this is just to say

I’ve been reading for a “notables” book committee this year, my second of a three-year term, and I’m down to my last seven titles. Those seven books haven’t yet arrived though, so I am granted some free reading time of my own choosing—- unheard of since July.

Because I am off work these two weeks, I was able to read the new biography of E.B. White by Michael Sims, The Story of Charlotte’s Web, which I loved. And I spent time luxuriating over at http://www.poets.org. It’s always nice to hang with poets, and breathe in what they say about their own poetics. I read essays by Eavan Boland, Jane Hirschfield, and Carl Phillips. I re-read poems by Yeats, Williams, and Wilbur. And then I came across a form of poetry I didn’t know called the “lune.”

According to Jack Collom in his essay, “How I Teach Poetry in the Schools,” the lune is like a haiku, only simpler. Instead of syllables, we count words. Three/five/three. I tried writing one while eating a slice of toasted gingerbread and looking out the dining room window into the windy morning:

 thin, gray branches

shake and reach, imploring their

leaves to return

I like this thing called lune. Collom mentions in his essay that he wrote 100 lunes in an evening. When he told a junior high school class this, a girl came to school the next day with 120. Little snapshots of what surrounded her at home.

So this has been a lucky week with its unexpected hiatus in notable books to read falling at a time when I’m not working. A lucky find, this new biography of one of my favorite writers; this new form of poetry. A joy to write a new poem, a lune. A lucky week, this last week of December, this last week of the year. May a week in 2012 be as joyful.