by Peter Menkin

Created on: April 20, 2009

Wonderful book; a treasure

I would like to tell you about my desire to review a book that has been reviewed time and again, most likely. I am sure it will be reviewed by others as many people have noted it. This is a little about the small hardback: Here on the pages of the poetic "Out of the Dust: A Novel" are found the words to savor about our willing struggle to live within the travails that we encounter, even the most horrible. The gift of heart and hope, by daily endurance, and the simple recognition of our immediate lives lived within the labour of life is written as a statement of love about Bill Jo, who is a 14 year old girl. This is a children's book, and the writer is Karen Hesse (a poet, truly).

There are so many good things about this book, including the way the book is divided into sections, like separate poems. These poems read like prose, and they go together to tell a story. My desire concerns the subject of blame. On page 70 there is a part in the book about the life of the girl who is the voice of this novel. She tells about herself, in a way that I remember my own mother telling me about herself. I would like to remember many of the things that my mother and father told me about when I was young. Some of these things like the blame in their lives, the story of their parents, and the story of the parents of their parents are things of remembrance that I ponder now that I am older. These treasured and important memories make up a weaving that is the fabric of our conception of the way we can and will live in the world. This book of poetic history does this for the reader.

Here is what Karen Hesse writes about in the poem "Blame." She says, or rather the girl who is telling the story to us says:

"My father's sister came to fetch my brother,
even as Ma's body cooled.
She came to bring my brother back to Lubbock
to raise as her own,
but my brother died before Aunt Ellis got here.
She wouldn't even hold his little body.
She barely noticed me.
As soon as she found my brother dead,
she
Had a talk with my father.
Then she turned around
And headed back to Lubbock."

My desire to reflect on the joy that this tells me about is a mystery to me, because this poem is so sad. You would think that there is just the tears, and the poor little boy, and the missing Aunt (father's sister). I can think of so many times of blame in my day, and in my life. I recall a blame where a man I was visiting in a rest home called Pleasant Care, died. I blamed the facility, I blamed his family

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