Poetry Books, And A Playlist

As I'm heading for a new destination, I've had to leave my Paris apartment and could only bring a few books with me, of the hundreds that I have collected over the years, transforming my living room into a library... It took me a surprisingly short time to select the ones that will be in my suitcase - all three of them poetry. Shakespeare's Sonnets of course. Sylvia Plath's musical Ariel. Sappho's fragments, in Mary Barnard's landmark translation, radiating with Grecian sun and violently shaded with the abysmal darkness of the heart.
I wish I could have brought my Emily Dickinson volume, but it was a bit weighty.
What books would make it into your luggage?

And if you're wondering where I'm off to, listen to this Destination playlist...

Summer Of Shakespeare

After the performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream, let's stay a little longer with Shakespeare... Last summer, I was dying to attend some kind of music, dance or theater festival but really couldn't afford it, so I decided to have my own little festival, and spent a couple of months reading nothing but Shakespeare. The Tempest is my favorite and the Sonnets of course are the most beautiful poems ever.
Here's Sonnet 116, which I'm posting for Pierre:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

At Lafitte this summer, the many children are rehearsing Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (in French), which will be performed this weekend, in the castle's chai, a beautiful stone structure where the wine used to be stored... Meet our three elves!

Here's a passage from this magical play (Act V, Scene 2, Puck's speech):
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.
Now the wasted brands do glow,
Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe
In remembrance of a shroud.