Poetry Wednesday: When the Year Grows Old

When the Year Grows Old

 

I cannot but remember
  When the year grows old—
October—November—
  How she disliked the cold!

 

She used to watch the swallows
  Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
  With a little sharp sigh.

 

And often when the brown leaves
  Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
  Made a melancholy sound,

 

She had a look about her
  That I wish I could forget—
The look of a scared thing
  Sitting in a net!

 

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
  The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
  Rubbing to and fro!

 

But the roaring of the fire,
  And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
  Were beautiful to her!

 

I cannot but remember
  When the year grows old—
October—November—
  How she disliked the cold!

- by Edna St. Vincent Millay

courtesy poets.org

A Winter's Read: Polar Book Club and Mark Helprin's Tale

Winter is the perfect time to bundle up, grab a cuppa and climb into a good book. Who's with me?

Let's form the Polar Book Club!

The 2015 Polar Book Club selection is Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.

Here is a description from Helprin's website:

Set in New York at the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, Winter´s Tale unfolds with such great narrative force and beauty that a reader can feel that its world is more real than his own. Standing alone on the page before the book begins are the words, I have been to another world, and come back. Listen to me. In that world, both winter and the city of New York (old and new) have the strength and character of protagonists, and the protagonists themselves move as if in a vivid dream. Though immensely complicated, the story is centered upon Peter Lake, a turn-of-the-century Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young heiress whom he encounters in robbing her house, and who eventually will die young and in his arms. His love for her, and a gift of grace, will allow him after the most extraordinary and painful explorations and discoveries to stop time and bring back the dead. To follow him, his predecessors, his inheritors, and his companions is to experience one of the great stories of American literature.

 The book is available in bookstores and libraries.

After we finish the book — let's aim for March 5, 2015 —  club members can join an e-mail conversation about the book.

This isn't a lit class, so how (and with whom) you participate is up to you. However, think about why you liked (or didn't like) the book, and consider telling other readers about it to spur discussion. No one is right or wrong. It's all about the book and reading.

E-mail me to join the Polar Book Club — and the ensuing conversation.