Free App: Poetry from the Poetry Foundation.

It’s National Poetry Month.  Woo Hoo!  Hang sonnets from the sashes and couplets from the cupolas.  Let a ballad be your banner flapping in the brisk April breeze.

I would join in your revelry and pen my own poetic masterpiece, alas, I got distracted playing with this fabulous app.  It doesn’t have flappy fins or diced fruit, but you can spin TWO wheels and garner a fortune of carefully crafted verse.  It is a goldmine for logophiles like me, for it brings merit to the world of technophilia.

Which brings me to the book I just finished reading (and shows just how distracted I am today): Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.  Though at times in the plot there are contentious arguments about the merits of print vs. technology, Sloan, for the most part, has created a loving universe where both coexist in meaningful and appreciative ways.  The last lines, though, do give a good ol’ what what to my beloved book:

“A man walking fast down a dark lonely street.  Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need.  A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes.  A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

May you always find exactly the right book, at exactly the right time.  And may the spinning poetry wheel of fortune be ever in your favor.  Happy reading!

Kenneth Josephson, Chicago (blurred book pages) 1988

** Big shout-out to iGameMom for tipping me off to this app!