Luminous Things

A couple of days ago, by accident, I left my little fountain on when I went out in the morning. When I came home, a fair bit of water had splashed over the side and onto the top of my bookcase, and was dripping off the edge down onto the first shelf of books beneath it. Most of my books were barely wet, but one in particular got soaked all along the bottom, so I took it off the shelf to give it a chance to dry out. And, of course, in doing this, I flipped through it again, and remembered just how much I like it. I'm pretty sure I like it more now than I used to...since I'm now older and wiser and all (theoretically). I don't know when I would have had this reacquaintance otherwise. Next time my proverbial bookcase gets metaphorically wet, I'll have to remember what a blessing it can be.

Anyway. The book is called A Book of Luminous Things, and it's an international anthology of poetry edited and introduced by Nobel-prizewinning author Czeslaw Milosz...and apparently I got it as a prize for Senior Poetry in a writing competition in high school. I think what happened was that the prize was money and a bookplate, and I was going to buy Douglas Adams or something equally droll and smart-alecky, and my mother said "...um, how about you buy some poetry, seeing as how it's a poetry prize?" This may have been the very last time my mother influenced my reading habits, and in this case, I'm glad I listened.

The book still isn't quite dry, so while it's still in sight on my desk and not out of mind on my bookcase, I've posted a few of my favourites under the "words" section.

~isolde