Forest Born crowning

the actor and the housewife won the City Weekly's Readers Choice award for best fiction book of the year. Thanks, City Weekly voters! I am so thrilled and honored. It makes me ridiculously happy when other people love Becky, Mike, and Felix too.

 I'll be at the King's English in Salt Lake City this Saturday at 2 pm for the forest born release party. It's been a really nice release week so far, with lovely reviews and happy responses from many of you. Thank you! I don't like to post full reviews on my blog or site for fear of spoilers, but I put up snippets of the reviews.

In honor of Rin this week, here's my favorite tree-related poem. (A little history--I first read this poem in the New Yorker and loved it so much I was going to memorize it, but I lost my copy and couldn't remember the title or poet. Then when I was reading Tithe by Holly Black, I saw that she quoted from this poem, and so I was reunited with the poem AND a week later met Holly for the first time! And I declare "Crown" one of my all time favorite poems and Holly one of my all time favorite people.)

CROWN
by Kay Ryan

Too much rain
loosens trees.
In the hills giant oaks
fall upon their knees.
You can touch parts
you have no right to—
places only birds
should fly to.

Aaah...I love that. I am stunned by her brevity, by her simple word choices. This could be the text for an early reader book, and yet she says things no one else has. This poem is like a buttermint on the tongue. I feel refreshed! And now back to daisy danger brown, and a different secret project that I may be able to talk about next month...