Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I can still hear you saying those words

A Library by Nikki Giovanni

My Poet by Patricia MacLauchlan

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Words are important. There are all types: good, bad, ugly and the words chocolate (a most important one). And the below books are about words. On the surface, A Library by Nikki Giovanni is a silly little story about a young girl and the possibilities of the library she goes to. But it is more than that. The library is a place filled with magic. It is a place where you can be a cook, crook, lover, or sit among the stars. There are worlds […]

I admit didn’t finish, but you know you’ve a hit when the first 4 pages have nothing horrible about them

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver

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I am not sure what to say about Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver that has not already been said. Therefore, I will write about the feelings I had and my “Mary Oliver story.” Right after Oliver passed, the local poetry group did a last-minute event to read some of their favorite Mary Oliver poems, read some of their own poetry and to celebrate Oliver. My story is this was the first time I had heard a poem by her. Or at least, realized […]

Intense happiness

Felicity by Mary Oliver

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Every once in a while a poem is able to articulate a feeling or thought in a profound, emotional way that would never have occurred to me. I’m not a big reader of poetry and a lot of it is incomprehensible to me, so this doesn’t happen to me often. But I’m always hopeful. So, when I saw Narfna’s review of Felicity (2015) by Mary Oliver, I was intrigued. The promise of a short book with meaningful, understandable poems sounded fantastic. I also liked the […]

“Your heart is beating, isn’t it? You’re not in chains, are you?”

Felicity by Mary Oliver

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This is one of those books I never would have picked up on my own, so thanks, Read Harder, for doing your job. I do not read much poetry at all, and that is because some that I have read in the past has been pretentious as hell or impenetrable, or both, but even when it hasn’t been, my favorite thing about reading is narrative, and most poetry doesn’t have that, so. I’d just rather spend my reading time on novels, and the very occasional […]

Nevermind that he is only a memo from the offices of fear.

At Blackwater Pond by Mary Oliver

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This is a small collection of Mary Oliver poems that the poet herself reads. Much of Mary Oliver poetry is like a set of minor meditations of a natural with life being pushed to forefront and the present manifesting. If you give yourself over to her poems, they act as tiny little moments of clarity. It’s much like the Robert Frost definition of poetry, and the effect can be incredibly calming, or at least stilling. This collection is a single disk audiobook version of the […]



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