Li-Young Lee is an important American poet of Chinese parentage who lives in Chicago. Much of his poetry is marked by unabashed tenderness, and this poem is a good example of that.
I Ask My Mother to Sing
She begins, and my grandmother joins her. Mother and daughter sing like young girls. If my father were alive, he would play his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace, nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung; how the waterlilies fill with rain until they overturn, spilling water into water, then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begun to cry. But neither stops her song.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 1986 by Li-Young Lee, whose most recent book of poems is Behind My Eyes, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2009. Poem reprinted by permission of Li-Young Lee and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
French director and writer Luc Besson has an extraordinary cinematic resume, having directed “La Femme Nikita” and “Leon: The Professional.”
His action style is most evident in his scripts for the “Taken” franchise, starring Liam Neeson as the tough guy.
For “3 Days to Kill,” directed by McG, no slouch himself in the high-octane action department, Luc Besson is co-screenwriter along with Adi Hasak, the script writer for “From Paris With Love,” another film in the same genre.
The interesting thing about these hard-boiled thrillers, other than an affinity for location shooting in Paris, the beautiful City of Lights, is the use of mature actors for tough guy roles.
Now Kevin Costner, dangerous international spy Ethan Renner, is in good company with the likes of John Travolta and Liam Neeson. Nearing retirement age, Costner’s CIA operative convincingly beats the stuffing out of guys half his age.
The film kicks off explosively at a hotel in Belgrade, Serbia, once the capital city of the former Yugoslavia. The bad guys show up in shiny blacks SUVs, ready for a major firefight, and Ethan is only too willing to oblige.
Trying to save the world from Europe’s most dangerous terrorists, including a creepy-looking guy known only as the Albino and the elusive mastermind who goes by the moniker of “The Wolf,” Ethan wants to finish the job and get out of the game.
Having been on the road for so long, Ethan is only a faint, distant memory to his teenage daughter Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld) and his estranged wife Christine (Connie Nielsen). Now, he desperately wants to reconnect with his family.
Ethan also has a seemingly terminal disease and he’s got little time left. Enter the mysterious vixen named Vivi (Amber Heard), with lips painted bright red and wearing leather latex like a dominatrix, Ethan’s new handler sent from CIA headquarters in Langley.
Beautiful and seductive, Vivi offers the dying CIA operative an offer he can’t refuse. Experimental drugs may extend his life, but first he’s got to accomplish one more extremely dangerous mission.
The good news is that the job gets him back to his home base in Paris, where he finds his shabby apartment has been taken over by squatters and his complaints to the local police go nowhere because the law won’t evict them during the cold winter months.
Zooey is attending an international school in Paris, while Christine has made a new life for herself with museum work that sometimes takes her to England. Ethan’s first encounters with his daughter are awkward and tentative.
One of the film’s running gags is that he buys a purple girl’s bike for Zooey, who prefers to ride the Metro with her friends, since her absent father never taught her how to ride a bike as a child. Ethan lugs the bike all over Paris, vainly hoping she will eventually use it.
Based upon intelligence reports about terrorist activities, Vivi recruits Ethan to eliminate “The Wolf” when he comes to Paris to meet with his accountant and to supply dirty bombs to the usual bad guys.
The mission becomes more complicated when, trying to balance his job and family for the first time ever, Ethan agrees to care for Zooey when Christine takes off for a three day business trip to London.
Not hip to the modern digital world, Ethan has a lot to learn about teenage behavior, having to show up for a conference with her school principal and then saving Zooey from sexual aggressors at an underground rave.
Ethan could be in the middle of gunning down a bunch of thugs in a fancy hotel room or interrogating a suspect, but then he’ll take time out to answer a cell phone call from Zooey, who usually rings at an inconvenient time.
As part of his planning for a quiet family dinner at home, Ethan interrupts his grilling of an Italian hoodlum to force him to tell Zooey over the phone his family recipe for a nice spaghetti sauce.
There’s also the running gag of Ethan having taken a Middle Eastern limo driver into custody, keeping him locked in the trunk, but seeking advice from him about fatherhood because he’s met the driver’s polite teenage daughters.
The comic relief is a welcome palliative to the surfeit of violence that comes with hunting down the terrorists. Director McG takes great pains to create terrific action sequences, from volatile shootouts to fist fights in the Paris subway system.
Most spectacular of all, reminiscent of “Ronin,” is an incredible, breathtaking multi-car chase sequence on the streets of Paris, which culminates with Ethan crashing a car into the Seine.
Kevin Costner’s talent shines in his role as the world-weary, put-upon CIA operative grappling with family issues. He’s tough, witty, resilient and consequential. Let’s hope his Ethan Renner can be called out of retirement one more time.
Over-the-top in its thrilling action, “3 Days to Kill,” not to be taken too seriously, is unorthodox at its core but absurdly entertaining and one heck of a lot of fun.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
Artists are invited to submit their original artwork to the 2014-2015 California Duck Stamp Art Contest. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will accept submissions from April 25 through May 23.
The contest is open to U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older as of February 19, 2014. Entrants need not reside in California.
The winning artwork will be reproduced on the 2014-2015 California Duck Stamp. The top submissions will also be showcased at the Pacific Flyway Decoy Association’s art show in July.
The artwork must depict the species selected by the California Fish and Game Commission, which for the 2014-2015 hunting season is the scaup (lesser or greater).
The design is to be in full color and in the medium (or combination of mediums) of the artist’s choosing, except that no photographic process, digital art, metallic paints or fluorescent paints may be used in the finished design.
Photographs, computer-generated art, art produced from a computer printer or other computer/mechanical output device (air brush method excepted) are not eligible to be entered into the contest and will be disqualified. The design must be the contestant’s original hand-drawn creation.
The entry design may not be copied or duplicated from previously published art, including photographs, or from images in any format published on the Internet.
All entries must be accompanied by a completed participation agreement and entry form. These forms and the official rules are available online at www.dfg.ca.gov/duckstamp .
Entries will be judged at a public event to be held in June. The judges’ panel, which will consist of experts in the fields of ornithology, conservation, and art and printing, will choose first-, second- and third-place winners and an honorable mention.
Since 1971, CDFW’s annual contest has attracted top wildlife artists from around the country. All proceeds generated from stamp sales go directly to waterfowl conservation projects throughout California. In past years, hunters were required to purchase and affix the stamp to their hunting license.
Now California has moved to an automated licensing system and hunters are no longer required to carry the physical stamps in the field (proof of purchase prints directly onto the license).
One of the founders of modernist poetry, Ezra Pound, advised poets and artists to “make it new.” I’ve never before seen a poem about helping a tree shake the snow from itself, and I like this one by Thomas Reiter, who lives in New Jersey.
Releasing a Tree
Softly pummeled overnight, the lower limbs of our Norway spruce flexed and the deepening snow held them. Windless sunlight now, so I go out wearing hip waders and carrying not a fly rod but a garden hoe. I begin worrying the snow for the holdfast of a branch that’s so far down a wren’s nest floats above it like a buoy. I work the hoe, not chopping but cradling, then pull straight up. A current of air as the needles loft their burden over my head. Those grace notes of the snowfall, crystals giving off copper, green, rose—watching them I stumble over a branch, go down and my gloves fill with snow. Ah, I find my father here: I remember as a child how flames touched my hand the time I added wood to the stove in our ice-fishing shanty, how he plunged that hand through the hole into the river, teaching me one kind of burning can ease another. The branch bobs then tapers into place and composes itself, looking unchanged though all summer it will bring up this day from underfoot.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by Thomas Reiter, whose most recent book of poems is Catchment, Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from The Southern Review, Vol. 49, no. 1, by permission of Thomas Reiter and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
February is the time of year for flowers, sentimental greeting cards and the Russell Stover heart-shaped box of chocolates. On top of that, Hollywood often gift wraps a romantic love story almost perfect for the occasion.
Well, that’s not the case for “Winter’s Tale,” a sappy romance tale that stretches credibility to the breaking point and tosses in a mix of supernatural mumbo-jumbo and good versus evil battles that may easily confuse or confound an audience primed for traditional fare.
The film marks the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldman (“A Beautiful Mind”). Aside from the scenery, there’s nothing really beautiful about this exercise into a fantasy world beyond any sort of tangible credibility.
Set in New York City, the story spans more than a century, starting with the fateful day in 1895 that a baby is set adrift on a model boat in the harbor outside Manhattan, as his prospective immigrant parents are forced from Ellis Island to return to their country of origin.
Flash forward to 1916, the orphan child is now an adult, in this case Colin Farrell’s Peter Lake, who matured on the streets of Brooklyn as a member of the Short Tails gang, under the tutelage of vicious crime lord Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe, bearing horrible facial scars).
A master thief who wants out of the business, Peter has been marked for a violent death by his one-time mentor. Ambushed by Pearly and his gang of black-suited goons, Peter makes an escape on a beautiful white steed, a mythical Pegasus.
The mysterious white stallion, acting as a guardian angel capable of taking flight, always appears at the right moment to whisk Peter away from impending danger. Yet, over a century’s time, Peter only calls his savior “Horse.”
When not busy repelling the brutal forces of Pearly’s henchmen, Peter can’t quite shake his thieving past, and so he breaks into the Victorian mansion of a newspaper magnate (William Hurt), when it appears the family is away.
Breaking into the home and finding the wall safe is easy. The hard part comes in encountering the unexpected presence of Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), the lovely daughter left behind as she copes with a losing battle against consumption, which requires maintaining a low body temperature by frequent exposure to the cold.
After meeting Beverly, Peter loses all thought of his illegal craft, and soon falls madly in love with the liberated, eccentric and inscrutable free spirit. So this is where the love story kicks in, though it appears to be ill-fated due to Beverly’s short life expectancy.
As Beverly and Peter first get acquainted in the drawing room of the family estate, Beverly asks “what’s the best thing you’ve ever stolen?” Peter replies “I’m beginning to think I haven’t stolen it yet.”
I don’t know if this dialogue is contained in Mark Helprin’s acclaimed nearly 800-page paperback novel of the same title, but in the context of the chance encounter afforded a few minutes in a two-hour movie, it comes across as syrupy romantic hokum.
In any case, as the Pearly Soames gang bears down on Peter, the two lovebirds escape the city, courtesy of the white horse, to the Penn country estate on the Hudson River, where the love story continues to unfold.
Handy in many things mechanical, Peter slowly wins over Beverly’s family, particularly the distrustful patriarch, with his sincere love and care for the slowly dying beautiful redhead.
Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, Pearly visits Lucifer (Will Smith) in his underground bunker, mainly to seek permission to leave the city limits to hunt Peter. Absurdly, Lucifer flares his nostrils and bares sharp fangs. Wisely, Will Smith has no credits in this film.
Not so much luck for Colin Farrell, who often has the sheepish look of being trapped in this mystical nonsense. On another occasion, Peter asks “Is it possible to love someone so completely they simply can’t die?” Maybe so, in a movie that allows one to leap through time.
After Pearly and his gang get the better of Peter by tossing him from the Brooklyn Bridge, he later emerges in the present time, looking like a homeless guy in Central Park, drawing sketches of a redheaded girl on the pavement.
Here, he encounters journalist Virginia (Jennifer Connelly) and her little daughter (Ripley Sobo), who just might be the person he is meant to save. Don’t ask me how or why.
Oddly enough, Virginia works for the newspaper now run by Beverly’s youngest sibling, Willa (Eva Marie Saint), who most improbably remembers Peter from nearly a century earlier. If I am doing my math properly, I would think that Willa is well over 100 and even less likely to be running a publishing empire.
“Winter’s Tale” is mostly a puzzle. At times, it’s a love story and at other times, it’s Russell Crowe acting all fearlessly tough and brutal. The story believes in miracles but there’s not one to be had to rescue this supernatural soapy, sentimental tale.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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