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Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Breakages + meme for Ms. Box Elder

I am taking a wee break from blogging because I am having a lovely almost-spring spate of new poems. Also, I ought to be in a dragon-biting gunpowder mood because two of my books are going out of print at once (the Penguin/Firebird paperback editions of The Curse of the Raven Mocker and Ingledove--better get one now or never), and I might just be in that bad mood later on so may as well vanish till I'm over it. However, at the moment I am being of great good cheer because I'm placing a lot of stories and poems and what is even better, having that grand lyric gush of poems. Every now and then I get a flood of the things, and it's the most wondrous pleasure.

See you later! And may you have much happy April fooling! But be sure that this, though possibly written by an April fool, is no fooling . . .

Despite much cheerful tagging, I rarely get around to doing a meme... This one from Box Elder sticks in memory because I actually dredged up the name of the book when Lucy posted her quote.

The rules for Lucy's meme go like this:

1. Pick up the book you are reading, or else the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences

5. Tag five people.
If you're reading this and have a blog and the funny feeling that I mean you, consider yourself tagged.
No, it was the chirping of birds, which landed like gray shot on open umbrellas, for here I was offered real German canaries from the Harz Mountains, cageloads of goldfinches and starlings, basketfuls of winged talkers and singers. Spindle-shaped and light, as if stuffed with cotton wool; jumping jerkily, agile as if running on smooth ball bearings; chattering like cuckoos in clocks--they were destined to sweeten the life of the lonely, to give bachelors a substitute for family life, to squeeze from the hardest of hearts the semblance of maternal warmth brought forth by their touching helplessness. Even when the page was almost turned, their collective, alluring chirping seemed to persist.
Photograph: The literary mosaic picture is courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/ and Christa Richert of Berlin, Germany. Now see if you can put any of these little shards of word into a larger mosaic.