At the Palace of Pest

Bloggerdom will have to toddle on mostly without moi for a while longer, because children want stories and special treatment when they are sick. And children don't need a blogger (or a writer, though one hopes the stories are first-rate.) In some bookish ways it has been a sickly-yet-good week: requests for poems and a story (I love requests, because I hate the bother of sending out), mail with money for a poem (yes, money for poems is always surprising news) and an issue of Books & Culture with one of my poems, "The Sea of Traherne" (also reprinted online with permission from the editor here), and an acceptance to Yaddo--my first time applying, so I'm pleased.

Also, somebody pointed me to a new review of Catherwood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)--a longish review of a book published twelve years prior. The net is a friend to writers when it allows once-impossible things like this to happen. (Of course, the web also allows the throwing of fermenting veggies and bizarre anonymous notes.) The end made me feel cheerful, it's so heartfelt and strong: "Catherwood has changed my life completely. This book has easily become my all-time favorite. It has all the action, romance, suspense and gruff reality that will keep the reader turning pages until the bittersweet ending. I urge everyone to find this book, buy it, read it. Mothers take my warning, you will need a whole box of kleenex for this one. I have read it several times. I know it by heart almost, and it still makes me sob uncontrollably."

Thank you, Dawn Nave! I'm glad somebody somewhere is using kleenex for something better than the common cold.

The book had great reviews in the NYTBR and Washington Post and elsewhere and was a Literary Guild Alternate, so I've always felt sad that megacorporations ate its paperback line (Bard) and thus took Catherwood out of print. But you can buy a used copy in softcover or hardcover for one little brown penny at Amazon (here) and such places.

I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
--from Yeats, "Brown Penny"

And trala, despite coughs and fevers and winter blues! Good health to you, and good cheer. The sun is blinding-bright on the snow today, so I'm dreaming of melt and the lovely sound of ice water (trickling into the basement, no doubt.) And now I climb upstairs to tell a story to a little boy who needs one desperately.

Don't we all, don't we all?

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Public domain picture: Image is taken from an old postcard of Yaddo that appears in various spots on the web--and seems to be sold as a larger print as well.