Allogamy

My nightly ritual of allogamous reading keeps a number of books near my bedside at any given time. Some hapless books have been known to hang out there for a year as I read a paragraph or two like a devotional psalter. Some come and go before dawn.

This practice befuddles my husband who believes in doing one thing and doing it well. My daughters are mystified that it takes me longer to read the best books. I often wish I could take them all in faster and once even bought a do-it-yourself Evelyn Woods course. (So many books, so little time!) But chewing the cud is part of the fun for me. I've camped out on one page of Mary Karr's book for the last two nights (page 11-12) and I've been reading Osnos' book (a 2014 Christmas gift from my husband) out loud for a year with one of my ESL students. It is excellent, by the way, and as my student's allotted hours are almost over, I hope to finish the book soon!

Death by Living, on loan from Julie, will be returned to her when I visit this weekend. Wilson's book is a rollicking ride, a fast read that simultaneously slows me down to appreciate my own life while spurring me on to do more without fear. This memoir's mantra is, throw caution to the wind and dare to live with one hundred percent attention to the world surrounding you.

Anam Cara, because, like Allison, I didn't finish it the first time around.

Marilynne Robinson, because, as an exasperatingly difficult read, I need to - like cod liver oil.

Daily Rituals has been eye-opening and hilarious. It's a compilation of great artists and their work habits. Need I say more?

Robert Cording, one of my favorite contemporary poets, just released this book. Allison knew I'd love it for Christmas. I read it like Psalms. So good.

Cross-pollination: because it would be fruitless to do it any other way.

Time warp thingys

Sarayu. If you've read "The Shack" then you understand a little more about colors and fractals and wind. Lodged within the story line of one man's weekend with God, was this undulating, pulsating, windblown energy that moves the clouds and gives birth to creativity. A whisper is all it takes to blast away vestiges of religion - dry and dead - off the branches of my life.

The book, though not a literary gem, is a gift of insight and wisdom. It is less an allegory than Pilgrim's Progress (a case made by Eugene Peterson), and seems to be scaring away a lot of Christians. This makes it more appealing, I think, and so I read it with one eyebrow raised. And each time I thought I could predict the plot, I failed. Wonderfully failed.

These clouds, sliced and cut open by troughs of air that tumbled and flipped the temperature, blew in on the leading edge of a cold front while I was reading the book. Who has seen the wind?

poets, essayists, and eye candy

Wow. Bret Lott, I love you, man. The Southern Review is publishing my two favorite poets, together, in the same issue. Is this rare? Consider that neither poet has published a volume of work. To catch their poems, you would first have to know when and which journal they might appear and then you ante up for one, maybe two poems. I have in my possession only three of Margo Berdeshevsky’s, xeroxed. I’m luckier with Allison Smythe. She is a longtime friend and critique partner and I am the blessed recipient of many more delicious lines and in the know on all her acceptances. Still. Having them both in one fine journal (and able to say I’ve shaken the hand of the editor) well, that is both rare and fine.

Another friend and nonfiction critique partner, Lisa Ohlen Harris, recently gifted a book to me by a writer of essays that she promised was near as good as reading Annie Dillard. I had my doubts. A slim volume, The Green Heart of the Tree, by A. S. Woudstra, is a compilation of essays written at a bamboo desk on the northwestern coast of Africa. I love these essays. Every word. I hesitate to tell you anything at all about them for fear you might presume familiarity and not buy this book. But these are some of the best essays I’ve read in a very long time. I love an intelligent and sensitive narrator; one who is well-traveled, understanding, a conduit by which I see and taste the red dust of her dirt road. Oh please buy this book. It is deliciously good.

And now for some deliciously good eye candy, revel in what Spring brought to us two weeks ago and only thirty minutes south of Dallas. It beat my beloved Washington-on-the Brazos annual retreat outside of Houston, though I missed meandering those paths with old friends.