// BOOKSACTUALLY RECOMMENDS //

The Promise Bird
by Zhang Yueran
translated by Jeremy Tiang

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( An excerpt from The Promise Bird by Zhang Yueran )

“She sat over a tableful of bright seashells. They had been polished by a silk cloth until they glowed, like coral, like a young girl’s cheeks. My eyes still clouded by sleep, I thought I saw little highly-coloured skulls, vibrating gently in the wind that came from who-knows-where. Her normally dry eyes moistened, like lighthouses dappling the surface of an inky sea. Only at times like this could I see her pupils clearly. Such beautiful pupils, no one could think they couldn’t see.”

“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand other people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you’ll never meet them.” 

― Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music

IN THE HAIRY ARMS OF WHITMAN
poems by Bill Kushner

FANCY CLOTHES

Don’t let the fancy clothes fool you.
Underneath I wear nothing but the 
truth, but what is true? That I grew
raised on macaroni & dreams, you
can bite me anywhere, & ouch you 
do. Do you always eat naked in
your socks, or what? Sometimes
when I look up, your face explodes
sun here, moon there, so I have no
idea. Sometimes, when I wonder 
who you are, really are, a you hand
me an olive, wet & green, & I bite
hard down, mmm delicious, oh pardon
my stare. Me, I’m just one lip, waiting
for one other. This is my story. This
is my song. Times when you’re awful 
& running, & when you tell me just of
enough to, & I can appear visibile, but only
to you. Then we put on our best shoes. Then
oh, we do put on airs, the music of the spheres.

“ALL TEACHERS GREAT AND SMALL tells the true story of Andy Seed’s first year at Cragthwaite Primary School - how he bravely negotiated the vagaries of the local dialect, made disastrous bids to provide a family home, naively and hilariously tried out new-fangled ideas in a school stuck in a 1950s time warp, and ultimately discovered a little part of England he was proud to call home.

Warm, touching and very funny, All Teachers Great and Small transports you to a time that may be gone but has never been forgotten.”

All Teachers Great and Small

by Andy Seed

By Heart, 101 Poems to Remember
101 Sonnets
Sounds Good, 101 Poems to be Heard
The Funny Side, 101 Humorous Poems 

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Poetry Anthologies by Faber and Faber, now available at BooksActually!

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

The Thought-Fox
by Ted Hughes

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Part of Sounds Good, a poetry anthology of 101 Poems to be Heard

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

Crossing The Water
by Sylvia Plath

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Part of By Heart, a poetry anthology of 101 Poems to Remember

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Prayer
by Carol Ann Duffy

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Part of 101 Sonnets, a poetry anthology