Winter Issues

The snow and ice are melting today, a sunny, blue-sky day. I've been wearing my boots and carrying my shoes around in a grocery bag, except when I forget and have to do exercise class in my socks. It's been "back to work" lately--writing, editing, submitting, meeting, phone calls, chores, figures, errands, lists.

So far, this has not included taking down the Christmas tree, or random house decorations, but it might.

I've posted a "poetry blog" at Escape Into Life about all the winter issues in which our poets are featured, and other stuff. If you are a poet, go comment on that blog, and tell us what you are doing, poetry-wise, this winter.

In my usual reading-a-number-of-things-at-a-time mode, I finished The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, weeping, and started Doc, by Mary Doria Russell, a library book. I finished Stag's Leap, by Sharon Olds, added to the Olds collection on my shelf, and started A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver, a library book. The poem "Hum, Hum" made me very sad. I had thought she was free of sadness and trouble in her childhood, but, oh, no, she wasn't. Her love of the world is all the more astounding. It was, after all, her life's work.

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Forgot to credit the EIL artist, Evgenia Arbugaeva!