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J. Alfred

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J. Alfred is Currently Reading

J. Alfred is currently reading

Gilead (Gilead, #1)

by Marilynne Robinson

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 5th time

read in June 2018

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J. Alfred said: " Just dazzling. Just astonishing. It's criminal that people are still writing books this good.
In addition to many other, more sober, excellences, Gilead contains one of the finest long comic passages I've ever read: it involves a drunk horse stuck in ...more "

Jan 17, 2024 11:48AM · see review

J. Alfred is currently reading

James and the Giant Peach

by Roald Dahl

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Reading for the 4th time

read in February 2012

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J. Alfred said: " From the abrupt death of James' parents (eaten by an escaped rhinocerous) to the fantastic magicality, to the characters themselves (the frequently-singing Centipede who boasts of being a "pest" is my favorite), this book is a whole lot of fun.
The q ...more "

May 31, 2023 06:27PM · see review

J. Alfred is currently reading

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

by David Brooks

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Reading for the 2nd time

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Jun 03, 2026 10:48AM

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¡ POETRY ! — 22520 members — last activity May 24, 2026 04:09PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more