February 16, Monday evening -- Reading Claudia Rankine

Waiting for the sushi
Reading Don't Let Me Be Lonely, by Claudia Rankine -- a book of poetry, pictures and essays about depression, prescription drugs, loneliness, the media. It's for a class. The specific poem she's reading is about a man who was, for a while, the only person with an artificial heart. It made him feel weird that he, unlike anyone else, had not a heartbeat, but a whirr. No one could know how that felt and the heart itself was heavy. The whole apparatus (and there was a picture) weighed more than four pounds.

Her favorite book is by Hermann Hesse and she read it not in English, or in German, but in Spanish -- Tres Momentos de Una Vida or Three Tales from the Life of Knulp. It was a gift from a cousin who is Spanish.

The books that got her into reading as a child -- Dr. Seuss, Disney books, and the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I would probably miss my heartbeat too.

Liza P. said...

the poem about the artificial heart sounds interesting. would love to read it too. i would miss my heartbeat too.