Saturday, November 30, 2024

2024 read #146: So Far So Good by Ursula K. Le Guin.

So Far So Good: Final Poems: 2014-2018 by Ursula K. Le Guin
90 pages
Published 2018
Read November 30
Rating: 4 out of 5

Rhyming descriptive poetry about nature and spirit has been a mainstay for so long that you could, at best, call it a worn-out cliché. Yet Le Guin's deep compassion and enduring humanity infuse these short poems with the urgency of life. 

Seemingly simple lines stagger, as in "Come to Dust": "All earth's dust / has been life, held soul, is holy." Everything connects; the universe flows from star to spirit and out again.

Her meditations on mortality, aging, and the business of being alive transcend old forms and invest in them something vital: "the grace / of water to thirst" ("Lesser Senses").

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