Poetry and Tree Climbing

It all makes sense! A neuroscientist writes HERE that poetry comes from our tree-climbing ancestors. It's all about synesthesia: about the connection between the mental map of branches we need to be able to see, and the mental map of branches that we need to be able to feel. And here is my grandmother, not too many years before she died.

Things in my Neighborhood

I love walking. I love walking in new places, and I love walking in my own neighborhood. Here are a few things I saw today:

Color when you need it. We love northern cardinals here in Michigan.



And seed hearts.





And snug, cozy places.

Old Poems on a New Blog

Two of my poems that originally appeared in Sugar House Review are now featured online. Daniel Luevano created his blog to give poems from the printed page a new home in the virtual world. I like what he's doing and I'm delighted to have "The Ringmaster" and "The Pawnbroker" included on the site. You can find them here.

Vaclav & Lena & Childhood Friends

This book is full of quietly powerful moments. I finished it a couple of days ago, but the deep friendship between Vaclav and Lena keeps floating to the surface of my thoughts, bumping into other thoughts. V&L are children (for most of the book) in a Brooklyn neighborhood full of Russian immigrants. Their story, though wildly different in many ways from my own story, has in it something familiar: unending friendship. It's a story about what it means to have (as the inside jacket says), "an everlasting connection with someone else." Childhood friendship, at its best, can feel like that, can become that. My friend Maureen at Rose Water & Orange Blossoms wrote about it today, and I have carried her post close to my heart on this sunny, snowless, winterless winter day.