Cousins Book Club

Hi Cousins,

For Tuesday, March 31, 2026 we’ll look at 3 nature poems. Here they are!

BESIDE THE WATERFALL                           by Mary Oliver    1994

At dawn

the big dog-Winston by name-

reached down

into the leaves-tulips and willows mostly-beside the white

waterfall,

and dragged out,

into plain sight, a fawn;

it was scarcely larger than a rabbit

and, thankfully, it was dead.

Winston

looked over the

delicate, spotted body and then deftly

tackled

the beautiful flower-like head,

breaking it and breaking it off and

swallowing it.

All the while this was happening

it was growing lighter. When I called to him

Winston merely looked up.

     Grizzled around the chin

and with kind eyes,

he, too, if you’re willing,

had a face

like a flower; and then the red sun

which had been rising all the while anyway,

broke

clear of the trees and dropped its wild,

clawed light

over everything.

Read online at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver

THE MOTHS                                                                by Mary Oliver    1992           

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know                           
what kind, that glimmers                                                                              
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink moccasin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,                                        

motionless                                                                                          
in those dark halls of honey.                          

The Lake Isle of Innisfree                                          by W. B. Yeats    1888

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Read online at https://poets.org/poem/lake-isle-innisfree

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We Zoom next on Thursday, February 26th, at 7:30 pm EST (4:30 pm PST).

As always, feel free to pop in and say hi, even if you can’t stay or if you didn’t read anything.

At that meeting, we’ll talk about Logan’s Run, the whole book, including the ending. **If you have time, pull an excerpt from the book that you’d like to talk about.** Also, do you like the ending ? Remember, it’s no biggie if you don’t get a chance to read every word–we’ll talk about what you did have time to read.

And bring your ideas for our next book. If you want, text your book ideas to the group in advance.

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We Zoom on Tuesday, December 16th, at 7:00 pm EST (4:00 pm PST).
At that meeting, we’ll talk about the whole book, including the ending. **If you have time, pull an excerpt from the book that you’d like to talk about.** Also, what do you make of the ending paragraphs? Remember, it’s no biggie if you don’t get a chance to read every word–we’ll talk about what you did have time to read, and we’ll have a laugh.

And bring your ideas for our next book. If you want, text your book ideas to the group in advance.

I just got the physical copy of our book, and see that the cover blurb highlights the “human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness.” Those emotions are part of the story, but the book also asks us to look at human life as a brief space of time we each to spend within a human body and mind, and I feel the story encourages us to view our humanness with humor, whimsy, acceptance, compassion, love, etc. What would you write for a blurb?

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Here’s a brief creative exercise for anyone who wants to do a fun thing on their own:

Read: enough of Part II to get a good sense of Johannes’ way of being.
Imagine: Johannes on the night before this story takes place. It is the end of the day and he climbs into bed for the night. He lies in bed for a minute or two before dozing off.
Write out: everything that goes through his mind during those minutes.
Extra Credit: Read it for us at book club 🙂

See you soon!

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Hi everybody,
Here are some notes for our book club meeting on Tuesday, December 2nd, at 7 o’clock pm Eastern time. Which is 4 o’clock on the West Coast.

When we get going with a new book, an easy way for all of us to get in sync is to start by looking together at page one. And to focus at first on the form of the writing.

We can think of the form of a story as if it is the body language of the story— it is made up of things that aren’t explicitly stated, but are fundamental to our understanding of what we are reading.

What makes up the form of the writing in Morning and Evening? One simple answer to this question is: it is written in the present tense. But I think we will all agree that the form of the writing in this book is unusual and I look forward to hearing the terms you all would use to describe it.

For our discussion of the form, posted below is a screenshot of the opening sections of Morning and Evening. Plus, underneath that is a screenshot of a section of a different book that is written in a form similar to our book. We can compare and contrast the two of them if we want to.

And lastly, also posted below are a few excerpts from our book that we can use to ground our discussion as we move along today if we choose to.

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The pages below are 11-14 in the paperback (the story begins on page 11).

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This is an excerpt of See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid. It is a passage that describes the day of the birth of the main character’s son, Heracles. The images aren’t the best, but hopefully they get the job done.

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Here are a handful of excerpts from Morning and Evening. The first two involve Olai in Part 1. The other two involve Johannes in Part II.


This excerpt starts on page 16 in the paperback.

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Excerpt from “Morning and Evening” by Jon Fosse from page 21.

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This excerpt starts on page 34 in the paperback.

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This excerpt starts on page 92 in the paperback.

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Our current book is Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls.

The meetings we have on the calendar are:
Tuesday, DEC 2nd at 7:00 pm EST (That’s 4:00 pm PST)
Tuesday, DEC 16th at 7:00 pm EST (That’s 4:00 pm PST)