Posts on winter

I've been a little lazy with the book displays the past few weeks. Or maybe I should say I've been very busy with other important things at work. That sounds better, doesn't it? And it's true, I swear.

Anyway, I had a realistic fiction display in our Junior High Fiction area all of November. High time for something different! We're getting out our Christmas (and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, in much smaller numbers) books today, so to complement them I pulled out some wintry fiction.

Currently on display:
- Northlander, by Meg Burden
- The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper
- The Dreaming Place, by Charles DeLint
- Spud in Winter, by Brian Doyle
- The Winter War, by William Durbin
- Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
- Girl Overboard, by Justina Chen Headley
- Far North, by Will Hobbs
- The Winter Road, by Terry Hokenson
- Miracle on 49th Street, by Mike Lupica
- Brian's Winter, by Gary Paulsen
- The Winter When Time Was Frozen, by Els Pelgrom
- Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett
- The Trap, by John Smelcer
- Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson

Not a bad combination of adventure, fantasy, realistic fiction, and even a little historical fiction, if I do say so myself.

Any suggestions of books to add when the supply is depleted? They need to be upper middle grade and/or tamer teen fiction. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does not qualify in our library, alas!

After weeks of avoidance, I finally tackled the sestina which, Stephen Fry says, "is a bitch to explain but a joy to make." (This kind of commentary is why I love The Ode Less Travelled.)

I feel like I'm jumping the gun with the snow poetry, seeing as Chicago's only seen a light dusting that melted within a day, but snow's definitely on folks' minds. And I'm generally weather-obsessed. And to get "meta" for a moment, the sestina's strict form seems quietly oppressive—sort of like being snowed in.

Without further ado...
 

Snowbound

It’s January, and my family falls
asleep to storm warnings, drifts
through warm dreams, our blankets
shielding us a little longer. Still,
morning brings the truth. Close
to seventeen inches has stuck

to the streets, leaving us all stuck
at home. All day the snow falls.
We sigh and layer on warm clothes,
as snow gathers at the door in drifts.
The world outside is hushed and still,
draped in soft crystal blankets.

The news station issues a blanket
statement: all city plows stuck
plowing “important” roads. Still,
we hope. We visualize waterfalls,
rapids, hurricanes—anything but drifts
of powdered water, heavy and close.

When bedtime comes, I don’t close
the curtains. Wrapped in wool blankets,
I drowsily watch as each flake drifts
downward. I dream that I’m stuck
in a plastic snowglobe, trapped in its false
blizzard forever. When I wake, it’s still

snowing. Life is at a standstill,
every school and church closed.
Under the snow’s weight, a pine falls
across the road. New snow blankets
it, the clouds permanently stuck
on “high,” and once again the drifts

rise. I’m past bored. My mind drifts,
wondering if there’s a lesson to distill
from these days of confinement—stuck
with no one but family, in such close
quarters. No. My mind is blank. It’s
muffled more with every flake that falls.

Then night falls again on our snowy, still
world, and we all drift together, cuddling close,
blanket to blanket—for a moment content to be stuck.
 

Stephen Fry also writes of the sestina, "You can do it, believe me you can. And you will be so proud of yourself!" I grudgingly suppose he's right.

This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Holly Cupala Brimstone Soup. Please check it out!

I've finally found the perfect poetry book for my attention span! It's Splinters: A Book of Very Short Poems, edited by Michael Harrison (Oxford, 1988). Here's a lovely verse for us now, on the verge of the Winter Solstice:

Season Song

Spring stirs slowly, shuffles, hops;
Summer dances close behind.
Autumn is a jostling crowd
but Winter creeps into your mind.

– Judith Nicholls

It does, doesn't it? Winter feels to my brain like that cold air seeping through the gap in the window frame. I don't know it's there until I'm chilled to the core. Brr, ugh, and brr again.

At the same time, I'm touched by winter's beauty. Walking around the neighborhood, blanketed with snow, there's such a hush. Except for the steady roar of the lake churning against the beach, turning to ice.

My favorite winter book is The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper. It captures winter's dichotomy - the sinister chill of the atmosphere and the gaiety of the holidays - so perfectly.

Catch the rest of this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up at The Miss Rumphius Effect.