Writing a Book Review

Please follow this link to a NYT review of Zadie Smith's White Teeth, a novel I recently finished and absolutely loved.  Use this review as model for writing your own.  Note the tone of the review, its use of credited images, and its presentation of an informed opinion. Don't forget to consult your assignment guidelines and rubric in OnCourse.

NYT Review: White Teeth

How I Chose My Blog Title

I am a certifiable Whitmaniac.

... A what?

Glad you asked! I'm a huge fan of Walt Whitman.  Or, as Mandella (from Ten Things I Hate About You) said of William Shakespeare:

And, if I'm going to use the American Bard as my source material, then it is only natural that I should turn to his great opus, Song of Myself.  Now, SoM is as massive poem, so I'm only going to reproduce the section in question:

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
     hands,
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any
     more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
     green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
     may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
     vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
     zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
     same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

One of my favorite aspects of SoM is Whitman's propensity for meditating on the simple and the mundane, and arriving at soul-defining epiphanies.  In the passage I selected, grass fulfills this role.  Whitman sees the grass as a unifying force:

• it unites him with the child in their shared wonder of the natural world;
• it unites all living people, who walk along the grass;
• it unites all people who have passed on, and now lie under the grass;
• it represents the life cycle, as a child of the natural forces that made it grow.

Considering all this, I love the idea of Whitman claiming the grass as his own flag: a symbol of his own disposition, or personality.  He is woven of the green stuff that invigorates life and takes the sting out of death.  

Incidentally, he returns to the grass later in the same movement (#6), in an absolutely gorgeous revelation:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and
     children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at
     the end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
     luckier.

I'll be honest: these lines have given me comfort when I get scared or sad.  I find it inspiring that Whitman can paint a portrait of a benevolent, cyclical universe, simply from taking a child's question about grass seriously.

All right, kiddies, it's your turn! Explore the poetry database at www.poetryoutloud.org to find some good source material for YOUR blog's title!