Besides the amazing poetry on this site!  Along the vein of what is your favorite poem... what are you reading?  I am in the middle of a biography of Ralph Ellison--highly meticulous biography and rewarding....

I've recently gotten into the very bad habit of reading several books at once - something I have long abhorred in others. So, currently reading Pleasures of the damned - Bukowski (ha!); Letters to a young poet - Rilke (thanks Larry); The Darling - Russell Banks (painful and powerful); How to make your Japanese flow (doesn't do what it claims to!); and a stack of 10th grade writing portfolios!

Thanks for asking.

B.

No poetry at the moment. Just finished Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and The Circus in Winter, Cathy Day (which inspired my Dear Sam poem.)

All wonderful books and yes, I was reading them all at once. I keep them in different rooms of the house.

I'm into Jill's companion and Baudelaire and Perry (an old soak). I read and reread — at the same time — something of an odd Oxford speciality, draw life from the long departed

As for a dash of humour, I dip into King James. But more so, because this particular bible gives me great pleasure to measure the wayside progress that befalls so many palatial clerics of today — Basil Hume and I went back a long way and mixed with some strange angels

— so forth

Bury Me Standing is always there, another holy text. As is Jessie's Journey and my own stuff. Swift's Rhetorical Art (reminds me of where my feet are), plus the downpour splendour of near unpronounceable trope by Yevtushenko et al. Good old George Orwell, I read his letters often

— so it goes 


   

Ah reading many books at once. A habit of mine as well. Not such a bad habit really. I mean it's like conversations with friends sort of?  Drawing life from the departed? Funny. In fact, there are many dead people I really wish I could have met. 
Here is a big confession. I just finished the first eighth of Ulysses, again, for the third time. I like it. I just can't get through it. Help!
Having said that there is nothing like the feeling of not being able to put a book down. I cannot explain the combination of books that has occured for me for.
Here are a few: Moby Dick, Sound and the Fury, Black Water by Joyce Carol Oats, Shipping News by Annie Proulx, everything by PG Wodehouse, The Color Purple,
I think I will stop now.

My goodness.....i have just completed the Jun-Air 'Compressor' Manual
so that i can get my wife's air driven carving tool ready
for her to have some fun with.


Here is a piece "Cosmic Cradle" she is putting the finishing touches to
it will be featured in a show at Gallery Apel in Istanbul September 2008.
http://www.galleryapel.com/ 

artist  Nermin Kura       
http://www.galleryapel.com/go.php?page=sanatci&artistid=78

artist email:   nerminkura @ silentlotus.net



It is 'coil built' low fired clay
with a Terra Sigillata slip finish and mixed media.

Lovely, Silent.

I've just finished The Hours by Michael Cunningham as part of a reading assignment to show me how seamlessy an author can move their readers between time periods and character/storylines without missing a beat. 

I hardly have time to read anything besides the two texts for my poetry classes.  Next week I will begin Shakespeare where we will dive into four comedies and four tragedies.  My husband ordered a book "The Life of Robert Browning" off Ebay for me (what a sweetheart) and I expect it in the mail shortly.  I've also been reading Plath's "Ariel".

what are you reading?

I mostly read murder, fiction or fact.  I squeeze a few oddball selections off the discount rack of this and that .. it's how I discovered Carol Oates, although I'm not exactly sure, as I feel it might be Joyce Carol Oates but surely  a favorite.  I packed that book over a year ago in the move from Seattle to Kansas where weight layed much to discern but could not bear to part - it was indeed one of my most favorites concerning departure separate from the norm. hmmm... I shall have to disinter.  Bury Me Standing, ahem, perhaps, I have that - somewhere - the jist sounds oh so familiar . . although it's been years . . (layed should be laid, perhaps, perhaps . )

My current reading list:

A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Meditations-Writings/dp/0060884088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215015975&sr=8-1
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Standing-Up-Comics-Life/dp/1416553649/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016092&sr=1-1
PHP and MySQL 5 for Dummies
http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/0470096004/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016136&sr=8-1
Poetic Medicine by John Fox
http://www.amazon.com/Poetic-Medicine-Healing-Art-Poem-Making/dp/0874778824/ref=pd_bbs_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016196&sr=8-5
Stop Walking on Eggshells
http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Walking-Eggshells-Borderline-Personality/dp/157224108X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215016253&sr=1-1
Click (about internet search engines and human behavior; forgot author's name)

in case you wanted some nonfiction to read- moskowitz

Bag of Bones - Stephen King

(my daughter's newfound love of the ghostly and ghastly has resparked mine - lol

she just finished a book called --  The Restless Dead:  Ghostly Tales From Around the Globe)

"Here is a piece "Cosmic Cradle" she is putting the finishing touches to
it will be featured in a show at Gallery Apel in Istanbul September 2008."

Silent, This piece "Cosmic Cradle" by your wife is really beautiful. And coil built!

[expected in the mail today] Water for Elephants, and a book titled Knitting Socks [with 25 patterns! -- Watch out kids, here come your Christmas presents!].

Lynn there must be a poem in there some where.
I am going to look at your submissions around xMas time here at the circle.

Yarn & Knitting Needle Smiles
silent lotus

W.S. Merwin's Finding the Islands.

---

Road

In early snow
going to see a friend
I pass thousands of miles of fences