Happy Poem In Your Pocket Day.

Since I can neither slip one into your pockets nor pluck one from mine to read to you, I figure this is a good spot to put ‘em. (Also, reaching into other peoples’ pockets is weird and sort of creepy. If you’re going to participate, I don’t recommend this course of action unless you know the people very well.)

First up, go clicky over to Tor.com to read Catherynne M. Valente’s gorgeous “What the Dragon Said: A Love Story”

Second, one of my old favorites. John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”

I should expound a bit about both of them. I could; I will; I might. However, the first reading of a poem is, to me, a personal thing. I don’t like going into them with my thoughts colored by someone else’s analysis, looking for this reference, that turn of phrase, because I was told to watch for it. It doesn’t so much diminish the poem as it takes me out of it, interrupts the flow of words as I would have read them.

So. Go forth and read, and if you like, come back here and tell me what you think. I’ll save my yattering for the comments.