I read a lot of poetry and a lot of books by Ursula Le Guin, so it's rather surprising that I haven't read a book of her poetry until now. I enjoyed many of the poems in this collection (but not all of them)--in both verse and prose, she can stir emotion and paint a scene with a beautiful and feminine economy of words. Some of the poems in this book are about translating Virgil, connecting with her book Lavinia (which I read last month). I'm very much in love with connections between prose and poetry as well as between old and new texts. I was impressed with her love of and use of silence and song in many places.

Somewhat coincidentally, all the books I've read this year have been by female authors, and they have spanned many of the genres I usually read--poetry, SF/F, classic lit, and nonfiction. I have read some poems, essays, and excerpts of fiction by men, and I will have to read a male-authored book soon for my TA-ship, but it's interesting to see how many books by women I read in a row without really trying to read only women.