A Fresh Start

Hello all!  I attempted to start the reading challenge last winter, and quickly realized that the events of the year (personal and universal) would distract me from being able to sit down and stay committed.  So, I am here to try re-gain a little balance, and re-connect to some healthy reading patterns.

As some of you might be, I have been deeply affected by the turn of events in the US election, and I have been having trouble staying focused on reading. The over-active newsfeed is very distracting, so I have decided to dig into some fairly political reads to learn more about what is going on.

I have been following the Standing Rock pipeline story for months and recently read the book Black Elk Speaks, and am now turning to The Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen (it is around 600 pages, so will be a challenge, but I would like to dig deeply, so will do my best to stick with this one).

Also, I attended a local sister march to the Women’s March on Washington and felt uplifted by the solidarity of connecting in a new way, so I found a book at the library by Alice Walker called Anything We Love Can Be Saved, A Writer’s Activism.  I have been reading this intermittently- and her writing is both beautiful and inspirational.  I find this book essential to getting through this difficult political climate.

The last book I will mention today is a New and Selected Essays, by Denise Levertov.  She has an amazing piece that I have read over and over again in the last few weeks called Poetry and Peace: Some Broader Dimensions.  There is so much to work through in this essay and I have found it incredibly helpful and important for offering perspective on some fairly lofty ideas.

As always, I am also reading poetry and articles- if anything is worth mentioning, I will share here..  and will come back with updates as I get through the books I am working on.

Thank you all for being here!  I look forward to spending our next 2017 pages with you all 🙂

~ meredith