Lemuria Bookstore Blog

When I was a student at the University of Southern Mississippi, I was lucky enough to have Angela Ball as one of my academic advisers.  During my years there, I went to several of her poetry readings.  And I should tell you now that I’m not really a big poetry fan, but Angela’s poems are [...]

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Lately if I have been in a mind to read poetry, it has been that of Rainer Maria Rilke. A collection of selected poetry was given to me as a gift awhile back, might have been Christmas; but I think that it is one of the only gifts that is still giving as much as the day [...]

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In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu Copper Canyon Press (2009) Last July I blogged about Hinton’s fine translation of Classical Chinese Poetry. While enjoying that book, I stumbled upon a poet I haven’t read much of, Wei Ying-wu. I tried to find a collection of his poems and couldn’t. Soon after the [...]

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I have not read much in the past few days. Sometimes you just have to let your mind empty out. Once emptied, it can be used  and filled up again. Emptiness is often thought of as a negative condition, but I am thinking of it in the positive sense. It seems to me that Kay [...]

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I think most people have had a teacher who made a difference in their lives. Margrethe Alschwede taught a class entitled “Women’s Lives” where I went to college. I still reflect on that class as it continues to help me in so many varied and unnameable ways. No doubt Pearl London was one of these [...]

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The Best of It, March 1, 2010, Grove Press Poet Kay Ryan “starts with details, oddities, categories, then unscrews and rebolts them, magnetizes them so that in turn they draw all the bright filings the world throws out. Each of her poems is like a telescope that keeps the observer at a distance while focusing [...]

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Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart Edited by Patricia Donegan Shambhala (2008) I enjoy reading good haiku very much.  Sometimes I’m astonished by how much can be said with so few words.  Good haiku is a direct result of understanding complex reality and stating it precisely, correctly and beautifully.  Haiku [...]

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Nick Flynn’s Some Ether (Graywolf Press, May 2000) was his first collection of poetry. I read it based on a recommendation from a friend of mine who is a poet. I was coming off of a long Yeats binge and was wondering what was being read by the people writing poetry, and this was one [...]

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John came back from a short vacation and put a book of poetry on the desk for me to look at. It was Of This World by Joseph Stroud and oh what a stunning book of poetry this is! From his very brief poems to several amazing sustained contemplative poems, each deeply moving selection is [...]

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Of This World by Joseph Stroud Copper Canyon Press (2009) A great pleasure derived from reading is the post-reading experience of sharing good books with other readers. Often while reading a book, and for almost any reason, a person will pop into your mind as someone who would enjoy these words and ideas. Usually, when [...]

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