LoPoYo (The Eight)

Usually around this time of the year I post the top 20 or so poetry books that I've read during the year.   This year, I'm afraid, my poetry appetite has been a little diminished.  There are more choices than ever and less and less that I desire to read.   It's been, by all accounts, a personal Low Poetry Year.  So be it.  I read a few and I'll clue you in to what I found worthwhile, in chronological order, of course.

1.  Chromatic - H.L. Hix
2.  Diving Into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-1972 - Adrienne Rich
3.  Song of Myself - Walt Whitman
4.  The End of Beauty - Jorie Graham
5.  All of the Above - Jim Daniels
6.  The Coldest Winter on Earth - David Dodd Lee
7.  Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems - Jim Daniels
8.  Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems - Chase Twichell

Snow-Viary

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The Sandhill Cranes

At Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area 

The sandhill crane migration is in full swing.

My friend Kathy snapped this great pic with her telephoto lens.

I'm a little jealous.

But I was still able to get a few shots of the birds coming in.

The weather was absolutely the best we've ever encountered.

That is to say, we stayed until sundown and still had feeling in our limbs.

If you have time and are local, this is a great time to go.

At Lakenenland

A great sculpture park.
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Sandstone Quarry

We dove into the woods and found the old quarry Gene's dad used to swim in as a kid. The guys would take a heavy rock to weight themselves down, a knife to carve their names and they would dive as deep as they could go.
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The Keweenaw's South Shore

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Miner's Falls

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The Salmon Light Breaking Over Lake Superior

Incredibly calm.
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Mighty Mac

Our feet have reached the U.P.
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Rewrite

I am busy.  My friends are busy.  The whole world, it seems, is busy, which I'll take as a good sign, for the moment.  America is recreating itself, rewriting its story, transitioning into something new.  Again.  Always.  Musically speaking, transitions have a preferred rhythm.  They are fast and light.  I like that.   For the moment.  Soon I'll be happy to slow down and study the new movement, the latest words.

Artistically, I've put down my poetry pen for awhile and have turned my hand toward fiction.  My little office is covered with maps and dry-erase boards filled with characters and locations and notes about physics and the cosmos and entropy.  Someone will be killed in this fiction, because I dig that sort of thing.   I could be writing a mystery, but I don't want to say that too loudly or the anti-genre police will come and take my markers away.  Bastards.  Maybe if I call it something else...

Mystery, I mean Gothic, I mean -- hell, I don't know what I mean.