"Cover Note," by W.S. Merwin

Hypocrite reader my
variant my almost
family we are so
few now it seems as though
we knew each other as
the words between us keep
assuming that we do
I hope I make sense to
you in the shimmer of
our days while the world we
cling to in common is

burning for I have not
the ancients' confidence
in the survival of
one track of syllables
nor in some ultimate
moment of insight that
supposedly will dawn
once and for all upon
a bright posterity
making clear only to
them what passes between

us now in a silence
on this side of the flames
so that from a distance
beyond appeal only
they of the future will
behold our true meaning
which eludes us as we
breathe reader beside your
timepiece do you believe
any such thing do the
children read what you do

when they read or can you
think the words will rise from
the page saying the same
things when they speak for us
no longer and then who
in the total city
will go on listening
to these syllables that
are ours and be able
still to hear moving through
them the last rustling of

paws in high grass the one
owl hunting along this
spared valley the tongues of
the free trees our uncaught
voices readers I do
not know that anyone
else is waiting for these
words that I hoped might seem
as though they had occurred
to you and you would take
them with you as your own

- W.S. Merwin

in Travels (1993)

___

(Associations: texting a photo of this poem to Erin in February of 2020. Biking to the library in March of 2020 to return the book it came from, and that being the last thing I did outside before lockdown was announced.)

November bookmarks

Thank goodness, it's finally over

November is by far the busiest month of the year in my industry (because of the dread Thanksgiving). Thank goodness, thank goodness that's over and I can look forward to some time to breathe now. 

To get through the final push of this week, I decompressed with an old favorite book, one that I haven't reread in years and years - Enna Burning, by Shannon Hale. 

In a roundabout way, she is the author who got me blogging. I was part of her ferociously active little fan forum, Little Red Reading Hood (est. 2006), and a number of the girls and young women there had blogs as well whose comment sections became another way of hanging out and chatting.

What about you - do you remember who or what (if applicable) got you started blogging?

Books read in October 2021

1. No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood (2021)

The first half read like a series of sort of absurdist, sort of accurate micro-blog posts about the internet. It captivated me and made me laugh. The second half was a strange dive into a pressingly offline world of familial medical crisis. It didn't carry me all the way with it but it certainly was interesting and did not lack conviction.

2. Escape from Wolfhaven Castle, by Kate Forsyth (2014)

Read as research for niece/nephew birthday present shopping. Charming early middle-grade fantasy. Just enough age-appropriate peril and spooky, and just enough safety. Takes being a good story seriously without taking itself too seriously at it.

3. Happy Endings Are All Alike, by Sandra Scoppettone (1978)

I was impressed by her young adult novel about a teenage alcoholic, The Late Great Me, that I read earlier this year. This one is a very early treatment of a lesbian relationship (up against much lesbophobia) in a young adult novel, and it has aged just fine.

4. A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, by Cal Newport (2021)

Clever, interesting, frustrating (because I am not a manager able to create large-scale changes) but still inspiring for me as an individual. His studies of companies that don't operate off email are fascinating because they make you realize how much of our current set-up is neither inevitable nor optimal (or even really good). I also found the history of professional email use interesting in a nerdy way.

5. East, by Edith Pattou (2003)

Reread. When I was a teenager, I liked this book more than it deserved (I thought then) and I think that more now. It's so likeable in some ways but in other ways it phones it in, particularly the farther Rose's journey carries her. I wish it had been edited better. But it gives a good cozy feeling. And it makes me want to learn how to weave. And the cover is so lovely and brings back all these memories.

6. Outside, Inside, by LeUyen Pham (2021)

This picture book about early COVID lockdown made me cry. It is so sweet and good. I'm just sad it doesn't go through the present day (it ends in June 2020) - because it is so comforting to see this set of global experiences through this book's lens, and even as a grown-up, I could have done with being gently and wisely carried along by its pages through all the rest of this exhausting, life-altering experience. My mom, who teaches, told me that the elementary school social workers/counselors in her district were all given copies of this book at the start of the school year, and I can see why.

7. The Beast's Garden, by Kate Forsyth

Uff, Kate Forsyth does it again. I am verging on obsessed and yet to be disappointed! Right after finishing this I went online and put holds on a couple more of her books at the library. This is a World War II-era tale inspired by the German fairy tale "The Singing Springing Lark" (a variation of "Beauty and the Beast"). I was moved to learn at the end how many of the characters were real historical figures (and their actions real historical actions they took in the resistance). Gripping, intricately historical, poignant. This novel covers six years of fiction-within-history, with no skipping around or fading to black to cut out chunks of time! It would have been tiring if it hadn't been so unceasingly fascinating.

8. Where Three Oceans Meet, by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan (2021)

Sweet, bright picture book about a multi-generational (a girl and her mother and grandmother) family trip through India.

"Surely You Remember"

After they all leave,
I remain alone with the poems,
some poems of mine, some of others.
I prefer poems that others have written.
I remain quiet, and slowly
the knot in my throat dissolves.
I remain.

Sometimes I wish everyone would go away.
Maybe it's nice, after all, to write poems.
You sit in your room and the walls grow taller.
Colors deepen.
A blue kerchief becomes a deep well.

You wish everyone would go away.
You don't know what's the matter with you.
Perhaps you'll think of something.
Then it all passes, and you are pure crystal.

After that, love.
Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
Only a fool doesn't understand
he loved the river, too.

You sit alone.
Your heart aches, but it won't break.
The faded images wash away one by one.
Then the defects.
A sun sets at midnight. You remember
the dark flowers too.

You wish you were dead or alive or
somebody else.
Isn't there a country you love? A word?
Surely you remember.

Only a fool lets the sun set when it likes.
It always drifts off too early
westward to the islands.

Sun and moon, winter and summer
will come to you,
infinite treasures.

- Dahlia Ravikovitch

translated by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch
in The Window