Winter Thoughts and Winter Reading

More snow today--seems like it has snowed every day since I last posted. Nothing to amount to anything, but enough to keep the ground white for a few hours here and there, and today we have almost two inches at home, while nowhere else seems to have anything. Very strange, very local. I checked out a book at the library called Ken Libbrecht's Field Guide to Snowflakes. The photos are astonishing, breathtaking. I had to find the website (www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals ) and look at them online too. You can print the photos, make cards, etc. These are the same photos the US postal service used on stamps recently. The website has other snow activities and scientific information about how snowflakes for. I did not know that snowflake shapes are always in threes--no such thing as an eight-pointed snowflake.

I've been in a reading mood lately, trying to read as much and as widely as possible during these long winter evenings. Since we took out the television and the satellite over a year ago, we've re-learned what to do with our time when it's too cold or too dark outdoors to do anything. Some evenings I work on writing, others I talk to family on the phone, or Larry and I just sit and talk by the fireplace in the log room. It's quiet and peaceful, just the two of us, our three dogs and 20 or so chickens within a half mile.

What have I been reading? A lot of children's picture books, looking for writing ideas and also for what makes a good book and what makes a bad one. Some things I've observed: good picture books read like good poems. There is a flow to the language, and the story can stand alone without the pictures because the images created by the words are so good. Re-reading some of my favorites like Jan Brett, Marc Harshman, and Denise Fleming I see again why these books attract me--it's the language and the crafting of the story.

Lee Smith (www.leesmith.com) has been my "featured author" for the past month, apparently. I read her newest effort, Agate Hill, then went on to read two others--Devil's Dream and Fair and Tender Ladies. All of these books pulled me along, and kept me up well past bedtime. It takes a lot to do that because it seems like I have so much to do every minute I'm awake. But Lee Smith has a way with a story, giving good voice to her Appalachian people and putting me right into the place they live.

Other reading: ballad books, looking for a new song to learn. No luck yet--I find several that attract me, but so far nothing that says it belongs to me. I'll be back on www.contemplator.com to listen to melodies and perhaps that will lead me to something I want to learn. I like the murder ballads for some reason, I suppose because they're strong with imagery.

Literary journals have been on my list too, as I study what makes a good poem. I'm still stumped by that and I think perhaps literary journals are not the place to study. Many seem to prefer the oddly written, indecipherable arrangement of artful words that have no meaning for me. I might be too country and too straightforward in my thinking to appreciate this type of writing. I want to get a flash of personal recognition from a poem, something that says "ah yes, I know what this poet means, what he feels, thinks, sees." But maybe that's not what poets write anymore?

I was encouraged, however, when I picked up a copy of Ted Kooser's book Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison. The simplicity of his words, spare and lean like the Iowa landscape of his home, refreshes me and makes me hopeful that perhaps not all poetry has to be so inpenetrable. His website (http://www.tedkooser.com/) has a link to his poetry column, published weekly. You can also sign up to get the columnn by email:(http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/email.html)