tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68145166153506045832024-02-07T21:37:07.254-05:00Ellie@Home by Nicole Kapise-PerkinsWelcome to the home of Nicole Kapise-Perkins, author, poet, reader, reviewer, tea drinker, believer in magick and myth, a dreamr that walks through darkly Gothic halls in sweeping skirts seeking mystery, meaning, her cat, and the occasional chocolate biscuit. Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.comBlogger399125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-18330853076578132142020-09-04T10:15:00.001-04:002020-09-04T10:15:45.008-04:00Beauty for Your September Morning...
To the Light of September
By W. S. Merwin
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbLkkAIZYt7gutsY0ff-8DcazSJILj1TOiZSdm5ZnnVLsnsv5S1m_8VXK_TEqQQzec5xQ27MrxIu0rC4PC4KOe8cPNOmP_uhSguuRH93s-XFl1JM9HoyFmqZaLIer5OCcwtOHwNni8w68/s1155/mullein-leaf-1296x728-header.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: left;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="1155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbLkkAIZYt7gutsY0ff-8DcazSJILj1TOiZSdm5ZnnVLsnsv5S1m_8VXK_TEqQQzec5xQ27MrxIu0rC4PC4KOe8cPNOmP_uhSguuRH93s-XFl1JM9HoyFmqZaLIer5OCcwtOHwNni8w68/s320/mullein-leaf-1296x728-header.jpg"/></a></div>
When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not
and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground
but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later
you
who fly with them
you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night
perfect in the dew
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-18935632786585269502020-09-03T10:43:00.002-04:002020-09-03T10:43:20.404-04:00A Prayer for Rain by Lisel MuellerWe began the day with rain today, carrying over from yesterday. Now the day is beautifully sunlit, but as much as I enjoy lovely sunshiny days, a small part of me misses the rain....
A Prayer for Rain
By Lisel Mueller
Let it come down: these thicknesses of air
have long enough walled love away from love;
stillness has hardened until words despair
of their high leaps and kisses shut themselves
back into wishing. Crippled lovers lie
against a weather which holds out on them,
waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry,
some screaming cat that smells a sacrifice
and spells them thunder. Start the mumbling lips,
syllable by monotonous syllable,
that wash away the sullen griefs of love
and drown out knowledge of an ancient war—
o, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain,
let love be brought to ignorance again.
Originally appeared in the March 1964 issue of Poetry magazine.
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-15474152958320492962020-09-02T14:32:00.002-04:002020-09-02T14:33:51.014-04:00Carrying On <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgL_qKSfiVy4MOgoGug9OVRnRL0AOXvgd_i45g_QfMqVARqqZ4rklint3mR44yKVIMm48kPY0LdxJSGA44jcgdwtP801z8fwD84fZVWHewuSN1EE0Z9ic-n0nD9w9hhVzlQ0LrLHDCS6Y/s1280/untitled.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgL_qKSfiVy4MOgoGug9OVRnRL0AOXvgd_i45g_QfMqVARqqZ4rklint3mR44yKVIMm48kPY0LdxJSGA44jcgdwtP801z8fwD84fZVWHewuSN1EE0Z9ic-n0nD9w9hhVzlQ0LrLHDCS6Y/s320/untitled.png"/></a></div>I hope this finds you and your loved ones well. My family has been fine during this stressful time, anxiety a little high but nothing debilitating, and certainly nothing we haven't been able to work through. Still, each day is an exercise in uncertainty, wondering if we are doing enough to keep ourselves and others safe, wondering if our luck will change, and what we will do if that does happen. We recently learned that our boy will not be going back to school next month (we weren't going to send him anyway), and now my husband and I are trying to figure out how we are going to oversee our son's virtual schooling while both of us are working full time. My husband has said that is the main topic of canversation in his workplace, as many of his coworkers are parents to school-age children and both parents are working. It is less of a conversation at my workplace; not so many of us have school-age children, though a handful have school-age grandchildren.
Because I work in healthcare I have been working full-time since the pandemic started. My husband and I have been doing our best to maintain separation from potential health risks, but sometimes we just need to be somewhere that isn't home. There have been a couple trips to Target to buy some household supplies and clothes for the ten year old that refuses to stop growing (where has my baby gone???), a stop at Barnes and Noble while on a Target trip to stock up on books, and the usual grocery trips (such an adventure). Recently my husband took our boy to the movies; our local theatre is showing oldies but goodies with very limited seating, so good fun and ample distance was enjoyed by all. A couple weekends ago in a fit of utter cabin fever we rented a campsite not far from home and spent a glorious two days in the woods with no walls, no alarms, no work, and no worries. Summer hasn't felt like summer without a vacation, or even the day trips that we usually do. In fact, I was researching ideas for "field trips" to take my son on while he is doing his remote schooling, because otherwise he's going to be at a computer for four hours a day, every day. I have to get him out doing things, but what to do when museums are closed? Historical walking tours are the next best option: I have a feeling we'll be visiting Historic Deerfield and Walden Pond a lot.
Another aspect of this quarantine that really has me discombobulated is the inability to go to the library. My local library has been closed since March. They recently opened for in-house requests and outdoor pick up, but they are not currently doing inter-library loans, and so my Goodreads list languishes (and continues to grow). I'm trying to convince my husband to let me just buy all the books on my list, but he for some reason feels the need to point out that I have a student loan to pay off. Killjoy.
Despite summer's end, I am feeling brighter, more hopeful, as we enter September. Perhaps it is simply my love of fall, but there is a feeling of renewal, almost. It is not lost on me that September is host to two New Year's celebrations, Rosh Hashanah and Enkutatash. Other cultures observe the year's change in fall as well, with Samhain at the end of October and Diwali falling in November this year. Perhaps looking at the closing of the warmer days as a beginning is the better approach: the year is beginning with the bounty of the harvest, leading us to abundance, then introspection during the cold months, as we shelter in and plan for the coming spring, where our thoughts and goals will come to fruition as nature reawakens. However we approach fall, the gentle month of September is upon us. Enjoy the warm sunlit days and cooler nights, perfect for hot tea and a light quilt, or a bonfire if you have the space. (I don't, so I go a bit overboard with candles. Preferably apple-scented ones. Or cinnamon. Or both.)
September
~ Helen Hunt Jackson
The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.
The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.
The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook,
From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.
By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.
But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.
'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget. Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-52257813131568181242020-05-25T20:56:00.000-04:002020-05-25T20:56:02.404-04:00The Ellie@Home 2020 Summer Reading List<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good Evening
and Happy Memorial Day! This post is far later than I planned thanks to technical
difficulties (sob, sob) but here it is, better late than never! The earlier
version of this post was wry, witty, and weird, and I don’t recall any of it
now on my THIRD attempt. So without further ado (or headaches) I’m going to
dive in. I have 34 books for this summer’s list. Because I can’t order from my
library, I scoured my shelves for books that I haven’t read or have not
finished. I managed to come up with 28. I grabbed one of Josh’s books, and two
of Liam’s, then on a whim treated myself to a copy of Caleb Carr’s <i>The
Alienist</i> and <i>Angel of Darkness</i> for my Kindle. Then, just when I
thought I had enough (plenty!) Henry Roi from HellBound Books kindly sent me a
review copy of <i>The Horror Writer: A Study of Craft and Identity in the
Horror</i> <i>Genre</i> compiled and edited by Joe Mynhardt. This is at the top
of my reading list, partly because it sounds really interesting and informative,
and also because I don’t want to make HellBound Books wait too long for my
review. Otherwise, in no particular order, here is the 2020 Ellie@Home Summer
Reading List. All synopses are from Goodreads
unless otherwise noted. There are no images for this year's list as every attempt I have made to include them has caused issues with uploading. (My apologies)</span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Horror Writer: A
Study of Craft and Identity in the Horror Genre</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> edited by Joe Mynhardt:
<i>The Horror Writer</i> covers how to connect with your market and carve out a
sustainable niche in the independent horror genre, how to tackle the writer's
ever-lurking nemesis of productivity, writing good horror stories with
powerful, effective scenes, realistic, flowing dialogue and relatable
characters without resorting to clichéd jump scares and well-worn gimmicks.
Also covered is the delicate subject of handling rejection with good grace, and
how to use those inevitable "not quite the right fit for us at this
time" letters as an opportunity to hone your craft.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Plus...
perceptive interviews to provide an intimate peek into the psyche of the horror
author and the challenges they work through to bring their nefarious ideas to
the page.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">And,
as if that – and so much more – was not enough, we have for your delectation
Ramsey Campbell's beautifully insightful analysis of the tales of HP Lovecraft.</span></span></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">English Bread and Yeast Cookery</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Elizabeth David: In
this universally acclaimed book Elizabeth David deals with all aspects of
flour-milling, yeast, bread ovens and the different types of bread and flour
available. The recipes cover yeast cookery of all kinds, and the many lovely,
old-fashioned spiced breads, buns, pancakes and muffins, among others, are all
described with her typical elegance and unrivalled knowledge.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">A Joseph Campbell
Companion</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">
edited by Diane K. Obson: Celebrated scholar Joseph Campbell shares his
intimate and inspiring reflections on the art of living in this beautifully
packaged book, part of a new series to be based on his unpublished writings.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Through the Cloud Mountain</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Florence Scott
Bernard: A story of Jan (the little lame boy who got left behind the Pied
Piper) and lots of story book folk we know.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Oriental Fairy Tales</i> (Arlington Edition):
I have a fondness for antique children’s books. I found this one at the
Salvation Army, practically in pieces (really, I probably shouldn’t handle this
book, but I paid less than a dollar for it, so what the hell). I can’t find a
description or author of this book anywhere, on Amazon, Google, or Goodreads. I
guess it will be a “wait and see?” All I have is the information from the frontispiece:
“From the German of Hirder, Liebskind, and Krummacher.” Uhh….okay. </span><br />
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<a href="about:invalid#zClosurez" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Two Orphans</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> by Adolphe d’Ennery: Another Salvation
Army find. The only description I found of this one (in English) was from a Goodreads
review by Eirini Robin: “<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Two beautiful & loving young women have to get through
all sorts of disasters and personal tragedies until they find a way to re-unite
and also marry the men of their lives.”</span><span style="background: white;"></span></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Mary’s Meadow and Other Tales of Fields and
Flowers</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">
by Juliana Horatia Ewing: Collection of short stories first published in 1886
by the prolific author of children's stories. Her tales, which have hardly been
excelled in sympathetic insight into childlife, still enjoy undiminished
popularity.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Street of Queer Houses </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">by Vernon Knowles: Another “wait and
see” book, though the original title per Goodreads was “<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Street of Queer Houses and
Other Tales (Supernatural & Occult Fiction)</span>”</span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">A Whistling Woman</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by A.S. Byatt: Frederica
Potter, a smart, spirited 33-year-old single mother, lucks into a job hosting a
groundbreaking television talk show based in London. Meanwhile, in her native
Yorkshire where her lover is involved in academic research, the university is
planning a prestigious conference on body and mind, and a group of students and
agitators is establishing an “anti-university.” And nearby a therapeutic community
is beginning to take the shape of a religious cult under the influence of its
charismatic religious leader.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">America’s Women: 400
Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines </span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">edited by Gail Collins: America's
Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a
stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side
of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty
pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these
women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">By
culling the most fascinating characters — the average as well as the celebrated
— Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times, charts a
journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt
about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and
the early southern "tobacco brides" who came looking for a husband
and sometimes — thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate — wound up
marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days,
the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil
rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women
describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances,
rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the
ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her
eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable
shoes mattered a lot, too.</span></span></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Untie the Strong Woman</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Clarissa Pinkola
Estes, PhD: Call her Our Lady, La Nuestra Senora, Holy Mother or one of her
thousands of other names, says Dr. Estes. She wears hundreds of costumes,
dozens of skin tones, is patroness of deserts, mountains, stars and oceans.
Thus she comes to us in billions of images, but at her center, she is the Great
Immaculate Heart. With Untie the Strong Woman, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
invites us to reconnect with the fierce and loving Blessed Mother who is
friendly, but never tame she who flies to our aid when the road is long and our
hearts are broken, ever ready to rekindle the inner fire of our creative souls.
In her first book in more than a decade, Dr. Estes illuminates Our Lady through
blessings, images, and narrative, including: Stories of connecting with the
Blessed Mother, including ; Meeting the Lady in Red, and Untie the Strong Woman
; Blessed Mother s many images from around the world, including Litany of The
Mother Road: A Chant of Her Incandescent Names; A Man Named Mary; and The Marys
of Mother Africa ; The wild side of her love, including Massacre of the
Dreamers: The Maiz Mother; Holy Card of Swords Through the Heart; and Guadalupe
is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven The Blessed Mother is often Friend to the
friendless one and Mother to all yet too many of us have been estranged from
her for far too long. Untie the Strong Woman opens a channel to this sacred and
nurturing force breaking through walls that have held us back from her
presence, and instead, inviting us to shelter under her starry green mantle</span>.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">L. Frank Baum: Creator
of Oz</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">
by Katharine M. Rogers: In this first full-length adult biography of Baum,
Rogers discusses some of the aspects that made his work unique and has likely
contributed to Oz's long-lasting appeal, including Baum's early support of
feminism and how it was reflected in his characters, his interest in Theosophy
and how it took form in his books, and the celebration in his stories of
traditional American values. Grounding his imaginative creations, particularly
in his fourteen Oz books, in the reality of his day, Katharine M. Rogers
explores the fascinating life and influences of America's greatest writer for
children.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to
Anna Bahlmann </span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">edited by Irene Goldman-Price: An exciting archive came to
auction in 2009: the papers and personal effects of Anna Catherine Bahlmann
(1849–1916), a governess and companion to several prominent American families.
Among the collection were 135 letters from her most famous pupil,
Edith Newbold Jones, later the great American novelist Edith Wharton.
Remarkably, until now, just three letters from Wharton’s childhood and early
adulthood were thought to survive. Bahlmann, who would become Wharton’s
literary secretary and confidante, emerges in the letters as a seminal
influence, closely guiding her precocious young student’s readings,
translations, and personal writing. Taken together, these letters, written over
the course of forty-two years, provide a deeply affecting portrait of mutual
loyalty and influence between two women from different social classes. This
correspondence reveals Wharton’s maturing sensibility and vocation, and
includes details of her life that will challenge long-held assumptions about
her formative years. Wharton scholar Irene Goldman-Price provides a rich
introduction to </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My
Dear Governess</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> that restores Bahlmann to her central place
in Wharton’s life.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 10.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i>The Sultan and The Queen</i> by
Jerry Brotton: When Queen Elizabeth was excommunicated by the Pope in 1570, she
found herself in an awkward predicament. Now England's key markets would be
closed to her Protestant merchants. To complicate matters the staunchly
Catholic king of Spain was determined to destroy her, bolstered by the gold
pouring in from the New World. In a bold
decision with far-reaching consequences, Elizabeth set her sights on the East.
She sent an emissary to the shah of Iran; wooed the king of Morocco, trading
gunpowder for sugar; and entered into an unprecedented alliance with the
powerful Ottoman Sultan Murad III. This marked the beginning of an extraordinary alignment with
Muslim powers and of economic and political exchanges with the Islamic world of
a depth not again experienced until the modern age. Londoners were gripped with
a passion for the Orient. In this groundbreaking book, Jerry Brotton reveals
that Elizabethan England's relationship with the Muslim world was far more
amicable - and far more extensive - than we have ever appreciated as he tells
the riveting story of the businessmen and adventurers who first went east to
make their fortunes. (From Amazon.com)</div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder,
Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Christine Woodside: In
this groundbreaking narrative of literary detection, Christine Woodside reveals
for the first time the full extent of the collaboration between Laura and her
daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Rose hated farming and fled the family homestead as
an adolescent, eventually becoming a nationally prominent magazine writer,
biographer of Herbert Hoover, and successful novelist, who shared the political
values of Ayn Rand and became mentor to Roger Lea MacBride, the second
Libertarian presidential candidate. Drawing on original manuscripts and letters,
Woodside shows how Rose reshaped her mother's story into a series of heroic
tales that rebutted the policies of the New Deal. Their secret collaboration
would lead in time to their estrangement. A fascinating look at the
relationship between two strong-willed women, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Libertarians on the Prairie</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> is also the
deconstruction of an American myth.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Rumi: The Big Red Book</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> edited by Coleman
Barks: Rumi was born in 1207 to a long line of Islamic theologians and lawyers
on the eastern edge of the Persian Empire in what is now Afghanistan. In order
to escape the invading Mongol armies of Genghis Khan, his family moved west to
a town now found in Turkey, where he eventually became the leader of a school
of whirling dervishes. It was a fateful day in 1244 when he met Shams Tabriz, a
wild mystic with rare gifts and insight. The renowned scholar Rumi had found a
soul mate and friend who would become his spiritual mentor and literary muse.
"What I had thought of before as God," Rumi said, "I met today
in a human being."</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Out
of their friendship, Rumi wrote thousands of lyric poems and short quatrains in
honor of his friend Shams Tabriz. They are poems of divine epiphany, spiritual
awakening, friendship, and love. For centuries, Rumi's collection of these
verses has traditionally been bound in a red cover, hence the title of this
inspired classic of spiritual literature.</span></span></span><br />
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<br />
<em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Working Women,
Literary Ladies<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">: The Industrial Revolution and Female Aspiration </span></span></em><em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 107%;">by Sylvia Jenkins
Cook:</span></em><em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Working Women, Literary Ladies</span></em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> explores the
simultaneous entry of working-class women in the United States into wage-earning
factory labor and into opportunities for mental and literary development. It is
the first book to examine the fascinating exchange between the work and
literary spheres for laboring women in the rapidly industrializing America of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As women entered the public
sphere as workers, their opportunities for intellectual growth expanded, even
as those same opportunities were often tightly circumscribed by the factory
owners who were providing them. These developments, both institutional and
personal, opened up a range of new possibilities for working-class women that
profoundly affected women of all classes and the larger social fabric. Cook
examines the extraordinary and diverse literary productions of these working
women, ranging from their first New England magazine of belles lettres, </span></span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Lowell
Offering</span></em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">,
to Emma Goldman's periodical, </span></span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mother Earth</span></em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">; from Lucy
Larcom's epic poem of female factory life, </span></span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">An Idyl of Work</span></em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">, to Theresa
Malkiel's fictional account of sweatshop workers in New York, </span></span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Diary of a</span></em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span>Shirtwaist
Striker</em></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">.
This vital new book traces the hopes and tensions generated by the expectations
of working-class women as they created a wholly new way of being alive in the
world</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Essays on Nature and Landscape</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Susan Fenimore
Cooper: Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894), though often overshadowed by her
celebrity father, James Fenimore Cooper, has recently become recognized as both
a pioneer of American nature writing and an early advocate for ecological
sustainability. Editors Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson have assembled
here a collection of ten pieces by Cooper that represent her most accomplished
nature writing and the fullest articulation of her environmental principles.
With one exception, these essays have not been available in print since their
original appearance in Cooper's lifetime.A portrait of her thoughts on nature
and how we should live and think in relation to it, this collection both
contextualizes Cooper's magnum opus, </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rural
Hours</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
(1850), and demonstrates how she perceived her work as a nature writer.
Frequently her essays are models of how to catch and keep the interest of a
reader when writing about plants, animals, and our relationship to the physical
environment. By lamenting the decline of bird populations, original forests,
and overall biodiversity, she champions preservation and invokes a collective
environmental conscience that would not begin to awaken until the end of her
life and century.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">The
selections include independent essays, miscellaneous introductions and
prefaces, and the first three installments from Cooper's work of literary
ornithology, "Otsego Leaves," arguably her most mature and fully
realized contribution to American environmental writing. In addition to a
foreword by John Elder, one of the nation's leading environmental educators, an
introduction analyzes each essay in various cultural contexts. Brief but handy
textual notes supplement the essays. Perfect for nature-writing aficionados,
environmental historians, and environmental activists, this collection will
radically expand Cooper's importance to the history of American environmental
thought.</span></span></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Letters of Virginia
Woolf (Volume One)</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann: A collection
of Virginia Woolf's correspondence from age six to the eve of her marriage
twenty-four years later. "Engagingly fresh and spontaneous as young
Virginia's letters are...the excitement in this collection arises from [her]
growing awareness of herself as a writer" (Chicago Sun-Times).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American
Novel</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">
by Philip F. Gura: This history begins with a series of firsts: the very first
American novel, William Hill Brown's </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Power of Sympathy</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">, published in 1789; the first bestsellers,
Susanna Rowson's </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Charlotte
Temple </span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">and
Hannah Webster Foster's </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Coquette</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">,
novels that were, like Brown's, cautionary tales of seduction and betrayal; and
the first native genre, religious tracts, which were parables intended to
instruct the Christian reader. Gura shows that the novel did not leave behind
its proselytizing purpose, even as it evolved. We see Catharine Maria Sedgwick
in the 1820s conceiving of </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A
New-England Tale </span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">as a critique of Puritanism's harsh strictures, as
well as novelists pushing secular causes: George Lippard's </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Quaker City</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">, from 1844, was a dark warning about growing social
inequality. In the next decade certain writers—Hawthorne and Melville most
famously—began to depict interiority and doubt, and in doing so nurtured a
broader cultural shift, from social concern to individualism, from faith in a
distant god to faith in the self.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Rich
in subplots and detail, Gura's narrative includes enlightening discussions of
the technologies that modernized publishing and allowed for the printing of
novels on a mass scale, and of the lively cultural journals and literary salons
of early nineteenth-century New York and Boston. A book for the reader of
history no less than the reader of fiction, </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Truth's Ragged Edge</i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">—the title drawn from a phrase in Melville, about
the ambiguity of truth—is an indispensable guide to the fascinating, unexpected
origins of the American novel.</span></span></span><br />
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<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Edmund Spenser’s Poetry</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> (Norton Edition): The </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Faerie Queene</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> was the first epic in English and one of the most
influential poems in the language for later poets from Milton to Tennyson.
Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united medieval romance
and renaissance epic to expound the glory of the Virgin Queen. The poem
recounts the quests of knights including Sir Guyon, Knight of Constance, who
resists temptation, and Artegall, Knight of Justice, whose story alludes to the
execution of Mary Queen of Scots. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Composed
as an overt moral and political allegory, </span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">The Faerie Queene</i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">, with its dramatic episodes of chivalry,
pageantry and courtly love, is also a supreme work of atmosphere, colour and
sensuous description.</span></span></span><br />
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<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Bossypants</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Tina Fey: Before Liz Lemon, before
"Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a
young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased
through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream
that one day she would be a comedian on TV.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">She has seen both
these dreams come true.</span></span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;" />
<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">At last,
Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her
tour of duty on </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Saturday
Night Live</i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical
beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided
college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this
paragraph to this final sentence.</span></span> <span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Tina Fey reveals all, and proves
what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners,
Rivals</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">
by Gillian Gill: It was the most influential marriage of the nineteenth
century—and one of history’ s most enduring love stories. Traditional
biographies tell us that Queen Victoria inherited the throne as a naïve
teenager, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and seemed
doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a woman until she married her
German cousin Albert and accepted him as her lord and master. Now renowned
chronicler Gillian Gill turns this familiar story on its head, revealing a
strong, feisty queen and a brilliant, fragile prince working together to build
a family based on support, trust, and fidelity, qualities neither had seen much
of as children. The love affair that emerges is far more captivating, complex,
and relevant than that depicted in any previous account. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">The
epic relationship began poorly. The cousins first met as teenagers for a few
brief, awkward, chaperoned weeks in 1836. At seventeen, charming rather than
beautiful, Victoria already “showed signs of wanting her own way.” Albert, the
boy who had been groomed for her since birth, was chubby, self-absorbed, and
showed no interest in girls, let alone this princess. So when they met again in
1839 as queen and presumed prince-consort-to-be, neither had particularly high
hopes. But the queen was delighted to discover a grown man, refined,
accomplished, and whiskered. “Albert is beautiful!” Victoria wrote, and she
proposed just three days later.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">As
Gill reveals, Victoria and Albert entered their marriage longing for intimate
companionship, yet each was determined to be the ruler. This dynamic would
continue through the years—each spouse, headstrong and impassioned, eager to
lead the marriage on his or her own terms. For two decades, Victoria and Albert
engaged in a very public contest for dominance. Against all odds, the marriage
succeeded, but it was always a work in progress. And in the end, it was
Albert’s early death that set the Queen free to create the myth of her marriage
as a peaceful idyll and her husband as Galahad, pure and perfect. </span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">As
Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not because it was
perfect but because it was passionate and complicated. Wonderfully nuanced,
surprising, often acerbic—and informed by revealing excerpts from the pair’s
journals and letters—</span></span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">We Two</i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> is a revolutionary portrait of a queen and her
prince, a fascinating modern perspective on a couple who have become a legend.</span>
(From Amazon.com)</span><span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;">The epic
relationship began poorly. The cousins first met as teenagers for a few brief,
awkward, chaperoned weeks in 1836. At seventeen, charming rather than
beautiful, Victoria already “showed signs of wanting her own way.” Albert, the
boy who had been groomed for her since birth, was chubby, self-absorbed, and
showed no interest in girls, let alone this princess. So when they met again in
1839 as queen and presumed prince-consort-to-be, neither had particularly high
hopes. But the queen was delighted to discover a grown man, refined,
accomplished, and whiskered. “Albert is beautiful!” Victoria wrote, and she
proposed just three days later.<br />
<br />
As Gill reveals, Victoria and Albert entered their marriage longing for
intimate companionship, yet each was determined to be the ruler. This dynamic
would continue through the years–each spouse, headstrong and impassioned, eager
to lead the marriage on his or her own terms. For two decades, Victoria and
Albert engaged in a very public contest for dominance. Against all odds, the
marriage succeeded, but it was always a work in progress. And in the end, it
was Albert’s early death that set the Queen free to create the myth of her
marriage as a peaceful idyll and her husband as Galahad, pure and perfect. <br />
<br />
As Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not because it was
perfect but because it was passionate and complicated. Wonderfully nuanced,
surprising, often acerbic–and informed by revealing excerpts from the pair’s
journals and letters–<b>We Two</b> is a revolutionary portrait of a queen and
her prince, a fascinating modern perspective on a couple who have become a
legend.</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The
Moonstone</i> by Wilkie Collins: "The Moonstone is a page-turner",
writes Carolyn Heilbrun. "It catches one up and unfolds its amazing story
through the recountings of its several narrators, all of them enticing and
singular." Wilkie Collins’s spellbinding tale of romance, theft, and
murder inspired a hugely popular genre–the detective mystery. Hinging on the
theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine, this
riveting novel features the innovative Sergeant Cuff, the hilarious house
steward Gabriel Betteridge, a lovesick housemaid, and a mysterious band of
Indian jugglers.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Portrait of a Lady</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Henry James: When
Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her
wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel,
resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible
suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who,
beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of
intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with
modern audiences.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Golden Bough</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by James George Frazer: A world
classic. "The Golden Bough" describes our ancestors' primitive
methods of worship, sex practices, strange rituals and festivals. Disproving
the popular thought that primitive life was simple, this monumental survey
shows that savage man was enmeshed in a tangle of magic, taboos, and
superstitions. Revealed here is the evolution of man from savagery to
civilization, from the modification of his weird and often bloodthirsty customs
to the entry of lasting moral, ethical, and spiritual values.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The American Frugal Housewife</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Lydia Maria Child: "The
American Frugal Housewife" (1829) is a domestic manual by Lydia Maria
Child. The book is an interesting read, both for amusement and for historical
insight, as well as for practical tips.</span> (From Amazon.com)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Scarecrow and His Servant</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Philip Pullman: One
night there was a thunderstorm. A tattered scarecrow stood in the wind and
rain, taking no notice . . . until a bolt of lightning struck his turnip head.
The scarecrow blinked with surprise and came to life.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">So begins the
story of the Scarecrow, a courteous but pea-brained fellow with grand ideas. He
meets a boy, Jack, who becomes his faithful servant, and they set out to
journey to Spring Valley together. Along the way there's no end of excitement -
battle and shipwreck, brigands and tricksters - and it's up to Jack time after
time to save the day.</span> (This one is Liam’s, and looks like so much fun,
especially after all the heavy tomes I have waiting for me!)</span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Horns and Wrinkles</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Joseph Helgerson: How
can you tell if a river’s under a spell? River trolls, rock trolls, blue-wing
fairies—the usual suspects—the stretch of the Mississippi where Claire lives
has rumors of them all, not that she’s ever spotted any. But then Claire’s
cousin Duke takes a swim and sprouts a horn—a long, pointy, handsome thing.
After that, Claire doesn’t have much choice but to believe that something
rivery is going on, especially since she’s the only one who can help Duke lose
his new addition. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">In
the tradition of grand river adventures, Joseph Helgerson’s tale is as twisty
and unpredictable as the Mississippi River itself, while an unusual cast of
characters adds pepper to the pot. Readers of all ages will enjoy getting
in—and out of—trouble with Claire and Duke in this nimble, sharp, and funny
fantasy.</span> (Another one of Liam’s!)</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The
Conduct of Life</i> by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Conduct of Life is a collection
of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson published in 1860 and revised in 1876. In this
volume, Emerson sets out to answer “the question of the times:” “How shall I
live?” It is composed of nine essays, each preceded by a poem. These nine
essays are largely based on lectures Emerson held throughout the country,
including for a young, mercantile audience in the lyceums of the Midwestern
boomtowns of the 1850s. The Conduct of Life has been named as both one of
Emerson's best works and one of his worst. It was one of Emerson's most
successful publications and has been identified as a source of influence for a
number of writers, including Friedrich Nietzsche. (From Amazon.com)</span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span>
<br />
<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">English Traits</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays
include: First Visit to England; Voyage to England; Land; Race; Ability;
Manners; Truth; Character; Cockayne; Wealth; Aristocracy; Universities;
Religion; Literature; The “Times”; Stonehenge; Personal; Result; and, Speech at
Manchester.</span> (From Amazon.com)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Letters and Social Aims<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">by
Ralph Waldo Emerson<i>: Letters and Social Aims</i><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">, published in 1875, contains essays originally
published early in the 1840s as well as those that were the product of a
collaborative effort among </span></span><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Ralph Waldo Emerson</b><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">, his daughter Ellen Tucker Emerson, his son
Edward Waldo Emerson, and his literary executor James Eliot Cabot. The volume
takes up the topics of “Poetry and Imagination,” “Social Aims,” “Eloquence,”
“Resources,” “The Comic,” “Quotation and Originality,” “Progress of Culture,”
“Persian Poetry,” “Inspiration,” “Greatness,” and, appropriately for Emerson’s
last published book, “Immortality.”</span> (From Amazon.com) (Note from Nicole:
my copies of these three Emerson Books are actually original editions from 1887,
1888, and 1891. They are in amazing condition. Should I actually be reading
them? Probably not.)</span></span><br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Alienist</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Caleb Carr: (Now remember that I
have actually read this one, but not the sequel, so I’m just starting from the
beginning) The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John
Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or
“alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned
on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a
revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the
perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes
them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again
before their hunt is over.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> <span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">(From Amazon.com)</span><span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;">The year is 1896. The city is New York.
Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo
Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of
an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there
the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a
psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes.
Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a
murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.<br />
<br />
Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures
up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and
flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in
which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could
have unexpected and fatal consequences.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br />
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<i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Angel of Darkness</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> by Caleb Carr: June
1897. A year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic
psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with the help of
a team of trusted companions and a revolutionary application of the principles
of his discipline. Kreizler and his friends—high-living crime reporter John
Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant (and
bickering) detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and
compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a
life of street crime—have returned to their former pursuits and tried to forget
the horror of the Beecham case.<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; orphans: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">But
when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara’s aid, the team
reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. It is a case fraught with
danger, since Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Their investigation
leads the team to a shocking suspect: a woman who appears to the world to be a
heroic nurse and a loving mother, but who may in reality be a ruthless murderer
of children.</span> (From Amazon.com)</span></span><br />
</span><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br /></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-32878586448847678902020-05-16T13:32:00.002-04:002020-05-16T13:32:53.136-04:00Twice Told Tales<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(I stole that from Hawthorne. Sorry Natty.)<br />
Retold faerie tales are such fun to read. You get to experience the writer's thoughts on a traditional tale, sometimes told in a familiar manner, oftentimes as a completely new approach. I haven't read many novels of retold tales, but I have volumes of anthologies of them. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling gave us these magnificent collections of tales: <i>Snow White, Blood Red; Black Thorn, White Rose; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears; Black Swan, White Raven; Silver Birch, Blood Moon; Black Heart, Ivory Bones</i>. I bought <i>Snow White, Blood Red</i> when I was a senior in high school; it took me 25 years, but I now own the whole set. (I neglected homework for 3 days while I read the whole set back to back. It was a wonderful weekend.) Tanith Lee produced<i> Red As Blood, or Tales From the Sisters Grimmer</i>, giving her readers a heartbroken dying god as the Pied Piper and a woefully misunderstood queen in Snow White. Angela Carter started it all with <i>The Bloody Chamber</i>, and Theodora Goss curated her own collection in <i>Snow White Learns Witchcraft</i>. Scholar and storyteller Jack Zipes has several collections of retold tales (the best is<i> Don't Bet on the Prince</i>) I'm not anywhere near to scratching the surface of the vast amount of retold tales available for fantasy and faerie fans, these are just the ones on my shelves. With so many great names of literature retelling traditional tales, who am I to turn my nose up at it? (Then again, who am I to think that I can meet those greats?) Here is a snippet of a new piece I am working on, a YA retelling of <i>Twelve Dancing Princesses</i>, set in nineteenth-century Massachusetts.<br />
<br />
Twelve Dreaming Princesses by Nicole Kapise-Perkins<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Every summer of my
childhood, as far back as I can recall, my family traveled to the coast. We’d
stay in our ramshackle cottage perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean,
shadowed by monstrous pines, mysterious in their darkness. My eleven sisters
and I would dance in a ballroom of trees to the waves’ orchestral movements,
twining flowers and vines in our hair as we dreamed of the time when we would
be permitted to attend a real ball, wrapped in cobwebby silks. </div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Our parents
indulged us, allowing us to scramble all day among rocks and flotsam washed up
by the waves. Shells and stones were our jewels, and we packed them carefully
in oak chests hand-carved by our father with scenes from our favorite bedtime
tales and our names inlaid in the cover with ivory. Each box sat at the foot of
each bed, all twelve in a row under the eaves of the cottage roof, each covered
with a quilt hand-stitched by our mother in each of our favorite colors and
shades. The quilts, a rainbow with peach, lemon, seafoam, starlight, scarlet,
lavender, pine, sky blue, rose, sunset orange, midnight blue, even one black,
were a cacophony of cloth, as our mother had stitched them from satin, wool,
silk, cotton, linen, brocade, and panels of lace. The walls of our attic room
were unadorned plain wood, the only ornament being snowy white gauze curtains
hanging at either end of the attic. </div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Bedtime was when
we were sleepy, meals when we hungered. It seems we always ate outside, the
dining room being too small for the crowd of daughters our parents were
raising; regardless, the scarred nine-foot table hosted only eight mismatched
chairs, while the small butcher-block kitchen table stood with only two tall
backless stools. A cracked ceramic bowl filled with apples sat in the middle of
the table, apples picked from the tree that grew beside the door of the cottage
and stored in the cottage’s cool cellar pantry through the winter, apples that
my sisters and I refused to eat, fearing the dark power we were convinced their
starred centers held. Bread, fresh and fragrant, and golden honey, thick frothy
cream from the spotted cow our parents kept, this comprised our meals. We would
gather strawberries from the field surrounding our cliff-top home and cherries
from the trees at the foot of the cliff. These sweet jewels were safe to eat,
the blossoms safe to pluck and toss in a snowfall of petals. All the flowers of
that seaside paradise were ours to play with. All but the apple blossoms. We
felt their sinister magic in their (always at a safe distance) and warned our
children of the dangers to be found in the lovely tree. “Beauty is only skin
deep,” we warned our dollies, then rushed off to seek more seaside treasure, to
feast on more golden clover-scented honey or ruby fruit. </div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Inevitably summer
would draw to a close; the fragrant gilded days made way for twilights spicy
with wood smoke and crisping leaves. The apples on the tree would darken from a
maiden’s blush to lurid wine, all but oozing their hidden poison. Cherries and
strawberries became past perfumes ghosting through our long curls; spiced pears
melted on our tongues instead. My sisters and I always mourned summer’s death.
It was the end of our carefree days, and we knew that as soon as the seasons
turned we would be bundled along and carted away from sunlit sea breezes to
stone walls and dark walnut wainscoting, from beautiful quilts made just for
each of us to dark tapestries stitched to tell of knights’ deeds and deaths. </div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We would look
behind watching our shabby cottage fade away, seemingly swallowed by the kingly
pines and the apple tree that lurked by the door; then, with a sigh, one by one
we would turn our faces homeward, watching as the dark house rose from the depth
of moor and mist. Princesses no longer, we would be shepherded into the shadowy
house and sent to our rooms, only two to each instead of all twelve together.
No more nights spent spinning tales of princes and adventure with the breeze
dusting through the open windows; now our nights were filled with tomes of
literature and history, antagonistic Latin and brooding German, read by
lamplight that flickered off barred windows matted by thick woolen drapes. </div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Laughter faded in
the forbidding halls of our ancestral home. Shadowed corners swallowed light
and ghouls of past glories haunted our quiet steps. Dinner was spent in the
majestic formal dining room, six of us on each side of the great table with our
mother at one end and Father at the other, or, if he was away at sea, his
throne-like chair stood watch. No play here, only quiet voices, proper manners,
and the occasional recitation as Mother required it, to judge our progress at
our lessons. Occasionally one of us elder girls would look up and start to find
her watching us, a calculating look in her light eyes. We were unsure if we
were found wanting, or meeting approval. We wished not to know. </div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
(copyright 2018)<br />
<br />
Please enjoy, please share, but please remember to credit me for this work.<br />
If you are interested in any of the collections I mentioned, I purchased all of them from Amazon (They really like me lately!).<br />
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-91997463623871287562020-05-15T12:39:00.002-04:002020-05-15T13:25:40.791-04:00So. Much. TV.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've never been much of a TV person. Even as a kid I was more likely to pick up a book, unless <em>Voltron, The Pirates of Dark Water</em>, or <em>The Mysterious Cities of Gold</em> was on (anyone remember that one? No? Gods I'm old.) <br />
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In middle- and high school I was a devoted fan of<em> Robin of Sherwood</em>, <em>The Adventures of Sherlock</em> <em>Holmes</em>, and <em>The Highlander</em>. Then I found <em>La Femme Nikita</em>, and then <em>Witchblade</em> and <em>Dark Angel</em> premiered (and then tanked after two seasons each. Much sadness.), and <em>Kingdom Hospital</em> only lasted one season...I'm seeing a pattern here.<br />
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I've been watching quite a bit of television lately; well, for me, anyway! Every Wednesday we pile on the couch with takeout and watch <em>The Masked Singer</em>. It looked like it was going to be a fun show, but it's even better than I expected. Family-friendly, funny, and with great music (mostly...Rob Gronkowski cannot sing!) Scrolling through On Demand one night Josh and I found the Showtime series <em>Penny Dreadful</em> (3 season, 2014 to 2016). Nineteenth century literature is my love, especially gothic lit, so a show featuring literary characters, creepy gothic overtones, and luscious costumes...yes, thank you. I mean, look at Billie Piper in this dress!!!: <br />
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and doesn't Reeve Carney look sharp? A similar series I enjoyed via dvd from my library was <em>Ripper Street</em> (2012-2016). Post-Jack the Ripper London was still terrorized by gruesome murder and mayhem, according to the show's writers. (Really, I don't doubt it.) When <em>The Alienist</em> premiered in 2018 I was thrilled. I read Caleb Carr's book the preceding year--the cover looked interesting--and loved it. <br />
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<em>The Alienist</em> takes place in New York City, but the nature of the crimes causes investigators to wonder if Jack had gone stateside (which was an actual question in the investigation of some American murders of the time period. I am beginning to worry about how much I know about Jack the Ripper. Did I mention I read Hallie Rubenhold's book <em>The Five</em> about Jack's known victims?)<br />
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Another "Saucy Jacky" connection, and a look at the darker side of the nineteenth century. <br />
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I have only watched two episodes of <em>The Alienist</em>. I didn't want to get too far ahead because I know Josh will like it also, and it's more fun watching TV snuggled up to him that all by my lonesome. Sadly, it only lasted for 10 episodes, but I understand that TNT has started filming a sequel based on Caleb Carr's sequel <em>The Angel of Darkness</em>. In the meantime, I think I'll treat myself to the books while I wait. As an aside, I also tried to read Carr's fantasy novel <em>The Legend of Broken</em>, but couldn't get into it (very odd for me!) If anyone has read it, let me know your thoughts and I'll give it another try. </div>
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I'm two episodes into Season 3 of <em>Penny Dreadful</em>, and then Josh and I will jump over to <em>The Alienist.</em> Apparently there is a spin-off <em>Penny Dreadful</em> series called <em>The City of Angels</em>, placed in 1930's Los Angeles. Call me picky but I'm not interested, despite the fact that Natalie Dormer stars in it. It's probably because of the time period. </div>
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Keeping with the book/television connection, I am woefully embarrassed to admit that we still have to finish Game of Thrones. Yes, it ended forever ago, I know! We only made it to season 5, probably only four or five episodes in. I am extremely fortunate that I am still able to work during this time, and for a facility that has the safety of its employees at the top of its priorities. If I were home, I would no doubt be caught up on everything (all of which is off-air. Talk about arriving fashionably late.) No worries of ever running out of stuff to watch, though. Thanks to On Demand I can find pretty much every episode of <em>Ghost Hunters</em> I want! Also, thanks to Pintrest my To Watch list keeps growing (...thanks Pintrest...). <em>Around the World in 80 Days</em> starring David Tennant based on Jules Verne's book; <em>Gentleman Jack</em> (based on the diaries of Ann Lister), BBC One's <em>Dracula</em> (thank you Mr. Stoker), <em>The Last Kingdom</em> based on Bernard Cornwell's series, <em>The Luminaries</em> adapted from Eleanor Cotton's novel, as well as<em> Belgravia</em>, <em>The Nevers</em>, and <em>Miss Scarlet and the Duke</em> are all on my watch list, and I can't wait to fire up the popcorn maker and hit go. </div>
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(I will however, behave myself and restrict TV time to after I have sent out at least ten queries to agents. Can't only watch the drama and drool over costumes!)</div>
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All images from Google...</div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-42599555617353177012020-05-05T14:01:00.002-04:002020-05-05T14:01:33.796-04:00Playing in the Dirt!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am so glad we had a good couple of days this weekend, because A: my apartment needed a good airing, and B: my back steps were looking really shoddy. Two beautiful almost-70 degree days went a long way toward resolving both issues. <br />
Windows were pushed open, screens were popped in, and we left the back door open, much to the delight of the cats, intrepid explorers they. Watching my husband try to her a honeybee out of the kitchen while explaining to it why it didn't want to be in the house was definitely worth it. Liam and I planted strawberries and herbs in outdoor pots and I started my seed flat in the kitchen. This year's container garden attempt includes sweet peppers, a variety of hot peppers, five kinds of tomato, beans, cucumbers, mini squash, radishes, lettuce, and nasturtiums, plus a couple odd balls like cucamelons and jelly melons, because why not? These last two didn't sprout at all last year, but I also just direct-planted them outside. I think squirrels ate them. For good measure, I also picked up a mushroom growing kit. <br />
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I also picked up an ivy plant and a globe basil, but those are for my office window....</div>
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Hopefully I'll see some kind of yield from this year's back step garden. Last year I was too busy with school and didn't pay enough attention to the plants, so nothing really came of it. I read through my small collection of gardening books this weekend, taking notes of what I need to do to keep my plant babies in tip-top shape and not kill the poor things. Keeping my fingers crossed that I will be a good plant Momma this year. </div>
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Before leaving for work this morning I peeked in at my babies. The lettuce, arugula, and radishes have begun to sprout, and some of the tomatoes look like they'll be open by the time I get home this evening. Happy is the child that plays in the dirt!</div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-41446805308998092142020-05-03T12:24:00.004-04:002020-05-03T12:24:52.817-04:00My May TBR and the Goodreads Challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> Hallo and Happy May! I hope you are all enjoying this lovely weather now that May seems to have shaken off the blues. Beltane was a few days ago, but it certainly didn't feel like Beltane: wet, dreary, COLD; today May is living up to her light and lively name, giving us sun, a gentle breeze, and a beautiful greening everywhere. Yesterday I spent far too much money at Home Depot and got everything I needed to start my seeds. (More on that tomorrow) Today I am reveling in the lovely air and making plans for the month which sadly do not include a Memorial Day trip to the seaside or canoeing on the Connecticut River as I want to keep my family and my ladies and gentlemen at work safe, but do include revising wedding plans and researching how to hand-wash a wedding gown. My beautiful girl AlysonRose is getting married on May 30 to a charming, kind young man who absolutely adores her, so I think Nikolas is a keeper. Unfortunately they have had to completely re-think their wedding and push the celebration back a year, but they are still exchanging vows on the 30th. I am so proud of them. They aren't letting the ongoing health crisis get them down; instead they are going forward with their union and are going to face whatever life throws their way together. I can't wait to share photos with you next month! In the meantime, any reliable tips on how to safely hand-clean a beaded wedding gown would be greatly appreciated!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> Later this month I will post the Ellie @ Home Summer Reading List. This should be interesting to put together this year as my library remains closed so I will have to cull the selections from my shelves unless Josh gives me permission to run rampant on Amazon. Actually, Josh doesn't care so long as the bill continue to get paid. (Note: I will not be running rampant on Amazon) I think the theme for this year will be books I haven't read before. I have plenty of those sitting on the shelves, patiently waiting to be read. I'll have the list up in time for Memorial Day, and if anyone wants to read along just drop me a line. Below is my May TBR in no particular order (excluding the Jennifer Roberson series, that is):</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIO7qBhV3f2hYiueBq4hO05RHgyfxKHxeDlpFe1KYc9ahP0AvX_sZqlvmYrmjkzablAYMiWu1wq22HDQiLZcGBbub6xBfbSNb4KjjhoRjEjz_1KbDON73neZCk06uAsd24dII4ZMLcR_U/s1600/May+TBR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="810" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIO7qBhV3f2hYiueBq4hO05RHgyfxKHxeDlpFe1KYc9ahP0AvX_sZqlvmYrmjkzablAYMiWu1wq22HDQiLZcGBbub6xBfbSNb4KjjhoRjEjz_1KbDON73neZCk06uAsd24dII4ZMLcR_U/s320/May+TBR.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<i>Lady Chatterley's Lover</i> by D.H. Lawrence (going to find out why this is such a shocking book!)<br />
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<i>Twice-Told Tales </i>by Nathaniel Hawthorne<br />
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<i>The Portrait of a Lady </i>by Henry James<br />
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<i>The Unicorn Expedition</i> by Satyajit Ray (I have no idea what this is about; I picked it up at a library sale. Apparently it is a YA book. According to Goodreads:<br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #181818; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Merriweather","Georgia",serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Professor Shonku cannot dismiss without proof the possibility that unicorns do exist somewhere on earth. In fact Charles Willard a fellow scientist claimed to have actually seen them in Tibet but unfortunately died shortly afterwards. So when Shonku learns that another expedition is starting off for Tibet he jumps at the opportunity to trace Willard's route and find the unicorns. </span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #181818; font-family: &quot; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #181818; font-family: &quot; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #181818; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Merriweather","Georgia",serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Tibet is just one of the exotic places Professor Shonku's exploits take him in this volume of stories. In the Sahara Desert he comes face to face with a massive pyramid like structure no one knew of earlier he travels underwater in a submarine with two Japanese scientists to investigate the sudden appearance of deadly red fish that have taken to eating humans in the caves of Bolivia he meets a primitive man who has been painting his dwelling with animal figures and strange mathematical formulae and on a peculiar island which has appeared out of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean horrific plants suck out all his learning from his brain. </span><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #181818; font-family: &quot; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: #181818; font-family: &quot; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #181818; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Merriweather","Georgia",serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Professor Shonku is at the height of his ingenuity and daring in this collection and thrills and surprises await us around every bend as we follow him on his astonishing adventures.</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">(It looks fun)</span><br />
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<i>The Country of the Pointed Firs</i> by Sarah Orne Jewett (I've heard a lot about it; Willa Cather claimed it was one of the best books ever written. Guess I should read it)<br />
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<i>Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books</i> by Christine Woodside (I LOVED the Little House Books as a girl. I still own my collection and they are absolutely destroyed. Spines broken, covers torn off, pages falling out. I will never dispose of them. Grandchildren will have to be given shiny new boxed sets.)<br />
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<i>Lab Girl</i> by Hope Jahren (This is a reread for me. I picked it up at a library sale because I remember it was an interesting memoir)<br />
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The <i>Karavans</i> series by Jennifer Roberson (The entire hardcover trilogy was on sale at my library and I wasn't going to pass it up. I loves Roberson's <i>Lady of the Forest </i>and <i>Lady of Sherwood</i>, and her Tiger and Del series, so this was a no-brainer. No idea what it's about. Let's check Goodreads:<br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: "Lato","Helvetica Neue","Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Audrun and her husband Davyd, along with the others of the land of Sancorra, have been left homeless because of the brutal Hecari. Consulting diviners, they learn that their newest child must be born in the peaceful province of Atalanda. They must now travel close to the sinister woodlands of Alisanos, where darkness awaits. Joining a karavan for safety, the family moves ever closer to the dangerous, mystical forest. And, as they are all about to discover, Alisanos is moving ever closer to them</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">(This is the synopsis for book 1, <i>Karavans</i>. Sounds interesting. I'll let you know how it is) </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> Speaking of Goodreads, according to the 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge, I am 6 books ahead of schedule, having read 56 out of 150 so far. Take a look, and set your own goal: </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/19430067</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> I have a confession to make: I've already read <i>Lady Chatterley's Lover</i>. I read it yesterday. I see why it was considered so shocking for the time it was written. Today? Not so much, especially thanks to Anne Rice's erotica and the 50 Shades series that I have not read and have zero interest in reading. I found Lawrence to be easy to read, but the story itself was really dull. Oh well. I can now say I have read one of the most scandalous books written.)</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> All right, this post has gone on forever and blogger has managed to delete it twice on me (thank goodness for the autosave feature) I will sign off for now as I have reading to do, a book list to make, and literary agents to harass. Thanks for checking in, and feel free to leave any thoughts or comments below. See you soon!</span><br />
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-81183097644637306562020-04-30T09:40:00.001-04:002020-04-30T09:40:46.056-04:00The End of Poetry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Well, not really, because poetry is life, and as long as there is life there is poetry. Thank you for reading along during 2020's National Poetry Month. I'll close the month with these words by Ada Limon:<br />
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower<br /> and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,<br /> enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy<br /> and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis<br /> of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god<br /> not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,<br /> enough of the will to go on and not go on or how<br /> a certain light does a certain thing, enough<br /> of the kneeling and the rising and the looking<br /> inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,<br /> the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost<br /> letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and<br /> the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough<br /> of the mother and the child and the father and the child<br /> and enough of the pointing to the world, weary<br /> and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,<br /> enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough<br /> I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,<br /> enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high<br /> water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,<br /> I am asking you to touch me.<br /><br />—<a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flauraolin.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce%26id%3D0e31be3479%26e%3D0f7cb8af92&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cfbb2326d54c241e7cba908d7ed0700f4%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637238486649384966&sdata=6FCtWpIHm4r6ALuDFYgKXJaxxvhEMax11%2FUpy4c1GoM%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://lauraolin.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce&id=0e31be3479&e=0f7cb8af92" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="vUy1Ny3FH04nQmy/hrR5+MAmL3Iq9Sr+LK40VJtTmNjgUQsg3+cao8Idx4XqSvkw+at886FDIe5XMYE57lTs0Zm2Byf3KHE0XJtYPrGeE9kOH6ftt7KJF4/MBIS6p8XZA6LDMxTFBqOTdEIO6jAfb7eRGs42zhuvK7Fuv01v8Ng=" style="color: #c40909; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://lauraolin.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce&id=0e31be3479&e=0f7cb8af92. Click or tap if you trust this link.">The End of Poetry</a>, Ada Limón</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">(from the Laura Olin newsletter)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTN48rFyN5i69q2CkOKgoiN-UJ6yst3FeSzVFZrfClbxv5XqAPRkLO2osW5HgS1f_mqEK8tuZzRXuCos28siPb48ReIKvqGAHESxH7kJDNG-1LqYX-xSdbad5TCg6oOcBfdVv0Ft_IjY/s1600/91377799_10159487463136124_7754639903345868800_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="304" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTN48rFyN5i69q2CkOKgoiN-UJ6yst3FeSzVFZrfClbxv5XqAPRkLO2osW5HgS1f_mqEK8tuZzRXuCos28siPb48ReIKvqGAHESxH7kJDNG-1LqYX-xSdbad5TCg6oOcBfdVv0Ft_IjY/s320/91377799_10159487463136124_7754639903345868800_n.jpg" width="194" /></a></div>
And one of my own:<br />
<br /><br />
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lines From Letters</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">by Nicole Kapise
Perkins</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="line-height: 19.2pt; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: Roboto; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two lonely cross-roads that themselves cross
each other I have walked several times this winter without meeting or
overtaking so much as a single person on foot or on runners.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here we are in the vortex, but this evening
snatching a few moments repose in the “Ladies’ Parlor” for domestic life.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We little dreamed when we began this contest,
optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we
would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of
women.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If I break a law of state or nation it is the
duty of the civil courts to deal with me.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am so full of misery to-night that I am
ridiculous.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Three or four times I have given you the
opportunity to make, gaily & good-humouredly, the transition which seems to
me inevitable; & you have not chosen to do it.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am only one, only one, only one; only one
life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour; only one pair of eyes.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course we are lone survivors, of course the
past that was our lives is at the bottom of an abyss—if the abyss has any
bottom; of course too there’s no use talking unless one particularly wants to.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And so we are justified in taking risks.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This gift, like all the others, is
characterized by simplicity and thoughtfulness, which I hope each member will
make the slogan of their lives.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am just slowly killing myself.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All’s well, and the twilight is like
spring—vague azure and green and silver.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Turn your face to gay, thrilling
instruction—the conquest of more & more amazing natural facts.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The photograph is all I have: it is with me
from the morning when I think of you and of death at night.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know there may be compensations, but have no
heart to look ahead.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A night when I can not sleep—I think the first
one since I am out here—bright moonlight on my door—everything so still but for
a persistent mocking bird—somewhere out there in the night.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The ideas of man often interfere with natural
processes.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: Roboto; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I wanted most desperately to live and still
do, and I thought about you a 1000 times, and wanted to see you again, and
there was the impossible anguish and regret of all the work I had not done, of
all the work I had to do.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If so I will make a prophecy—in ten years time
no one will work for you for either love or money.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My fingers were on his lips, but no sound came
from them for several seconds.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After some thought, I have decided that you
are the most valuable person alive, so for God’s sake take care of yourself.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But if my own conscience tells me I’ve done my
duty—I will always come back to you in the certainty that you’d understand any
fall from the high places, and that my place in your heart would be as big as
ever.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You may not approve of it and it may not be
the form in which you see the ideal—but I would like you to accept, as my
tribute to you, the fact that what I took from you was taken for the figure of
my own god.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I also want to let all of this beauty get
into my body.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now night has come, everything is silent and
peaceful.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the comment on Life’s storage wall, I
wrote: “…a pretty good case can be made out for setting fire to it and starting
fresh.”</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Be comforted, then, that we were serene and
understood with the deepest kind of understanding, that civilization had not as
yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of
life; and that we were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry
on after us.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A desire I have had for a long time has overtaken
me.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I have been mentally blocked for a long
time, first because I didn’t know just what it was I wanted to say about Life,
and also for a reason more difficult to explain.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve written a lot of poems from my heartache
of being without you.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When the question is asked “How many lives are
you willing to sacrifice:--it tears at my heart.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am not afraid of Time or lies or losing
money or defeat.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I want to make love to the world.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart—I’m
in both: if you need me.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For the past few weeks I’ve been evaluating +
reevaluating everything.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There really is nothing for me there.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m beginning to like this fucking case.</span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: Roboto; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<br /><br />
<div align="center" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #201f20; font-family: Roboto; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<br /><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-66007538774378889822020-04-27T10:46:00.001-04:002020-04-27T10:46:19.002-04:00The irrepressible E.E. Cummings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<a href="https://poets.org/poet/e-e-cummings" target="_self"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: Calibri;">E.
E. Cummings</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> - 1894-1962</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond<br />
any experience,your eyes have their silence:<br />
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,<br />
or which i cannot touch because they are too near</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">your slightest look easily will unclose me<br />
though i have closed myself as fingers,<br />
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens<br />
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">or if your wish be to close me,i and<br />
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,<br />
as when the heart of this flower imagines<br />
the snow carefully everywhere descending;</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals<br />
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture<br />
compels me with the colour of its countries,<br />
rendering death and forever with each breathing</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(i do not know what it is about you that closes<br />
and opens;only something in me understands<br />
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)<br />
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
Post Impressions (VI)</div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">into the strenuous briefness</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
Life:</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
handorgans and April</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
darkness,friends</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">i charge laughing.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
Into the hair-thin tints</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
of yellow dawn,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
into the women-coloured twilight</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">i smilingly</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
glide. I</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
into the big vermilion departure</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
swim,sayingly;</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">(Do you think?)the</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
i do,world</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
is probably made</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
of roses & hello:</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">(of solongs and,ashes)</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">(and one more for good measure, because as of Wednesday I shall be the yonger deadfromtheneckup graduate!)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434; font-family: "Poets Electra"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">yonder
deadfromtheneckup graduate of a<br />
somewhat obscure to be sure university spends<br />
her time looking picturesque under</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #343434; font-family: "Poets Electra"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the as it happens
quite<br />
erroneous impression that he</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #343434; font-family: "Poets Electra"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">nascitur</span></div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-74097470090667769582020-04-23T09:38:00.001-04:002020-04-23T09:38:25.003-04:00Newsletters! <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: 15px;"> I am a newsletter junkie. I proudly admit it! I should probably scale back because I don't get the chance to read all of them daily, but then I DO spend my Sunday mornings enjoying a mug of tea and getting caught up, so that's okay, right? So, here is the list of newsletters I receive in my inbox daily or weekly. (This really does have a poetry connection, I swear) Check some of these out. They are both informative and entertaining, and cover such topics as art, literature, self-care, politics, civil rights, current events, and general human interest.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Laura Olin Newsletter: <a href="https://www.lauraolin.com/newsletter/">https://www.lauraolin.com/newsletter/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Ann Friedman Weekly: <a href="https://www.annfriedman.com/weekly">https://www.annfriedman.com/weekly</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Brain Pickings by Maria Popova: <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/">https://www.brainpickings.org/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Call Your Girlfriend (a great podcast; their newsletter is called The Bleed): <a href="https://www.callyourgirlfriend.com/">https://www.callyourgirlfriend.com/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Girls' Night In: <a href="https://girlsnightinclub.com/">https://girlsnightinclub.com/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">The Snoozeletter: <a href="https://www.thesnoozeletter.com/">https://www.thesnoozeletter.com/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">The Lily (from The Washington Post): <a href="https://www.thelily.com/">https://www.thelily.com/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Verily Magazine: <a href="https://verilymag.com/2018/12/subscribe-to-verily-yours">https://verilymag.com/2018/12/subscribe-to-verily-yours</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">HuffPost Must Reads: <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/newsletters/must-reads">https://www.huffpost.com/newsletters/must-reads</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Career Contessa News: <a href="https://careercontessa.leadpages.co/subscribe/">https://careercontessa.leadpages.co/subscribe/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">The Good Stuff (from CNN): <a href="https://www.cnn.com/specials/us/the-good-stuff">https://www.cnn.com/specials/us/the-good-stuff</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">The Newsette: <a href="https://thenewsette.com/newsletter/">https://thenewsette.com/newsletter/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Smarter Living Newsletter (from The New York Times): <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/smarter-living">https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/smarter-living</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">The Skimm: <a href="https://www.theskimm.com/">https://www.theskimm.com/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">This lovely poem is taken from today's edition of the Laura Olin Newsletter, as is the exquisite video link that follows:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span><span style="font-size: small;">Darling,<br /> Je fais ce que je peux.<br /> Which is to say, midwinter<br /> and poems are as difficult as flowers.<br /> Roots are secrets, my heart<br /> mulch-heavy—a flowering shrub<br /> under leaves and leaves,<br /> rotting beech and oak.</span><a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flauraolin.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce%26id%3D1e72d11f01%26e%3D0f7cb8af92&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cf9592cfd05474568e80508d7e77dd848%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637232400000635359&sdata=7urLgx86Ak7vr6iN0ItMUCzRZf7DcmnJ07Eqb1xapp8%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://lauraolin.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce&id=1e72d11f01&e=0f7cb8af92" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="L0DAw0aJgz59qog6pf+zGFHpGiRt+4a/dbP6UlMLkMDY+5z/hCs4za9Z+shLMEy2w+YB+Cd4esbFTbxV1U1qYt24CkBn3ysAoM9D7mn/pwjU8BG3ZIm+Bo0JVdLvlnYwxdhXlir5IDSsdhK1nZASgb/wYc6pJASVZGbIHh7+iGw=" style="color: #c40909; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://lauraolin.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce&id=1e72d11f01&e=0f7cb8af92. Click or tap if you trust this link.">I do what I can</a><span style="font-size: small;">, which is to say,<br /> there is little going on aboveground.<br /><br />—Sylvie Legris</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><a href="https://www.bbg.org/news/stroll_through_the_japanese_garden_in_bloom_video">https://www.bbg.org/news/stroll_through_the_japanese_garden_in_bloom_video</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUVUm961hLMkMFq6JnQEwBeyltEV4Ff1LdkExhjOAlyw_jCWi6hqfP0KP5r0EPd8sNtbtHr3WdBm0fmedE9wvbC8Lq-90vOgGRum-WervHNPexKn3MDrsjU_-0QBQUBoqvEmKA0MYX3A/s1600/featured_76.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="770" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUUVUm961hLMkMFq6JnQEwBeyltEV4Ff1LdkExhjOAlyw_jCWi6hqfP0KP5r0EPd8sNtbtHr3WdBm0fmedE9wvbC8Lq-90vOgGRum-WervHNPexKn3MDrsjU_-0QBQUBoqvEmKA0MYX3A/s320/featured_76.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 15px;">Photo from <a href="https://www.theinvisibletourist.com/best-time-to-visit-japan-for-cherry-blossoms/">https://www.theinvisibletourist.com/best-time-to-visit-japan-for-cherry-blossoms/</a> via Google</span></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-41999153040253624152020-04-22T08:48:00.004-04:002020-04-22T08:48:59.555-04:00Heal the world through joy...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_5ea03be8c12f94207199460">
<span style="font-size: small;">I have a fragment of loveliness for you, written by Terry Tempest Williams, from her book <em>When Women Were Birds</em>. I have not read this volume yet, but it is on my list.</span><br />
<br /><br />
<br /><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“Once upon a time, when women were birds, <br /> there was the simple understanding that <br /> to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk <br /> was to heal the world through joy. <br /> The<span class="text_exposed_hide">...</span></span><span class="text_exposed_show"><span style="font-size: large;"> birds still remember <br /> what we have forgotten, <br /> that the world is meant to be <br /> celebrated.”</span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<span style="font-size: large;">~Terry Tempest Williams</span><br />
<br />― <span id="quote_book_link_13166601"><a class="authorOrTitle" href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/18345824">When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice</a> </span><br />
<span><a aria-label="Visit Amazon.com" class="eHAdSb" data-ved="0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNi-k-mI_OgCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWhen-Women-Were-Birds-Fifty-four%2Fdp%2F1250024110&psig=AOvVaw2u9-BScrwHeehn_Mg-Zrz0&ust=1587646116536000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNi-k-mI_OgCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI" jsaction="focus:kvVbVb; mousedown:kvVbVb; touchstart:kvVbVb;" rel="noopener" rlhc="1" role="link" saprocessedanchor="true" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><img alt="When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice: Williams ..." class="n3VNCb" data-noaft="1" jsaction="load:XAeZkd;" jsname="HiaYvf" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Z-j1-6GGL._SX300_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" style="height: 499px; margin: 0px; width: 302px;" /></a></span></div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-16136164468809569162020-04-21T10:11:00.000-04:002020-04-21T10:11:03.330-04:00Tell the Bees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Tell the Bees by Sarah Lindsay</span></div>
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Tell the bees. They require news of the house; </div>
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they must know, lest they sicken </div>
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from the gap between their ignorance and our grief. </div>
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Speak in a whisper. Tie a black swatch </div>
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to a stick and attach the stick to their hive. </div>
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From the fortress of casseroles and desserts </div>
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built in the kitchen these past few weeks </div>
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as though hunger were the enemy, remove </div>
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a slice of cake and lay it where they can </div>
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slowly draw it in, making a mournful sound. </div>
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And tell the fly that has knocked on the window all day. </div>
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Tell the redbird that rammed the glass from outside </div>
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and stands too dazed to go. Tell the grass, </div>
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though it's already guessed, and the ground clenched in furrows; </div>
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tell the water you spill on the ground, </div>
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then all the water will know. </div>
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And the last shrunken pearl of snow in its hiding place. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Tell the blighted elms, and the young oaks we plant instead. </div>
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The water bug, while it scribbles </div>
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a hundred lines that dissolve behind it. </div>
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The lichen, while it etches deeper </div>
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its single rune. The boulders, letting their fissures widen, </div>
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the pebbles, which have no more to lose, </div>
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the hills—they will be slightly smaller, as always, </div>
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<br /></div>
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when the bees fly out tomorrow to look for sweetness </div>
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and find their way </div>
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because nothing else has changed.</div>
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Source: <em>Poetry</em> (October 2008) </div>
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<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51682/tell-the-bees">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51682/tell-the-bees</a></div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-55494260518972692782020-04-20T15:06:00.001-04:002020-04-20T15:06:34.955-04:00Two for your Monday!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><a href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3Db63a0ed660%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7C367dee79725f47b7520e08d7e46a1e0f%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637229016755744320&sdata=aL%2F%2FhYd1J4YYZ41GmU6beMjPwibUcg2s8bD2DQ0o4gs%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=b63a0ed660&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link."><span style="color: blue; font-family: Calibri;">Introduction
to Poetry</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">By Billy Collins </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></b></div>
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<td style="background: rgb(246, 246, 246); border-image: none; border: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 22.5pt; width: 100%;" valign="top" width="100%"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I ask them to take a poem</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">and hold it up to the light</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">like a color slide</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">or press an ear against its hive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I say drop a mouse into a poem</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">and watch him probe his way out,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">or walk inside the poem’s room</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">and feel the walls for a light switch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I want them to waterski</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">across the surface of a poem</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">waving at the author’s name on the shore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But all they want to do</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">is tie the poem to a chair with rope</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">and torture a confession out of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">They begin beating it with a hose</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">to find out what it really means.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from <i>The
Apple that Astonished Paris.</i> Copyright </span><span style="font-family: "Tahoma",sans-serif;">�</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the
University of Arkansas Press. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Source: The Apple that Astonished Paris ( University
of Arkansas Press, 1996 ) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
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<div class="x_poem" style="line-height: 1.6;">
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Believe in this. Young apple seeds,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In blue skies, radiating young breast,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Not in blue-suited insects,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Infesting society’s garments.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Tearing the night into intricate shreds,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Putting it back together again,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In cool logical patterns,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Not in the sick controllers,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Who created only the Bomb.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
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Ring louder in your ears</div>
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Than the screechings mouthed</div>
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In mildewed editorials.</div>
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Listen to the music of centuries,</div>
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Rising above the mushroom time.</div>
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Bob Kaufman, “Believe, Believe” from <em>Cranial Guitar</em>. Copyright © 1996 by Eileen Kaufman. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press. www.coffeehousepress.org </div>
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Source: <em>Cranial Guitar</em> ( Coffee House Press, 1996 ) </div>
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Both poems from the Poetry Foundation</div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-32533587752658259672020-04-17T09:29:00.000-04:002020-04-17T09:29:29.140-04:00Finding Joy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> During this time of uncertainty and fear, I am reminded that happiness and moments of joy are equally important as the precautions we are taking to prevent illness. Yes, we are worried about our loved ones, wondering when this virus will finally be controlled and we can go back to hugging our friends and visiting our out-of-state children. I work in a health-care facility. Every day I am witness to the strength of character of a hard-working team of environmental service staff and CNAs. Every day I go home to a bouncy, wiggly, oh-so-happy little boy who is enjoying his extended vacation from school but longs to go out and play at the park. He isn't letting this shutdown dampen his spirits too much, though. Corny jokes, complicated Lego structures, impromptu dance parties, and sweet hugs abound. My little boy is reminding me that joy is to be found everywhere, if I only take the time to look. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: small;">Poem of Joys</span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">by <span id="author" itemprop="author"><a href="https://www.poetrysoup.com/walt_whitman" id="ContentPane_FormView1_PoetPoemsLink2" title="Walt Whitman">Walt Whitman</a></span> </span></div>
<pre id="poem" itemprop="text"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: small;"> 1
O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.
O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—I will have thousands of
globes,
and all time.
2
O the engineer’s joys!
To go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam—the merry shriek—the steam-whistle—the laughing
locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds—the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and all through the forenoon.
O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys!
The saddle—the gallop—the pressure upon the seat—the cool gurgling by the
ears
and hair.
3
O the fireman’s joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells—shouts!—I pass the crowd—I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena, in perfect condition,
conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human Soul is capable of
generating
and emitting in steady and limitless floods.
4
O the mother’s joys!
The watching—the endurance—the precious love—the anguish—the patiently
yielded life.
O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation;
The joy of soothing and pacifying—the joy of concord and harmony.
O to go back to the place where I was born!
To hear the birds sing once more!
To ramble about the house and barn, and over the fields, once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
5
O male and female!
O the presence of women! (I swear there is nothing more exquisite to me than the mere
presence
of women;)
O for the girl, my mate! O for the happiness with my mate!
O the young man as I pass! O I am sick after the friendship of him who, I fear, is
indifferent
to me.
O the streets of cities!
The flitting faces—the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot tell how welcome
they
are to me.
6
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast!
O to continue and be employ’d there all my life!
O the briny and damp smell—the shore—the salt weeds exposed at low water,
The work of fishermen—the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher.
O it is I!
I come with my clam-rake and spade! I come with my eel-spear;
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them—I joke at my work, like a mettlesome young man.
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ice—I have
a
small axe to cut holes in the ice;
Behold me, well-clothed, going gaily, or returning in the afternoon—my brood of tough
boys
accompaning me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else so well as they
love to
be with me,
By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.
Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots, where they are
sunk
with heavy stones, (I know the buoys;)
O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water, as I row, just before sunrise,
toward the buoys;
I pull the wicker pots up slantingly—the dark-green lobsters are desperate with their
claws, as I take them out—I insert wooden pegs in the joints of their pincers,
I go to all the places, one after another, and then row back to the shore,
There, in a huge kettle of boiling water, the lobsters shall be boil’d till their
color
becomes scarlet.
Or, another time, mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles:
Or, another time, fishing for rock-fish, in Chesapeake Bay—I one of the brown-faced
crew:
Or, another time, trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body,
My left foot is on the gunwale—my right arm throws the coils of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions.
7
O boating on the rivers!
The voyage down the Niagara, (the St.
Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
steamers,
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
raftsmen
with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook their supper at
evening.
O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from a puny and pious life!
Something unproved! Something in a trance!
Something escaped from the anchorage, and driving free.
O to work in mines, or forging iron!
Foundry casting—the foundry itself—the rude high roof—the ample and
shadow’d space,
The furnace—the hot liquid pour’d out and running.
8
O to resume the joys of the soldier:
To feel the presence of a brave general! to feel his sympathy!
To behold his calmness! to be warm’d in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle! to hear the bugles play, and the drums beat!
To hear the crash of artillery! to see the glittering of the bayonets and musket-barrels
in the
sun!
To see men fall and die, and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood! to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.
9
O the whaleman’s joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
I feel the ship’s motion under me—I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning me,
I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head—There—she blows!
—Again I spring up the rigging, to look with the rest—We see—we descend,
wild
with excitement,
I leap in the lower’d boat—We row toward our prey, where he lies,
We approach, stealthy and silent—I see the mountainous mass, lethargic, basking,
I see the harpooneer standing up—I see the weapon dart from his vigorous arm:
O swift, again, now, far out in the ocean, the wounded whale, settling, running to
windward,
tows me;
—Again I see him rise to breathe—We row close again,
I see a lance driven through his side, press’d deep, turn’d in the wound,
Again we back off—I see him settle again—the life is leaving him fast,
As he rises, he spouts blood—I see him swim in circles narrower and narrower, swiftly
cutting the water—I see him die;
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then falls flat and still in
the
bloody foam.
10
O the old manhood of me, my joy!
My children and grand-children—my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
O the ripen’d joy of womanhood!
O perfect happiness at last!
I am more than eighty years of age—my hair, too, is pure white—I am the most
venerable mother;
How clear is my mind! how all people draw nigh to me!
What attractions are these, beyond any before? what bloom, more than the bloom of youth?
What beauty is this that descends upon me, and rises out of me?
O the orator’s joys!
To inflate the chest—to roll the thunder of the voice out from the ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.
O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself—receiving identity through
materials,
and loving them—observing characters, and absorbing them;
O my soul, vibrated back to me, from them—from facts, sight, hearing, touch, my
phrenology, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like;
The real life of my senses and flesh, transcending my senses and flesh;
My body, done with materials—my sight, done with my material eyes;
Proved to me this day, beyond cavil, that it is not my material eyes which finally see,
Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates.
11
O the farmer’s joys!
Ohioan’s, Illinoisian’s, Wisconsinese’, Kanadian’s, Iowan’s,
Kansian’s, Missourian’s, Oregonese’ joys;
To rise at peep of day, and pass forth nimbly to work,
To plow land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To train orchards—to graft the trees—to gather apples in the fall.
O the pleasure with trees!
The orchard—the forest—the oak, cedar, pine, pekan-tree,
The honey-locust, black-walnut, cottonwood, and magnolia.
12
O Death! the voyage of Death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for reasons;
Myself, discharging my excrementitious body, to be burn’d, or render’d to
powder, or
buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices,
eternal
uses of the earth.
13
O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore!
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep—to race naked along the shore.
O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all—that there are no bounds;
To emerge, and be of the sky—of the sun and moon, and the flying clouds, as one with
them.
O the joy of a manly self-hood!
Personality—to be servile to none—to defer to none—not to any tyrant, known
or
unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze, or with a flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice, out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.
14
Know’st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions, and of the merry word, and laughing face?
Joys of the glad, light-beaming day—joy of the wide-breath’d games?
Joy of sweet music—joy of the lighted ball-room, and the dancers?
Joy of the friendly, plenteous dinner—the strong carouse, and drinking?
15
Yet, O my soul supreme!
Know’st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart—the tender, gloomy heart?
Joy of the solitary walk—the spirit bowed yet proud—the suffering and the
struggle?
The agonistic throes, the extasies—joys of the solemn musings, day or night?
Joys of the thought of Death—the great spheres Time and Space?
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals—the Divine Wife—the sweet,
eternal, perfect Comrade?
Joys all thine own, undying one—joys worthy thee, O Soul.
16
O, while I live, to be the ruler of life—not a slave,
To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
No fumes—no ennui—no more complaints, or scornful criticisms.
O me repellent and ugly!
To these proud laws of the air, the water, and the ground, proving my interior Soul
impregnable,
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
O to attract by more than attraction!
How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys none of the rest,
It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.
17
O joy of suffering!
To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face!
To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!
18
O, to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady, unendurable land!
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses;
To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail, and sail, and sail!
19
O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on,
To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship, full of rich words—full of joys.</span></pre>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-73073226811952832272020-04-17T09:09:00.001-04:002020-04-17T09:09:38.650-04:00Check out my interview on EvOke!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The gracious and talented Rebecca Buchanan, editor -in-chief of Eternal Haunted Summer (<a href="https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/">https://eternalhauntedsummer.com/</a>) interviewed me for EvOke e-zine (<a href="https://medium.com/ev0ke">https://medium.com/ev0ke</a>)<br />
Follow the link and check it out!<br />
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<br /><br />
<a href="https://medium.com/ev0ke/interview-nicole-kapise-perkins-958f7ace1d0b?fbclid=IwAR0cio-TPiMn70DIDVc_hZISkYD0a3byvX9svi4BC2Mku-9tKKvme-CguVc&_branch_match_id=779680303622574465">https://medium.com/ev0ke/interview-nicole-kapise-perkins-958f7ace1d0b?fbclid=IwAR0cio-TPiMn70DIDVc_hZISkYD0a3byvX9svi4BC2Mku-9tKKvme-CguVc&_branch_match_id=779680303622574465</a></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-28203058841938926412020-04-16T11:06:00.002-04:002020-04-16T11:07:15.516-04:00A Posey of Alcott Poems<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today is my birthday, 43 years young! I have decided to treat myself (and you) to a collection of poems by my all-time favorite author, the incomparable Louisa. (Really, it's just an excuse to read all the Alcott I want today, but that doesn't matter, does it?)<br />
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Fairy Song - Poem by Louisa May Alcott<br />
<br />
<br />
The moonlight fades from flower and rose <br />
And the stars dim one by one; <br />
The tale is told, the song is sung, <br />
And the Fairy feast is done. <br />
The night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers, <br />
And sings to them, soft and low. <br />
The early birds erelong will wake: <br />
'T is time for the Elves to go. <br />
<br />
O'er the sleeping earth we silently pass, <br />
Unseen by mortal eye, <br />
And send sweet dreams, as we lightly float <br />
Through the quiet moonlit sky;-- <br />
For the stars' soft eyes alone may see, <br />
And the flowers alone may know, <br />
The feasts we hold, the tales we tell; <br />
So't is time for the Elves to go. <br />
<br />
From bird, and blossom, and bee, <br />
We learn the lessons they teach; <br />
And seek, by kindly deeds, to win <br />
A loving friend in each. <br />
And though unseen on earth we dwell, <br />
Sweet voices whisper low, <br />
And gentle hearts most joyously greet <br />
The Elves where'er they go. <br />
<br />
When next we meet in the Fairy dell, <br />
May the silver moon's soft light <br />
Shine then on faces gay as now, <br />
And Elfin hearts as light. <br />
Now spread each wing, for the eastern sky <br />
With sunlight soon shall glow. <br />
The morning star shall light us home: <br />
Farewell! for the Elves must go. <br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
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<br />
The Rock And The Bubble - Poem by Louisa May Alcott<br />
<br />
<br />
Oh! a bare, brown rock <br />
Stood up in the sea, <br />
The waves at its feet <br />
Dancing merrily. <br />
<br />
A little bubble <br />
Once came sailing by, <br />
And thus to the rock <br />
Did it gayly cry,-- <br />
<br />
"Ho! clumsy brown stone, <br />
Quick, make way for me: <br />
I'm the fairest thing <br />
That floats on the sea. <br />
<br />
"See my rainbow-robe, <br />
See my crown of light, <br />
My glittering form, <br />
So airy and bright. <br />
<br />
"O'er the waters blue, <br />
I'm floating away, <br />
To dance by the shore <br />
With the foam and spray. <br />
<br />
"Now, make way, make way; <br />
For the waves are strong, <br />
And their rippling feet <br />
Bear me fast along." <br />
<br />
But the great rock stood <br />
Straight up in the sea: <br />
It looked gravely down, <br />
And said pleasantly-- <br />
<br />
"Little friend, you must <br />
Go some other way;<br />
For I have not stirred <br />
this many a long day. <br />
<br />
"Great billows have dashed, <br />
And angry winds blown; <br />
But my sturdy form <br />
Is not overthrown. <br />
<br />
"Nothing can stir me <br />
In the air or sea; <br />
Then, how can I move, <br />
Little friend, for thee?" <br />
<br />
Then the waves all laughed <br />
In their voices sweet; <br />
And the sea-birds looked, <br />
From their rocky seat, <br />
<br />
At the bubble gay, <br />
Who angrily cried, <br />
While its round cheek glowed <br />
With a foolish pride,-- <br />
<br />
"You SHALL move for me; <br />
And you shall not mock <br />
At the words I say, <br />
You ugly, rough rock.<br />
<br />
"Be silent, wild birds! <br />
While stare you so? <br />
Stop laughing, rude waves, <br />
And help me to go! <br />
<br />
"For I am the queen <br />
Of the ocean here, <br />
And this cruel stone <br />
Cannot make me fear." <br />
<br />
Dashing fiercely up, <br />
With a scornful word, <br />
Foolish Bubble broke; <br />
But Rock never stirred. <br />
<br />
Then said the sea-birds, <br />
Sitting in their nests <br />
To the little ones <br />
Leaning on their breasts,-- <br />
<br />
"Be not like Bubble, <br />
Headstrong, rude, and vain, <br />
Seeking by violence <br />
Your object to gain;<br />
<br />
<br />
"But be like the rock, <br />
Steadfast, true, and strong, <br />
Yet cheerful and kind, <br />
And firm against wrong. <br />
<br />
"Heed, little birdlings, <br />
And wiser you'll be <br />
For the lesson learned <br />
To-day by the sea." <br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
<br />
Lullaby - Poem by Louisa May Alcott<br />
<br />
<br />
Now the day is done, <br />
Now the shepherd sun <br />
Drives his white flocks from the sky; <br />
Now the flowers rest <br />
On their mother's breast, <br />
Hushed by her low lullaby. <br />
<br />
Now the glowworms glance, <br />
Now the fireflies dance, <br />
Under fern-boughs green and high; <br />
And the western breeze <br />
To the forest trees <br />
Chants a tuneful lullaby. <br />
<br />
Now 'mid shadows deep <br />
Falls blessed sleep, <br />
Like dew from the summer sky; <br />
And the whole earth dreams, <br />
In the moon's soft beams, <br />
While night breathes a lullaby. <br />
<br />
Now, birdlings, rest, <br />
In your wind-rocked nest, <br />
Unscared by the owl's shrill cry; <br />
For with folded wings <br />
Little Brier swings, <br />
And singeth your lullaby. <br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
<br />
My Doves - Poem by Louisa May Alcott<br />
<br />
<br />
OPPOSITE my chamber window, <br />
On the sunny roof, at play, <br />
High above the city's tumult, <br />
Flocks of doves sit day by day. <br />
Shining necks and snowy bosoms, <br />
Little rosy, tripping feet, <br />
Twinkling eyes and fluttering wings, <br />
Cooing voices, low and sweet,- <br />
<br />
Graceful games and friendly meetings, <br />
Do I daily watch and see. <br />
For these happy little neighbors <br />
Always seem at peace to be. <br />
On my window-ledge, to lure them, <br />
Crumbs of bread I often strew, <br />
And, behind the curtain hiding, <br />
Watch them flutter to and fro. <br />
<br />
Soon they cease to fear the giver, <br />
Quick are they to feel my love, <br />
And my alms are freely taken <br />
By the shyest little dove. <br />
In soft flight, they circle downward, <br />
Peep in through the window-pane; <br />
Stretch their gleaming necks to greet me, <br />
Peck and coo, and come again. <br />
<br />
Faithful little friends and neighbors, <br />
For no wintry wind or rain, <br />
Household cares or airy pastimes, <br />
Can my loving birds restrain. <br />
Other friends forget, or linger, <br />
But each day I surely know <br />
That my doves will come and leave here <br />
Little footprints in the snow. <br />
<br />
So, they teach me the sweet lesson, <br />
That the humblest may give <br />
Help and hope, and in so doing, <br />
Learn the truth by which we live; <br />
For the heart that freely scatters <br />
Simple charities and loves, <br />
Lures home content, and joy, and peace, <br />
Like a soft-winged flock of doves. <br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
<br />
Hither, Hither - Poem by Louisa May Alcott<br />
<br />
<br />
Hither, hither, from thy home,<br />
Airy sprite, I bid thee come!<br />
Born of roses, fed on dew,<br />
Charms and potions canst thou brew?<br />
Bring me here, with elfin speed,<br />
The fragrant philter which I need.<br />
Make it sweet and swift and strong,<br />
Spirit, answer now my song!<br />
<br />
Hither I come,<br />
From my airy home,<br />
Afar in the silver moon.<br />
Take the magic spell,<br />
And use it well,<br />
Or its power will vanish soon! <br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
<br />
The Mother Moon - Poem by Louisa May Alcott<br />
<br />
<br />
THE moon upon the wide sea <br />
Placidly looks down, <br />
Smiling with her mild face, <br />
Though the ocean frown. <br />
Clouds may dim her brightness, <br />
But soon they pass away, <br />
And she shines out, unaltered, <br />
O'er the little waves at play. <br />
So 'mid the storm or sunshine, <br />
Wherever she may go, <br />
Led on by her hidden power <br />
The wild see must plow. <br />
<br />
As the tranquil evening moon <br />
Looks on that restless sea, <br />
So a mother's gentle face, <br />
Little child, is watching thee. <br />
Then banish every tempest, <br />
Chase all your clouds away, <br />
That smoothly and brightly <br />
Your quiet heart may play. <br />
Let cheerful looks and actions <br />
Like shining ripples flow, <br />
Following the mother's voice, <br />
Singing as they go. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><br />
All poems from <a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/louisa-may-alcott/poems/page-2/?a=a&l=3&y">https://www.poemhunter.com/louisa-may-alcott/poems/page-2/?a=a&l=3&y</a>=</div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-4555865262159861592020-04-15T11:31:00.001-04:002020-04-15T11:31:42.882-04:00Poems of Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Home [“Often I had gone this way before”] </span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">By Edward Thomas </span><br />
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Often I had gone this way before:</div>
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But now it seemed I never could be</div>
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And never had been anywhere else;</div>
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'Twas home; one nationality</div>
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We had, I and the birds that sang,</div>
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One memory.</div>
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They welcomed me. I had come back</div>
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That eve somehow from somewhere far:</div>
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The April mist, the chill, the calm,</div>
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Meant the same thing familiar</div>
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And pleasant to us, and strange too,</div>
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Yet with no bar.</div>
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The thrush on the oaktop in the lane</div>
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Sang his last song, or last but one;</div>
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And as he ended, on the elm</div>
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Another had but just begun</div>
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His last; they knew no more than I</div>
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The day was done.</div>
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Then past his dark white cottage front</div>
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A labourer went along, his tread</div>
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Slow, half with weariness, half with ease;</div>
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And, through the silence, from his shed</div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The sound of sawing rounded all</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">That silence said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><strong>My Home by Ella Wheeler Wilcox</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><strong><br /></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">“Far from the city's dust and heat, </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> I get but sounds and odours sweet. <br /> Who can wonder I love to stay, <br /> Week after week, here hidden away, <br /> In this sly nook that I love the best-- <br /> This little brown house like a ground-bird's nest?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><h3 class="cat-poem-title pod-selection">
<a href="https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/amos-russel-wells/morning-windows/"><span style="font-size: small;">Morning Windows</span></a></h3>
<div class="indent">
<div class="intro">
<span style="font-size: small;">by Amos Russel Wells</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">►</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>
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<blockquote class="line-style-quote">
<div class="ExcerptText">
<span style="font-size: small;"> The brightest thing a house can do,<br /><span class="indent-single">When morning fills the skies,</span><br /> Is just to catch the sun's first rays,<br /><span class="indent-single">And flash the brilliant prize.</span></span></div>
<div class="ExcerptText">
<span style="font-size: small;"> No eighty-candle lights within<br /><span class="indent-single">Can match the dazzling sight,</span><br /> And every window-pane becomes<br /><span class="indent-single">A fusillade of light!</span></span></div>
<div style="display: block;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> Thus, thus it is when households kneel<br /><span class="indent-single">In humble morning prayer.</span><br /> The very Sun of Righteousness<br /><span class="indent-single">Is caught and captured there:</span></span></div>
<div style="display: block;">
<span style="font-size: small;"> And all the day, in all its ways,<br /><span class="indent-single">However dull they be,</span><br /> The happy windows of that home<br /><span class="indent-single">Are scintillant to see!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Poems from:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">The Poetry Foundation</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/inspire-me/just-for-fun/the-best-home-themed-poems">https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/inspire-me/just-for-fun/the-best-home-themed-poems</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a href="https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/poems-about-home/">https://discoverpoetry.com/poems/poems-about-home/</a></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><a aria-label="Visit TripAdvisor" class="eHAdSb" data-ved="0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOjE2PTf6ugCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAN" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tripadvisor.com%2FLocationPhotoDirectLink-g41869-d1072370-i195764042-The_Rendezvous-Turners_Falls_Massachusetts.html&psig=AOvVaw1y9ahGT5QAHJapgRYUMPk-&ust=1587051018840000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOjE2PTf6ugCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAN" jsaction="focus:kvVbVb; mousedown:kvVbVb; touchstart:kvVbVb;" rel="noopener" rlhc="1" role="link" saprocessedanchor="true" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><img alt="The Rendezvous - Picture of The Rendezvous, Turners Falls ..." class="n3VNCb" data-noaft="1" jsaction="load:XAeZkd;" jsname="HiaYvf" src="https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0b/ab/1f/4a/the-rendezvous.jpg" style="height: 450px; margin: 0px; width: 338px;" /></a> A fixture of my hometown....</span></span></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-33967568525014788662020-04-13T13:00:00.001-04:002020-04-13T13:00:08.184-04:00A Dozen Roses for my Wild Irish Rose<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My daughter AlysonRose turned 21 on Sunday, and I was unable to spend her milestone birthday with her. She was in pretty good spirits about it (I mean, who doesn't enjoy 21?). Rose has always been a fierce, free spirit, a wild faerie child. I called her my Wild Irish Rose, because Alyson is the Irish form of the name Alice, and from birth this child was (and remains!) Hell on wheels. Happy happy 21, AlysonRose. Don't ever change.<br />
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<strong>1. A Red, Red Rose</strong><br />
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose<br /> That’s newly sprung in June;<br /> O my Luve’s like the melodie<br /> That’s sweetly play’d in tune.<br />
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,<br /> So deep in luve am I:<br /> And I will luve thee still, my dear,<br /> Till a’ the seas gang dry:<br />
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,<br /> And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:<br /> I will luve thee still, my dear,<br /> While the sands o’ life shall run.<br />
And fare thee well, my only Luve<br /> And fare thee well, a while!<br /> And I will come again, my Luve,<br /> Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.<br />
— <a href="http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/preview?u=9e5e4dd4731a9649c1dd1cf58&id=a8ab20f06b" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Robert Burns, </a> for more see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849342326/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=seedinston-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1849342326" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Complete Poems</a><br />
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<strong> 2. The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart</strong><br />
All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,<br /> The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,<br /> The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,<br /> Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.<br />
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;<br /> I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,<br /> With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold<br /> For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.<br />
<a href="http://us2.forward-to-friend1.com/forward/preview?u=9e5e4dd4731a9649c1dd1cf58&id=71672a0d88" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">— W.B. Yeats, </a> for more see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684807319/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=seedinston-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0684807319" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Collected Poems</a><br />
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<strong>3. Had I not been awake, that</strong><br /> a child<br /> then whispered in the night, humbly<br /> of a rose—a little rose asleep<br /> in the meadow amid the lupine—of<br /> a shooting-star beyond the daystar, keeping<br /> at the horizon:<br /> kindly, the faint star wanders—<br />and time, perceptibly<br /> beyond her breath; time, the edge<br /> of its light, a ghost<br /> I am within her eyes, and from my hands<br /> rendered unable to reach for her, she, too, a ghost.<br /> I had loved flowers that faded, these<br /> rose petals had I placed<br /> gently on her closed eyes, upon her eyelids touched<br /> the edge of a cool petal, near<br /> until it would be felt cool in time no longer, this<br /> under one small star wandering, perhaps<br /> awake, this<br /> romance of bones kept as relics—after<br /> faith and plighted troth has faded—but kept<br /> nonetheless, as<br /> the scent of rosebuds from the dust.<br />
— John Daniel Thieme, appeared at <a href="http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/preview?u=9e5e4dd4731a9649c1dd1cf58&id=72df314555" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Every Day Poems</a><br />
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4. The Rose Family - Poem by Robert Frost<br />
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The rose is a rose,<br />And was always a rose.<br />But the theory now goes<br />That the apple's a rose,<br />And the pear is, and so's<br />The plum, I suppose.<br />The dear only knows<br />What will next prove a rose.<br />You, of course, are a rose -<br />But were always a rose. <br />
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5. My Pretty Rose Tree - Poem by William Blake<br />
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A flower was offered to me,<br /> Such a flower as May never bore; <br /> But I said 'I've a pretty rose tree,'<br /> And I passed the sweet flower o'er.<br /><br /> Then I went to my pretty rose tree,<br /> To tend her by day and by night; <br /> But my rose turned away with jealousy,<br /> And her thorns were my only delight. <br />
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6. A White Rose - Poem by John Boyle O'Reilly<br />
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THE red rose whispers of passion,<br /> And the white rose breathes of love;<br />O, the red rose is a falcon,<br /> And the white rose is a dove.<br /><br />But I send you a cream-white rosebud<br /> With a flush on its petal tips;<br />For the love that is purest and sweetest<br /> Has a kiss of desire on the lips <br />
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7. O Gather Me The Rose - Poem by William Ernest Henley<br />
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O gather me the rose, the rose, <br />While yet in flower we find it, <br />For summer smiles, but summer goes, <br />And winter waits behind it.<br /><br />For with the dream foregone, foregone, <br />The deed foreborn forever, <br />The worm Regret will canker on, <br />And time will turn him never.<br /><br />So were it well to love, my love, <br />And cheat of any laughter <br />The fate beneath us, and above, <br />The dark before and after.<br /><br />The myrtle and the rose, the rose, <br />The sunshine and the swallow, <br />The dream that comes, the wish that goes <br />The memories that follow! <br />
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8. Sea Rose - Poem by Hilda Doolittle<br />
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Rose, harsh rose, <br />marred and with stint of petals, <br />meagre flower, thin, <br />sparse of leaf, <br /><br />more precious <br />than a wet rose <br />single on a stem -- <br />you are caught in the drift. <br /><br />Stunted, with small leaf, <br />you are flung on the sand, <br />you are lifted <br />in the crisp sand <br />that drives in the wind. <br /><br />Can the spice-rose <br />drip such acrid fragrance <br />hardened in a leaf? <br />
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9. When The Rose Is Faded - Poem by Walter de la Mare<br />
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When the rose is faded, <br />Memory may still dwell on <br />Her beauty shadowed, <br />And the sweet smell gone. <br /><br />That vanishing loveliness, <br />That burdening breath, <br />No bond of life hath then, <br />Nor grief of death. <br /><br />'Tis the immortal thought <br />Whose passion still <br />Makes the changing <br />The unchangeable. <br /><br />Oh, thus thy beauty, <br />Loveliest on earth to me, <br />Dark with no sorrow, shines <br />And burns, with thee.<br />
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10. The Rose And The Bee - Poem by Sara Teasdale<br />
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IF I were a bee and you were a rose, <br />Would you let me in when the gray wind blows? <br />Would you hold your petals wide apart, <br />Would you let me in to find your heart, <br />If you were a rose?<br /><br />"If I were a rose and you were a bee, <br />You should never go when you came to me, <br />I should hold my love on my heart at last, <br />I should close my leaves and keep you fast, <br />If you were a bee." <br />
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11. Laughing Rose - Poem by William Henry Davies<br />
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If I were gusty April now, <br />How I would blow at laughing Rose; <br />I'd make her ribbons slip their knots, <br />And all her hair come loose.<br /><br />If I were merry April now, <br />How I would pelt her cheeks with showers; <br />I'd make carnations, rich and warm, <br />Of her vermillion flowers.<br /><br />Since she will laugh in April's face <br />No matter how he rains or blows -- <br />Then O that I wild April were, <br />To play with laughing Rose<br />
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<span>My Wild Irish Rose -- <span data-ved="2ahUKEwjZ5I2t7-XoAhV_lnIEHYlgAIIQ2kooATAAegQIDxAE"><a data-ved="2ahUKEwjZ5I2t7-XoAhV_lnIEHYlgAIIQMTAAegQIDxAF" href="https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk02hZmyodYe1yN2bFNiay81xwC_QFw:1586796968511&q=Daniel+O%27Donnell&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLSz9U3MCwoyi1IW8Qq4JKYl5mao-Cv7pKfl5eakwMA64tiMSEAAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZ5I2t7-XoAhV_lnIEHYlgAIIQMTAAegQIDxAF&sxsrf=ALeKk02hZmyodYe1yN2bFNiay81xwC_QFw:1586796968511"><span style="color: #1a0dab;">Daniel O'Donnell</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">If you listen I'll sing you a sweet little song</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Of a flower that's now dropped and dead,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Yet dearer to me, yes than all of its mates,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Though each holds aloft its proud head.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Twas given to me by a girl that I know,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Since we've met, faith I've known no repose.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">She is dearer by far than the world's brightest star,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And I call her my wild Irish Rose.</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose.</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">They may sing of their rose, which by other names,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Would smell just as sweetly, they say.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I know that my Rose would never consent</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">To have that sweet name</span><span>… </span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">They may sing of their rose, which by other names,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Would smell just as sweetly, they say.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">But I know that my Rose would never consent</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">To have that sweet name taken away.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">Her glances are shy when e'er I pass by</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">The bower where my true love grows,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And my one wish has been that some day I may win</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">The heart of my wild Irish Rose.</span></div>
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<span jsname="YS01Ge">My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose.</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows,</span><br /><span jsname="YS01Ge">And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose.</span></div>
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Poems from <a href="https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2014/08/21/top-ten-rose-poems/">https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2014/08/21/top-ten-rose-poems/</a><br />
<a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/rose/page-1/23085/#content">https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/rose/page-1/23085/#content</a><br />
<a href="https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk0127vcVu3wyqRTH6NoaFW1UJn99sg%3A1586796958657&source=hp&ei=npmUXuetJZvatQbvlrmYBA&q=my+wild+irish+rose+lyrics&oq=my+wild+irish&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgUIABCRAjICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADoHCCMQ6gIQJzoFCAAQgwE6BAgjECc6BAgAEENKJwgXEiMwZzMxOGcxODdnMjA5ZzIyN2c2NzJnOC03MDRnMTgzZzI3N0oXCBgSEzBnMWcxZzFnMWcxZzgtMWcxZzRQ8CBYgDhgmERoA3AAeAGAAeYMiAHxJJIBDzAuNy4xLjAuMS4yLjgtMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXqwAQo&sclient=psy-ab#spf=1586796968676">https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk0127vcVu3wyqRTH6NoaFW1UJn99sg%3A1586796958657&source=hp&ei=npmUXuetJZvatQbvlrmYBA&q=my+wild+irish+rose+lyrics&oq=my+wild+irish&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgUIABCRAjICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADoHCCMQ6gIQJzoFCAAQgwE6BAgjECc6BAgAEENKJwgXEiMwZzMxOGcxODdnMjA5ZzIyN2c2NzJnOC03MDRnMTgzZzI3N0oXCBgSEzBnMWcxZzFnMWcxZzgtMWcxZzRQ8CBYgDhgmERoA3AAeAGAAeYMiAHxJJIBDzAuNy4xLjAuMS4yLjgtMZgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXqwAQo&sclient=psy-ab#spf=1586796968676</a></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-16587281337816035422020-04-10T09:37:00.000-04:002020-04-10T09:37:13.249-04:00Half Omen Half Hope by Joanna Klink<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><a href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3D87edc2e835%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7C1145f584ff004ed0ed9208d7d57c8fe8%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637212603280998590&sdata=cZ3voe8m8cDoZwXkddxf9Fq2yWe5%2BaM%2BsLAvqDTH2Xo%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=87edc2e835&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link."><span style="color: blue; font-family: "calibri";">Half
Omen Half Hope</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">By Joanna Klink </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">When everything finally has been wrecked and further
shipwrecked,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">When their most ardent dream has been made hollow and
unrecognizable,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">They will feel inside their limbs the missing shade of
blue that lingers</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Against hills in the cooler hours before dark, and the
moss at the foot of the forest</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">When green starts to leave it. What they take into
their privacy (half of his embrace,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Her violence at play) are shadows of acts which have
no farewells in them.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Moons unearth them. And when, in their separate
dwellings, their bodies</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Feel the next season come, they no longer have anyone
to whom</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">To tell it. Clouds of reverie pass outside the window
and a strange emptiness</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Peers back in. If they love, it is solely to be
adored, it is to scatter and gather</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Themselves like hard seeds in a field made fallow by a
fire someone years ago set.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In the quiet woods, from the highest trees, there is
always something</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Weightless falling; and he, who must realize that
certain losses are irreparable,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tells himself at night, before the darkest mirror,
that vision keeps him whole.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">On the verge of warm and simple sleep they tell
themselves certain loves</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Are like sheets of dark water, or ice forests, or
husks of ships. To stop a thing</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Such as this would be to halve a sound that travels
out from a silent person’s</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Thoughts. The imprint they make on each other’s bodies
is worth any pain</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">They may have caused. Quiet falls around them. And
when she reaches</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">For him the air greens like underwater light and the
well-waters drop.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">They will see again the shadows of insects.</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">They will touch the bark and feel each age of the tree
fly undisturbed</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Into them. If what is no longer present in them cannot
be restored,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It can at least be offered. Through long bewildered
dusks, stalks grow;</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Rains fill and pass out of clouds; animals hover at
the edges of fields</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">With eyes like black pools. For nothing cannot be
transformed;</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Pleasure and failure feed each other daily. Do not
think any breeze,</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Any grain of light, shall be withheld. All the stars
will sail out for them.</span></div>
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<span style="display: none; mso-hide: all;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></span></div>
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<td style="background: white; border-image: none; border: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 22.5pt; width: 100%;" valign="top" width="100%"><div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Joanna Klink, “Half Omen Half Hope” from <i>Raptus</i>.
Copyright © 2010 by Joanna Klink. Reprinted by permission of Penguin, a
division of Penguin Group (USA), LLC. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
(From thepoetryfoundation.org) </div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span></div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-24405366244834971042020-04-09T10:10:00.003-04:002020-04-09T10:10:45.549-04:00I missed a day!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sometimes the days just get away, and before you know it you're sitting on the couch munching your way through a party pack of tacos from Taco Bell while watching The Masked Singer, only to wake up the next morning after indigestion-induced nightmares to a text message that says you had a call-out and are now short-staffed and the realization that you forgot to post a poem the day before. It's only 10:00 AM, and already I can tell it's going to be a weird day. Anyway, to make up for yesterday, today you get two poems. The first is by author Ross Gay, and was part of Laura Olin's weekly newsletter. The second is by Daniel Halpern and is from the Poetry Foundation's Poem a Day newsletter. </div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3D696255500f%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cccacd87a562842db9f3108d7dc8ea730%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637220377561379310&sdata=ImZZpKKGAKmJWz75%2FophSdqriIXSztkX5%2F7CRxPpNws%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=696255500f&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="BqFQBUvSLPlB1msmUKoENhqhCmNfko8onHe5tOldvcS22/igzWkE3TJ9KX/fuSfxBGXeLhk7mmHR/aZS5hZgGTNHYapX1sWAhMGFqmTiIx+cx4lLpPfDDQaRCafhmxMdwZpMQYTNNHSwSdGefkJnfzog/sRjuE8AVMGiegwtyU4=" style="clear: right; color: black; float: right; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=696255500f&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link." unselectable="on"></a><a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3Dbace206b5b%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cccacd87a562842db9f3108d7dc8ea730%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637220377561379310&sdata=P4H7IM13kXAKjQf5q0cmNRVQTSRnS1xx3numCz3F3GE%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=bace206b5b&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="Q2drNQjMN7240euGEAhmE2WLfuNo98GL1OWUUvxI5LK1sQJ56tobdOI2mkvntwc3hKExTrV6kp5cw150o/BQ/cHTzF+yp9G3jsAIgChkLqWgJiw0+iKIXpdFeRtyQjBE0JweC6erO83KwWKaf1QJWVpV8cmX+gtwNRMjRd3R8ks=" style="clear: right; color: black; float: right; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=bace206b5b&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link." unselectable="on"></a><a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fus12.forward-to-friend.com%2Fforward%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3Daa12b2e73e%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cccacd87a562842db9f3108d7dc8ea730%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637220377561389304&sdata=Ql1Y4%2BUcNEUwVtXsf7oTn45wdpTdwV740ZQtwQ%2FB%2B%2BU%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="http://us12.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=aa12b2e73e&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="SdBgpuoiYbIQzMTAgqw8oD6Y5rlRPyeN+Jqt99FQ665M9/BvUElCpdEKQttLb9Adajbcfs8D8nXZbiw1HPrKXmL0s13SuVZfXvoAYYLta4/TU7zP0zE9LjtlSxUptUFGRqPS0yQ9kTlKR6cthe5HPnUeulwBZSh1eifbO0Mgv2M=" style="clear: right; color: black; float: right; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: http://us12.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=aa12b2e73e&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link." unselectable="on"></a><span style="font-size: 15px;">No matter the pull toward brink. No<br /> matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.<br /> There is a time for everything. Look,<br /> just this morning a vulture<br /> nodded his red, grizzled head at me,<br /> and I looked at him, admiring<br /> the sickle of his beak.<br /> Then the wind kicked up, and,<br /> after arranging that good suit of feathers<br /> he up and took off.<br /> Just like that. And to boot,<br /> there are, on this planet alone, something like two<br /> million naturally occurring sweet things,<br /> some with names so generous as to kick<br /> the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,<br /> stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks<br /> at the market. Think of that. The long night,<br /> the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me<br /> on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.<br /> But look; my niece is running through a field<br /> calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel<br /> and at the end of my block is a basketball court.<br /> I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.<br /><br />—<a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flauraolin.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3D8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce%26id%3D902ace4b0b%26e%3D0f7cb8af92&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7C461893ab031740deff4508d7dc8c65ec%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637220367873787494&sdata=0zAVzSB3b4ENGSvxBSKCZe9at45RCHNRGTDt2x8aDd4%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://lauraolin.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce&id=902ace4b0b&e=0f7cb8af92" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="uj3doExC/7oFJnYyyee0inivlnoIZtPA3RfVh+bbiuuqMik5AK/JTDMFQzdonBEY8sWZzXACYi6P8sWSceD5snuhIIiKXw4/XOIHJIifYxPse/kUSyUnQyv/yEHbvcxEBkopcrihrQXRM22fi1QTWGL4svp2zLKwHrVc02mQb34=" style="color: #c40909; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://lauraolin.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8014320de9941eaab79e8a1ce&id=902ace4b0b&e=0f7cb8af92. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Sorrow Is Not My Name</a>, Ross Gay</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Pandemania</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">by Daniel Halpern</span></div>
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There are fewer introductions</div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In plague years,</div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Hands held back, jocularity</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
No longer bellicose,</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Even among men.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Breathing’s generally wary,</div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Labored, as they say, when</div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The end is at hand.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
But this is the everyday intake</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of the imperceptible life force,</div>
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Willed now, slow —</div>
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Well, just cautious</div>
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In inhabited air.</div>
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As for ongoing dialogue,</div>
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No longer an exuberant plosive</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To make a point,</div>
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But a new squirreling of air space,</div>
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A new sense of boundary.</div>
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Genghis Khan said the hand</div>
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Is the first thing one man gives</div>
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To another. Not in this war.</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A gesture of limited distance</div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Now suffices, a nod,</div>
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A minor smile or a hand</div>
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Slightly raised,</div>
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Not in search of its counterpart,</div>
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Just a warning within</div>
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The acknowledgment to stand back.</div>
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Each beautiful stranger a barbarian</div>
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Breathing on the other side of the gate.</div>
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Source: <em>Poetry</em> (March 2013) </div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-78313960705632121032020-04-07T12:19:00.001-04:002020-04-07T12:19:24.984-04:00Wordsworth!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Can you think of anything so sublime as reading lines by Wordsworth? Neither can I.</div>
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<a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3D6d2e27eb35%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cab9e43d4071a4f0e553508d7dafc3ca2%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637218649201475368&sdata=zqmf6l%2F21FKWkUztFj7NlUs91wG9fHoe10TNEczvNg0%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=6d2e27eb35&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="FyVt2WeEiWWjSljNe0XfRJ19Y/y4XVjTDrXWgyp8LJmP3aHrjlnIIJncY4+uVX/QrqHnaZKebGHHFKLsO/FwZiYbWL5sGiQsdAGPXM0WZcWMpbZf0Za5q+zi9jnkLIihzoWyT7FlIuSaMMndWiNkpeCOSuWl7jxXQxTewFC3xzo=" style="-ms-word-wrap: normal; color: inherit; font-family: "Arial Black","Arial Bold",Gadget,sans-serif; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=6d2e27eb35&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link."></a><a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3D4eac11e812%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cab9e43d4071a4f0e553508d7dafc3ca2%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637218649201485368&sdata=PhWE%2B6SaT6C6MkqN3H9MhU7KV34G1cX%2FBSLkzsdbyWM%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=4eac11e812&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="jjgPpWdVBINyfdCkh4JLzwX394HV5YluqjY8Gr0LZH0s8l1VZsY3tUAP+XGghGcmLrFF23WzADiBNOgjsktCXg8uqfcnqYEdjSTxWjHaLmPbB1s4nHB0ClAAq9IYsKXR48zpuMpSU2gNhtlLlc+xlWH1kRmZ+mJcYzXLycsanAo=" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial Black","Arial Bold",Gadget,sans-serif; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=4eac11e812&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link."><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798</span></a> </h1>
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By William Wordsworth </div>
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Five years have past; five summers, with the length </div>
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Of five long winters! and again I hear </div>
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These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs </div>
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With a soft inland murmur.—Once again </div>
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Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, </div>
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That on a wild secluded scene impress </div>
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Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect </div>
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The landscape with the quiet of the sky. </div>
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The day is come when I again repose </div>
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Here, under this dark sycamore, and view </div>
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These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, </div>
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Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, </div>
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Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves </div>
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'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see </div>
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These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines </div>
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Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, </div>
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Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke </div>
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Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! </div>
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With some uncertain notice, as might seem </div>
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Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, </div>
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Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire </div>
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The Hermit sits alone. </div>
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<br /></div>
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These beauteous forms, </div>
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Through a long absence, have not been to me </div>
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As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: </div>
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But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din </div>
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Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, </div>
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In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, </div>
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Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; </div>
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And passing even into my purer mind </div>
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With tranquil restoration:—feelings too </div>
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Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, </div>
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As have no slight or trivial influence </div>
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On that best portion of a good man's life, </div>
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His little, nameless, unremembered, acts </div>
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Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, </div>
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To them I may have owed another gift, </div>
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Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, </div>
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In which the burthen of the mystery, </div>
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In which the heavy and the weary weight </div>
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Of all this unintelligible world, </div>
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Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, </div>
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In which the affections gently lead us on,— </div>
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Until, the breath of this corporeal frame </div>
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And even the motion of our human blood </div>
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Almost suspended, we are laid asleep </div>
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In body, and become a living soul: </div>
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While with an eye made quiet by the power </div>
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Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, </div>
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We see into the life of things. </div>
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<br /></div>
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If this </div>
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Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— </div>
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In darkness and amid the many shapes </div>
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Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir </div>
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Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, </div>
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Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— </div>
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How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, </div>
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O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, </div>
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How often has my spirit turned to thee! </div>
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<br /></div>
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And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, </div>
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With many recognitions dim and faint, </div>
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And somewhat of a sad perplexity, </div>
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The picture of the mind revives again: </div>
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While here I stand, not only with the sense </div>
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Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts </div>
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That in this moment there is life and food </div>
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For future years. And so I dare to hope, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first </div>
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I came among these hills; when like a roe </div>
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I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Wherever nature led: more like a man </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Flying from something that he dreads, than one </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And their glad animal movements all gone by) </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
What then I was. The sounding cataract </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Their colours and their forms, were then to me </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
An appetite; a feeling and a love, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That had no need of a remoter charm, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
By thought supplied, not any interest </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, </div>
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And all its aching joys are now no more, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this </div>
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Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts </div>
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Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Abundant recompense. For I have learned </div>
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To look on nature, not as in the hour </div>
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Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The still sad music of humanity, </div>
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Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt </div>
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A presence that disturbs me with the joy </div>
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Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime </div>
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Of something far more deeply interfused, </div>
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Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, </div>
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And the round ocean and the living air, </div>
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And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A motion and a spirit, that impels </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A lover of the meadows and the woods </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And mountains; and of all that we behold </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
From this green earth; of all the mighty world </div>
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Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, </div>
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And what perceive; well pleased to recognise </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In nature and the language of the sense </div>
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The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, </div>
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The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul </div>
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Of all my moral being. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Nor perchance, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
If I were not thus taught, should I the more </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Suffer my genial spirits to decay: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
For thou art with me here upon the banks </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The language of my former heart, and read </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
My former pleasures in the shooting lights </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
May I behold in thee what I was once, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Knowing that Nature never did betray </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, </div>
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Through all the years of this our life, to lead </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
From joy to joy: for she can so inform </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The mind that is within us, so impress </div>
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With quietness and beauty, and so feed </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, </div>
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Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, </div>
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Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all </div>
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The dreary intercourse of daily life, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And let the misty mountain-winds be free </div>
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To blow against thee: and, in after years, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
If I should be where I no more can hear </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams </div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That on the banks of this delightful stream </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
We stood together; and that I, so long </div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A worshipper of Nature, hither came </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Unwearied in that service: rather say </div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, </div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That after many wanderings, many years </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me </div>
<div style="border-image: none; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
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<strong>A Note from the Editor</strong> <div style="border-image: none; color: black; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
On this day 250 years ago, the poet William Wordsworth was born. </div>
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<em>Please note: We strive to preserve the text formatting of poems over email, but certain email clients may distort how character indent, line wraps, and fonts appear.</em> </div>
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<a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3D6d2e27eb35%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cab9e43d4071a4f0e553508d7dafc3ca2%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637218649201475368&sdata=zqmf6l%2F21FKWkUztFj7NlUs91wG9fHoe10TNEczvNg0%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=6d2e27eb35&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="FyVt2WeEiWWjSljNe0XfRJ19Y/y4XVjTDrXWgyp8LJmP3aHrjlnIIJncY4+uVX/QrqHnaZKebGHHFKLsO/FwZiYbWL5sGiQsdAGPXM0WZcWMpbZf0Za5q+zi9jnkLIihzoWyT7FlIuSaMMndWiNkpeCOSuWl7jxXQxTewFC3xzo=" style="-ms-word-wrap: normal; color: inherit; font-family: "Arial Black","Arial Bold",Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=6d2e27eb35&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link."></a><a data-auth="Verified" href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpoetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com%2Ftrack%2Fclick%3Fu%3Dc993b88231f5f84146565840e%26id%3D4eac11e812%26e%3D24dc8203b5&data=02%7C01%7Cnkapiseper%40bhs1.org%7Cab9e43d4071a4f0e553508d7dafc3ca2%7Ca7c3d673c09849e5a90b0202d55c1c6f%7C0%7C0%7C637218649201485368&sdata=PhWE%2B6SaT6C6MkqN3H9MhU7KV34G1cX%2FBSLkzsdbyWM%3D&reserved=0" originalsrc="https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=4eac11e812&e=24dc8203b5" rel="noopener noreferrer" shash="jjgPpWdVBINyfdCkh4JLzwX394HV5YluqjY8Gr0LZH0s8l1VZsY3tUAP+XGghGcmLrFF23WzADiBNOgjsktCXg8uqfcnqYEdjSTxWjHaLmPbB1s4nHB0ClAAq9IYsKXR48zpuMpSU2gNhtlLlc+xlWH1kRmZ+mJcYzXLycsanAo=" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial Black","Arial Bold",Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 26px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://poetryfoundation.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=4eac11e812&e=24dc8203b5. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798</a> </h1>
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By William Wordsworth </div>
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<tr style="padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;"><th class="x_callout-inner x_quarternary" style="-ms-word-wrap: normal; background: rgb(246, 246, 246); border-image: none; border: currentColor; color: black; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px; padding: 30px; text-align: left; width: 100%;"><div class="x_epigraph" style="margin-bottom: 22px;">
</div>
<div class="x_poem" style="line-height: 1.6;">
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Five years have past; five summers, with the length </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of five long winters! and again I hear </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That on a wild secluded scene impress </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The landscape with the quiet of the sky. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The day is come when I again repose </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With some uncertain notice, as might seem </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The Hermit sits alone. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
These beauteous forms, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Through a long absence, have not been to me </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And passing even into my purer mind </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
As have no slight or trivial influence </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
On that best portion of a good man's life, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To them I may have owed another gift, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In which the burthen of the mystery, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In which the heavy and the weary weight </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of all this unintelligible world, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In which the affections gently lead us on,— </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And even the motion of our human blood </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In body, and become a living soul: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
While with an eye made quiet by the power </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
We see into the life of things. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
If this </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In darkness and amid the many shapes </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
How often has my spirit turned to thee! </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With many recognitions dim and faint, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The picture of the mind revives again: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
While here I stand, not only with the sense </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That in this moment there is life and food </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
For future years. And so I dare to hope, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
I came among these hills; when like a roe </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Wherever nature led: more like a man </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Flying from something that he dreads, than one </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And their glad animal movements all gone by) </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
What then I was. The sounding cataract </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Their colours and their forms, were then to me </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
An appetite; a feeling and a love, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
That had no need of a remoter charm, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
By thought supplied, not any interest </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And all its aching joys are now no more, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Abundant recompense. For I have learned </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To look on nature, not as in the hour </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The still sad music of humanity, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A presence that disturbs me with the joy </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of something far more deeply interfused, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And the round ocean and the living air, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A motion and a spirit, that impels </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
A lover of the meadows and the woods </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And mountains; and of all that we behold </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
From this green earth; of all the mighty world </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
In nature and the language of the sense </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of all my moral being. </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Nor perchance, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
If I were not thus taught, should I the more </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Suffer my genial spirits to decay: </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
For thou art with me here upon the banks </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The language of my former heart, and read </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
My former pleasures in the shooting lights </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
May I behold in thee what I was once, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Knowing that Nature never did betray </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
Through all the years of this our life, to lead </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
From joy to joy: for she can so inform </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
The mind that is within us, so impress </div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
With quietness and beauty, and so feed </div>
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With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, </div>
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Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, </div>
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Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all </div>
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The dreary intercourse of daily life, </div>
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Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb </div>
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Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold </div>
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Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon </div>
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Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; </div>
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And let the misty mountain-winds be free </div>
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To blow against thee: and, in after years, </div>
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When these wild ecstasies shall be matured </div>
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Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind </div>
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Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, </div>
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Thy memory be as a dwelling-place </div>
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For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, </div>
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If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, </div>
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Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts </div>
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Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, </div>
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And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— </div>
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If I should be where I no more can hear </div>
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Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams </div>
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Of past existence—wilt thou then forget </div>
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That on the banks of this delightful stream </div>
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We stood together; and that I, so long </div>
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A worshipper of Nature, hither came </div>
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Unwearied in that service: rather say </div>
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With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal </div>
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Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, </div>
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That after many wanderings, many years </div>
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Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, </div>
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And this green pastoral landscape, were to me </div>
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More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! </div>
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<strong>A Note from the Editor</strong> <div style="color: black; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
On this day 250 years ago, the poet William Wordsworth was born. </div>
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<em>Please note: We strive to preserve the text formatting of poems over email, but certain email clients may distort how character indent, line wraps, and fonts appear.</em> </div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-21071134403086182942020-04-06T10:31:00.001-04:002020-04-06T10:31:22.923-04:00When solitude is again a choice....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="x_text-attribution" style="border-image: none; font-family: Arial,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,sans-serif, serif, EmojiFont; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 4px; text-transform: uppercase;">
By Cesare Pavese </div>
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Translated by Geoffrey Brock </div>
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I’m eating a little supper by the bright window.</div>
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The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn.</div>
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Outside my door, the quiet roads lead,</div>
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after a short walk, to open fields.</div>
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I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows</div>
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how many women are eating now. My body is calm:</div>
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labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.</div>
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Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch</div>
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the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive,</div>
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but not worth these cherries, which I’m eating alone.</div>
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I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining</div>
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among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them.</div>
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A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life</div>
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of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.</div>
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A small dose of silence suffices, and everything’s still,</div>
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in its true place, just like my body is still.</div>
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<br /></div>
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All things become islands before my senses,</div>
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which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence.</div>
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All things in this darkness—I can know all of them,</div>
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just as I know that blood flows in my veins.</div>
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The plain is a great flowing of water through plants,</div>
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a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone,</div>
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lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins</div>
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with each living thing that this plain provides.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky</div>
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whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star</div>
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struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,</div>
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from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,</div>
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it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,</div>
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my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.</div>
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<strong>A Note from the Editor</strong> <div style="border-image: none; color: black; font-family: Garamond,Baskerville,"Baskerville Old Face","Hoefler Text","Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
This is the 11th poem in our series "Together and by Ourselves,” featuring poems that speak to our current moment. </div>
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<div class="x_fauxGraph" style="border-image: none; margin-bottom: 20px;">
Cesare Pavese, "Passion for Solitude" from <em>Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950</em>. Copyright © 2002 by Cesare Pavese. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townshend, WA 98368-0271, coppercanyonpress.org. </div>
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Source: Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 ( Copper Canyon Press, 2002 ) </div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-53421525471775124322020-04-05T14:13:00.001-04:002020-04-05T14:13:25.185-04:00In April<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: small;">In April, the world is fresh, the sun soft, skies cool and gray. April is my month. I love nothing more than listening to birds as they flit from tree to tree, listening to the rain, seeing trees budding. Here is Rilke for your April afternoon:</span></h1>
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<a href="https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=036beba2ea&e=a49b144c98" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00add8; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i>In April</i></a></h1>
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<a href="https://poets.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e329a0cb6f08842f08a05d822&id=8dbb2bbfdd&e=a49b144c98" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00add8; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><strong id="yiv7947728171docs-internal-guid-e525f931-7fff-4b3e-f963-17dc66616dc1" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: 400;">Rainer Maria Rilke </strong></a>
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Again the woods are odorous, the lark<br />
<span>Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray </span><br />
<span>That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark, </span><br />
<span>Where branches bare disclosed the empty day. </span></div>
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<span>After long rainy afternoons an hour </span><br />
<span>Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings </span><br />
<span>Them at the windows in a radiant shower, </span><br />
<span>And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings. </span></div>
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<span>Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep </span><br />
<span>By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies; </span><br />
<span>And cradled in the branches, hidden deep </span><br />
<span>In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies. </span></div>
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This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.</div>
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Photo from Premier Tree Solutions</div>
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Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6814516615350604583.post-72742454040254653642020-04-04T16:29:00.003-04:002020-04-04T16:29:32.608-04:00The Writer's Mind<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the midst of plowing through homework that I allowed to pile up all week (it's all due by midnight tonight) and sending messages for staffing for work, I have been scribbling some lines for a new poem. Why am I thinking of this now when I should be reviewing notes for a paper on the long-term effects of cutting funding for arts and humanities in public schools and participating in a discussion on the difference between a query letter and a press release? Well, partly because homework is boring and I would rather be playing, but primarily because I am a writer and the words never stop. </div>
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In honor of those words that I want to write even when I am supposed to be doing other things like focusing on my education (25 days to go!), I bring you a poem by a writer I admire. Theodora Goss is a mistress of wordcraft. Her poetry touches the heart, her fantasy takes readers to realms they didn't imagine existed. Here, Theodora tells us why she writes poetry. </div>
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Why I Write Poetry</div>
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by Theodora Goss</div>
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If I didn’t commit this crime<br /> of putting words on paper one after the other<br /> that either do or do not rhyme,<br /> that have a surreptitious rhythm<br /> and make a kind of sense<br /> or perhaps nonsense<br /> depending on whether it’s Thursday —<br /> if I didn’t choose to play<br /> in this particular puddle, splashing myself<br /> all over the pavement, embarrassing<br /> myself in front of your eyes —<br /> I believe the words would build up<br /> in my brain, and it would explode<br /> like a bomb filled with clouds, mountains,<br /> oak forests in which owls fly silently through the night,<br /> the sight of wild geese overhead, the sound<br /> of snow falling from overladen fir branches onto snow,<br /> lakes that reflect the sky between shards<br /> of floating ice, wolves howling at the moon,<br /> mushrooms growing on an old log,<br /> Autumn dancing with red and yellow leaves in her hair,<br /> bare branches against the sky forming a rune<br /> I do not understand, time itself,<br /> and an undefinable longing.<br /> Forgive me for committing, repeatedly,<br /> the act of poetry. I’ve trying not to disintegrate<br /> or make a mess.</div>
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Theodora Goss recently shared this poem on Facebook, but this and many others can be seen on her website,<a href="https://theodoragosspoems.com/" target="_blank"> TheodoraGosspoems.com</a>. Please take a moment to visit her website. You won't be disappointed!</div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><a href="https://theodoragosspoems.com/2018/12/05/why-i-write-poetry/?fbclid=IwAR3MVcfP0EpwPgwzgvaCkfWpfEQ8keQo9w9hjXQ_x7ZMayHhQ_T0_vu7hJA">https://theodoragosspoems.com/2018/12/05/why-i-write-poetry/?fbclid=IwAR3MVcfP0EpwPgwzgvaCkfWpfEQ8keQo9w9hjXQ_x7ZMayHhQ_T0_vu7hJA</a></div>
Nicole Perkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00722645074956605097noreply@blogger.com0