When you’re up against a trouble,
Meet it squarely, face to face;
Lift your chin and set your shoulders,
Plant your feet and take a brace.
When it's vain to try to dodge it,
Do the best that you can do;
You may fail, but you may conquer,
See it through!

Black may be the clouds about you
And your future may seem grim,
But don't let your nerve desert you;
Keep yourself in fighting trim.
If the worst is bound to happen,
Spite of all that you can do,
Running from it will not save you,
See it through!

Even hope may seem but futile,
When with troubles you're beset,
But remember you are facing
Just what other men have met.
You may fail, but fall still fighting;
Don't give up, whate'er you do;
Eyes front, head high to the finish.
See it through!

- See It Through by Edgar Guest

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Somebody said that it couldn't be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn’t," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it";
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

- It Couldn't Be Done by Edgar Guest

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Enter each day
as upon a stage
lighted and waiting
for your step
Crave upward as flame
have keenness in the nostril
Give your eyes
to agony or rapture

Take earth for your own large room
and the floor of the earth
carpeted with sunlight
and hung round with silver wind
for your dancing place

- selected lines from Earth Your Dancing Place by May Swenson

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May 2017: 11 books and scripts read

This Month's Pick
Ararat by Christopher Golden

The Play's the Thing
The Secret in the Wings by Mary Zimmerman

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

- In the Library by Charles Simic

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Once upon a time, way back in the infinitesimal
First fraction of a second attending our creation,
A tiny drop containing all of it, all energy
And all its guises, burst upon the scene,
Exploding out of nothing into everything
Virtually instantaneously, the way our thoughts
Leap eagerly to occupy the abhorrent void.
Once, say ten or twenty billion years ago,
In Planck time, in no time at all, the veil
Available to our perceptions was flung out
Over space at such a rate the mere imagination
Cannot keep up, so rapidly the speed of light
Lags miraculously behind, producing a series
Of incongruities that has led our curiosity,
Like Ariadne's thread, through the dim labyrinth
Of our conclusions to the place of our beginning.
In Planck time, everything that is was spread so thin
That all distance is enormous, between each star,
Between subatomic particles, so that we are composed
Almost entirely of emptiness, so that what separates
This world, bright ball floating in its midnight blue,
From the irrefutable logic of no world at all
Has no more substance than the traveler's dream,
So that nothing can be said for certain except
That sometime, call it Planck time, it will all just
Disappear, a parlor trick, a rabbit in its hat,
Will all go up in a flash of light, abracadabra,
An idea that isn't being had anymore.

- About Planck Time by George Bradley

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may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you
and a love of the past so blind you would
venture, always securing permission,
into the back library stacks, without food
or water because you have a mission:
to find yourself, in the regulated light,
holding a volume in your hands as you
yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life
will be voices and images. Information. You
may go a long way alone, and travel much
to open a book to renew your touch.

- Chance by Molly Peacock

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There was a Young Woman,
And, what do you think?
She lived upon nothing
But paper, pens, ink.
Paper, pens, ink was the chief of her diet,
And now this Young Woman will never be quiet.

- The Popular Authoress, as published in Punch, April 11th, 1863

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May 2017
The End of Magic by Amber Benson (final book of the Echo Park Coven trilogy)
Monstrous by Thomas E. Sniegoski
Project UnPopular: Totally Crushed by Kristen Tracy
Real Friends by Shannon Hale, illustrated by LeUyen Pham
The Supernormal Sleuthing Service #1: The Lost Legacy by Gwenda Bond and Christopher Rowe

June 2017
Indigo by Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James Moore, and Mark Morris
Let's Pretend We Never Met by Melissa Walker
Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

July 2017
I See London, I See France by Sarah Mlynowski
Dark Exodus by Thomas E. Sniegoski

September 2017
Alexander Hamilton, Revolutionary by Martha Brockenbrough

October 2017
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 20 Years of Slaying: The Watcher’s Guide by Christopher Golden

Sometime in 2017
The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix #5: Dawn and the Impossible Three by Ann M. Martin, adapted by Gale Galligan
The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix #6 by Ann M. Martin, adapted by Gale Galligan
Breakaway by Gale Galligan
Hazel by Gale Galligan
Sam & Ilsa by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
World of Payne Book 0: Ghost Dog by Tom Sniegoski and Frank Cho

Fall 2018
A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney
Magic Camper by Courtney Sheinmel and Bianca Turetsky ‏

Sometime in 2018
Dear Miss Sweetie by Stacey Lee

April 2017: 7 books and scripts read

This month's stand-out book is We Are Okay by Nina LaCour. It's the kind of book that's subtly laced with secrets and backstory and slow reveals, fluttering back and forth between the now and then, making you want to race through the pages to discover what happened, while simultaneously offering up poetic, heart-wrenching narration that makes you want to slow down and savor each word and revelation. We Are Okay is deeply worth the read. It's also worth a re-read.

I have read and enjoyed all of Nina's novels to date, beginning with her debut, Hold Still. Check out my reviews of Everything Leads to You and The Disenchantments.