It rhymes, don't it?

"Rowan was a round-faced, bright-eyed young fellow with a rather decided air: Jack had seen enough of him to know that although he was a man of little formal education--a West-Country shipwright's son--he was a competent officer and a great improvement on Somers; but apart from that he had gathered little and now, during a momentary pause in the talk on either side of him, he was surprised to hear Rowan say 'I may not know what a dactyl is, but I do know that Will you take A piece of cake is poetry, whatever you may say. It rhymes, don't it? And if what rhymes ain't poetry, what is?'

"Jack quite agreed; and he was morally certain that Mowett did not know what a dactyl was either, though he loved him dearly."

--Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission

It's National Poetry Month! I've signed up to receive a poem a day in my email.

The Literary Saloon has taken the time pull the rug out from under Katie Roiphe's claim that few 'cept her had seen fit to mention the connections between Ian McEwan's Saturday and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. This New York Times piece about McEwan doesn't mention either Woolf or Tom Wolfe, but links to the Katutani review that does.

At least in the United States loonies who want particular books removed from the shelves usually know that the books in question are actually on the shelves: Orhan Pamuk's detractors in Turkey need to work on that part.

Kazuo Ishiguro's latest, Never Let Me Go, has been getting lots of press. Margaret Atwood's review has made me decide I want to read it sooner rather than later.