The start of this month marks the 13th Bloggers’ (Silent) Poetry Reading in honor of St. Brigid, patron saint of poetry. I no longer know what day it’s supposed to be on, since we all started on Feb. 2. But St. Brigid’s Day is actually the 1st, and that is when the few who still participate seem to share their choices. However, I am a traditionalist on this issue and continue to participate on the 2nd (although it’ll be the 3rd by the time everyone reads this). This year, I decided to share a poem from the last collection I bought:

Wind Ode

I saw the water, ruffled like a duck,
as if its ruffles arose from within.
I saw clouds, scudding across
as if by their own will. I sat here,
over the pond, and saw its fierce
gooseflesh and its rough chop
as if it were shivering. I did not know you,
I looked right through you. And then, one summer
day, Wild Goose was in nine moods
at once, and I went down to it,
and into it up to my lower eyelids, and I
saw a row of fine lines
rushing toward me, then another row
crosshatching it, rushing, then a veil of dots swift
in, like a hat-veil-sized spirit, I saw you,
it was you, and there were many of you, I sank
underwater, and looked up,
and saw your strokes indent the surface.
Could we trace them back, these hachures and gravures,
to the Coriolis force caused by the
spinning of the earth? Who is the mother
of the wind, who is its father? O ancestor,
O child of heat and cold, wild
original scribbler!

   ~Sharon Olds

In previous years, I have shared poems by Emily Dickinson, Kyle Dargan, Barbara Crooker, William Stafford, Mary Oliver (twice), Wislawa Szymborska, Stuart Dischell, Jean Esteve, John Frederick Nims, Grace Paley, Heather McHugh, and Barbara Hamby, all of which are worth another read.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. At the plaza by my office, for the first time in 15 years, the lights are red, rather than white.

2. I did not get the comforter cover changed last weekend, so when Corey threw up all over the duvet today, at least I didn’t have to feel irritated about that.

3. Pizza sauce and mozzarella in the fridge mean that when Rudi suddenly has to work late several nights, I can make French bread pizzas for dinner.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Finally! It took me an entire month, but at long last, I’ve settled on and summed up the top ten books of the 79 I read last year.

I’ll be honest. I was stuck on nine for a long time, not because I didn’t read enough good books to merit including ten, but because I read so many solid 4-star books last year that I had a really hard time figuring out which one to elevate. But in the end, convention dictated that a best-of list has ten or maybe twelve books and not nine, so I picked one that I wouldn’t mind owning and that I’d certainly re-read.

The top three books were the best books I read in the first half of the year. If I’d remembered at the time that I finished The Girl Who Drank the Moon in January, rather than in the previous calendar year, I would have included it in the list as well.

Without further ado, my favorite ten books read last year: (more…)