Books Now is the season of resolve and renewal.
This is that time of year when poetry retunes the ear for the language the way fruit and veggies cleanse the system after too much food, free booze, and mashed spuds leave us bulging from bingeing through the holidays. After the bowl games and family blather, after the retail madness, the bestsellers and the blockbusters, it is comfort and epiphany to sit with a book brought home for the pure pleasure of the sounds within it. A slim volume or thick anthology that seemed pricey when we bought it soon becomes a bargain as we return to it, again and again, in our lives and times. William Butler Yeats wrote in his memorable iambs to Maude Gonne, whom he loved and who wouldn't have him, a century ago. He had, in his youth, the certain sense that these lines would survive her youth, her age, their century.