Unparallelled Joy

I've been reading Liz Waldner's A Point Is That Which Has No Part, and I came across this alernative spelling: "parallel llines." It's from the poem "Welling" on page 42.

Look carefully--you'll see it. And please don't tell me this is a printing error; not with Waldner's sense of wordplay throughout the entire poem. It couldn't be.

This delights me in a way that few other things ever have. In fact, from now on I am holding this is my secret place of things I pull out when I am in despair and need a pleasing thought. There is only one other item in that cache, something I discovered when I was 14 years old, and which I do not allow myself to recall very often, only in times of dire need.

That's how much this piece of cleverness pleases me. Thank you, Liz Waldner.

(And yes, I know Americans spell 'unparalleled' with only one 'l' in the second 'l' series, because it's an unaccented syllable, but the British spell it 'unparallelled,' and today I feel like all the double letters I can get.)

Books for the Holidays

Did you get any poetry books for Christmas? If so, which are you most looking forward to reading?

I got a nice stack of poetry books from my husband and from my parents (yay and thank you!). Among them, a few that I am particularly excited to read are:

A Point Is That Which Has No Part by Liz Waldner. This won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the James McLaughlin Prize about a decade ago, and I've been wanting it ever since. It's title refers to a definition from Euclid's Geometry, which is what immediately drew my attention. I bought another book by Waldner in the meantime, but somehow I had never gotten this one. So excited to have it, I started reading it on Christmas afternoon. The University of Iowa actually offers the entire text online here.

Paul Guest's My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is also a book I've been wanting to read, and now can.  Guest writes about his paralysis since a bicycle accident at age 12. As our family copes with devastating health issues, I find myself drawn more and more to Guest's poetry about struggles with the physical, written with poignancy, wit, and a realistic edge.

the true keeps calm biding its story by Rusty Morrison is probably the book I was coveting most this Christmas season, as I am in the throes of a poetry crush on Morrison, but didn't have this volume. But I've blogged about Morrison before...

So how about you? Did you get any particularly coveted books this holiday season?