NPM #5 – Witch-Wife
She is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ‘tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine. Edna St. Vincent Millay
NPM #4 – Tonight I Can Write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,’The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Pablo Neruda (Translated by W.S. Merwin)
NPR #3 – Roads Go Ever On
Roads go ever ever on,- Over rock and under tree,
- By caves where never sun has shone,
- By streams that never find the sea;
- Over snow by winter sown,
- And through the merry flowers of June,
- Over grass and over stone,
- And under mountains in the moon.
- Roads go ever ever on
- Under cloud and under star,
- Yet feet that wandering have gone
- Turn at last to home afar.
- Eyes that fire and sword have seen
- And horror in the halls of stone
- Look at last on meadows green
- And trees and hills they long have known.
J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit
NPM #2 – To Tzu-an
Parting, a thousand cups won’t wash away the sorrow.
Separation is a hundred knots I can’t untie.
After a thaw, orchids bloom, spring returns,
Willows catch on pleasure boats again.
We meet and part, like the clouds, never fixed.
I’ve learned that love is like the river.
We won’t meet again this spring,
But I can’t rest yet, winesick in Jade Tower.
Yu Xuanji (translated by Geoffrey Waters)
Yu Xuanji was a Chinese poet who lived in the 9th century. During her life she was a courtesan, nun, and poet. Much of her life is unknown, but she died young and left behind several beautiful poems.
National Poetry Month 2016
April is National Poetry Month here in the US and this year marks the 20th anniversary of the celebration. I thought that in order to commemorate that I would post a poem every day here on the blog.
My first poem is one that has stuck in my mind since college. I read it during my Russian lit studies and never quite forgot about it even though the exact words blurred a bit in my memory. The opening line is so evocative that I could never entirely let go of it:
Your lynx-eyes, Asia,
spy on my discontent;
they lure into the light
my buried self,
something the silence spawned,
no more to be endured
than the noon sun in Termez.
Pre-memory floods the mind
like molten lava on the sands…
as if I were drinking my own tears
from the cupped palms of a stranger’s hands.
-Anna Akhmatova (Translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward)
Rachel Swirsky is joining us today with her short story “Love Is Never Still” in Uncanny Magazine Issue Nine. Featuring all–new short fiction by Rachel Swirsky, Shveta Thakrar, Max Gladstone, Kelly Sandoval, and Simon Guerrier, classic fiction by Daryl Gregory, nonfiction by Jim C. Hines, Kyell Gold, Javier Grillo–Marxuach, and Mark Oshiro, poems by C. S. E. Cooney, …
Source: My Favorite Bit: Rachel Swirsky talks about LOVE IS NEVER STILL
House Read – Tomorrow the Killing
What I’m Reading: Tomorrow the Killing by Daniel Polansky
Published: Hodder & Stroughton, 2012
Read This: while contemplating past mistakes.
Tomorrow the Killing was one of the books I wanted to read for the March Take Control of Your TBR Pile Challenge over on Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and I did! Yay me! Now, I have two more books to read before the end of the month.
This is the second book in the Low Town trilogy and ties the most closely to the Great War. Polansky’s decision to mirror WWI in his secondary world fantasy is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen done in fantasy literature in a long time.
Tomorrow the Killing focuses in on the Warden’s experience in the war through a series of flashbacks interspersed with a current case. The daughter of the best general from the war has gone missing. She’s somewhere in Low Town investigating the murder of her brother ten years earlier.
Her brother started the Veterans Association, which is gearing up for a huge protest. Ten years ago, it was on the verge of starting a revolution before its leader was found dead outside one of the roughest brothels in Low Town. The death of the charismatic figurehead turned the VA from a virtual cartel into something more like a social club, but new tensions, and the disappearance of the founder’s sister, might rekindle the revolutionary impulses of the membership.
The Warden’s situation is complicated by three things. First, his best friend is being courted as a new figurehead for the VA’s protests. Second, Wren, his apprentice is in desperate need of training for his magical abilities before they burn out his brain. And third, the death of Roland Montgomery was suspiciously convenient and the Warden knows more about what happened ten years ago than he wants to remember.
I really enjoyed this installment of the series, although it is much bleaker than the first book. But, that’s true to it’s noir styling. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it is beautifully crafted.
New ARCs
My Penguin rep is pretty awesome… 
THE NIGHT COUNTRY #6secondbookreview
“An elegiac ghost story that drifts after the sole survivor of a terrible accident and the Greek-chorus-like specters of his deceased friends.”
Take Control of your TBR Pile Challenge
I was reading In Libris Veritas today and saw her link to the March Take Control of Your TBR Pile Challenge over on Caffeinated Book Reviewer. And, since I am trying to pare down my TBR pile already and I love doing challenges, I thought I’d jump in.
So, here are the books I’d like to get finished by the end of March:
There may be more coming, but these are the ones that are actually sitting out by my bed. Fingers crossed!
Medusa's Library 