To Share with God's Poor
Garvey, John
ropos of nothing in particular, Gesh asks his buddies one night, "What's the closest you ever came to dying?" I perked up at this. Boyle's first book, Descent of Man, is a collection of weirdly...
...Emmanuelle saw a little boy pick up a rotten tomato and tried to keep him from eating it...
...I'm afraid that one day life will no longer come down as a great cascade, a torrent, the symbols of words almost helplessly floating on its tide...
...The zabbaleen are the garbage collec- tors of Cairo...
...She studied literature at the Sorbonne, and for about thirty years after joining her order she taught in rather comfortable circum- stances...
...She was particularly concerned with the plight of the women, and taught them family-planning methods (though she didn't accept the suggestion that she should sponsor a government clinic, since that might involve sterilization, and she drew the line at that...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...It should be a relentless 61an . . . a holy raging too great for the bondage of words, disdainful even of conceptualiza- tion...
...The translation is literal rather than poetic, although occasionally the translators don't choose the obvious word for reasons that are not clear...
...That doesn't matter: you don't judge a book of this sort in the ordinary way...
...In Brief AIMI~ CI~SAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, by Aim~ C~saire, translated by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith...
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...Lousy words," I said...
...As awesome as her own compassion is, Sister Em- manuelle shows us something even more remarkable: the love and generosity and compassion which can be found in the lives of the poorest alad most abject...
...Her respect and deep love for the people she serves (and for their religions, Coptic Orthodoxy and Is- lam) permeate her writing...
...Some of Sister Emmanuelle's most frustrating experiences involved her work with women, and some of the most excruciating passages in To Share With God's Poor deal with their often terrify- ing condition: here is the story of a young girl smothered to death to protect the family honor (she was a Christian who had fallen in love with a Muslim...
...Sta., N.Y...
...Ctsaire is a rich, complex poet, much more difficult to understand and translate than the romantic Lamartine (it is curious that both writers wrote plays about Haiti, Lamartine about Toussaint l'Ouverture, Ctsaire about Christophe...
...a longer, less dense essay might have been in order...
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...From a strictly literary point of view a reader could find things to complain about...
...Carol Young, University of Maine, Augusta ME 04330...
...750 monthly plus utilities, 1-car garage, back'yard...
...He's used to it," she said...
...Boyle's first book, Descent of Man, is a collection of weirdly inventive tales that read like sick jokes...
...now one of its overseas territories, Martinique, has a regional assembly presided over by Aim6 Ctsaire, who along with Senghor, developed the notion of n~gritude...
...The sky raining blood, no letup in sight --that's one of them...
...Ctsaire's peculiar fusion of symbolism, surrealism, the unique linguistic and experiential qualities of the Caribbean, and the African heritage make him a highly intellectual as well as an emotive poet...
...or am I only saying that life should always be young...
...Boyle patiently takes us from sowing to reaping to rolling and smoking, with play-by- play commentary provided by Dowst, a Yalie botany whiz...
...To explain (not just to translate or transliterate) the profusion of neologisms and references to local flora and fauna would have required a multi-volume critical edition...
...10159...
...people who have reason to hate, forgive...
...Sister Emmanuelle's story of her work and its meaning jumps here and there, and the feistiness which bore such a'great fruit in getting schools and vocational centers built can be off- putting on the page...
...For free catalog con- tact LuraMedia, 10227 Autumnview Ln., Suite 2, San Diego, CA 92126...
...September 1984 June or September 1985...
...Bill Axe, The Trinitarian Friars, P.O...
...The translators have acquitted themselves well of a difficult task...
...George Steiner wrote somewhere that "we hate most" the purveyors of a failed utopia...
...it is something more important, a profoundly good book, by a woman of radiant cour- age and generosity...
...Ms...
...66r three times...
...The Journey Tapes are meditation tools laced with music for per- sonal reflection time...
...She was in her sixties when she Commonweal' s '84 visited Cairo in 1971 and encountered the zabbaleen...
...At the very least, this attractive bilingual edition will demonstrate the force behind C~saire's poetry and indicate why French literature since the Second World War has become increasingly colonized by the writers of former French colonies...
...Commonweal: 382...
...It's good to read a comment on .this cruelly polarized issue without wanting to say, "Yes, but...
...She comes from a com- fortable background: her father was a lingerie exporter in Brussels...
...Between predators both man and beast, natural disasters and narcs, the marijuana business sounds risky at best...
...Classified payable with order...
...Nor, say, is Gesh and Felix's bar-prowling interlude in San Francisco...
...RUSS COLE Classified RATES: 70r a word, one time...
...Sister Emmanuelle moved into a re- furbished goats' shed...
...will stir you to talk with God...
...Books Still looking for a book...
...monweal) to: Name Address City, State,Zip [] I prefer a full.year subscription at $24 6/15/84 Commonweal: 380 five is still hard at work) for being part of its revealing...
...Shea expresses much of what I, too, feel -- like Aesop's bat between the hawks and the doves of abortion...
...We find it hard to forgive her...
...Wife- beating is common, and the husband is the undisputed ruler of his house, often a tyrannical one...
...For would-be dope farmers and the naturally curious, Budding Prospects earns good marks as an elementary how- to...
...Box 5719, Baltimore, MD 21208...
...The great writers of the French language no longer all live near a metro station...
...1-800-633-2252, Father Nigro, Gonzaga University, Spokane 99258...
...Completed B.A...
...Growing older, I've dreaded the time when words might become adequate...
...STEVEN PHILIP KRAMER Correspondence (Continued from page 354) you headlined "Cry with the Mother...
...I first realized this when I was fighting words one night in order to embody my emotional experience...
...Religious Community Considering Religious Life...
...He referred to Judaism, but there's no utopia so total as the womb...
...In the anger that seems to fuel so much advocacy of "life" or of "choice," I often sense an almost Catharist distaste for the untidy ambiguity of femaleness...
...People who have almost nothing share what little they have...
...The baby she was hold- ing was covered with flies...
...Gas heat, 11/=-baths, walking distance to Long Island Railroad...
...Unfortunately, those campfire stories requested by Gesh in Budding Prospects are nowhere near as inspired as these early efforts by Boyle...
...The latest wrinkle, according to my Santa Cruz friend, is planting on out-of- the-way, publicly owned lands...
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...Zabbal means dung...
...You're much better off writing pulp like this...
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...On her first visit to the ragpickers Sister Trial Subscription Offer--11 Issues for $9 COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
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...But the novel is strictly cautionary, the outlook anti-El Dorado...
...France, the only nation to be governed (however briefly) by a poet, Lamartaine, gave independence to Senegal under a poet, Senghor...
...MARY LOUISE BIRMINGHAM Words, words Barstow, California To the Editors: While celebrating the in- herent magic of words with John Garvey [Feb...
...California, $25, 416 pp...
...his mother laughed...
...I fear life slipping away into verbalism, fear that words will be accepted as alter- natives for life...
...In another ("Heart of a Champion' '), Lassie makes it with a coyote, leaving Timmy for dead under fallen timber...
...10], I'd also like to look at their darker side, from my view...
...This is the heart of the Gospel, and we must be grateful to Sister Emmanuelle (who at age seventyTO SHARE WITH gOD'S POOR Sister Emmanuelle Harper & Row, $5.95, 176 pp...
...These pale awkward things were trying to extend my passions and become their contour...
...John Gas'vey S ISTER EMMANUELLE Cinquin is a Belgian member of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion...
...63r six times...
...they pick it up...
...Flies, infection, and disease are everywhere...
...First and last month's rent in advance ~ $500 damage deposit...
...For this Boyle brazenly drags in the old sexy-woman-who-turns-out-to-be-a-man routine, a decrepit anecdote about which Generosity on the dungheap Paul Theroux, in The Great Railway Bazaar, says, "I think I've heard that one before...
...This isn't a great book...
...References required...
...Now hiring...
...During her years with the ragpickers she managed to build a school, a vocational center, medical facilities, and recreational fields...
...Two of France's legacies to its former colonies were the privileged position of the writer and the French language as a literary vehicle...
...And it is Mommy who provides it, then violently expels us (sooner or later, via- ble or not) from that lovely "secret sea...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., NYC 10016...
...The infant mor- tality rate is a staggering forty percent...
...The introduction to the book summarizes these influences...
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...But there is much more to this book than tales of woe...
...The Cairo ragpickers live on rubbish mounds and sort through what they collect from the wealthy homes of Cairo, recycling what can be recycled, feeding the edible scraps of food to domestic animals, and the best of the refuse to children...
...I had the uncomfortable feeling that they were part of decrepitude, like false teeth and bifocals...
...Write: Books, Dept...
Vol. 111 • June 1984 • No. 12
