.P. Glixman

The challenge this week at Inspire Me Thursday is lace. Here is my poem in progress, my first draft. Since it is Valentines Day, I thought about hearts and flowers and lacy things. I guess Cupid loves lace. It is everywhere on this holiday.

Angela's

You might think you've entered a room
where everything is covered
with luxurious lace. You are right
You've entered a space with signs on walls
that read for the demure, the daring, the darling
The room is full of searching people like your neighbor
eighty year old Mrs.Rodriguez
hiding her Valentines Day hearts and flower thong
trimmed with neon pink lace in her bony hand
No one would have ever guessed

This is the way the world should be everyday
a shopping spree - a surprise-
All women are madonas goddesses
mistresses of the dark
in black lace and high heels and
then there are the women who are told
not to be women
who need to take care of their
deepest yin

This store is not a place of weeping and sighs
of threats and phrases
I am leaving you
Don't expect child support
And it is not a place where you pick up dry cleaning
or tell the judge how your significant other cheated

It is a place of
Revelation
Emancipation
Freedom
A declaration

I am a lover of lace and soft things
at Angela's Lingerie store

E.P. Glixman

The Challenge of Fold

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Lately I have had the urge to create "pure" visual form. My artist roots are showing.I found this inspiring site that posts a creative challenge each week .
http://www.inspiremethursday.com/

The creative challenge this week is fold.

I took a piece of white drawing paper and folded it. Simple! The paper became two dimensional. Then I changed the color of the paper and sharpened some of the folds in Photo Shop and voila. This is an ongoing experiment. I thought I'd post a few folds. Nothing earth shattering. I am enjoying myself having no goal in mind.

I am back to minimalism!
I have a lot to learn about what Photo Shop can do.

Robert Frost " Versed in Country Things" Poems and New England Winter Photos

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:49:00 +0000

photo by a.coven

Robert Frost lived and wrote in New England for part of his life.

"Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony."

Read more about Frost at

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

A few memorable poems.

DUST OF SNOW

by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

An Old Man's Winter Night
by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

From "Mountain Interval", 1916

I bought this book of Frost's poems and B.A. King photos years ago. I often re-read it. I find it inspiring. See more of King's black and white photos at this link.

http://www.b-a-king.com/books/versed-in-country-things.html

"... (an) extraordinary collection, which has an energy, a precision and a deep black humour I haven't seen in a long time." The Guardian

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:58:00 +0000

"God Is a Chicken" is one of the stories from Beware of God stories (Simon & Schuster March 28, 2006) . Imagine what you would do as an Orthodox Jew if you died and went to heaven and found out God was an actual chicken who did all things chicken. All the practices you observed like keeping kosher were meaningless. You wanted to tell your family to stop being observant because God was a chicken and the practices didn't matter. But you were dead! Esquire Magazine called it "Heretical. Hysterical." Auslander's second book Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir was published in 2007.

Auslander has contributed pieces to The New Yorker, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine and NPR( You Must Read This by Shalom Auslander

Dear World: Lighten Up. Sincerely, Groucho)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95830821

Auslander's website

http://www.shalomauslander.com/index.php

Eclectica New Issue : Fiction, Poetry, Book Reviews, Interviews, Essays

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:14:00 +0000

http://www.eclectica.org/v13n1/toc.html

This issue includes interviews with and by these members of the Wom-Po ( Women's Poetry) Listserv.

Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi * Wendy Vardaman * Susan Settlemyre Williams * Kimberly Becker * Christine Pacosz * Shayla Mollohan * Charlotte Mandel * Barbara Crooker

Letters To the World
Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv

http://www.amazon.com/LETTERS-WORLD-Poems-Wom-po-Listserv/dp/1597090999

December 27, 2008 National Book Award Winners

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:51:00 +0000

November 18, 2008

National Book Awards Ceremony in
New York City

I turned on the TV yesterday in time to watch a tape of the November 18, 2008 National Book Awards Ceremony. Poet Mark Doty was accepting the award for his book of poetry Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems.
I also heard Judy Blundell children's book author accept her award for What I Saw and How I Lied.

I know the book business is downsizing and changing due to the economy and also because of new media formats like the Internet, Amazon Kindle, Blackberries etc. I have loved books since I was a toddler. I love the feel, smell and concreteness of a book. I hope that books do not go the way of the dinosaur. For me and many readers that would be a sad day.

Click on the link to read about the awards and to see videos of each winner's acceptance speech.

http://nationalbook.org/nba2008.html

Galway Kinnell "everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;/ though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,"

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:47:00 +0000

Saint Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

© 1980 by Galway Kinnell

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3753

December 15, 2008 - I Can't Watch War Movies But I Read This Book

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:42:00 +0000

"Extraordinary... a vast, ambitious, spiritually lusty, all-guzzling, all-encompassing novel" The New York Times Book Review

I can't watch war movies. The blood and bombs, the hand to hand combat gets to me. I was surprised that I enjoyed this novel. Oh, yes the battle scenes were there (they filled many of the pages of this 860 page novel) but I saw them in the context of the greater story of the life from youth to old age of Alessandro Giullani, soldier and believer in beauty, art, and the spirit.

As an old man, Giuliani tells his life story to his traveling companion, a young man of seventeen, as they walk through the Italian countryside.

"Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
For Alessandro Giullani, the young son of a prosperous Roman Lawyer, golden trees shimmer in the sun beneath a sky of perfect blue. At night the moon is amber and the city of Rome seethes with light. He races horses across the country to the sea, and in the Alps he practices the precise and sublime art of mountain climbing. At the ancient university in Bologna he is a student of painting and the science of beauty. And he falls in love. His is a world of adventure and dreams, of music, storm, and the spirit. Then the Great War intervenes."

Read the rest at Powell's books

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0156031132