There’s some news about Solace in So Many Words. First, we got a new review on Goodreads. To celebrate its fifth year Weighed Words hosted a giveaway of Solace In So Many Words and sent five copies away to readers across the country. I always hope that such a giveaway will generate a little buzz and this time it did. A reader named Erin Hill received a copy, and in her review of Solace in So Many Words she writes: “I really enjoyed this collection. It's varied in the … [Read more...]
April 20
I guess I could wish you happy April 20; I don't know though. It is an inauspicious date. I saw "Real Time with Bill Maher" the other day -- he's starting a movement to make 4/20 a federal holiday to celebrate pot, and I've got to admit his spoof "Twas the Night Before 4/20" was pretty clever (especially for a bunch of stoners--haha). You can see it here. But it was his explanation of the origins of 4/20 that I noticed because it differed from what I had heard. Bill … [Read more...]
Slice of Solace: Albert Camus
Autumn flowers © Ellen Wade Beals, 2013 "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." Albert Camus (Thanks to Goodreads for helping me find this quote!) … [Read more...]
Still growing solace
Solace in So Many Words is two years old, and I am trying to build some new interest in the book. After all we know that its subject matter is timely so the collection is still relevant. When I read about soldiers returning home from Afghanistan, I think of Dave Lachance's "Nagasaki Shadows.' Whenever I hear about Texas I think of Buck Odom and wonder how he's doing ever since I read J. Scott's Smith's compelling "Heartbeat," which renders Buck so well that I think of him … [Read more...]
Winter weekend: reading Philip Levine and Donna Hilbert
It's a quiet weekend here and a perfect time to post. Did you read The New Yorker (Feb 11 & 18 issue)? Philip Levine has a poem "In Another Country" and when I say it's dreamy, I mean it literally. In this other country, ". . . There is no town, only / fields of long grass blowing in the wind / and beyond the wind the gray mountains." It ends, ". . . . The wind kept prodding / at my back as though determined / to push me away from where I was, / fearful, perhaps, I … [Read more...]