Walking the Wall

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

by William Butler Yeats
 
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,    
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;    
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,    
  And live alone in the bee-loud glade.    
 
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;    
There midnight ’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,    
  And evening full of the linnet’s wings.    
 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day    
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,    
  I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

 One benefit of being sick as a dog (where did that phrase come from, I wonder? Our dog is rarely sick, he certainly never gets colds and coughs and stuffy noses!), is that I had time to do some reading. One benefit of reading my American literature syllabus wrong is that I ended up ahead of the reading schedule and could read "just for fun".

• The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant: I listened to this book while I was very sick with a full fledged fever so some of my perceptions could be skewed by that. I greatly enjoyed the book, though it was a very slow and meandering story following the eccentric and outcast characters based on real characters of a ghost town. Prostitutes, freed slaves, widows, spinsters, and supposed witches–but their stories told more than pain and deprivation–they told of the strength of humanity, of the power of love, and the enduring bonds of friendship. It doesn’t have the sweeping power of The Red Tent, but the quiet undertones of life lived and struggled through.
• Good Harbor by Anita Diamant: I found this and the next book at my favorite room in the library, the little room full of books for sale, $1 for hardbacks and $.50 for paperbacks. When I saw this one there, I figured it was fate that I go on a Anita Diamant spree. This is a fairly short books, and again, it doesn’t have the power of The Red Tent, or the quiet endurance of The Last Days of Dogtown, it does address the power of family secrets and, a recurring theme for Diamant, the incredible support that friendship can be.
• A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott: This was a fun find! I had never heard of this book although I had grown up on Little Women and all the other books in that series. In many ways it reminds me of Chopin’s Awakening because it is such a fun surprise to think of women of that time period, dressed all prim and proper, sitting down to write this book. This isn’t an incredible book, it wasn’t written as a great work of fiction, but as a serial story to be released weekly in the paper, with cliff hanger endings to chapters to make the reader excited for the next chapter to be released. Her editor wouldn’t publish it because it was too "sensational" and it remind locked away until the 1990s. It is chock full of woman’s rights, friendships (male and female), psychological abuse, bigamy, suicide, and murder. It was fun to read when I was too tired to have to read anything too deep and from the first page to the last page I got a kick out of picturing this strong young woman who said, "I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world."