Fairy Revel

(I recommend reading this one aloud to yourself; In fact, I recommend reading all poetry aloud to yourself, to hear the “music”.)

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying, What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jvverde/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

According to Wikipedia:

“Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse.”

This post is a response to Weekly Geeks 13-2010.

It’s time for . . . Weekly Geeks! This week’s topic:

“There seems to be a bit of a theme going around the bookish blogopshere this past little while. Have you noticed many posts and lists and ponderings about books from our past? To go along with this trend, for this Weekly Geek installment, I’m asking you to think back to the moment when you realized “I am a reader!” The moment you felt that desire to read everything! The moment you knew you were different than most of those around you and that this reading thing was for real.”

I can’t point to a specific moment or book that made me realize I was a reader. I started out as a reader when I was four, and I can still remember many of the books I read as a child. Thinking of them brings back the sense of excitement and wonder I felt back then. My first real fantasy book was a chapbook illustrated with those odd ’70s-style Art Nouveau drawings so popular at the time, a retelling of the Welsh legend of Elidor, called Elidor and the Golden Ball, by Georgess McHargue. Though I forgot the title and author, I always remembered the lady dressed in green with apple-blossoms in her hair, the golden ball Elidor chased, and the snake that curled mysteriously in some of the pictures. Those images would sometimes resurface in my consciousness like a fish barely visible in a deep pool. Looking back, I see that book was my first experience of elves.

(By searching Loganberry Books’ Solved Mysteries, I was able to find a copy of this book a few years ago, and now it’s back in my collection. This is probably the only children’s book I will never let go.)

As a teenager I found less time for reading, but my interest in books was rekindled somewhat by the discovery of romance novels. I read mostly Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood and Lavyrle Spencer, and I still appreciate those books. But eventually, I knew something was missing from my reading that I needed. I think it was magic, and a sense of something deeper, something beyond the the edge of this world . . .

I rediscovered fantasy literature as an adult, with Patricia A. McKillip. I’d always thought fantasy books for grown-ups looked a bit weird, with glowing muscley dudes on the covers with sword in hand, dragons holding crystal balls, that sort of thing. But I loved The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis, and I loved the idea of fantasy. I just needed to discover the right author, and thankfully, I did. I think maybe this is why I always push McKillip on people and why she had such an influence on me; she was the first adult fantasy author I read seriously, and she helped me to see that everything I loved about it as a child was still there. I read somewhere—I wish I could remember where—that there are books you read in which you identify with the characters, and books you read and identify with the author; I think Winter Rose was the first book I felt that way about, and so in a very real way, Patricia McKillip gave me the first clue that I wanted to write. She writes books I want to read, and I want to read more of them. But just a little more like this, or more like that . . . you know?

But . . . as I learned to write, one thing I realized about myself is that although I’d always considered myself a reader, I really didn’t read that much. Life constantly got in the way, and if I was lucky and got to bed before 4 AM (long story I don’t want to go into), I might get to read for five minutes before falling asleep. Reading was not a priority. “I want to read more,” I said. “I want to read that book. I want to try that author. I just don’t have time.”

I think it’s only recently that I’ve decided I will be a reader. I’m not a particularly slow reader (which I used to think was the case), but I still find it hard to make time for reading. I’m easily distracted by the outdoors, and interruptions are many. My current goal is to read at least an hour a day, not at bedtime (bedtime reading energizes me and wakes me up, and if it doesn’t, then I can’t remember what I read the next day). I’m actively working towards a goal of at least a book a week (I know for some people that’s nothing, but for me it’s huge), I’m trying to discover new authors in my genre, and I’m trying to read some of the “Great Books” I missed out on as a wayward, free-spirited youth, hehe.

Now when the more “responsible” side of me says, “I don’t have time to read, it’s a luxury, it’s lazy,” I try to remember what Stephen King said in his book On Writing: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Now it’s time for Weekly Geeks. This week’s topic:

“Commenting. It can be a fun way to connect to your readers. It can be the a source of frustration as a blogger. A comment can make your day. A comment can cause an argument. Today let’s talk commenting.”

Comments. Some people have them, and some of us wish we had them. I get a few comments, and I always appreciate them. On a new blog like this one, every comment by a visitor encourages me to keep writing.

I don’t reply to every comment; I like to spend to commenting on other bloggers’ posts—a habit I’m working hard to cultivate. But any time I can think of a response to a comment here, I’ll reply. Just because I don’t reply doesn’t mean I’m not reading, and I smile every time a get a comment.

Unless it’s spam.

Speaking of spam, I started out using comment moderation, moderating first-time commenters, but I always feel like it makes a new user (especially one not so internet savvy, or one who has to work up a lot of courage to comment) feel alienated. In the end, I decided to use ReCAPTCHA instead, so visitors who are actually human can see their comments posted right away. ReCAPTCHA is not ideal, since it’s owned by Google (isn’t everything?), but I’ve yet to find a better captcha for my purposes.

So far, the only comments I’ve deleted are spam. I don’t have set rules for what I’ll allow or not allow in the future, whenever I (inevitably) post an article that turns someone into a flaming, typing ball of rage. The plan for now is to allow comments I disagree with, so long as the commenter is polite; downright ugliness will not be tolerated. To use a canned phrase, my blog is not a democracy (considering my political views, that idea is kinda funny), and I feel comfortable deleting if necessary, but I don’t mind being politely disagreed with. Also, comments that seek merely to enrage (i.e. comments from trolls) will be deleted without mercy.

Just so I don’t end this on a negative note, so far all commenters have been wonderful, and all comments have helped to cheer me up and keep me posting! My blog is still fairly new, but I hope it will be not only a place for me to post my thoughts on what I’m reading and writing, but a place for interesting discussion.

“This week’s theme is: fun facts about authors.”

Which gives me an opportunity to pimp my absolute favorite author, Patricia A. McKillip. Yes, I will keep on singing her praises, because she is a genius. Multiple-award winning fantasy author Patricia A. McKillip:

1. Was born on on Leap Year, February 29th, 1948.
2. Has won prestigious awards, including the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
3. She lives in Oregon.
4. For awhile she thought she’d be a concert pianist, and she still plays the piano for pleasure.
5. She started writing at age 14—”In a fit of boredom one day when she was fourteen, she sat down in front of a window overlooking a stately medieval church and its graveyard and produced a thirty-page fairy tale.”
6. When she received the 1975 World Fantasy Award (which looks like the head of H.P. Lovecraft), her reaction was, “What the #@*!!$ is this?”
7. She enjoys and is knowledgeable about cooking.

(The above trivia was all uncovered at this Patricia A. McKillip fan page.)

Some of my favorite McKillip covers:

“For this week’s Weekly Geeks, share with us the books which call out to you during the cold, wintry months. Are there genres which appeal to you most? Why do you think you are drawn to these types of books during winter? Do you have some book recommendations for other readers who are looking for some escape from the blustery weather? Give us some of your favorites and tell us why you recommend them.

As “extra credit” why not share some photos of what the weather looks like outside your home…or where you curl up to read when ‘the weather outside is frightening.’”

My hometown spends Winter under endless white waves of crystalline snowdrifts, beneath a sky that changes day by day from storm clouds to bright cerulean. Not long ago I moved a short way out of town, but an invisible rift between here and there creates entirely different weather; my Winters now are full of hurricane-force winds and rainstorms, and sometimes what we call “cute snow”, the kind that gathers its few inches on the ground overnight and melts off in a couple of days. In a way, the weather here in the desert seems drearier than the layers of sparkling snow and ice, and the nights are certainly colder. Snow and overcast skies make a blanket that will keep a little town warm; out here in the desert we’re exposed naked to the cruel Winter chill.

The lake last week, when the water came back after a good snow.

In otherwords, even in a high desert, Winter calls for a different sort of book than other seasons, books that draw you in deep and give a full-on sensory experience of another world. Maybe it’s because the pace of Winter is slower, and gives us more time to get lost in our reading, or maybe the cold weather makes the richness of things like hot chocolate, pumpkin bisque, and Victorian novels splendid instead of suffocating, but for some reason, for me anyway, books get denser and thicker in the Winter. Here are my suggestions for Winter reading, wherever you live:

Riddle-Master: The Complete Trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip.
I’m in the middle of this right now, and I think it’s a wonderful Winter read. Old magic, enchanted harps, conversations by fire, wanderings in the wilderness and magical creatures . . . This trilogy employs all the fantasy tropes, but is so lyrical and lovely that it doesn’t even need to turn them on their heads. If you want to read something like Lord of the Rings during Winter but maybe don’t feel like reading it for the nth time, Riddle-Master is the perfect choice.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is a great Winter book, for sure; in fact I’m not even sure it should be read at any other time. This alternate history stays true to its Regency novel heritage while inventing an entire history of magic for England. It’s long and divided into three parts, so you can stretch it out all Winter and read other books in between.

Poetry is especially welcome in the Winter; you can read as much or as little as you like, and each poem can give you a multitude of sensory experience in a small dose. The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell, is a book I love to pick up on a whim and just page through slowly.

Surprised By Joy by C.S. Lewis is an autobiography that takes you through Lewis’s journey from skepticism to belief in God. This is my favorite book of his; even though his range of experience couldn’t be more different from mine, he gives voice and purpose to the awe I’ve felt while looking up at a cold, white mountain or dreaming of Norse gods.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. A book about eating local foods in season, living sustainably by growing your own food, and the preservation of our food culture through heirloom seeds and heritage meats. This is a perspective-altering book that would be good to read in Winter because it carries you full circle through all the seasons.

I read Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle on the North Coast in a cabin surrounded by thick ocean fog, and I think anything good to read on the coast is just as good to read in Winter. L’Engle explores creativity as it relates to the Christian faith, challenging the artist to be authentic as they integrate their living faith and art.