The Red Leather Diary

Lily Koppel has written a book about the life discovered between the pages of an old crumbling diary that she found in a trunk, abandoned in an alleyway. It’s a wistful thought I know, but it’s as if the diary wanted to be found and for all the thoughts of a young woman living in 1930’s New York, to come spilling out. You can read an excerpt from the first chapter @ the NY Times.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/chapters/first-chapter-red-leather-diary.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Henry David Thoreau published, "Cape Cod," an account of 19th century life on the Cape initially in 1865. A new illustrated edition featuring the complete 1906 Houghton Mifflin edition text of Thoreau's classic work, and updated photography by Scot Miller, can be purchased through The Walden Woods Project website. For each copy sold, Houghton Mifflin and Scot Miller are making a donation to the Walden Woods Project, which works tirelessly to preserve the beautiful land about which Thoreau wrote. It'd be a great gift for someone who has a cherished copy of Walden on their shelves and it helps protect Walden Woods.

Link: http://www.walden.org/

"To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief."

Anne Sexton – “Admonitions to a Special Person” 1974

Photo: Flickr/Rogiro

MY HEMINGWAY

I can see you, bar side
Hoisting whiskey to song
Irish celebration
You turned into week-long

Four Green Fields
Back alley door, swimming within a sea
Of Guinness and laughter
And that Irish band, you had sing, to me

Your life much like that weeklong revelry
An open dance of party and song
And ladies, ladies, ladies
You did not discriminate, it would have been wrong

Your easy going way
All yes, yes and yes – a welcome sound
Larger than life
My Hemingway I’d found

More David Bourne with a touch of Nick Adams
Thrown in as oversight
Like pen to a page
You did write yourself into my life

In 2005 Detroit lost it's historic Studebaker Piquette avenue plant, built in 1904, to a devastating fire.

PIQUETTE LOST

Constructed on dreams
Ten-sized grander
A signpost of success realized
Length and depth filled to overflowing
With passion, voices & expectancy

Apparitions walk-through memories,
Of cars constructed,
Wartime assistance, of unity
Bound in cause, to
Shelter-less, hopeless modern men lying
Achingly cold against warn timbers
Amidst shards of broken pane
Unable to hear those 1904 voices of hope,
Success and prosperity

Voices now slight, distant
As crackling joist collide with
Once unyielding brick
Breaking out violently street-side

Phosphorescent flames raging,
Seeking exit, freedom
Smoke permeating night air against sapphire sky

A century of history and city pride, erased in hours,
Extinguishing voices softened,
Then silenced forever

Photo: Eddie Ballots/Detroit News

2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere

Billy Jones of BloggingPoet.com will again host the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere Election for the 4th year in a row with nominations beginning April 1, 2008. The Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere is the only laureateship chosen by readers. Billy asked for help getting the word out, if interested you can check out the details @:

http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/category/poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere

It all appeared so well ordered
A family – a household really
A fully functional, well-oiled machine

From outside looking in, there was even
A perceived warmth
A polite, comfortable life
There were disagreements, sure
It wasn’t fake, plastic or cold
Don’t think that

But those eyes looking in were not the only ones
Who fell prey to the deception
The family itself and even the traitor in their midst
Had been taken in by the belief
That this home’s foundations would hold up
Against those treacherous winds

But in truth this foundation
Was not built upon anything substantial
Merely routines, smoke and mirrors
So much so
That when the duplicitous actions of one of it’s members
Was exposed
It fell like a house of cards

Photo: Flickr/Rene S.