The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“It was a December of crows.”

— Claire Keegan / Small Things Like These

“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;”

— Wallace Stevens / “The Snow Man”

“Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have sex. No matter if it is snowing lightly and unseriously, or snowing very seriously, well on into the night, I would like to stop whatever manifestation of life I am engaged in and have sex…”

— Mary Ruefle / “Snow”

“Out of ice us: what
we’re made of came from comets,
which
are ice.”

— Martha Collins / “Coming Through”

“The wintry west extends his blast,
   And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
   The blinding sleet and snaw…”

— Robert Burns / “Winter: A Dirge”

“As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?”

— Claire Keegan / Small Things Like These

“Among twenty snowy mountains,   
The only moving thing   
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

— Wallace Stevens / “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

What I’m Listening To:

“Well I’m lookin at the snowflakes
And they all look the same
And the clouds are goin by me
They’re playin some kind of game
Well you know there’s a snowstorm”

— Galaxie 500 / “Snowstorm”