Quote for the Day: October 28th, 2021

*The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)* by J.R.R. Tolkien

I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)

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Poem for the Day: October 27th, 2021

*How to Not Be Afraid of Everything* by Jane Wong (Alice James Books, 2021)

Tenants by Jane Wong

Above: my neighbor's feet, fussing from room to room,
velvet hooves tendering my head. Was the fruitcake
curdling? Would the mail make it there on time? (it must
make it there on time)? Below: I try to light
the stove. Little clicks of the tongue, heat and water, my altar.
Underground: my grandfather breathes through a silk jacket,
a dandelion mane resting between his lips. Here: every living
thing is an altar. Sweet worms kiss his knuckles to sleep,
loose doorknobs I open: story after story. My family:
a spiral staircase, a fish spine picked clean, the snail's
miasmic song. 1982: sun gasping through splintering snow,
a lemon slice folded in my mother's cup, a generous
bulb, a lighthouse across oceans she can not see. 1985: we slept in
a split-level attic, squirrels running across
the beams. 1964: my grandfather offers my mother one egg.
Her brother looks on, fists full of ash. 1967: to make
the body dance with sticks and stones to break alone. Within:
prison, rose finch feathers float through bars, what he can not
talk about. My grandfather sings to me in a ladybug-speckled coffin,
the color of good teeth. Above: my grandmother keeps
heaps upon heaps of oil containers, poured and repurposed
in hunched Fanta plastic. This living can be so quiet sometimes,
you can hear the lights humming. Moss slinks into my walls
and is painted over, white to mint. I touch
the wall, these porous lives, this dense understory. Today: I cut
a telescope in two to see everything inside, out:
new.

© 2021 Jane Wong. “Tenants” is taken from Wong’s collection How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, which was published by Alice James Books in October 2021 and is now available to purchase wherever books are sold. Her first collection, Overpour, was published by Action Books in 2016. In addition to being a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, Wong has been awarded numerous fellowships and residencies. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. You can find out more about Wong and her work on her website.

Quote for the Day: October 27th, 2021

We only have what we give.
Isabel Allende

Poem for the Day: October 26th, 2021

Trees by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Today’s poem first appeared in the August 1913 issue of Poetry. It was later collected in Kilmer’s 1914 collection entitled Trees and Other Poems, which is available to purchase wherever books are sold. A free public domain version of the text can be accessed and disseminated without limitations at Project Gutenberg.

Quote for the Day: October 26th, 2021

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Isn’t fall the best? Multicolored leaves falling from the trees. The smell of change in the air. The intentional slowing-down of time. And pumpkin spice everything, of course. Since today’s quote is from The Great Gatsby, I thought I’d share my favorite edition of that particular book, which you can purchase here.

Poem for the Day: October 25th, 2021

As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's 
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

I say móre: the just man justices; 
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; 
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — 
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Today’s poem was taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose, which was published by Penguin Classics in 1985 and is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Quote for the Day: October 25th, 2021

You belong among the wildflowers
You belong in a boat out at sea
Sail away, kill off the hours
You belong somewhere you feel free
Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”

Poem for the Day: October 24th, 2021

Resting on the Ground with My Love in the Rattlesnake Habitat by Alice Lyons

She pronounces Chama the name of the milky green river
with a richness in the ch I cannot muster, puts a hard d
on the end of her ands. anD. anD. anD. Like the river
she is asking to be endless anD shifting. To stream.
I’d scouted the knoll of oaks for rattlers, being beyond the bounds
of Coverage having no means to learn their habits.
So I lay down with her on the ground. Their ground. AnD
I willed to forget the cares of my later-in-life job search. Job.
Which is also Job, a man in the Bible. Which is a book.
The oaks of the knoll were leaning into the Chama like girls
washing their hair in basins. I thought of EB shampooing Lota,
of Frost’s birches, of Plath’s Wych elms which I’d like to have
googled. Did snakes favor oak knolls? Did Georgia O’Keeffe worry
about health insurance costs in Abiquiú? AnD beside me my love
streaming, her poodles distantly nosing the chamisa. Standards.
I thought I had them. Put art at the front of the queue
wych is different from quiú. AnD now this. Biblical
the proportions of this breaking-back-into-a-country-I’d-
locked-myself-out-of phase. Was it scenic? I liked
the pachysandra, branches of oak taking all that space
from the sky. But then everybody disappeared to their offices.
Three times I wrote work work work when woke
was what I wanted to write.
Miniature is the acorn
I fingered in the soft flour-sack pocket of my jeans.
Acorn smaller than East Coast or indeed Irish Oak varieties
wych she handed me anD how hungrily I pocketed its little body.

© 2018 Alice Lyons. Among other accolades and recognitions, Lyons has received the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry, the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary, and was a Fellow in Poetry at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute from 2015-2016. Her most recent collection, The Breadbasket of Europe, was published by Veer Books in 2016 and is now available to purchase wherever books are sold.

Quote for the Day: October 24th, 2021

I don’t paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
Frida Kahlo

All Aboard the ARC: Halloween Is Coming! by Cal Everett (Words) and Lenny Wen (Pictures)

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Seasonal titles are often hit-or-miss in terms of quality and sales-worthiness. You have your perennial bestsellers, the classics, which always perform well. Then there’s the seasonal titles featuring licensed characters, like Pete the Cat or Peppa Pig. These are always a big hit with preschool audiences but are certainly nothing to write home about. And then finally are the newbies, the titles published especially for the holiday(s) in question that aren’t tied to any other franchise or proud tradition save the holiday itself.

*The Three Types of Children’s Halloween Books* © 2021 Fred Slusher. All rights reserved.

My verdict: it’s absolutely delightful. Everett’s pithy rhymes combined with Wen’s clean and colorful illustrations make for a spook-tacular family read for Halloween night.

Halloween Is Coming! belongs to the last category. My verdict: it’s absolutely delightful. Everett’s pithy rhymes combined with Wen’s clean and colorful illustrations make for a spook-tacular family read for Halloween night. I also really appreciated the diversity of the children featured in the picture book. Too many children’s books focus exclusively on able-bodied white children and this deliberate act of exclusion prevents BIPOC children and children who are differently-abled from being able to socialize themselves within the framework of their peers. In short, representation matters, and it doesn’t just matter in social issue titles that explicitly deal with race, ability, or any other demographic characteristic.

Too many children’s books focus exclusively on able-bodied white children and this deliberate act of exclusion prevents BIPOC children and children who are differently-abled from being able to socialize themselves within the framework of their peers.

I’m comfortable in saying that Halloween Is Coming! is my favorite new Halloween title published this year and will be one I enjoy reading in the future as well as recommending to my littlest customers and their adults.