Happy bookish face,

brand spanking new, hot off the printing press

Why I love "Rapture":

Carol Ann Duffy — mother, daughter, sister, friend, lover and now poet laureate to more than 60m of us — is good with words. You could say they hang around her unadorned throat like pearls. She wouldn’t, because she’s as unpretentious as her verse. But those simple lines of hers contain whole universes, and we are talking about love.

~ Extract from this Times article

"They start with Darling"

From the Times,
The Most Romantic Love Letters Ever with this wonderful observation:

Today, time and distance no longer stand between lovers. With a twitch of thumbs and the press of “Send” we can be within reach. We can hear the beloved voice instantly on our mobile phones. A moment’s yearning can be instantly gratified. What have we lost!

And yet there is still the magic of the written hand, the addressed envelope, the intimacy of recorded words. Katherine Mansfield sits down to take pleasure in being alone — “I long to write you a love letter tonight” — and there follows the most eloquent, personal and beautiful expression of love. It is unique and for all time. Texting can’t do that.

... along with the after-reality in Duffy's The Darling Letters

                            Even now, the fist's bud flowers into trembling,
the fingers trace each line and see
the future then. Always... Nobody burns them,
the Darling letters, stiff in their cardboard coffins.

[ . . . ]

                      Once in a while, alone, 

we take them out to read again, the heart thudding 

like a spade on buried bones.