Question of the Day | 04/25/2008 12:00 am

What are you reading that you really love?

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Dreams of Isis—Nomandi Ellis Awakening Osiris—Normandi Ellis Writing For Your Life—Deena Metzger The Science of Miracles—Gregg Braden Waking Up in Time—Peter Russell Sonnets—William Shakespeare Calculated Risk—Katherine Neville The Alchemist—Paulo Coehlo The Kin of Ata Are Waiting—Dorothy Bryant (re-reading) ProNoia is the Antidote for Paranoia—Rob Brezny The Book of Qualities—J. Ruth Gendler (always reading/gifting) Codex Seraphinius—Luigi Serafini

By iris odonata on 04/25/2008 12:21 pm

Iris — Deena Metzger is a writing mentor of mine and I was part of her Advanced Women’s Writing Circle for a number of years. She was mentored by Anais Nin. Another of her books I recommend is “Entering the Ghost River” which is about Deena’s journey to Africa where she and others were at an ancient, sacred site in Masvingo being initiated as healers the exact moment that 9/11 occurred. It is magical, mystical and unforgettable — especially her encounter with the elephants and their leader. It is about the essential power of Story for healing and bridging the gap between the Western mind and the indigenous non-linear mind.

By Deborah Behrens on 04/25/2008 2:36 pm

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Deborah: Yes. It is my intention to take part in her writing/healing councils. My meeting her is it’s own mystical, magical story. Have you read her latest update on the council of healing on Navajo land? I met her in Abq. when she did the opening address for Integrative Medicine Conference April ‘03. How delightful.

By iris odonata on 04/25/2008 4:06 pm

Iris: Yes! In fact I had just finished reading Deena’s Navajo e-mail narrative before I plugged into wowOwow to see the latest goings on! We are in sync. Fantastic! I have participated in the healing councils, several Daré Sundays plus various sessions when the African healers have been in town. Plus — I remember when she was preparing for that opening keynote address! She read parts of it to us one evening. We must share our Deena stories offline sometime soon!

By Deborah Behrens on 04/26/2008 1:28 am

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Some books are like people; they win us with “hello”. So here is the first line of Rules for Old Men Waiting by Peter Pouncey:”The house and the old man were well matched, both large framed and failing fast.” Beautiful and deeply moving.

By margaret britt on 04/25/2008 12:27 pm

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My thirteen year old niece recommended “Walk Two Moons” which I finished Wednesday. My sixteen year old nephew loaned me “Practical Demon Keeping” which I am in the middle of. “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” which cracks me up and just finished rereading Raymond E. Feist’s “A Darkness at Sethanon”. Next up, “Roadside History of Montana”.

By TJR 49 on 04/25/2008 1:14 pm

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Note to Frank: Here’s something I found in my journal from some years back on Millay: What Millay deeply cared about was the welfare of her senses and moods, which sometimes entailed stimulants and often demanded anesthesia. As for her affair with George Dillion which generated poems in her best collection, “Fatal Interview,” she at last had fulfilled the dream of her girlhood: to have an admirable man to shelter and worship her, and a boy to nurture and adore. As a woman and a writer, she needed to be in control. To write and love, she needed to lose control.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 04/25/2008 1:19 pm

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Phyllis, I agree that fatal interview idefinitely contains her best poetry an di knew about George Dillon—I love her poetry—esp the sonnets. Thanks for the information—much appreciated.

By Frank Peterson on 04/25/2008 1:36 pm

SAVAGE BEAUTY by Nancy Milford is a wonderful book about Edna St. Vincent Millay. Note that is Nancy MILford, and not Nancy Mitford, she of the Mitford Sisters I wrote of earlier. If you want to roll with laughter, read Mitford. If you want a great biography of Millay, read Milford.

By MaryPage Drake on 04/25/2008 1:50 pm

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MaryPage: thank you for the correction—I go for a walk. my hands freeze and I’m ham-fingered for a hour :-) Milford’s is truly the better of the two. I’m sure a new one will come out after 2010 because them more of her private pictures and writings will be available. Can’t for the life figure out why I didn’t put her with Emily Dickinson—*shakes head and ponders age*

By Frank Peterson on 04/25/2008 2:37 pm

MaryPage—-SAVAGE BEAUTY is one of my favorite books. Loved that Millay was so brave that she would speak out on war, putting herself in danger of financial ruin to do so, and go against some of the most influential men in the US at the time like Charles Lindberg. She was an amazing person. At Vassar Jackie Bouvier [Kennedy] won the Edna St. Vincent Millay prize for literature and for the rest of her life kept it in a special place in her bedroom. The one error I think Millay made was letting her editor change her Renaissance to the English spelling. Just think how many more google hits she’d get today with the original.

By No GOP on 04/25/2008 2:47 pm

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Grace: I dunno—I rather like the English spelling; maybe because I’ve always preferred that spelling—lord how can one be both an Anglophile and a Francophile in the same head. lol

By Frank Peterson on 04/25/2008 2:56 pm

And speaking of Lindburg: In 1940 this best American hero opposed aid to Britain, now standing alone against Hitler, and argued that white people, instead of fighting one another, must unite to resist the onslaught of Asiatic hordes. His wife’s poisonous best seller “The Wave of the Future” came out in the summer of 1940. The gentle Anne Morrow Lindburg, lamenting “the beautiful things…lost in the dying age,” saw democracy as finished and totalitarianism, the predestined successor, as a “new and perhaps even ultimately good, conception of humanity trying to come to birth.” (brings back a memory of Rice talking about birth pangs). She dismissed the evils of Hitlerism and Stalinism as merely “scum on the wave of the future” and concluded that “the wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.” At this time there were only a dozen democracies left on the planet. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of our past heroes and good for Millay and others that spoke out.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 04/25/2008 4:46 pm