Books I've purchased today...

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I keep adding to my Kindle. These books are available today from .99 - 1.99 :

 

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: William Shirer  ($1.99 today only)

 

The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Live: Dinty W. Moore ($0.99 through Saturday the 15th)

 

Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha's Path: Bhante Henepola Gunaratana ($0.99 through the 15th)

 

I have borrowed this book through the Amazon Prime Membership lending program. If you purchase a prime membership, at $79.00 a year, you get streaming video for your Kindle Fire; two day shipping with no price limits; and a book a month on a lending library basis. This month I'm reading:

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail: David Miller (without Prime Membership, this book is $2.99)

I'm well into this book and I'm really enjoying it. I've spent some time on the trail, but only short day stints in North Carolina and Georgia. I find the idea of hiking the whole route oddly tempting, but I will wait until I finish the book to see if he makes me change my mind! Might be one of those things best read.


Narcissus

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snowy egret

This was an early photo. I was at a preserve and had very little zoom on the camera I was using. They had one of those scopes mounted on the boardwalk and I thought it would be a fine idea to put my camera up the the lense. It created a halo effect and there are other flaws as well, but I love this shot. I did click at the right time.

Today's Inspiration

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a nod to what inspires:

Fresh Air - Martin Bayne, who suffers from early onset Parkinson's at age 53, and is residing in assisted living:

 "I love the community I'm in; it is my home, " he says. "And the people there -- no matter how demented or how sick or whatever is wrong with them -- I feel that (it's) my responsibility to make their journey while still on this planet as joyous and fulfilling as possible."

 

WHYY - NPR - Fresh Air with Terry Gross: interviewing Martin Bayne - Advocate Figths 'Ambient Despair' in Assisted Living

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama - Grant Park - Chicago - 2008

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I live in Chicago and I was in Grant Park the night Barack Obama won the election. It was an electrifying evening on so many fronts and one I will always remember. I love the intimacy of this moment, when the Obamas came to the stage after it was announced that he had won.

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Michelle Obama's speech last night was wonderful; I think she could run for any office and win. She touched all the right notes. I love this one:

"Well, today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, I have seen firsthand that being president doesn't change who you are. No, it reveals who you are."

~First Lady Michelle Obama

Michael Silverblatt Interviews Mary Ruefle

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This week's episode of KCRW's Bookworm, hosted by Michael Silverblatt -- one of the most nuanced readers to be heard anywhere -- features Mary Ruefle, noted poet, on her newest book release, a meditation on poetry: Madness, Rack, and Honey published by Wave Books.

Madness, Rack, and Honey is a collection of Ruefle's lectures on all things poetry. I'd buy the book for the chapter headings alone; I find them irresistable:

On Beginnings

Poetry and the Moon

On Sentimentality

On Theme

On Secrets: Eight Beginnings, Two Ends

On Fear

Madness, Rack, and Honey

My Emily Dickenson

Someone Reading a Book is a Sign of Order in the World

Remarks on Letters

Kangaroo Beach

I Remember, I Remember

Twenty-two Short Lectures

Lectures I Will Never Give

 

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I Remember, I Remember - On handsome roofers, attentive cows, and sudden tears of youth. - by Mary Ruefle - The Poetry Foundation

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UC Berkeley - Lunch Poems - Mary Ruefle

What I'm reading...A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens

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I love Wallace Stevens. I count The Man with the Blue Guitar  and The Idea of Order at Key West as two of my favorite poems. They talk to me, as a writer. Stevens struck a chord with me very early; decades later, he's been a constant companion. Some of Stevens' poems seem impenetrable. That's never put me off; I always think of the last two lines from MacLeish's,  Ars Poetica : A poem should not mean / But be whenever a poem leaves me wondering. I find out what I can, and what's necessary sticks with me.

Finding out much about Stevens work became much easier with Eleanor Cook's, Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens. Cook is a Stevens' expert; this work takes Stevens' poems in chronological order and provides annotations and references. It's wonderful; I can't thank Eleanor Cook enough!

 

A Reader's Guide to Wallace Stevens - Eleanor Cook (Princeton University Press)

 

Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America) - Wallace Stevens