After reading Teach Me and Breathe My Name, I was looking forward to the release of Russ Nelson's third novel, Days of Little Texas, and not just because he's a friend, but because I could not put the first two books down--his characters were immediately compelling and their stories vivid and unique. Days of Little Texas did not disappoint.

Young Ronald Earl, known as "Little Texas," has been a traveling Charismatic preacher since he was ten years old. The Holy Ghost never fails to fill him as he heals the crowds who flock to his tent revivals, but lately he starts to doubt himself and fears he may be a fraud.

At the end of one of his powerful services, a girl in a blue dress who is experiencing a serious medical emergency is rushed to Ronald Earl for healing. Though his laying on of hands appears to have performed a miracle for the girl, he is disturbed and filled with an unease that doesn't go away.

As he continues on his revivalist circuit, the girl in the blue dress keeps showing up in the crowds, haunting Ronald Earl until he is eventually drawn into her world. While Ronald struggles to discover who he is and who he wants to be, he finds himself fighting in a terrifying battle between good and evil.

The earnest voice of Ronald Earl Pettway drew me in completely. The colorful supporting characters and intensity of the plot kept me up reading late into the night. When I ordered the book, I knew the novel was about a young circuit preacher, but I didn't realize it was also a ghost story. Reading it reminded me of an experience I once had of going to a movie that I'd thought was a romantic drama, but was actually a suspense thriller. As I got more deeply engrossed in the story, the deliciously creepy elements of the plot started to unfold, sending shivers down my spine and, well, totally freaking me out. In a good way.

Check it out!

From the inside cover: Welcome, all ye faithful--and otherwise--to a ghost story, a romance, a reckoning. Come one, come all to Days of Little Texas.

I enjoyed meeting Asra Nomani, an activist for Muslim reform and gender equality, last night at dinner and was struck by her quiet intensity, her openness and generosity of spirit. Asra, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and friend of the late Daniel Pearl, gave an inspiring and heart-felt talk afterward at University of the Pacific's Colliver lecture, sharing her experiences confronting the male leadership at her local mosque in Morgantown, West Virginia. PBS recently aired a documentary of her struggle, The Mosque in Morgantown.

I admired Asra's ability to answer the sometimes probing questions from audience members with deep empathy and suprising candor. You can read Asra's personal accounts of her experiences in Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's struggle for the soul of Islam and Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love.

This essay by Arthur Krystal in the New York Times about writers who fail at simple conversation was strangely comforting.

.

Alex and her friends from the UU Stockton Youth Group participated in the 10th annual Kids in a Box, spending the night in the themed boxes they created and raising awareness and money for the McHenry House Family Shelter in Tracy. The motto is "Kids Should Play in Boxes, Not Live in Them."

Alex and Courtni made a Hogwarts castle out of their box and were interviewed with their friends Anneka and Reagan and quoted in today's Stockton Record.

I finally snatched a moment to do a quick shout-out about some of the fantastic books recently (or soon-to-be) released by writer friends. Check them out!



Three Witches by Paula Jolin

I was fortunate enough to read an early draft of this manuscript and enjoyed it as much as I did Paula's first YA novel, In the Name of God, which I discuss here, and which my husband Alan offered as a reading assignment for his Western Religions class.

From Roaring Brook Press:

Three seemingly ordinary girls, studying together in the same ordinary high school. All have their own reasons to summon Trevor Saunders after his car goes over a cliff. Aliya brings the mystical seances of Syria. Gillian contributes the voodoo arts from her native Trinidad. Miya shares the secret magic of ancient Japan. Will they be able use their powers to bring him back one more time? Should they?

Ash by Malinda Lo

Erin sent me an ARC of Ash a couple months ago, which I devoured in one sitting during a flight from Sacramento to St. Louis. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

From Kirkus, starred review:
An unexpected reimagining of the Cinderella tale, exquisite and pristine, unfolding deliberately. … Beautiful language magically wrought; beautiful storytelling magically told.




Palace Beautiful by Sarah DeFord Williams

I'm proud to claim Sarah as an agent-sister and recently had the pleasure of reading an ARC of her Palace Beautiful. What a fetching voice! The story exudes a beauty and warmth that stayed with me long after I closed the book. Look for it in 2010!

From AuthorsNow:
Thirteen-year-old artist and dreamer Sadie, her little sister Zuzu, and new best friend Belladonna Desolation meet in a secret attic room to vicariously live the experiences a girl recorded in a journal hidden there during the flu epidemic of 1918.





Border Crossing by Jessica Lee Anderson

When at ALA, I enjoyed meeting up with Jessica and came away with her striking second YA novel, Border Crossing, an intense story told with a beautiful, graceful edge. Look for it in October!

From Powell's Books:
The mixed-race son of apple pickers, Manz lives with his hard-drinking mother and her truck-driver boyfriend in the hardscrabble world of dusty Rockhill, Texas. Forced to take a summer job rebuilding fence of a cattle ranch, Manz works alongside his friend Jed and meets a girl named Vanessa — but even among his friends, Manz suffers from an uncontrollable paranoia. As the summer wears on, Manz becomes convinced that "Operation Wetback," a brutal postwar relocation program, is being put back into effect. As the voices in his head grow louder and more insistent, Manz struggles to negotiate the difficulties of adolescence, the perils of an oppressed environment, and the terror of losing his grip on reality.



Betraying Season by Marissa Doyle

Marissa was sweet enough to send out an ARC of Betraying Season for the moderators on Verla's Children's Writers and Illustrators Board to pass around. What a fun, intriguing historical, laced with magical fantasy. You'll be seeing it on shelves in the coming weeks!

From the publisher:

The naturally formed stone bridges.


The Eucalyptus grove behind the beach will become a protected annual resort for a large group of monarch butterflies in October.










Woo! The breeze was a little chilly when we first got there!








"Falafel's" in Santa Cruz.


The best falafels in the known universe.

Today I'm celebrating my 18th year with the man who keeps bakin' up the love, fresh daily. I tell myself more and more every year, "Christy Lenzi, you are one lucky girl."






We celebrated over the weekend by exploring Old Sacramento.

"What is it my dear?"

"Ah, how can we bear it?"

"Bear what?"

"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"

"We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."

"And every day we shall have less. And then none."

"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."
— A.S. Byatt (Possession: A Romance)

I love both this excerpt and Possession, the novel from which it is taken. I was pleasantly surprised to find it quoted so aptly in the book The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which I recently read and haven't stopped thinking about.

From the back cover:
A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.

The Time Traveler's Wife twisted me up inside then stretched me out wider than I was before. It's the kind of book that makes me alternately want to A.) Despair with writing and give it up forever and B.) Never do anything else but write, ever. I know the upcoming film version will inevitably suck in comparison to the novel. Ah, how can I bear it?

Alan and I took a trip to Chicago that coincided with ALA, so I stopped by the conference exhibit hall to see friends and cruise for freebees and ARCs! Here's lovely Jessica Lee Anderson with her soon-to-be released BORDER CROSSING.


Erin Murphy, agent extraordinaire



Elizabeth C. Bunce, after accepting the first annual William C. Morris award for CURSE DARK AS GOLD!

Catching up with two of my oldest friends!

I love being a reader for CMG. Not only can I do it in my jammies if I wanted, or any time of the day or in the middle of the night, it's also lots of fun. Sure, not every sub is stunningly brilliant, but sometimes there are stories that make me laugh out loud they're so clever, or non-fiction pieces that enlighten while they entertain. It's satisfying to find a real gem. Sometimes I forget I'm getting paid for this. Maybe as time goes by I will look upon the piles of slush with a shudder of dread, as I hear so many seasoned readers/editors/agents do. But right here, right now, I love this job.

Laurel Snyder's Any Which Wall came in the mail today! Alex, especially, has been looking forward to it because Laurel named one of the characters in the book "Alexandria Lenzi" after her. Noah's name gets a mention as well. And I was looking forward to reading about Laurel's dastardly villain she let me name "Wichita Grim"! (He's the mean ornery-looking fella on Alex's tattoo.) Go pick yourself up a copy and find out what kind of stinker Alexandria Lenzi is!


Any Which Wall is a fun middle-grade novel that will appeal to fans of Edward Eager and E. Nesbit. Kirkus has this to say:

Susan, Henry, Roy and Emma stumble upon a wall in the oddest of places—the middle of a cornfield. To their delight, it turns out to be wishing wall, complete with a key, capable of whisking them away to fascinating times and places. It’s not all fun and games, though, at least not at first. The kids have to puzzle out how the magic works and then contend with some mysterious visions granted to them by none other than the famous Merlin. The visions, along with the particular wishes each child makes, unfold into a unique life lesson for each of the children. Unfortunately, these lessons can feel a little contrived, particularly when it comes to Susan, the oldest of the group, who is desperately trying to grow up without losing the childlike qualities of imagination and adventure that are a fundamental part of her spirit. Nonetheless, the fast-paced plot and glib narrator—fond of making asides—will keep readers turning pages and looking for magic in their own corners of the world. (Fantasy. 9-12)

I had a dream last night that I went hiking with Freud and got so sick of him I squirted a bottle of water in his face. Alan had a dream he was teaching about Ali Baba, and his students argued that Ali Baba didn't deserve to be the main character of the story. This is very amusing to me because in reality, Alan is teaching on Freud's views of religion, while I am writing a retelling of Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves where someone else is the main character. And no, we were not sleeping on the wrong sides of the bed....

One of my characters plays the ney flute, a reed instrument sacred to the Sufis. I love listening to this, especially when the drum beat comes in. Makes me want to belly-dance.

I love the new live solo album from Bruce Cockburn. You can listen to the whole album here!

"Is there a sweet spot for spirituality in the brain?" This piece from NPR (first of a five-part series) is very interesting. I'm studying Sufism for my novel revisions, and learning about medieval Sufis' practices of whirling and smoking hashish which some Sufis perform in order to evoke mystical experiences not unlike the ones described in this article. Unfortunately, I'm told my hashish scene is probably not a good idea for a middle-grade (that is what my novel has morphed into...) but I think whirling will be ok.

Wow. Beautiful cinematography. Lovely music. Strange, touching, magical story.

...and tries a six-chord song on her sparkly new ukulele:



The Message

I wish I could write a song
good enough for the world to sing along
and if I could write that song
in a language that the world would understand

and if they sing it enough
the message might get through
the message that was only meant for you
where ever you are no matter how far
this message was only meant for you

I hope you're smiling
I hope your worries are as far away as me
I hope you're happy
I hope your troubles are as far away
as they could ever be

I wish I could write a book
good enough for the world to want to read
if I did, would you take a look
would the words show another side to me

And as you turn a page
a chapter has to end
before another chapter can begin
and if you read it enough
the message might get through
the message that was only meant for you

I hope you're smiling
I hope your worries are as far away as me
I hope you're happy
I hope your troubles are as far away
as they could ever be

If you find yourself in the dentist office or if your kids have a subscription to Highlights magazine, check out my story, "The Rune Hunt," on page 40 of the June issue! Some friends from Verla's Writers' Board are in there with me: Tanya's poem is on page 15, Amy's article is on page 7, and Annie's activity is on page 28!

"The Wanderer," the first song I learned on the ukulele.

I've been in Rolla for the past week--a couple days ago I picked up Dad's ukulele, and he taught me a few chords and a song, "the Wanderer." My fingers hurt from playing, and I'm not very good, but I love it! I think I'll try to get one for myself. I'll see if I can post a video of my dorkiness soon.

Lately I've been neck-deep in researching and writing my new novel and loving every minute of it. Feels good. But today I switched gears and turned back to my retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. I'm revising it and hope to submit it soon.

So I'm mulling and pondering and considering the best ways to revise and I'm thankful for the great feedback I've already received from writer friends who have read the manuscript for me with the new issues in mind. I'm excited to go to town on it and look forward to the end result. But I don't want to lose my momentum on my new novel, so I'm trying to divide my time between the two. Which means I'll be a crazy woman for awhile. But I like crazy. I'll try to pop in here every once in a while to take a breath.

In other writing news, Alan found out today that his book proposal was accepted and the book will be published in the Ancient Near Eastern Monograph series! Hurrah!

I especially like the way this person edited the clips of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to go with the song:

In celebration of the release of her debut YA fantasy novel, Silver Phoenix , Cindy Pon is holding a contest and giving away some great prizes including the choice of one of her original framed brushpaintings and a signed copy of her novel or a $100 gift card to a book store of choice and signed copy of the novel. Watch the book trailer and then hurry over to her blog and enter to win! Congratulations, Cindy, I can't wait to read it!



A sample of Cindy's beautiful artwork:

We're nearing the end of National Poetry month, and I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts on the subject, especially Kelly Fineman's regular poetry feature this month on her LJ.

While researching for my novel, I've come across some interesting things about medieval Icelandic law regarding poetry. Not only was any type of slanderous poetry illegal, love poetry, too, was against the law and its punishment, outlawry, was strictly enforced. According to the sagas, poets were murdered left and right for saying things they weren't supposed to say. Dangerous profession, poet.

This reminded me of the Russian Poet, Irina Ratushinskaya, who was sent to a horrible prison camp for seven years for expressing "anti-Soviet agitation" in her poetry. But even while imprisoned, Irina continued to create poetry, carving it into soap until she had memorized it, then washing away the evidence.

I was also reminded of this song by Bruce Cockburn, "Maybe the Poet," a perfect song to wind up National Poetry Month:



Maybe the poet is gay
But he'll be heard anyway

Maybe the poet is drugged
But he won't stay under the rug

Maybe the voice of the spirit
In which case you'd better hear it

Maybe he's a woman
Who can touch you where you're human

Male female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don't let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

Put him up against the wall
Shoot him up with pentothal

Shoot him up with lead
You won't call back what's been said

Put him in the ground
But one day you'll look around

There'll be a face you don't know
Voicing thoughts you've heard before

Male female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don't let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

In honor of the bard's 445th birthday:

17

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.


35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,
Thy adverse party is thy advocate,
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate,
That I an accessary needs must be,
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

I enjoyed this essay on NPR's This I Believe about how paying attention to the world around you can help make you a good writer and a good person.

I love her.

Today I went backpacking on a nine mile saunter through breath-taking country with some friends from the UU (been attending for about a month). The wildflowers were in bloom and the temperature was just right. I'm hoping to try kayaking soon, as one of them owns six boats and has offered to teach us how. I'm excited about it--I've never been. It was a beautiful day.

Doh! I just need to kill off one character, and then I'll come up for a donut.

Just heard of these guys a couple weeks ago and have been listening to the album over and over:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

When the kids hop out of the car each morning in front of the school, lately my instinct is to send them on their way into the world with the words, "Be careful!" Because I love them and care about them and want them to be safe out there. But something makes me continue to form the words, "Seize the day!" instead.

I toss the words to them like a sword and shield, hoping it will embolden them to take on the world. And win. To engage the day, own it, take hold of its wonder and beauty and complexities--make it theirs before it's gone. But the words scare me more than they used to. I know if my child boldly faces each day, at some point one day may rise to meet her, seize her with equal ferociousness and clutch her so hard it rips her heart before it's over. And I don't want that. I long to protect my kids from pain. Oh be careful! I say silently as they bolt out the door to embrace the world.

But still I call out to them, "Seize the day!" like a battle cry. Because despite the fear I have for my kids, I know deep down I desire them to truly live even more than I desire them to remain unscathed. E. E. Cummings said, "Unbeing dead isn't being alive." To carefully keep ourselves undead is not the same thing as truly living.

So off they go to seize the day, and my heart is both happy and fearful for them. My hope is that along with their sword and shield, I can also toss them a little something else to help them on their way. Not a map. I don't know the paths they need to take. I just want to give them a small satchel to carry close to their hearts--it holds a potent mixture of constant love and hard-won wisdom. And an endless supply of hope.

I've been researching for my next novel, a Romeo & Juliet story set in Iceland during the conversion from Paganism to Christianity (1000AD), and I think I'm finally ready to type "Chapter 1".

The start of a new novel always brings mixed feelings: excitement, a rush of energy, nervousness about getting off on the right foot, and fear that I might turn what feels like a shining brilliant idea into a load of rubbish.

And figuring out where to start the story is one of the hardest parts. "Begin at the beginning" they say. But where exactly does that occur? And what if the end is heartbreaking? Should you start at the end and then go back to the beginning, then move forward to the end and pass it till you reach a new beginning, hoping you find some Hope there by the time you reach it?

I guess in order to find out, I must begin.

Happy Birthday, lovely girl.

Words

Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road---

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.





Two Lovers and a Beachcomber By the Real Sea


Cold and final, the imagination
Shuts down its fabled summer house;
Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation
Dwindles in the hour-glass.

Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair
Tangling in the tide's green fall
Now fold their wings like bats and disappear
Into the attic of the skull.

We are not what we might be; what we are
Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.

A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack
Of kaleidoscope shells
Probing fractured Venus with a stick
Under a tent of taunting gulls.

No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone
That chucks in backtrack of the wave;
Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on,
A grain of sand is all we have.

Water will run by; the actual sun
Will scrupulously rise and set;
No little man lives in the exacting moon
And that is that, is that, is that.

Such a great song!

I was recently asked to be a first-reader for one of my favorite magazine groups. I will be reading submissions and selecting which ones to send on to the editors.* I'm really looking forward to getting my first huge stack of manuscripts!



*My writer friends already know this, but for those surfing by: Do NOT send any manuscripts directly to me or even addressed to me. Please follow the magazines' guidelines.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

It's been 150 years since Walt Whitman first published his Leaves of Grass. Diane Ackerman, whose A Natural History of the Senses I recently blogged about, discusses on NPR the enduring poem and the poet's lasting impression on his beloved country.

(Thanks to Alan for the link!)

"Happiness" is a thoughtful song, almost sorrowful. It's been on my mind. I like the different metaphors used, including a personification of happiness as a loved one who leaves but will return one day. You can hear the song here.

Happiness
By Isaac Slade/The Fray

Happiness is just outside my window
Would it crash blowing 80-miles an hour?
Or is happiness a little more like knocking
On your door, and you just let it in?

Happiness feels a lot like sorrow
Let it be, you can’t make it come or go
But you are gone- not for good but for now
Gone for now feels a lot like gone for good

Happiness is a firecracker sitting on my headboard
Happiness was never mine to hold
Careful child, light the fuse and get away
‘Cause happiness throws a shower of sparks

Happiness damn near destroys you
Breaks your faith to pieces on the floor
So you tell yourself, that’s probably enough for now
Happiness has a violent roar

Happiness is like the old man told me
Look for it, but you’ll never find it all
But let it go, live your life and leave it
Then one day, wake up and she’ll be home
Home, home, home

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair


I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.




Don't Go Far Off, Even For A Day


Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have
hands,and all the hands have people;and
more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand

and now you are and i am now and we're
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before--
and shining this our now must come to then

our then shall be some darkness during which
fingers are without hands;and i have no
you:and all trees are(any more than each
leafless)its silent in forevering snow

--but never fear(my own,my beautiful
my blossoming)for also then's until

The following poem was recently written by my friend, Kelly, in response to a challenge to create a story for this image by Cowper. I think she did a lovely job:

La Belle Dame Sans Regrets
by Kelly R. Fineman


A knight went riding out one day
To slay a dragon on the hill.
Astride his roan, he made his way –
Near water's edge, his horse stood still.

No dragon could the good knight see—
Only a maiden fit to bed:
Her eyes were silver as the sea,
Her smiling lips were poppy red.

In dreamlike state, he reached for her.
He spoke fine words in accents clear.
She came to him without demur—
No word she said as she drew near.

She rode with him upon his steed,
Again she rode him in due course.
Full willingly he met her need—
At last she rose without remorse.

The dragon maiden, fierce and fair,
sat by the dead knight's earthen bed—
With calm, cool hands she fixed her hair,
Her eyes and lips both poppy red.

These two new Megan Washington songs make me smile.

It's impossible to stay blue when the flowers are happy, the sky is bright, the air is sweet, and there are diamonds in the grass.

Yesterday I had a real treat in my mailbox. A friend sent me Tell Tale Signs, the eighth installment of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series. It's a two-CD set of previously unreleased studio recordings, alternate versions, demos, live songs and rarities from 1989 to 2006. I admit I am not the Dylan connoisseur Kevin is, and hadn't heard the original versions of some of the songs, but that did not keep me from fully enjoying this album. I've had this version of the song "Most of the Time" in my head most of the day:

I see you scowling. Looks like you could use some Billy Collins today. Here are links to three:

Introduction to Poetry