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J. Alfred

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J. Alfred is currently reading

When I Was a Child I Read Books

by Marilynne Robinson

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2019

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J. Alfred said: " "It seems to me fair to say that the loss of Moses was the defeat of Jesus, insofar as it was the hope of Jesus to bless and relieve the poor."
Sam Johnson raises his eyebrows from the grave in recognizing a masterful sentence from a creator of master ...more "

Oct 30, 2019 10:47AM · see review

J. Alfred is currently reading

Very Good, Jeeves!

by P.G. Wodehouse

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Reading for the 2nd time

read in August 2021

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J. Alfred said: " I tend not to think that the short story is the best milieu for the great Jeeves and Wooster, but BBC disagrees, because this short story collection is the source for many of their Jeeves and Wooster episodes. (Speaking of which: if you have not seen ...more "

Aug 04, 2021 09:56AM · see review

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Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair

by Christian Wiman

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Sep 02, 2026 11:52AM

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¡ POETRY ! — 22500 members — last activity Aug 31, 2026 04:34PM
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