Hand That Pen Over to Me, Poetaster!

I've been writing poetry again. As a first sentence that has an ominous flavor, doesn't it? A little du Maurier-esque. And maybe it's for good reason.
I wrote lots of poetry in college, mostly for assignments; sestinas, villanelles, sonnets, abecedarians, DOUBLE abecedarians, and the occasional non-required formless thing, inevitably scribbled after midnight. I stopped reading poetry on such a regular basis about five years ago, and when I stopped consuming it, the urge to produce it ceased also. Maybe I'm having a bit of a bohemian renaissance, but something triggered the poem-hunger in my brain and now I'm revisiting my old favorites, buying new collections, and pausing to read the poems in The New Yorker (!).
Since April is poetry month, I thought I would share a new favorite by a classic: Sylvia Plath.
Read this one aloud to yourself, I promise you'll get chills.

Elm

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminshed and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrevables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?--

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.


Whoa, Sylvia!
What poets are you reading now? How will you celebrate poetry month?

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" ~Shakespeare*

February is the perfect month to purchase love poetry. And I love poetry, so that suits me fine. So, this morning, I took a moment to see what is currently available and suited to the cause here at the book store.

You need not spend a lot of cash to satisfy your sweet tooth when Dover Thrift Editions are available. Great Love Poems edited by Shane Weller is only $2 before tax and in this small but lovely volume resides poetry by Shakespeare*, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Blake to name a few.

Then look no further than our bargain tables to find a lovely hardback volume of poetry by Pablo Neruda (in English and Spanish verse, now shelved in the poetry section.) Intimacies: Poems of Love is available for a mere $8.98 prior to taxation, when otherwise we'd sell it for close to thirty dollars.

Quite the right price, eh? And then open up the volume and you will see the lovely paintings of Mary Heebner that accompany Mr. N's words:

"Verses of pastry that melt

into milk and sugar in the mouth,

air and water to drink,

the bites and kisses of love.

I long for eatable sonnets,

poems of flour and honey."

Gosh, that makes me hungry. And if you want to be even more romantic, then recite Mr. Neruda's poems in Espanol:

"Versos de hojaldre que derritan

leche y azucar en la boca,

el aire y el agua se beben,

el amor se muerde y se besa,

quiero sonetos comestibles,

poemas de miel y de harina."

And then you can't go wrong to purchase a bit of heaven in verse, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, is one of my favorite books.

Not all the verse is dedicated to love per se, but much of it appears to be. Rumi was expressing his love of the divine, of God, but there's no reason the verse can't suit one's worldly lover:

"When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry at once, quickly,

for God's sake!

Don't postpone it!

Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching

will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason

has landed on your shoulder,

and become yours."

See what I mean?!

And then if you want to add a bit of spice try The Best American Erotic Poems, edited by David Lehman.

Charles Simic writes, "I love breasts, hard full breasts, guarded by a button," to which Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, "I, too, beneath your moon, almighty Sex, go forth at nightfall crying like a cat." M-E-O-W! That sounds about right ... so why not open up to a melange of erotic spices found within these pages.

But then perhaps you are like me and you love to find books on your own? If so, you know where to find us.

Jan
Book Seller

Welcome to the New World

We are so excited to be part of the HarperCollins 'Comprehensive Backlist' Program. Now, over 3,000 Harper titles are available Print-on-Demand through our Espresso Book Machine. Together, with 9 other bookstores in the country, we printed our inaugural Harper backlist title: Ann Patchett's Truth & Beauty.

You can follow the whole #podbookday conversation on Twitter and check out more of our photos on our Facebook page.

Here's a little more about this exciting new venture.

Feel free to email Anna, our Print-on-Demand & Self Publishing Coordinator with any questions about this: ubs_publish @ earthlink . net

If you find us together, which we often are...

Here is the final book in our holiday-adjacent giveaway! It's been so fun reading all your comments, and now I hope to get your creative juices flowing once more. This last book is a real beauty: A Zeal of Zebras! It's a wonderfully illustrated, large-format hardcover that is truly great for all ages.

Collective nouns are a linguistic phenomena that you suddenly realize are a thing. For me, this happened somewhat recently. I took for granted such oft-heard phrases as "pride of lions," "murder of crows," and "school of fish," but it came as a shock to open James Lipton's An Exaltation of Larks and see lists and lists of collective nouns! They were overwhelming! They don't really fill a lexical gap; after all, saying "a group of parrots" gets the idea across. But "a pandemonium of parrots?!" It's so... linguistically indulgent! Poetic, even! Anyway, I like the ones that are also insults, such as "an embarrassment of pandas," (see above) because, well, pandas. They're a little embarrassing.

So here's my challenge for you, intelligent readers of this blog. Make up a collective noun for us booksellers. Don't cheat and Google it! I did that and there's no consensus, so there's no right answer. Be a little mean if you must, but mostly, be witty.
And as always: if you want to win the book, include your e-mail address in your comment!
--Seija

What did I read in 2011? (and will 2012 be any different?)

Last year I took to reading books on a whim: considering whatever looked entertaining that came my way. I also kept in mind books that my co-workers, friends, and Nancy Pearl liked, and that Kirkus or Publishers Weekly gave starred reviews to ... because it is fun to have company once you've read a good book, right?!

So for 2011, I got a fair bit of reading done considering my own pacing and standards. [Please note: I am not a fast reader, and often will sound out words in my head so that the beauty of them doesn't escape me.]  I read around 36 books. How many books did you read?

36 is not a number with bragging rights around here: in fact I have a co-worker that can easily read a book a day (... plus she has super-duper-high retention, and it seems that she can easily refer to the specific details of books read in days gone by) and other co-workers who plumb loads of the non-fiction variety. Me, I mostly read fiction with a dash of the non.

Further, I was talking to my new friend Misha the other day and we were discussing top reading picks for the year (persuasion enough for me to actually come up with a list.) So, without further ado, here are some books that stood out for various reasons with a few guilty pleasures:

Sunshine, re-released with a silly gold-sparkly cover in trade book size, by Robin McKinley ... not sure which year I re-read it tho' ... could've been in '10. Love it, love it, love it. My fav vampire book to date.

Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin, her first book. Expansive fantasy freshly done. I will be reading the other two books in her Inheritance Trilogy.

The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell.
I fell in love with Temple .... And my only complaint was that it was waaay too short. :(

Soft Apocalypse, by Will McIntosh. Dystopian served up with a side of plausibility. Will look forward to other books by Will.

 

The Strain, first of a trilogy which I may not be completing, by del Toro and Hogan. Why not? Well, read it and we'll talk.

 

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson ... easily a classic and nothin' like the movie starring Will Smith (although I liked that, too.)

Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. I am going to hold off on reading book number two until book number three in the trilogy comes out. Mr. Rothfuss was at the book store and he is a scholar and a gentleman.

The River, by Mary Jane Beaufrand ... the beginning got me hooked ... I wanted to visit with these folk for real.  Mary Jane works at the book store sometimes, when we are lucky. She is an amazing bookseller and co-hort.

 And finally Icefall, by Mathew Kirby. Great main female adolescent character ... heroic. This is my seasonal book pick. Brrrrr! Definite thumbs up.

So, that's only nine ... yah, I know. I liked a lot of other books ... and would love to read your list(s.) With the final question that I pose to myself being: will 2012 be any different? Well, I may be hashing that out with you through my posts that follow ...

Jan

Caution: May Contain Cats

Finally! I have an excuse to post a picture of my cat on this blog. Here he is:



















Umm... were we interrupting something? Oh, just your unrelenting adorableness?
That's cool.

Back to books! This week we're giving away a copy of Crafting With Cat Hair by Kaori Tsutaya, the book that launched a thousand double-takes. Is it a joke? Nope. It's really quite earnest and sweet. Not only is it full of shockingly cute cat photos, it will also tell you what to do with that excess cuteness (aka cat hair). The answer? Felting!
In order to win this book, you must leave the name of your favorite cat (along with your e-mail address) in the comments. A winner will be chosen at random.
Shall we all say a collective "Awwww?"




**UPDATE**
Comments are closed for this giveaway. Thanks to all who entered! We have one more book to give away, and all you animal lovers will probably want to see what it is.
--Seija

Down and Out in Tokyo and Osaka

We're giving away another book! This time it's 1Q84, Haruki Murakami's massively popular, long-awaited 900 page novel. Murakami needs no introduction, you're either hooked or you're not.
Here's your challenge: Reimagine another George Orwell title with a Murakami-esque twist. (I know you all can do better than my title for this blog!)
Leave your e-mail in the comments if you want to be eligible to win! We have two more books after this one to give away, so check back, and as always, thanks for participating!




** UPDATE **
Comments are closed for this giveaway. We have two more books to go! Thanks!
--Seija

One Down, Four to Go!

Here's a pile of mystery books...


Are you guys ready for the next book in our giveaway? It's Before Seattle Rocked by Kurt E. Armbruster. This one's just about as local as we could get without giving away our teenage diaries (in your dreams!!).

From the introduction:
"Seattle is a music town, and for many, that means Rock & Roll. The "Northwest sound" of the region's early rock bands is universally acknowledged and the fact that their city succored in her bosom Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain fills Seattleites with proprietary pride. Fifty years of rock, however, were preceded by more than a hundred years of music that was equally exciting to its listeners and important to the community's evolution."

Sounds good! "...succored in her bosom" is quite a gem.
Here's the criteria for your comments. Describe the best live music show you've ever seen in Seattle. Make sure to leave your e-mail address in your comment if you want to be in the running! We'll randomly choose a comment and get in touch with the winner.
Three more books to go!

**UPDATE**
Comments are closed for this giveaway. Thanks!
-Seija