Lucille Clifton

I totally suck as a person with both an English BA and an MFA!  How could I possibly miss the death of Lucille Clifton??  She died last Saturday (February 13th, 2010).

The poetry of Lucille Clifton is not overwhelming; it does not beat the reader down.  There is a quiet power and deep love in her work.  It is a weird analogy but her patterns always remind me of water ripples--the reverberations feeding out from the central point until they touch the edges of our outer self.  It brings comfort and transformation.

Links 

Sorrows.
Won't You Celebrate With Me. [video]
Remembering Lucille Clifton.  [Poetry Off the Shelf]
Far Memory.

Vaccu-suck and share

Ok.  Last week I had one of those vaccu-suck experiences on the web.  I was innocently clicking on links I visit regularly--and wham--I was following links from blog to blog and site to site reading all kinds of wild and fun things.  So I thought I'd share a few...

1)  Whatever.  John Scalzi.  There are lots of great links and lovely introductions for new books.  Also he declared February 15th to be International Grover Appreciation Day.  Really--I swear!  Anyone who loves Grover is A-OK in my book.

2)  Blake Charlton.  New writer with a his first novel coming out on March 2 [Spellwright].  Med student.  All-around multi-tasking genius.  His blog is excellent--well written, intelligent, and funny.  If there's ever a remake of West Side Story featuring internists and surgeons...or maybe you need a sympathetic soul after witnessing a talking pile of laundry...

3)  Making Light.  Theresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.  I don't even know where to begin.  Let me start by saying I've never seen so many links to everywhere and everything in my life! I enjoy the commentary...

4)  Seven Stories Concerning Joss Whedon -or- The Road to Damascus.  Posted January 11, 2010 on Patrick Rothfuss' blog.  Actually he's pretty amusing on the whole.  See the post on how to determine his "cool factor" on the Gaiman-Day rating scale...


Moon Report:  20% of full.  Waxing crescent.
Outside:  Sunny.  Icy crust snow--very sharp on bare ankles.

Literary Passings

J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, died yesterday.  He was 91.

Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, died yesterday.  He was 87.

Catharsis

Sometimes we should all just stand in the snow and scream at the top of our lungs.

Moon Report:  94% of full.  Waxing gibbous.
Outside the Window:  Dark

A laugh

Since I have been talking about American views of other cultures in my class, I couldn't resist posting this here.  Obviously this is an example of how Americans are perceived as a culture in other parts of the world, but still I think this is a good mirror for the topic.  This commercial should never go to waste.

Moon Report: 0% of full. New Moon.
Outside the Window: Melty and grey. Getting muddy.