Shakespeare and Co. Booksellers

Two things I love:  (1) A new anthology—I’ve discovered some of my favorite writers through them.  And (2) Being read to aloud.  (Why is it that reading to one another suddenly becomes unimportant once we’re too old to be tucked into bed by our parents?) 

This fabulous poetry anthology, From the Fishouse, not only has a couple poems from Kevin Goodan (who, incidentally, will be reading at Shakespeare & Co. on Thursday the 14th at 7 PM as part of the New Lakes series), its unifying force is the aural quality of the poems inside.  What makes it extra worthwhile is the CD it comes with, which includes 36 of the book’s poems being read aloud.  And what makes it even cooler than that is the great resource provided in the back of the book:  an index of poetic traits—assonance, internal rhyme, enjambment, address, sentence length, etc.—with a listing of titles exhibiting each particular trait; and a cross-referenced index of poems by title.  If you’re interested in how poetry works and sounds, this is a book for you!

to crave what the light does crave
by Kevin Goodan

to crave what the light does crave
to shelter, to flee
to gain desire of every splayed leaf
to calm cattle, to heat the mare
to coax dead flies back from slumber
to turn the gaze of each opened bud
to ripe the fruit to rot the fruit
and drive down under the earth
to lord a gentle dust
to lend a glancing grace to llamas
to gather dampness from fields
and divide birds
and divide the ewes from slaughter
and raise the corn and bend the wheat
and drive tractors to ruin
burnish the fox, brother the hawk
shed the snake, bloom the weed
and drive all wind diurnal
to blanch the fire and clot the cloud
to husk, to harvest
sheave and chaff
to choose the bird
and voice the bird
to sing us, veery, into darkness

From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems That Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea Books, $25.95).  CD included.  IN STOCK.