Novels & Poetry

I love words and so enjoy the delightful pleasure of reading. Carola Dunn, Patricia Wentworth, Alain de Botton, Masanobu Fukuoka and Zadie Smith are a few of the authors whose works I have been enjoying. I am currently reading, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, not a light read and not for everyone, but interesting thus far. Poetry is another love of mine, I don't claim to know the ins and outs of the medium and haven't ever studied it as a subject, but I enjoy what speaks to me (whether or not it is touted as good by those in the know). I read a lovely review of Music for Landing Planes By, by Eireann Lorsung and look forward to reading it sometime. Billy Collins, a favourite poet of mine, has a wonderful way with words. He was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2001-2003. A review by The Washington Post had this to say, "[Collins] takes the mundane thing and shows you its mystery. And he takes the mysterious and strips it naked." I will leave you with a poem I am fond of from his book, Questions About Angels (1991):

The Man in the Moon

He used to frighten me in the nights of childhood,
the wide adult face, enormous, stern, aloft.
I could not imagine such a loneliness, such coldness.

But tonight as I drive home over these hilly roads
I see him sinking behind stands of winter trees
and rising again to show his familiar face.

And when he comes into full view over open fields
he looks like a young man who has fallen in love
with the dark earth,

a pale bachelor, well-groomed and full of melancholy,
his round mouth open
as if he had just broke into song.