Arts & Life

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Written by: Ted Kooser

Published: 19 April 2015

Here’s a fine poem about two generations of husbands, by Pauletta Hansel of Ohio.

Husbands

My mother likes a man who works. She likes
my husband’s muddy knees, grass stains on the cuffs.
She loved my father, though when weekends came
he’d sleep till nine and would not lift
his eyes up from the page to move the feet
she’d vacuum under. On Saturdays my husband
digs the holes for her new roses,
softening the clay with peat and compost.
He changes bulbs she can no longer reach
and understands the inside of her toaster.
My father’s feet would carry him from chair
to bookshelf, back again till Monday came.
My mother likes to tell my husband
sit down in this chair and put your feet up.

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 2011 by Pauletta Hansel from her most recent book of poems, The Lives We Live in Houses, (Wind Publications, 2011). Poem reprinted by permission of Pauletta Hansel and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2015 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.

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Written by: Tim Riley

Published: 18 April 2015

FURIOUS 7 (Rated PG-13)

There’s not much to say to the uninitiated about “The Fast and the Furious,” now that the series is entering its last chapter, at least one starring Paul Walker, in “Furious 7.”

At this point, nearly 15 years after the first film, it’s hard to imagine anyone not familiar with the action juggernaut that is the wildly successful “Furious” franchise, where fast cars and high-octane action collide.

Under the charismatic leadership of Vin Diesel’s Dom Toretto and Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner, the gang that loves to race in turbo-charged muscle cars is taking it to the limit this time, with one grand stunt involving parachuting their fast wheels out of a cargo plane.

“Furious 7” picks up where the last installment left off, with Dom and Brian returning to the States with pardons in hand for helping Dwayne Johnson’s FBI agent Hobbs on an overseas mission.

Trying to acclimate to domestic life in Los Angeles is difficult, particularly for Brian, now that he has a child with Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster).

Driving a minivan with his young son is not Brian’s idea of a challenge, though he’s a somewhat nervous father.

Trouble comes looking for the gang when the ruthless Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) decides to kill everyone involved with the death of his brother Owen (Luke Evans), the villain in the previous “Furious” film.

Deckard gets the drop on Hobbs, putting him in the hospital, but the tenacious agent won’t be down for long.

The gang, including the amnesiac Letty (Michelle Rodgriguez) and tech-whiz cohorts Tej (Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), get wrapped up in a ludicrous plot of battling a high-tech terrorist (Djimon Hounsou) and his martial-arts henchman Kiet (Tony Jaa).

Significant plotting and sharp dialogue are expendable in a “Furious” film, and even more so here when the gang ends up making a deal with shadowy government operative Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) to retrieve a surveillance gadget called God’s Eye, which will make it easier to find Deckard Shaw.

The plan is for Dom and Brian, with the help of their gearhead crew, to track down the terrorist cell in Azerbaijan and rescue expert computer hacker Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), who invented the dangerous software program that can track anyone and anything everywhere in the world.

“Furious 7” is an orgy of fact-paced action and exhilarating stunts, with the parachuting of chase vehicles from a cargo plane being rivaled by the absolutely stunning flying jump of a prized and extremely rare W Motors Lykan HyperSport from one high-rise tower into another in Abu Dhabi.

It’s not just cars that are flying in “Furious 7;” so are fists. Bare-knuckle fights between Dom and Deckard are essential to the action, and with Jason Statham in fine form as a super-villain, one could only expect that he would engage in such display of machismo.

Fittingly, “Furious 7” is a tribute to the late Paul Walker, who died prior to the completion of filming. His best scene involves balancing on an overturned bus that’s about to fall off a cliff, from which he manages to jump in time to catch the spoiler on Letty’s Plymouth Barracuda.

With the very unfortunate and untimely death of Paul Walker, one would think the “Furious” franchise has come to an appropriate end. Only time will tell, but my guess is that an enterprise this lucrative may well continue.

THE LONGEST RIDE (PG-13)

Not even Clint Eastwood’s spitting-image son Scott can make a dent in the “Furious 7” onslaught at the box office.

The audience for “The Longest Ride,” the latest film version of a Nicholas Sparks novel, is no match for the crowd yearning to glimpse Paul Walker for one last ride.

Still, though arguably this is not the best venue for him, the cowboy-hat wearing Scott Eastwood, whose chiseled good looks are reminiscent of a young Clint from “Rawhide” days, has the masculine sex appeal to be a breakout star in his own right.

In the setting of rural North Carolina, Eastwood’s Luke Collins works the family ranch to help support his mom (Lolita Davidovich), but his passion is competitive bull-riding, a dangerous sport that caused him serious injury.

Getting back in the ring to ride bucking bulls, Luke’s entry in a local competition draws notice from comely college co-ed Sophia (Britt Robertson), and they meet cute when Luke tosses her his black cowboy hat as a souvenir.

This being a film inspired by Nicholas Sparks, “The Longest Ride” is all about romance. In true fashion, common to Sparks’ work, there has to be a parallel romantic story, and it comes when Luke and Sophia, on a first date, rescue an old man from a car wreck.

The old man is Ira Levinson (Alan Alda), and boy, does he have a love story to tell, one that dates back to World War II days when he meets Ruth (Oona Chaplin), a refugee from Austria. The younger Ira is played by Jack Huston, and of course, the film is full of flashbacks.

“The Longest Ride” is predictable fare, but it benefits from the presence of rising young talent in Scott Eastwood and Britt Robertson, but the true romantic sparks come from Oona Chaplin and Jack Huston/Alan Alda.
  
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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Written by: Ted Kooser

Published: 12 April 2015

I don’t think I’ve ever sold anything that, later, I didn’t wish I had back, and I have a list of regrets as long as my arm. So this poem by Melissa Balmain really caught my attention.

Balmain lives in New York State, and her most recent book is Walking in on People, from Able Muse Press.

Love Poem

The afternoon we left our first apartment,
we scrubbed it down from ceiling to parquet.
Who knew the place could smell like lemon muffins?
It suddenly seemed nuts to move away.

The morning someone bought our station wagon,
it gleamed with wax and every piston purred.
That car looked like a centerfold in Hot Rod!
Too late, we saw that selling was absurd.

And then there was the freshly tuned piano
we passed along to neighbors with a wince.
We told ourselves we’d find one even better;
instead we’ve missed its timbre ever since.

So if, God help us, we are ever tempted
to ditch our marriage when it’s lost its glow,
let’s give the thing our finest spit and polish—
and, having learned our lesson, not let go.

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 2014 by Melissa Balmain, “Love Poem,” from Walking in on People, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Melissa Balmain and Able Muse Press. Introduction copyright 2015 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.