Wherever You Are, Whatever You're Doing, Have a Wonderful Bloomsday!

On this date, 108 years ago, in Dublin, Ireland, nothing really happened.

 But, it is still the most important date in the fictional history of the English-speaking world.

Bloomsday Central

Illustration: Pat Owen, source.

Speaking of Poets Laureate . . .

Thought's End
- Léonie Adams

I'd watched the hills drink the last colour of light,
All shapes grow bright and wane on the pale air,
Till down the traitorous east there came the night
And swept the circle of my seeing bare;
Its intimate beauty like a wanton's veil
Tore from the void as from an empty face.
I felt at being's rim all being fail,
And my one body pitted against space.
O heart more frightened than a wild bird's wings
Beating at green, now is no fiery mark
Left on the quiet nothingness of things.
Be self no more against the flooding dark;
There thousandwise, sown in that cloudy blot,
Stars that are worlds look out and see you not.

Speaking of Poets Laureate . . .

Tears in Sleep  

by Louise Bogan

All night the cocks crew, under a moon like day,
And I, in the cage of sleep, on a stranger's breast,
Shed tears, like a task not to be put away---
In the false light, false grief in my happy bed,
A labor of tears, set against joy's undoing.
I would not wake at your word, I had tears to say.
I clung to the bars of the dream and they were said,
And pain's derisive hand had given me rest
From the night giving off flames, and the dark renewing.

FLAG DAY . . .

commemorates the adoption of the United States flag by the second Continental Congress in 1777; it also celebrates the birthday of the United States Army. 

(Happy Birthday, Army!)

If you want to reach out to our troops for this FLAG DAY 

try:

Operation Homefront.

BOOK REVIEWS. Sort Of.

The Game - Laurie R. King     

OK, now this was good. Mary Russell meets Rudyard Kipling's Kim . . . then . . .

A fictional character (Mary) contemplates the realization that another fictional character (Kim) is, in fact, real. But then realizes that yet another character (Holmes), though real, is thought to be fictional also.

I think we're sliding into Philip K. Dick territory, here. Fun.

Locked Rooms - Laurie R. King     

In Mary Russell's latest outing we meet - are you ready - Dashiell Hammett. 

I have always loved Hammett and own everything he wrote, which really isn't much. I despise the witch hunting of the McCarthy era. It robbed the world of so much talent, not just Hammett's . . . Sorry. Off topic, I know.

I had an issue with this book which alternated sections told from Russell's and Holmes' perspectives. This entailed retelling of substantial portions of the story and I've never cared much for the device. Other than that, I enjoyed the book

Speaking of Poets Laureate . . .

To My Despoiler
- Joseph Auslander

Yes, you have taken everything from me:
Beauty and love and all the measureless
Impatience of proud April; even our sea
Shouting under the gulls; all loveliness
Of form and sound and colour; all that we
Had touched; the curve of things we used to press
Glowing against our senses; mystery
And movement. . . everything taken. . . taken. . . Yes,
Even the little brave irrelevancies
Like brooding water, dripping water-cress,
The cool dark noise of cropping; cruising bees
On hot gold expeditions--even these
You took from me--Oh spare me your caress,
Leave me at least my own stark loneliness!

Quote of the Day

So what I have to do, and what you have to do is remember, on a daily basis, that everyone else has a story, everyone else deserves dignity and respect, and that everyone else might just be going through tougher things than you are.

- Dianna E. Anderson.

from Our New Poet Laureate. A Round of Applause, Please.

Letter Home  

by Natasha Trethewey

--New Orleans, November 1910

Four weeks have passed since I left, and still 
I must write to you of no work. I've worn down 
the soles and walked through the tightness 
of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, 
their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking 
my plain English and good writing would secure 
for me some modest position Though I dress each day 
in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves 
you crocheted--no one needs a girl. How flat 
the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins. 
I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet 
industry, to mask the desperation that tightens 
my throat. I sit watching-- 

though I pretend not to notice--the dark maids
ambling by with their white charges. Do I deceive 
anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown 
as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite 
what I pretend to be. I walk these streets 
a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes 
of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, 
a negress again. There are enough things here 
to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through 
the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall 
the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard 
at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking 
their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads 
on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots 
and irons of the laundresses call to me.

I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending 
and domestic; my schooling a gift--even those half days
at picking time, listening to Miss J--. How 
I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced 
to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up
or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until
I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field,
I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart,
spelling each word in my head to make a picture
I could see, as well as a weight I could feel
in my mouth. So now, even as I write this
and think of you at home, Goodbye

is the waving map of your palm, is 
a stone on my tongue.

from Bellocq's Ophelia. Copyright 2002.