IT'S SNOWING IT'S SNOWING IT'S SNOWING!!!!!! IT'S!!!!! SNOWING!!!!!!

That means before the accumulation starts, I'm about to head home to lay a fire in the hearth and pour some Highland Park Spirit of the Bear scotch and have a lovely night of cozy hygge with books and music and my fur babies, lol. I came into work to water the melodramatic plants who can't wait til Saturday for their next drinks AND because my best friend made lemon bars for me and my parents and Sarah and Mikaela and Karissa and texted me to ask if I was going to be at work for lemon bars and cocktails. So gifts of dessert and needing to take care of my plants seemed like a good reason to head in even though I'm already over 45 hours of work in for the week. (I didn't even punch in to take care of my plants tbh.)  The snow wasn't supposed to start til like midnight according to the forecast, but instead it started around 9ish. It's supposed to be anywhere from 5-8" of snow through tomorrow afternoon and depending on the forecast here, in Milwaukee, and Racine (including the temp drop after the snow to form black ice) AND when the snow ends AND how well the roads are cleared, even with new tires on my car Crissy and I may decide not to go to McAuliffe's Pub to see DAIMH. (The tickets were only $15 each, we've never seen them before and they will be at several Irish fests this August.)  We will know tomorrow based on this snow storm (which has its heaviest line of snow all along 94 which is what we need to drive to get to Racine which is in the mixed precipitation/black ice belt whereas here is just snow, lots of snow, lol) if I'm dropping Waffles off with my parents and heading out for the show. On verra.

I also learned that it is 100% my fault that Gadan and Enda have teamed up into an Italian Irish banjo super group for Irishfest season, lol. I thought it might be because I had gushed to Enda about seeing Gadan and how much they instrumentally remind me of what We Banjo 3 was doing  could fill the gap of people missing his former band when he asked me how I was doing during a brief series of catch up emails. AND Lorenzo recently posted thanking "the girl who encouraged me to email one of my musical heroes" about how it happened reminding that it was me telling him to reach out to Enda for advice on banjo technique or to collaborate or how to book more fests community because Enda genuinely loves teaching and helping spread the playing of his beloved instrument -- Enda would be very kind about any email (even with Lorenzo shy anxious about Italian being the natal language and so making linguistic gaffes) and the worst he might say is that he's overbooked himself can't do it now but wants to come back to it later when he has some time. So in a weird way, I guess I yente-ed the setup for this collaboration of one of my favorite musicians/humans with a young group of Italian musicians struggling to figure out how to find themselves a place in the Irish music scene. I genuinely didn't remember til they reminded me, lol. 

Also, since I need to head home now but this has been shorter than usual, my friend AJ asked me on facebook for a list of dark poetry for her. (AJ is an intovert dark witch medium (her gifts opened up after a near death motorcycle accident that killed both her dad and unborn son)) and a self published author of sexually explicit dark fantasy novels and she's married to a drummer in a metal band. Anyway, she had a brain limpoma that turned out to be cancer and was removed a couple years ago but at her most recent scan the brain cancer had returned) So here's my list of poetry reccs of Dark English poetry for her (other than what she had said she just bought: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems of Mary Shelly, and a gorgeous new copy of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry) :

"Oooh! I definitely understand the intermittent poetry phase of reading!! I adore poetry, own a LOT of it. Some of the best dark poets I can think of are in French and I don't have good translations to recommend since I read them in the original without English but I can give you names if you want dark French poets as well. Also I hope you wanted long because this is me and brevity isn't my strongest asset as a writer. Better known for general enthusiasm, lol. Also, I can't talk any books, but especially this list of suggestions without waxing poetic.  So welcome to Dani's reading list for Dark English Poetry 101, we will skip the ones on the syllabus you already picked up which would otherwise HAVE to be on this list. If desired, I can easily come up with more, but here are some of the first that I think of and TONS of poems and pages for you to explore and also that I think you specifically might enjoy if you don't know them:

Classics:

~Christina Rossetti! Definitely check out her poetry if you don't know it!! She is bona fide Gothic-Romantic from the Pre-Raphaelite movement of art and poetry and arguably the most important female poet of 20th century England, some would argue of the 20th century full stop. She is best known for the wyrdness of The Goblin Market, which you can probably find online if you want a sample, but her complete works is literally a 1,000+ pg tome as thick as Emily Dickinson! She did go through a bit of a Jesurific phase, which is definitely not my favorite, but outside of those poems I think you would love her poetry!

~Dante Gabriel Rossetti ; this is Christina Rossetti's brother and was probably more famous in his time for his colorful (think Byronic) life and he is also Gothic-Romantic Pre-Raphaelite writer of dark themed poetry ; many of his poems are story character poems and focus on the Medieval (especially his ideas of Medieval Italy) and there's a lot of darkness in his imagery and taboo (for his time) subject matter but he is also ridiculously great and dark Gothic.

~Lord Byron ; I mean, love him or hate him for his lifestyle, not including him in a list of Gothic dark poets is all sorts of messed up given he created and defined the dark brooding fascinatingly seductive but will probably love you then leave you broken hearted Byronic hero. It's literally named for him. And we both know you ain't afraid of a few explicit passages in a work. I think the Rossetti siblings are better poets and you're more likely to have read some Byron before, but he belongs on the list of classics.

~Oscar Wilde ; he's better known for his plays and effervescent lifestyle and the consequences of being openly gay in that era, but his fairy tales and poems are beautiful and dark and heart breaking and worth finding. His most well known poem is probably Ballad of Reading Gaol:

"And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!"

~Sylvia Plath ; I'm going to admit I haven't yet read through my copy of her Collected Poems because I found it used a couple years ago and it's one I'm saving for the right mood/time, but the samples I've read opening to random pages are gorgeous and after all she sparked this question and is well known for creating light out of the darkness in her.

Contemporary to support living authors (not certain these are the darkness you want but they are more modern shadow and light of everyday living):

~Iain S. Thomas ; a South-African poet, I first found his works while I Wrote This For You was a random blog site before publishing and he has been fairly open talking about the places grappling with his depression has had in his life and art

~Lang Leav ; Australian poet of Singaporean descent, I can't really explain it but something in her poems and their hints at past life memory karmic ties just sing to me of the joy through the sorrows of being a soul in a human meat suit

~Courtney Peppernell, she is a relatively newer discovery for me and she's ridiculously prolific so I only own a few of her books and I will admit that it was the gilded on black cover art of Watering the Soul that first caught my eye but it was the mix of strength with empathy in the craziness of modern life that made me buy it. I only own I Hope You Stay, The Road Between, and Watering the Soul but I really enjoyed them and need to pick up more of her works!

~Najwa Zebian book called Sparks of Phoenix ; This one was a little library find so I'm not sure how easy this one is to buy, the book says it's from Andrews McMeel Publishing if that helps, but this is a solid book of poetry for when life throws you a sucker punch and you rise up screaming defiance. It just feels like something you would relate to for yourself or your characters. Trigger warning that some of the poems seem to have been written picking up the pieces of shattered self following at least one instance of sa.

Honorable mentions extra credit:

~Seamus Heaney ; Irish poet, some of the darkness in it deals with poverty and the troubles, but just excellent absolute class poems and a surprising amount of Celtic paganism woven through some of them. Also, if you haven't read his translation of the Old English classic Beowulf you should!! It is the easiest reading true to the original rhyme schemes but flowing the beautiful imagery. You will probably still sympathize with Grendel and his mom, because it's you and you love your misunderstood monsters, but imho Seamus Heaney's translation is tied with with J. R. R. Tolkien's for best translations of Beowulf and Heaney's is probably better but it's Tolkien....

~Tim Burton, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories ; Burton isn't the greatest poet of all time per se, his focus is a rhythmic way to tell his story not the emotive art of the language. But if you love his weirdness then all of his poems have that unexpected twist of dark fairy tale Burton-ness loving the monstrous that he is so well known for creating. It's an enjoyable little book and the illustrations are FANTASTIC if you love the Burton aesthetic!

~Edna St. Vincent Millay ; I said I was sticking to English language poets and yet.... I have yet to find a translation that sings for me and my German is not good enough to fully appreciate the original but there are some real gems in her work

~Rainer Maria Rilke ; also not a poet in English so same general warning as Edna St. Vincent Millay, I have yet to find translations that I adore but poems and parts of poems are transcendent

~ T. S. Eliot ; if you haven't read The Wasteland, you absolutely need to! It's a bit fractured post WWI and worth reading by itself and reading annotated to understand all his allusions, but it's a classic for a reason and the imagery is exquisite. I reread it every Spring because invariably something reminds me of the opening lines:

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain." "

And then I also suggested in our back and forth:

"most of Coleridge isn't necessarily dark themed, but if you've never read Kubla Khan, you should. Especially if you love Poe's poetry. Even if you've read it before, it's a good short one for re-reads because it's a beautiful tour de force of gorgeous atmospheric fantasy imagery! Supposedly, he wrote the poem based on an opium dream that got interrupted by someone knocking on his door"

So there you go! There's some insight into my favorite dark themed poets and a small reading list if you want to understand me better through poems I love, lol. Also, it's a damn good reading list syllabus if you LIKE dark gothic light through the shadows poetry.

And I don't know exactly WHEN, but if you want a heads up on my eclectic reading habits, T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland is the only poem I re-read every Spring since I first read it when I was like 16 or 17. I don't know WHEN in April I will be re-reading it, especially with such a lovely snowfall tonight, but somewhere in the next month or so, I will be re-reading The Wasteland. Every April I read it though, it's become a personal tradition with me tbh.

Okay. Time to head home. because..... IT'S SNOWING!!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!! IT'S SNOWING!!!! AND IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND I HAVE SUCH SNOW GIDDIES!!!!!!!

No, but I really DO have such snow giddies, lol. You should have seen me when I took the dog out to go pee (even though she hadn't asked) and was just back of work with no coat or hat or scarf, just my jeans and sweater, spinning around grinning and dancing face up into the snow and the full moon bright enough to hazy see through the thin but snow laden clouds to the east!  SUCH gorgeous fat fluffy soft flakes of snow!!!! No wind or ice in the early part of this snowstorm at all!!! And the dog was running around happily sniffing everything and trying to catch MASSIVE snow clumps as they fell and I was just absolute cheesing ear to ear grin and joy dancing with the fresh falling snow!!!

I'M SO FULL OF SNOW GIDDY SPARKLES TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! BOURBON PEACH SOURS AND LEMON BARS AND COFFEE AND SNOW GIDDIES!!!!!! (I should probably eat some real food instead of trying to live on sugar and caffeine and joy like some sort of chaotic hummingbird sylph, lol.) also. I make no promises that this chaotic hummingbird sylph won't take her lowrider long dog dachshund-beagle-Jack Russel terrier mutt on a midnight or early morning snow frolic in the silence and joy of it all. I make no promises on that front, after all, dogs need walks and my heart needs snow giddies.  But maybe enough common sense will prevail for me to await after sunrise for walkies and snow frolics rather than choosing the sacred silences of the wee hours.

P. S. Midnight addendum: 

Gah!!!!! It's such a gorgeous winter wonderland outside!!!! (Yes it's Spring officially, but also it's Wisconsin and so everything is the softest sparkle fluff outside!!!!) So much beauty!!!! Such shiny happy snow giddies in my heart!!!! Luckily, at least one being in this house is sensible and the dog ran to her kennel put herself to bed patiently awaiting her bedtime treat and kisses before I closed her kennel door on her to nest for the night. Which means no taking her on middle of the night snow frolics, if I go out for snow frolics it will just be me and the snowflakes dancing, lol. And, after the dog put herself to bed, I put on pyjamas because why not be more comfortable in my cozy if I can, right?