Happy Thanksgiving!

Our kitchen is barely big enough for one person to maneuver around in, let alone two, so every holiday some inevitable bickering always ensues.

Right now I am sitting in my living room looking out at the milky-gray overcast sky. I’ve got reruns playing in the background and I’m daydreaming about the turkey dinner I’ll be eating later today with all the fixings. I can hear my parents in our kitchen hoisting the turkey which so bravely sacrificed its life so that we might feast today into the oven. Our kitchen is barely big enough for one person to maneuver around in, let alone two, so every holiday some inevitable bickering always ensues. Perhaps it’s wrong of me, but I love relaxing on my behind while others toil near me.

I’m not going to lie, these past few weeks have been really difficult. I’ve spent a lot of time crying, screaming, tossing and turning at night, and questioning so many of the decisions which have brought me to this point in my life. Work has been an absolute nightmare, as retail work in any capacity usually is at this time of year, and my psychologist has been recalibrating my meds, so I’ve been a veritable basket case. I don’t know if “basket case” is a politically correct descriptor anymore and it’s certainly not a clinical term, but it’s what I’ve been nevertheless.

I’m comforting myself by constantly taking stock of what I have versus what I lack, and the balance is always in favor of what I have.

Today, all of the things I’ve been struggling with recently remain with me in the background. But something different is in the air today. I’m trying to live in the moment despite how difficult that is. I’m comforting myself by constantly taking stock of what I have versus what I lack, and the balance is always in favor of what I have. Right now, I have everything I need. Right now, I don’t have anywhere I need to be or anything urgent to accomplish. I am safe and warm. My bills are paid. I am with family and if only for today, I am choosing to allow everything else to be noise that I can turn all the way down to the point where it’s nothing but a low hum.

I hope that wherever you are and whoever you’re with that you’re able to press pause and take a deep breath, knowing that you have everything you need to carry you to the next moment.

I hope that wherever you are and whoever you’re with that you’re able to press pause and take a deep breath, knowing that you have everything you need to carry you to the next moment. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Poem for the Day: November 25th, 2021

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Quote for the Day: November 25th, 2021

You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want.
S.E. Hinton

Poem for the Day: November 24th, 2021

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

This poem is in the public domain. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is one of Robert Frost’s best-known and most-loved poems. It was written in 1922 and included in his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection New Hampshire, which was published by Henry Holt in 1923.

Quote for the Day: November 24th, 2021

Stop asking people for directions to places they’ve never been.
Glennon Doyle

Poem for the Day: November 23rd, 2021

Self-Compassion by James Crews

My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too 
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, but today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?—
or considered the threat of more wildfires,
the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream,
then remembered that in a few more minutes, 
I’d have to climb down to the cellar and empty
the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame—
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.

© 2021 James Crews. “Self-Compassion” was originally published by the Academy of American Poets for their Poem-a-Day series on November 17th, 2021. Crews is the editor of the forthcoming collection The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, which is due to be released in April 2022 by Storey Publishing and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Quote for the Day: November 23rd, 2021

*Enemies With Benefits: A Loveless Brothers Novel* by Roxie Noir

You’re walking barefoot along main street at midnight with no shoes on like some redneck hooker because your night’s going well?
Enemies With Benefits: A Loveless Brothers Novel by Roxie Noir

Everyone who reads has a book they keep with them for long waits in the grocery store line or to flip through while sitting in the doctor’s office. I’m talking ratty paperbacks and ebooks read on smartphones, those books some call “guilty pleasures”. I don’t really like that term because anything that brings someone joy, as long as it’s not harming them or anyone else, should not have even a modicum of guilt assigned to it.

Enemies With Benefits is that book for me right now. I don’t ever read it for long stretches of time, just when I have a minute here or there. It doesn’t take up a lot of space in my brain but it does bring me a lot of joy when I get to read three or four pages at a time every few days.

Are you reading anything at the moment that’s bringing you a lot of joy? Let me know in the comments.

Poem for the Day: November 22nd, 2021

Wight by Stanley Plumly

In the dark we disappear, pure being.
Our mirror images, impure being.

Being and becoming (Heidegger), being and
nothingness (Sartre)—which is purer being?

Being alone is no way to be: thus
loneliness is the test of pure being.

Nights in love I fell too far or not quite
far enough—one pure, one impure being.

Clouds, snow, mist, the dragon's breath on water,
smoke from fire—a metaphor's pure being.

Stillness and more stillness and the light locked
deep inside—both pure and impure being.

Is is the verb of being, I the noun—
or pronoun for the purists of being.

I was, I am, I looked within and saw
nothing very clearly: purest being.

Stanley Plumly (1939-2019) was greatly influenced by his working-class background, a fact which is evident in his work. He earned his B.A. at Wilmington College in Ohio and his Ph.D. at Ohio University. During his long career, he taught at the University of Iowa, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the University of Maryland. He also served as the poet laureate of Maryland for several years. You can read more about his life and work here.

Quote for the Day: November 22nd, 2021

Xavier Dolan as Maxime (left) and Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas as Matthias (right) in a scene from *Matthias & Maxime* (2019); directed by Xavier Dolan

Sometimes, you spend your life doing one thing, and in the end, it wasn’t your thing.
Matthias & Maxime (2019); directed by Xavier Dolan

Is this primarily a book blog? Yes. Have I been posting a lot of quotes from films? Also yes. Well, this is my blog, and I’ll post whatever I want whenever I want for as long as I want. I am also of the opinion that film, as much as literature, is text. Don’t take my word for it, though—Thomas C. Foster’s Reading the Silver Screen: A Film Lover’s Guide to Decoding the Art Form That Moves is the perfect place to start for any would-be cinephile or for that matter, anyone who appreciates the movies and wants to learn more about them.

There are hints of Bergman, of course. Some Truffaut and Fellini. Van Sant is flickering always in the background. But there’s something else there too, something which belongs wholly and exclusively to Dolan.

I love Xavier Dolan. Some of you may remember my review of his film J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) (2009), which I called a “semi-autobiographical, near-perfect evocation of the vagaries of queer adolescence”. You can tell that the young auteur is well-read when it comes to great films from the way he sets up his mises en scène to the way he is able to harness every drop of emotional resonance in each frame. There are hints of Bergman, of course. Some Truffaut and Fellini. Van Sant is flickering always in the background. But there’s something else there too, something which belongs wholly and exclusively to Dolan.

The fact that Dolan is only 32 years old means that we’re hopefully only seeing him at the depth of his powers. I only hope the planet holds out long enough for us to see him at his height.

Poem for the Day: November 21st, 2021

Winter Journal: Threshed Blue, Cardings, Dim Tonsils by Emily Wilson

stripped batting of cloud
glimpsed ligaments
dusk coming up under
lithographic, nib-hatchings
       instruments click
       the fine-sprung locust
       replicate dinge along hill-lines
       tailings of umber, the rust smudge
There is still that hemmed ocean of oaks
       the various reds, the somehow
       silver cast over the brown-gold
       the under-brushed shadows
How can there be more of their dispensing
       into air?
The night-openings of the trees
The thousand clefts into
Their corridors shiver and merge and piece apart
There is no one beside what was once river
Only the carbons incoming
       accreting in leaves
Love of old oaks unencumbering
Root-beauties brought through
crude sieves of bare trees
the few fastened leaves
Those pods are like tongues or like sickles
The blades have been pulled from their sheaths
The backs of the clouds now upturned
They herd from pink seas
They make their untouchable stream
       through regions of steep emptiness
       against which the trees have their gestures
Drop down, drop down toward me
your little sleek scars
Make your bed in rough cedars
clangor of darks numbering in
clusters of trunks and spoked lungs
the thistles that work at the gums

© 2001 Emily Wilson and Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. “Winter Journal: Threshed Blue, Cardings, Dim Tonsils” originally appeared in Wilson’s collection The Keep, which was published in 2001 by University of Iowa Press.

Emily Wilson studied at Harvard University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught at the latter, as well as at Colby College, Grinnell College, and the University of Montana. Wilson is the author of four poetry collections: The Keep (University of Iowa Press, 2001); Morpho Terrestre (2006), a limited edition book featuring artwork by Sara Langworthy; Micrographia (University of Iowa Press, 2010); and The Great Medieval Yellows (Canarium Books, 2015).

Writing for Boston Review, James Galvin said of Wilson: “Generous in her spareness, clear in her complexity, matching wildness of diction with precision of sense, nervousness with nerve, her poems are not written for analysis, perhaps not even for approval. As we watch poetical heresies turn into orthodoxies, it becomes clear, especially in a poet like Wilson, that only originality, a signature style, remains steadfastly heretical.”