Marly Youmans's Blog, page 28

Re-reading The Whitsun Weddings

Creative Commons, Wikipedia. Chichester Cathedral.
Monument to Richard Fitzalan III, 10th Earl of Arundel (c.1307-1376)
and Eleanor of Lancaster (d. 1372.) Unusual for the linked hands
and the wife's crossed legs and turn toward her husband.
By Nabokov at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

I do not love Philip Larkin; instead, I am fond of Charles Causley, the Cornish poet Larkin admired (as did

Ditherings (in lieu of New Year's resolutions)

Detail from one of Kim Vanderheiden's piecesfor a poem in The Book of the Red King. It's interesting to havean as-yet-unpublished book that already has art madefor some of its contents by several artists.I don't think that has ever happened to me before.



I seem to be full of ditherings rather than resolutions, so I thought that I would make a list of my dithers.

Dither no. 1: I have broken

Selected Reading, 2016 Happy New Year

Selected 2016 Reading List, in ABC order by author

Books by friends, books recommended by friends, 

new reads, lots of rereads, books read to review or blurb. 










Of course, I lost my list (so me!) partway through the year, 

so here's what I remember right now in the way of books read in full.

Aldhelm, Saint Aldhelm's Riddles, translated by A. M. Juster. Reviewed for First Things. (

The Witch and Clive on Christmas Eve

The most fun payment for a poem, ever!
Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Printed by Daniel Bug at the Penfold Press.
The Toy Town Theatre in Christmas lights.


If you would like to see the poem I wrote for Clive Hicks-Jenkins while taking a break from adorning the Christmas tree, fly here to his Artlog. "The Witch of the Black Forest" appears in honor of his marvelous, just-out Hansel and Gretel (

Merry Christmas

Detail of the Nativity from Giotto's frescoes at the Scrovegni chapel in Padua.

Q & A with a younger writer

Here's a portion of a  slightly altered (to disguise the innocent) Q and A from private messaging on Facebook, dealing with issues of revision and Beta readers and workshops.

The accompanying images are covers / jackets of my books now in print, in lieu of doing a boring post about what's in print. (And The Foliate Head is somewhat in print--that is, copies still remain at online outlets.)

*

Fellowship

I have just finished the Zaleski book, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, and find that I have a feeling of intense nostalgia for something I never had and never could have: the camaraderie of young men together, with no women about, talking about art and philosophy and aspirations; the ability to go off on great, indulgent walking trips without the least notice to family as to

Emily Barton on Catherwood

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996

When a wonderful writer writes a essay about a book of mine that is more than twenty years old, well, I am more touched and grateful that I can easily express. It could not have come at a better time--a time when I, like Catherwood, have been wandering in a wilderness, though mine is not the same as hers but more the sort of Hansel and Gretel forest that a writer

Another poem at Autumn Sky

I've been seldom-seen in these airy rooms--lots of celebrations and time-consuming activities and also deadlines. But here's a little nibble:



Icarus, Icarus, Paratrooper

Homage to Charles Causley



Slung down from heaven, torn silks whipped

By precipitous wind, he tripped



From air and rammed the blasting sea




Read the whole poem here. And yes, I love the poems of the Cornish

Tea and poem

http://hubpages.com/games-hobbies/Ant...

Quite a week. I'm glad it is over. The hysteria still rages on social media and elsewhere, but maybe it's already time for a cup of tea and a poem.

Also in the week's worry, my family's ridge-top solar envelope home in Cullowhee was saved from the wildfires by bold and brave firefighters. I thank them for that and think of them every day as