Reading for the Month

This month is National Poetry Month, and I am going to read more poetry. I'm lucky I work in the library beacause I can browse the shelves and find interesting poetry books, and books about poetry. I have the "Complete Works" by Shaklespeare at home right now and I am going through the sonnets. I need to read commentaries about his sonnets, the first ones seem to address Queen Elizabeth, who died without having children. Sonnet I "From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die." I am also reading right now a memoir, "Signs of Life: Finding the Best in Yourself During the Worst Life Has to Offer a Memoir" by Natalie Taylor. Mrs. Taylor lost her husband ina terrible accident during her fourth month of pregnancy. She isn't afraid to share her most intimate thoughts, her fears and her feelings about the future. She teaches English in Royal Oak, Michigan.

     I like to read books that deal with the weather, or time of year when I am reading them. One book I have at home is "The Crossing Places" by Elly Griffiths. The library owns a book in the series, "The House at Sea's End ". I thought I'd start the first in the series, but it starts in the raw of winter and I think I'll save it for next winter if it snows maybe. Another winter book I am saving is, "An English Murder" by Cyril Hare. I have read the first 30 pages and it promises to be a good read for a cozy, wrapped up in quilts in front of the fireplace kind of day. Cyril Hare was born in 1900, and his books are a treat.

    I think I'll share a appropriate poem for the season:

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.



Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.



The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:



For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth