Song of a Second April

Song of a Second April
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950

April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,
Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun,
Pensively,—only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.

poets.org

Jap Herron: The Novel Mark Twain Wrote From Beyond The Grave

Mark Twain died on this day in 1910. Emily Grant Hutchings claims he dictated a novel five years later from beyond the grave via a ouija board.

More: The Public Domain Review

Tiny homes designed for writers

Originally conceived by New Frontier Tiny Homes for children’s author Cornelia Funke, the cabin measures just 24 ft by 8.5 ft, but it feels bigger thanks to its soaring ceilings and clerestory windows which draw light into its rustic, Scandinavian-inspired interiors.

The homes hit the market for $110,000

Esperanza Spalding Sings Little Fly

 "Little Fly," a quiet and melodic piece in which Esperanza sets a poem by William Blake to music.

Girdle Books

Used from the 14th to 17th centuries, these books were texts that their owners needed to keep close at hand: prayer books used by monks and nuns, for example, or law books used by traveling judges. Though they were valuable objects—luxuries, even—these books were meant to be consulted and read.

More: Atlas Obscura

Pity the Nation - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Four teenagers stole rare books from a university library in 2004, and now their heist is being made into a movie

The only people that stood between them and millions of dollars worth of books were librarians.



More here

Helen Weinzweig's Interior Feminist Espionage Novel

I want to read this.

The interior nature of Basic Black is central to its unfolding. Shirley Kaszenbowski, regarded from the outside, is the embodiment of the invisible woman. She is in her early forties, long married, with two children. She wanders through Toronto in the titular basic black dress, a strand of pearls around her neck, cloaked by a tweed coat from Holt Renfrew—then and now the city’s most expensive, most fashionable, and snobbiest department store—designed to last for decades. “I fool no one,” Shirley understands. “I am regarded as a woman with no apparent purpose, offering no reason for my presence.” Regarded from inside, however, Shirley is anything but invisible. She is aglow. Her appearance, her age, her station are a cloak for a rich life of travel, adventure, and meaning.

More here

The Paper Traveller

What if books could talk? Through pop-up books, sound installations and live theatre performances, this immersive storytelling journey explores what happens when you get lost in a book.

What If the Leftwing Hoaxers Are Right?

"In the time when I lived, it was still possible to meet Americans who disbelieved in global warming, although the ones I knew became shyer and rarer in about 2013. In 2016, they helped elect Donald Trump president, upon which their various carbon ideologies naturally came roaring back.
 “We sure need a good Sierra snowpack this year,” said a contractor friend of mine. “Skiing was lousy last year and the year before. If we can only get some snow, that will make those global warming people shut up.”—That was just before Christmas. Come spring, the snowpack was six percent of what we had been calling normal. But why not call California a special case? Up in Washington the snowpack was a full 16 percent of what it should have been; and by May, “seeing things happen at this time of year we just have never seen before,” Governor Inslee declared a “statewide drought emergency.”—Fortunately, my contractor friend was vindicated, and those global warming people utterly foiled, for after a long dry year, the subsequent winter blew flurry-rich, and by January the Sierra snow level had reached 115 percent!"

Read more: Literary Hub

Excerpt from No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies - William T. Vollman

Roald Dahl, Who Lost His Daughter to Measles, Wrote a Heartbreaking Letter about Vaccinations

Author Roald  Dahl always drew something from his personal experience, and few personal experiences could have had as much impact as the sudden death of his measles-stricken seven-year-old daughter Olivia in 1962. But good came out of Dahl's response to the tragedy. In 1986, he wrote a leaflet for the Sandwell Health Authority entitled Measles: A Dangerous Illness, which tells Olivia's story and provides a swift and well-supported argument for universal vaccination against the disease:

More: Danny Dutch

One-Star Amazon Reviews of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be one of the greatest American novels ever written, if not the Great American Novel itself but there are many who think it's not so great. Literary Hub has compiled a list of 100 One-Star reviews of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.

More here

Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers.

Dogs Are Shakespearean, Children Are Strangers.

Delmore Schwartz

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers.
Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child,
Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog,
The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils,
Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister,
The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night,
As if she understood the wind and rain,
The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert.
—O I am sad when I see dogs or children!
For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean.

Tweet Us Your Best #NPRpoetry

It's National Poetry Month and NPR's All Things Considered is asking listeners to send their original 140-character poems with #NPRpoetry. Here are a few of the submissions:

crow caw
wind chime
chain saw
Spring song#NPRPoetry

— Susan Barry-Schulz (@suebarryschulz) April 6, 2018

#NPRpoetry
(by me and Troy Huffaker)

MILLIPEDES

Millipedes can't ballet dance.
The shoes are too expensive.
And asking for a pay advance
Makes them apprehensive.

But if by some amazing chance
They happened to succeed,
Who wouldn't pay to see a dance
Performed by millipedes?

— Rick Reid (@_RickReid_) April 1, 2018

@npratc #NPRpoetry
in my office cubicle
I log on
to Windows

— Sari Grandstaff (@Haikutopia) April 6, 2018

A "genealogy of tongues" from 1741, giving the many historic languages and writing styles of Europe. pic.twitter.com/e857foBeUv

— Myko Clelland (@DapperHistorian) April 7, 2018