Marilyn Arnold

I picked it up from the library because it looked like a light, quick read, without any nasty thinking involved. I was half right, it was a quick read, but the themes were heavier than I was expecting.
Dorie June Grimes lives a plodding existence with an out-of-work husband, returned-to-the-fold son and caring for her aging mother. When her mother dies she decides to fulfill her promise and bury her in Utah as she wished. But since she has no money, she decides to drive from Georgia to Utah show more and hope for the best.
Despite a set-up that might remind you of a National Lampoon movie, the sentiment in the book is real and the humor that comes from carting a dead body half-way across the country is a decent leavening to an exploration of hopelessness and caring, and what you do if love is all you have left.
As Dorie crosses the country she meets a variety of interesting characters, who fall in with her in a rather typical outcasts and misfits collection. The collecting people and crossing the country part of the story wasn't that great. There are a lot of cliches; meeting bank-robbers, bad weather, car breaking down, finding a baby. But the worn-down love of the main character kept me reading. There are a lot of people who don't care in the world, and a lot of people who take care of others out of a sense of duty or possession or something else, but to do what you can, when it is very little and probably not enough, that takes love and caring.
Dorie learns a lot, about herself, about her mother and even about giving when you think it won't do any good. At the end, I was uplifted and glad that I stayed with Dorie, even through the cliches.
One note: If you are going to write about a place, go ahead and name it, since everyone will know what you are talking about anyway. Reading Jericho, UT and Turner, AZ, when it was obviously Page and Kanab keep pulling me out of the story every time the names came up. show less

This book is broken into the following chapters:

Running from the Smoke (Children in War)
On the Sidewalks of Love and Fire (Women Surviving War)
War and So Forth (The Bitter Waste)
Now That I Am Helpless (Mothers in Ambiguity)
Who Stopped the Dance (Domestic Battlefields)
It Is The Time of Awakening (Reaching and ReBuilding)
Listen for Life (Nature Speaks)
The Heart has Found Home (Peace to the Spirit)

Most of my favorite poems fell unto the first few chapters. They include the following:

"For My show more Torturer, Lieutenant D" by Leila Djabali
In the Casbah by Salma Al-Khedra Al-Jayyusi
The Century's Decline by Wislawa Szymborska
I Had a Strange Dream by Irina Ratushinskaya
Every Day by Ingeborg Bachmann
Judgement by Meiling Jin
The End and the Beginning by Wislawa Szymborska

Over all, this is a fine collection of poems. They are truly gathered from poets across the world, with not preference given to any one country or conflict. Not all these poems make sense in how they connect to the theme, but that might be my own perception. I'm not skilled at finding the hidden meaning. Worth reading, particular if you are looking to find new poets to read. show less