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It is Raining on the River!

I guess I rattled my rain stick enough this weekend to wake up the clouds. We In North Alabama are reveling in what the Navajos call a gentle “female” rain, and I pray it continues all week. I especially hope it rains profusely on Atlanta, Georgia, where they are having a serious water shortage.

Today is a perfect day for curling up with a good book. I have read three so far this month: Carter Martin’s epic novel Kelbrn  (reviewed on Swampland); the latest novel in the delightful Stephanie Plum mystery series, Mean Lean Thirteen, by Janet Evanovitch; and the powerful and controversial memoire by Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her life as a Muslim and then as an apostate: the deeply disturbing Infidel. If you choose to read the latter book, be prepared to spend a great deal of time at the computer refreshing your knowledge of the history of Islam and the political and religious history of north east Africa. Yesterday I reviewed Infidel for a local study club, and I had over ten pages of research, not to mention the numerous sticky notes inside the book itself.

You don’t have to run to the library for reading material this week. Just click on the Discourse section of Swampland to read a wonderful poem by Bonnie Roberts, one of the Alabama poets included in Whatever Remembers Us. This particular poem, “Shacks on Highway 231, Along the High Red Clay Embankment,” was published in her collection of poems, Dances in Straw with a Two-Headed Calf (Elk River Press, 2002).

Bonnie Roberts grew up in a semi-rural area in Florence, Alabama, and when not traveling, she has spent her entire life in Alabama. Her southern roots are tangible. Bonnie received her MA in literature from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and she has been a teacher of Creative Writing at the Magnet School of Lee High School, taught at Calhoun Community College, and served as poet-in-the schools for the Alabama State Council on the Arts and Humanities. She has studied in Dublin, Dijon (France), and Turkey, and she has given readings on the east and west coast and as well as in Ireland. Her first volume of poetry was entitled To Hide in the Light.( Elk River Press, 1998).

---by Penne J. Laubenthal

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