April Reads: Poetry & Paris, blogs & books, and: "This Art" + cubism library

This blog post is inspired by the "It's Monday! What are you reading?" series, more about it, below, and more reading notes, here:  life as a journey with books 

 

April is National Poetry Month - and it's also A to Z Blogging month. So altogether, it comes with a bit of a different reading rhythm. I am still reading "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorov (more about it in last week's post: from islands to futureworld), yet the focus of reading this month is more on blogs & poetry:

"This Art - Poems about Poetry" - is an intriguing collection that reaches towards the inner nature and the function of poems, in a most poetic way:

"In more than one hundred poems, sixty poets from around the world explore the nature and function of poetry, whether directly or obliquely, finding mystery, paradox, and fullness in an art made of common everyday speech. Editor Michael Wiegers writes in his introduction, "Often the loudest arguments on behalf of poetry are made in prose. Meanwhile, the more convincing arguments are sung in poems." 

To get a taste of it, try this page with Selected Poems from THIS ART - poems about poetry by Copper Canyon Press one of my favourites of this collection is included on this page, too: "A Tao of Poetry" by Sam Hamill. 

Against-all-odds bookstory from Paris
There is a bookshop story connected to the Poetry book: I actually first saw this book in Paris, when I visited the famous "Shakespeare and Company" bookshop (the one run by Sylvia Beach - author James Joyce was one of the (then yet unknown and broke) authors who frequented the bookshop. Hemingway, too. Beach was the one who first published Ulysses.)
So that's the place I walked in. I walked in, amazed by all the books they have there, piles and piles, old and new. The one I picked was the Poetry book - i still remember how i picked it up, opened it at random, and the first thing i read was the TAO poem. then i browsed on, and returned to them, dug up pencil and paper to copy the title... and then a man walked up to me, and hesitantly asked why i picked the book, and what i was writing. the man, as it turned out, was: the editor of Copper Canyon Press himself. Michael Wiegers. such a good coincidence. here's a photo of the bookshop - if you happen to visit Paris, makes sure to visit the place (right next to Notre Dame, just walk across the bridge).



National Poetry Month
Some more poetry links: the website Poets.org features a Happy National Poetry Month page --- make sure to check out Poem-A-Day there, too. And put a poem in your pocket on April 18 (next week thursday)

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A to Z Blogging Challenge
From Poetry to Blogging: April is the month of the A-Z blogging challenge. Almost 2000 bloggers joined this alphabetical venture this year. Me included. Here's more about the A-Z Blogging Challenge. To browse some new entries, try Twitter AtoZ or this new "taboard" service: AtoZ tagboard
Or you could try this G-faceand for G, try this facebook-thread with more than 50 different bloggers and their G-themes, from Guinea Pigs to Grammar, from Goodreads to Gone: facebook / G is for ....

My own A-Z blogging so far leads from Alpha to Butterflies, from Crow Woman to Deduction and from R(E)volution to Fountain Lights. Really enjoying this so far. And I notice how i notice the letters of words more

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Cubism meets Books
And last but not least, this rather cubistic book moment from last week: visiting the new library.
Here's more about it: cubism meets books



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Global Reading Challenge
This blog post is inspired by the "It's Monday! What are you reading?" series that is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, participating blogs are listed in this Linky Book List

Previous reading blog entries are collected here: bookshelf: currently  reading... there also is a visual bookshelf, just click it to get there:

And my own new book... is Worl(d)s Apart. True.