BW31: Vetiver by John Ashbery

 

Big V, little V, what begins with V.  Virtual, vintage, vanguard, vault, vernacular, verses, and vignettes all sound good to me.  

Vetiver

By 

John Ashbery

Ages passed slowly, like a load of hay,

As the flowers recited their lines

And pike stirred at the bottom of the pond.

The pen was cool to the touch.

The staircase swept upward

Through fragmented garlands, keeping the melancholy

Already distilled in letters of the alphabet.

It would be time for winter now, its spun-sugar

Palaces and also lines of care

At the mouth, pink smudges on the forehead and cheeks,

The color once known as “ashes of roses.”

How many snakes and lizards shed their skins

For time to be passing on like this,

Sinking deeper in the sand as it wound toward

The conclusion. It had all been working so well and now,

Well, it just kind of came apart in the hand

As a change is voiced, sharp

As a fishhook in the throat, and decorative tears flowed

Past us into a basin called infinity.

There was no charge for anything, the gates

Had been left open intentionally.

Don’t follow, you can have whatever it is.

And in some room someone examines his youth,

Finds it dry and hollow, porous to the touch.

O keep me with you, unless the outdoors

Embraces both of us, unites us, unless

The birdcatchers put away their twigs,

The fishermen haul in their sleek empty nets

And others become part of the immense crowd

Around this bonfire, a situation

That has come to mean us to us, and the crying

In the leaves is saved, the last silver drops.

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BW30: Water

 

Happy Sunday. It's hot, hot, hot and since today is National Ice Cream Day, a bowl or cone filled with ice cream would absolutely hit the spot.  Also our next 52 Books Bingo Category will help keep us cool -  Water.  Read a story set in, on, around or under a body of water.  A story about the ocean, a lake, a pond, a river, or even a puddle. A story in which it seems water is almost a character. There are so many ways to go with this category.

Once by the Pacific 

By 

Robert Frost

The shattered water made a misty din.

Great waves looked over others coming in,

And thought of doing something to the shore

That water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,

Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if

The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,

The cliff in being backed by continent;

It looked as if a night of dark intent

Was coming, and not only a night, an age.

Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more than ocean-water broken

Before God's last Put out the light was spoken.

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BW29: Xylophone

 

Happy Sunday!  We're on X in our A to Z and Back and Again and X seems to be one of the hardest letters to find for titles and or authors so let's make it easy.  Find a book with a x anywhere in the title with the X sound such as excellent, excel, extra, exploit, or fox, tux, wax, maximum, or hoax.   Looking on my shelves, I find Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, Axis by Robert Charles Wilson, or Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch.   Authors such as Qui Xiaolong or Roxanne St. Claire or Alexandra Ivy or C.J. Box. Have fun and be creative. 

Xylophone

By 

Jimmy

Synapses, flick flack, brain waves, where was I? There i went

Rewinded it, but it sounds all too different.

I better record this, but it's too late. Where was I?

A thousand smiles in my motor functions. It's moving, like a butterfly.

I'm moving, like a butterfly, my mind is moving, like a butterfly.

And that's all there is to it.

Please share your thoughts and reviews. Link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week. 

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BW28: July Author of the Month - Ashley Poston

 

Happy Sunday!  Our July author of the month is Ashley Poston.  I recently read The Dead Romantics and fell in love with the charming story about a ghostwriter who falls in love with a ghost. It was humorous as well as touching and hit me in all the feels.  Which meant I wanted to read more of her stories and added the time slipping romance, The Seven Year Slip as well as her young adult science fiction adventure Heart of Iron to my stacks. 

Plus her newest novel, released on June 25th, A Novel Love Story:

"Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.

But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel…

Because it is.

This place can’t be real, and yet… she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.

Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.

Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book. 

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own."

I love books about books.  We probably all dream of getting lost in the fictional settings from our books at one time or another.   Which fictional setting would you most like to dive into? 

Big Y, little Y, what begins with Y:  Yesterday, Yearn, Yum, Yoga, and Yabba Dabba Doo!

Please share your thoughts and reviews. Link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week. 

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