World Poetry Day - three favourite poems

I have Stefanie at So Many Books to thank for this.  I had no idea today was World Poetry Day, and I'm a poet!  She has a lovely post on a poet she loves, today.  I decided to write about three different poets and how I found them, and a poem from each that was one of the first by them that I loved, to celebrate World Poetry Day.

First, about poetry:
 The poet Stefanie likes,  Muriel Rukeyser, writes that people are afraid of poetry because they are afraid to feel.  I think that's true, and that's also why we instinctively reach for it in our most deepest emotional moments.  Poetry is about this moment in time, and the very best poetry takes all that goes into this moment - whatever it's about - and if it's got something true because the poet has reached deep and  touched with all he or she feels and isn't afraid to write it - then it transcends that moment, and becomes something more, something that links time and experience. It becomes timeless, always waiting for us in our moment to find it again in the poem.  This is how we relate to one another, that bridging.  Poetry is a way for us to meet one another.

Poem number one: love poem extraordinaire: 
Once upon a time, couples read poetry to each other and fell in love over the experience. Sometimes now, if we are lucky, a movie will come along and use poetry to show us that it still lives, and we are touched and off we go to find out more.  This is exactly how I found ee cummings, from a Woody Allen movie, Hannah and Her Sisters:  One of the sister's husbands reads a poem to another sister (I think, it's been decades since I saw this) he wants to be his mistress:  I hated the cad, but loved the poem:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

That last line always makes me shiver, it's so beautiful and describes how love can go into the tiniest places that we think are closed in us, but the look of our love will open.

Mostly though, poetry is a gift, that waits for the reader to stumble across it. At least, that's been my experience. A chance mention here, a friend there, an article in the paper, a quote in a movie.....so many ways to find our way to a poet.

Poem Number Two: my current poet adoration:
Last year I wrote about an interview Maria Shriver did for Oprah's magazine in 2011.  I only found the interview last year.  Here is Maria Shriver's interview with Mary Oliver.  This interview is changing my life.  For a reason I am not certain of yet, when I was young, I never asked myself, what do I want to do that would make me happy?  I think possibly I never dared to take that risk, though over time I have come to see that I will always write poetry, so now I am doing what I should have done so long ago, making room in my life to write regularly.  Mary Oliver did ask herself that question, and she knew early on writing poetry was what she was happiest doing.  She set out to make a life around writing poetry.  This is having a profound influence on me, the idea that we can do - that I can do - what makes me happy.  Here is one of the early posts on my blog, just when I was discovering Mary Oliver for the first time.  And here is another post from 2009, again on Mary Oliver, quoting some of my favourite lines.  And one more from 2010, about goldfinches (another poem I love), because apparently I've been writing every year about poetry on here, without quite realizing how much I have been!


Here is a poem from that very first collection I read and blogged about, that made me jump and recognize myself and how I am trying to live.  The poem is Yes! No! in her collection Owls and Other Fantasies:
                                                                   Yes! No!

How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout
lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I
think serenity is not something you just find in the world,
like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like
small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, wants
only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier
is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy
rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better
than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work.

~ Mary Oliver ~

This is how I walk, when I am out for my walks, listening to the wind, and the bird songs and calls, watching the flowers, the sky, the trees, listening and absorbing and just being in the moment.  To find a poet who writes about this way of being in the world is revelation for me.  I am learning how to be in this world, still, and how to write about being here.  That's what a poet does.

Poems don't always have to be serious:
One last poem, from a poet who I adore, and who makes me laugh.  I discovered her when I lived in England in 2000. Wendy Cope is a light verse poet - ugh I hate this category name.  It deserves more respect.  Her poetry collection Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis was referred to somewhere (I think in an article), and since I have a bit of an addiction to chocolate, the title caught my eye.  I had to find that book and see what it was about!  Well, I opened it up in the bookstore, and found myself laughing out loud!  The very first poem in the collection, Engineer's Corner, is so snarky and sarcastic, that it is worth the price of the book alone:
                 
                 Engineers’ Corner

Why isn’t there an Engineers’ Corner in Westminster Abbey? In
Britain we’ve always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint
. . . How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers?
Advertisement placed in The Times by the Engineering Council

We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints –
That’s why so many poets end up rich,
While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets.
Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch?

Whereas the person who can write a sonnet
Has got it made. It’s always been the way,
For everybody knows that we need poems
And everybody reads them every day.

Yes, life is hard if you choose engineering –
You’re sure to need another job as well;
You’ll have to plan your projects in the evenings
Instead of going out. It must be hell.

While well-heeled poets ride around in Daimlers,
You’ll burn the midnight oil to earn a crust,
With no hope of a statue in the Abbey,
With no hope, even, of a modest bust.

No wonder small boys dream of writing couplets
And spurn the bike, the lorry and the train.
There’s far too much encouragement for poets –
That’s why this country’s going down the drain.

– Wendy Cope

Isn't that a lovely, funny poem? And so ironic.  I love it.

Do you have a favourite poem, or poet, and how did you find them?                      

going to the bookstore today......

   Today I found myself at Chapters downtown.  I wasn't shopping, all my shopping is done for my daughter's birthday tomorrow and Christmas.  I was taking some me time before going to a visit with a special little someone (more details will follow when we are allowed to say more). As you know, there is nothing like a bookstore to hang out in. 

Chapters was, as they say in England, heaving.  It was busy.  It was good to see that books are still a most popular book for Christmas.  The line up was, I kid you not, stretching from the cash all the way across the floor to the other side of the store, at the other entrance.  And it was like that for over an hour.  It did my bookish heart so much good to see books being bought as gifts.

Books I Still Want:
 I  checked for Diana Wynne Jones' biography Reflections, but they didn't have any copies in stock.  Nor Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries 2.  Nor White Pine by Mary Oliver.  I did buy one book, Chalk Girl by Carol O'Connell, a stocking gift for myself.  And Chapters has a secret: if you go up to the second floor,there is another cash register in the children's section.  Two people in line when I got there.  So I confess to a huge contented smile as I walked past part of the huge line up downstairs. 

I am not able to get much reading done this week.  It is my daughter's birthday tomorrow, she will be 10 years old, and we were planning her party (it was yesterday), and busy wrapping presents every evening. How are you doing, Gentle Reader?  Are you finding any time to read yet during this holiday season?  Is there one book in particular you want to read on Christmas Day?  I have a box of books waiting for me, and I haven't decided what I'm going to start with - I'll wait until Christmas Day, and when I open my box, see what falls into my hand first.  I can hardly wait to open it! 

I hope you each get a book you want to read, this Christmas season!  And many happy memories.

Living with poetry

I like that poetry connects me to a moment in time, a shining moment that is clear and true and filled with something that takes me out of the rush of  life deeper into the moment of living.  Life is this moment, right now.  Poetry - and writing - and  meditation, is about standing still and being right now, in this moment.  Feeling this grief, this love, this beauty, the extraordinary gift of being alive, and breathing. Everything falls away except for this moment, now.  When I read a poem that moves me, that's what it does, it reaches down into me, and stills me, and I am connected to it, and made richer because I have connected to someone else through the medium of poetry.

This is the link to Naomi Shihab Nye's interview and poem Kindness.  It's found in the magazine Spirituality & Health.  I picked it up on Thursday because of an article that isn't featured online, called "The Medicine Of Poetry: How Words Can Save Your Life."  I had just come from handing in the retainer for my divorce, and I needed to draw a deep breath and settle into myself again.  This article talks about Kim Rosen's discovery of poetry at a time when she really needed it in her life. The poem" Kindness" saved her, taught her she could get through an extremely difficult time.  Naomi Shihab Nye is the author of the poem, and her story about how she came to write it is incredible also.

  I read "The Medicine of Poetry" there in the store, and started to cry, for this is how I have been feeling about discovering poetry over the past two years. Kim makes this same connection, that poetry is healing:
         
          "Those poems not only infused me with their wisdom, but they actually brought vibrancy to my body.  How, might you ask, can a poem have a physical effect? As the poet Emily Dickinson says, "If I read a  book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire could ever warm me, I know that is poetry.  If I feel physically as if the top of my head has been taken off, I know that is poetry!"  Like a shaman's drum or a Sanskrit chant, the rhythm of a poem entrains your heartbeat, the phrasing changes your breathing, and the sounds resonate within the crystalline structures in your bones and fascia.....
      I became fascinated with poetry, not primarily as a literary art, but instead as a powerful healing medicine to unlock the richness of the inner life."
                               from "The Medicine of Poetry, How Words can Save Your Life "- Kim Rosen, in Spirituality and Health, July/Aug 2012 issue.

How often do you turn to poetry in your life?  Do you read it often, or occasionally, or almost never?  Kim Rosen was afraid of poetry for a long time  - she explains this in the article, and I really wish this article was online so you could go read the whole wonderful thing. She discovered poetry by accident one day, in a tape cassette she discovered while cleaning (she is a therapist). She listened to it, and it was spoken poetry that called out to her, and set her on her course to discover more.  The article is also on a few another person who had discovered poetry, through Mary Oliver:

     "It was a poem called 'The Summer Day' by Mary Oliver.  Much of the first stanza was about a grasshopper.  The description of the creature's 'complicated eyes' and 'pale forearms' was lovely, but Jan didn't see what it had to do with her.  A few lines later, though, she caught her breath.  "I don't know exactly what a prayer is," she heard her own voice say.  Suddenly she was awake, listening.  The next lines of the poem spoke directly to her - addressing a conversation that ran constantly below the surface of her life, but which she had never spoken out loud: How do  I pray when I am not religious?  How did my life become so meaningless?  What do I hold sacred anyway?  The final lines left her heart pounding: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"


In the store when I read those lines, I felt a chill on my arms, and that is when I began to cry.  It is exactly how I felt when I discovered Mary Oliver, that something that I didn't know I was longing to express, leapt up and took hold of me, and ever since then I have been reading poetry and exploring what it can be about.  I have been thinking about how to bring poetry into my life more, how to open myself up to the world around me, and if I can find a way to devote myself to writing more deeply, which has been on my mind ever since reading the interview with Mary Oliver earlier this year. Here is a link to the post I wrote about that interview.  That interview is changing my life, and is changing my relationship to how I write.

 Mary Oliver's poetry is called praise poetry, a term she devised when she realized she wrote hymns to the world, love poems to nature,  poems about the sacred in nature around her.  I am deeply thrilled that there is a place in the world for poetry like this, because without knowing it, it's what I have been writing all along, trying to express, the wonder in life around me. 

One of the things that Kim suggests is to make a list of the poems that have moved you, that have the deepest meaning for you, and track when they came into your life.  She says to write out your favourite poems, verses, and lines, and put them up where you can see them - on the refrigerator, taped to the mirror, frame them,  carry them with you. She says  this is a way of bringing the poems into your life, of letting you live with them.  This is an interesting idea.  I have a little book I used to write down the poems I especially liked, so they were together, but I haven't done this in over 20 years.

 I think all art is like this, paintings, music, dance, theatre, movies, singing, all the ways we have of expressing ourselves, is our souls reaching out, saying - this moment, this life, this extraordinary time.And it's not all about beautiful moments.  Grief, loss, pain, darker emotions also have their say in our souls.  I love this poem that Kim includes  in her article, "The Guest House" by Rumi.  Here is a link online to it.  Suddenly, I am able to make room for all my mean feelings, too, for darkness and despair, and sorrow.  I don't have to like them (who does?) but they have a place, a say in who I am, too, a place at the table of my soul, and I like how Rumi says that they may be clearing me out for some new delight. 

It seems to me that poetry can be a way to connect to life spiritually.  It is a way to give voice to the sacred, to give meaning to our moments and our lives.  I am incredibly grateful, profoundly moved by the poems I am finding, especially now as I move through  this stage of separation and loss in my life. Poetry reminds me that life is sacred, and that this is a moment, and it is safe to feel it, and see it, and be in it.  This is where life is. 

So do you have a favourite poem that you return to again and again, my friends?  A poem that has sheltered you, or comforted you, or led you to an unexpected realization or view of the world, that has woken you up to possibility?  Let me know, drop me a line, I'm curious to see how many of us read poems, and what some of your favourite poems are.

Birthday Books

      It was my birthday on Sunday.  My family surprised me by taking me out to the mall, and saying my birthday present was a new cell phone, of my choice!!!!  The biggest surprise ever, as I have never owned one before, though I have been looking at them for a while.  I am now living just after the Iron Age according to my 23 year old son,as between the new laptop and a cellphone, I have leapt light-years ahead from being in the Stone Age before.  Now if I can just figure out how to get music on my phone, and how to text, I'll be the hippest just turned 49-year-old ever. (Sadly, I know that last phrase 'hippest' dates me, and I've lost many cool points with that.  Sigh)

At the end of the day, I realized that I was the lucky recipient of the new cell phone, Cranford on dvd (I'd already seen it this winter from the library and really enjoyed it, so am thrilled to have my very own copy of this very sweet BBC comedy-drama of village life by Elizabeth Gaskell). And two wonderful book tokens for Amazon so I can do some book shopping shortly.  Then, this morning, I remembered - I had been making a box of books for my birthday!  So my ex-partner brought down the books, and here are  
Susan's Books to celebrate my birthday:

-The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin (Malcolm Fox #2......first book was very good, so I was so happy to see this in paperback so soon)
- Novel Destinations - Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon (subtitles "Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West",  who could resist this?)
- The Bibliophile's Devotional - Hallie Ephron (subtitled, "365 days of Literary Classics".  This is to remind me of how many great books are out there that I still have not read!)
- Why I Wake Early - Mary Oliver (my favourite poet, I am collecting all her books now.  I love this title poem also.  She is my heroine and guide when it come to writing as clearly as possible, to say exactly what I mean and not waste language if it's not needed)
- District and Circle - Seamus Heaney (another poetry book, how could I resist one that features a subway line that I've ridden on? His use of language and words is rich and fills my mouth - alliteration abounds (I know! bad me!), and the poems  delve into the meaning of things - I could write this in all literary terms, but really, these poems have depth and they are about every day life in England, and they teach me about using language.  Remarkable)
- The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni - this has been on my wishlist for almost a decade.  I love her speech patterns, her poems are like she is talking directly to us, and she is wry and funny and moving and bitter and wistful and even loving in them.
 - A Train in Winter - Caroline Moorehead (another subtitled book: "An extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship and Survival in World War 2.  I had to get this as soon as I saw this. It's about a group of women who were resistance fighters in WW2, who were rounded up in the detention camps and sent to Auschwitz - and how they tried to support one another and keep each other alive during the trip and in the camps. Only one train during one trip, took the 230 women to the death camps during the 4 year war, hence the title.  It was the only time women of the Resistance from France were sent.  The book explores why they joined the Resistance, and how they helped one another. A must-read, for me)

Now, to be honest, my birthday list I gave to my family did have many books listed on it, so I was careful not to pick any up for the box.  Dervish House by Ian MacDonald is top of the list, as is Tim Power's new book, Hide Me Among The Graves,  the sequel to The Stress of Her Regard,which I am rereading now to refresh my memory as I read it many years ago.  I'm also waiting for Artur Erlandur's Outrage to come out in softcover.  I don't think I will have any difficulty using my book tokens, do you?

Mary Oliver, creativity, and reading slump

I have reached  a reading impasse.  I haven't been able to finish one book since last Thursday.  I keep picking books up and putting them down.  I want something good, to sink into and lose myself in, and nothing is grabbing me.  I love my Jane Austen book, and I am reading the short stories in The Winds of Marble Arch, and am  over half-way done The Morville Hours, and each of them I adore for different reasons. They are lovely and beautiful books.  I want to read though something meaty, something where characters are wrestling with moral dilemmas, with deep drama and conflict, so that I don't feel I'm all alone in trying to sort my life out now.   I think this is one of the ways that books - and literature - are so good for us, for we get to see other characters going through the same things, and see different outcomes. Different perspectives, too, and ideas.

So have you, Gentle Reader, ever turned to a book because it mirrored something you were going through?    If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to know what the book was, or the author .

On the fabulous news front (and I'm sorry these have been in such short supply this year so far), I have begun writing again.  I had been writing my poetry on and off over the past few years, but I had stopped story writing a couple of years ago.  I've started up again, and I feel so much happier now.  This has been a long time coming.   It was reading a post on Mary Oliver that brought me to realize that I have to do what makes me happy.   This was such a good interview on Mary, at Oprah.com, by Maria Shriver two years ago.  I read those words, "We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy." and that was
writing poetry for her. I don't know why I never thought of it that way, doing what I liked because it makes me happy, and that is exactly how I feel when I'm writing.  I like how she puts that a calling is something that you can't help but do.  And that certainly is writing, and poetry, for me.   I'm happier, and a happier person, when I'm writing.    I've also been reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, which I saw at Chapters a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me I had my own copy at home, so as soon as I got home that evening, I went looking for it.  She says what almost every writer or poet says:  you must write every day, no matter what. That is the only way to learn and to become better.  This applies to any skill, any creative activity you want to develop.  Just do it, and keep doing it, because you love it.  Isn't that a wonderful way to explore and deepen our connection to life?

What do you do because it makes you happy?

What poetry is teaching me

I haven't always read poetry in my life.  There have been long periods where I haven't read any, followed by the discovery of a new poem which leads me to the poet.  Anna Akhmatova.  ee cummings.  Sylvia Plath.  John Donne.  Ted Hughes.  Mary Oliver.  Wendy Cope.  Yevgeny Yevtushenko.  John Keats.  These are the main poets that I have discovered and loved since I was about 18, when I loved my first poet, Sylvia Plath. Nikki Giovanni.  Wordsworth. 

Why read poetry?  In this day and age, when people are afraid of poems, why do I read it?  Because it teaches me that I am not alone in my feelings.  That others have felt as I do, both the wild rage of pain, and the tumultousness and gentleness of love.  When I read poetry, I discover myself.  I learn about new ways to express how I feel, and how I am in the world.

What I didn't know, was that poetry actually teaches me.  I could look at Neil Gaiman's poem "Instructions" and say it teaches me about how to come to fairy tales, which it does.  I could look at John Keat's "On a Nightingale" and say that I have never heard a nightingale sing yet, though I know it through Keat's eyes and ears.  I have been by that hedge where he hears the nightingale sings every time I read that poem, and the glorious song he hears is echoed by the birds I do hear, over here in Canada - though not the same, I know, not at all.  I really want to hear a nightingale so I can go back and read the poem and see what Keats took from the singing.  I could say that Dr Seuss gave me my first love of rhythm and words that rhyme in the English language, and that I actually had a line from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas occur to me last week, the line 'we are we'. 

But truly, poetry came alive for me today, when I opened Mary Oliver's book of poems Red Bird, and re-read her poem "Invitation".  Because the day before I had seen this little bird (pictures above, he's yellow and in the middle of the thistle bush, just above) while out for my walk along the Ottawa River.  I was lucky, he was there yesterday and allowed me to take these pictures.

Later, I went to look up what it was and when I read that it was an American Goldfinch and that it loved thistles, I thought to myself, I know that.  But how do I know that?  So imagine my delight and joy when I read "Invitation":

                                Invitation                      by Mary Oliver

Oh do you have a little time
  to linger
     for just a little while
        out of your busy

and very important day
   for the goldfinches
      that have gathered
        in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
   to see who can sing
     the highest note,
        or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
   or the most tender?
       Their strong, blunt beaks
          drink the air

as they strive
   melodiously
      not for your sake
         and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
  but for sheer delight and gratitude -
     believe us, they say,
        it is a serious thing

just to be alive
  on this fresh morning
     in this broken world.
       I beg of you,

do not walk by
    without pausing
       to attend to this
         rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
  It could mean everything.
     It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
        You must change your life. 


This poem, from the first time I encountered it, has captured and retold what I try to do in my own life, the values that I live by, and how open I try to be to the natural world around me.  I didn't know I was also learning about goldfinches, and that Mary Oliver was writing what was real:  but there the little goldfinch was, on Tuesday and yesterday, beside the path, digging into the thistles and burying himself in the seed fluff.  Isnt' it a marvel how nature has made it, that in searching for food, the finch releases the seeds from the pods at the same time?

How cool is it that in this photo and the next, Mrs Goldfinch joined her mate on the thistle bush (he is in the lower left corner, she is the dark brown bird shape on the top right of the bush)?  They were singing back and forth to each other while they watched me take his picture above first, then when deemed safe, she flew down to join him.  

As for the poem itself, it is among the handful of poems that I want to print up and put on my walls to remind myself how to I want to live.

As a writer, this poem and Rilke's idea that I must change my life - it is from Letters to a Young Poet, and what one must do in order to write, is also moving through me.  I also think that slowing my life down, taking the time to see around me, to see nature, is something I consciously try to do every day.  I can't write, if I don't see in my own life what is there.  And only by seeing, can I bring back to my writing my own voice and view.

This is why I read poetry. 

If you read poetry, who do you like? What are some of your favourite poets, and poems?

It's a Fringe world

You all know by now that I have fallen in love with a tv show called Fringe. What you may not have figured out is exactly how deep this love affair has become for me. I bought the soundtrack to the first season last week and have listened to it every day since. That's how much this show has become part of my life! I have to laugh a little. I've been obsessed with books, I've read books that I've ended up dreaming of, I've carried books with me through all the stages of my life, and there are characters who are almost as real to me as people are. I do not recall any tv show affecting me like this, no matter how much I enjoyed it. Something about Fringe, about the story it is telling about Olivia, Peter, and Walter, has captured me completely. I think I am beginning to understand those Star Wars and Star Trek fans who used to have every single thing ever brought out. I'm not saying I would buy every single thing, but I'd like a Peter doll, and an Olivia one. Gee, a tiny Walter's Lab would be fun!

What I mean to say is, I keep meaning to write more often on here, but I'm usually thinking about previous episodes, upcoming ones, searching for reviews, talking to my new Fringe fan friends I've met. I don't know if there is an official word for us yet, but I've fallen into that rabbit hole that is an obsession with a cultural event. It's kind of fun, and kind of scary. It's not like I'm a teenager!

The good news is, I have not left behind my passion for books - there is nothing on this planet that could do that. I have been reading, though not to any level that will have me finishing 100 books this year. I have ordered The Cipher Garden again, and then I threw in The Arsenic Labyrinth so I could keep reading the series as soon as it arrives. Also, I found a copy of Nemesis finally - Harry! Harry Hole! I'm coming! I even found myself telling one of my co-workers yesterday all about Harry and falling in love with him. Now she wants to read The Redbreast too. So books are my constant, still, and always. Fringe has just moved up very high on my list of passions.

One thing I do like about Fringe is that books turn up every once in a while. Markham's books is a used bookstore Peter frequents, that the owner can usually come up with anything in books they are looking for. I'd like to work in Markham's book store. It is the way the best bookstores are, crowded with books, shelves, and Markham is funny. I'm sure he'd let me work there for a while. Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll (one of his earliest works) even gets a mention in the episode "Ability' in the first season. I've read Land of Laughs! It was over 20 years ago, so I don't remember everything, but I remember crying at the end of it. Which is pretty much what Fringe has had me doing ever since Olivia discovered that Peter is from the alternate universe. For anyone looking for a good fantasy author and book to read for Carl's OUaT3, Land of Laughs or most books by Jonathan Carroll are a good bet. So how can I not love this show? Never mind that Land of Laughs is about a reality that changes according to what the townspeople think should happen, so it's about - alternate realities. Fringe is layered with symbolism like that, so I end up looking for more clues.....speaking of layering symbolism, Peter is the one who knows the real worth of Land of Laughs. How can I not like a hero who likes books? And a show that pays attention to details like this?

I think after my very difficult year last year, Fringe has come along to awaken me to all that is still possible to dream about and wonder about, for me, in life. Along with Mary Oliver, and Dido (thanks to Susan and Lee, who introduced me, I'm playing the music of Dido every day), there are new things in my life as I view this new terrain I'm on, living with a chronic disease. I'm still coming to terms with what that means for me, and how it's changed my life. Mary Oliver is reminding me of my love of poetry and nature, and why I wrote it in the first place and what I love about the world. Dido is reminding me how much I love music and need to hear it much more regularly than I had been for some time. Fringe is reminding me of how much I love layered writing, mythic arcs and story telling over several seasons with characters that I adore. Horror, mystery, science and science fiction, family drama, life-changing events that reverbrate up and down the years, and strong characters who are completely believable - Fringe has this in spades, and I can't get enough.

I've only recently come to the realization that I am picking up the pieces after the explosions and drama of last year. I know I'm fortunate, and that I could be in a much worse place if some of the tests had come back positive. The best news (other than that I just have diabetes and nothing else is wrong) is that I had my first writing idea in over a year, earlier this week. So I know I'm heading back to where I want to be, and I'm grateful that the leaves are coming out on the trees, and the spring birds have come back and fill the world with their songs, and that there is room and time for new passions in my life.

I am keeping this blog. I do love it and am proud of what I have written about books and life over the past two and a half years. I am especially thrilled to have met of all of you who share my love of books and reading. Some of you have become special to me, becoming my friends as well. I think I've been taking a break without being aware of it, for the past few months. So if you don't mind, I think more posts about Fringe will be creeping in, because after 6 months with this show, it's become part of my life, and I have to talk about it. This isn't just a blog about books any more, though they will still make up the huge bulk of it. I hope you'll still enjoy coming here. I will still keep the same blog title, because that really is my philosophy in life. Now, if only Markham's bookstore really did exist......

*Aw, shucks* I'm blushing....and Mary Oliver

Today I received the most beautiful award for being a blogger, and what means most to me about it, is what the award is for - for being friendly, and welcoming, and here, this explanation says it better:
"This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of their award."
Jeane at Dog Ear Diary nominated me, which I am thrilled about. She reviews the most amazing amount of animal books - psychology, adventure, life with, everything you can imagine, as well as reading as widely in everything else as the rest of us. And she is very friendly and funny, and has many fun draws also.

I'm not into blog comparison, because this isn't a sport or competition. We each create a blog we love, about the things we love: books, our families, life. I think each blog I visit has something original and creative about it, because it reflects the person. So I am touched when something about my blog reaches out to another person. It's like in a book, when a connection is made - when I understand perfectly what the author is saying; blogs allow each of us to touch one another and be in one another's lives, even if we never meet in person. I certainly am enriched by all of you that I have met through blogging. My hope is actually that if this award goes around, eventually everyone will get it!

With that in mind, I would like to give this award to some very special blogs who light the way for me:
1. Bybee at Naked Without Books
2. Deslily at Here, There and Everywhere
3. Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings
4. Cath at Read-Warbler
5. Raidergirl3 at An Adventure in Reading
6. JS Peyton at Biblioaddict
7. Geraniumcat at Geraniumcat's Bookshelf
8. Bride at Bride of the Book God

Onto a very special book I am reading: New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, volume Two. Volume One is on order at the bookstore. I mention this because - not waiting for my eventual book review - I am reading a poem or two at night, and I already have two that I have taken
to heart.

From "Everything":
I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.


and from "Work, Sometimes":
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.


I simply had to share that. Because when I read those words, I feel a ripple of delight in my soul. That is what I do, I run into nature. At this moment in March, when it is sub-zero temperatures and still too much snow to wander into the fields and by the river, I am simply waiting for the snow to go so I can go out into the' wordless, singing world' again. what a lovely, perfect vision of nature.

I have only recently discovered Mary Oliver, this is her second book of poetry I am reading, and if it's possible to fall in love with words on a page, that's what I'm doing.

I haven't given up on Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, on the contrary, I've had to take it down to the living room where i can dip into it when I'm wide awake. Those poems are so passionate, and angry and sad and loving at the same time, that I can't read them just before sleep. I have to be wide awake to take them in and consider them. Mary Oliver I can take with me into sleep, into my dreams where there is singing without words sometimes too.

I know poetry isn't widely read anymore, but I just had to share what I'm discovering, because Mary Oliver's work is of such beauty to me. Poetry doesn't have to be difficult, or obfuscate, or confuse or tongue-tie (though the latter is fun!); poetry for me is about seeing the world as it is, as directly and honestly as possible. At least that is how I have written my own poetry, trying to find the clearest way to say what I mean. Oliver's poetry is about being in love with nature, while seeing with a clear eye the predator-prey relationship. Isn't that a lovely way to be, to live one's life, in love with the world?

May you find a some beauty in your day today. And find a good book to capture you!