Poetry. Ann Spiers' RAIN VIOLENT views the earth and its creatures in crisis. Each page holds one short poem paired with a weather symbol. The symbols inject the poems with a depth, a counterpoint, a link to specific climate phenomena. The sixty poems are essentially about climate crisis: political, mythical, surrealistic, scientific, personal. Animals, humans, and the natural and built landscapes create the content. Point of view and narrator shift from poem to poem, migrating through past, present and future scenarios. Tone also shifts from lyrical to strident, objective to personal, humor to tragedy.The weather symbols create tensions within a run of poems, such as "Drizzle Slight," "Drizzle Heavy," "Drizzle Heavy Freezing." Citizen scientists and aeronautical professionals use these symbols, gleaned from the International Weather Symbols, on weather maps to denote conditions at local weather stations. Artist Bolinas Frank hand painted the symbols to emulate those hand drawn at the weather stations worldwide.

guide to precise phrases, grammar, and pronunciation can be key; it can even be admired. But beloved? Yet from its first appearance in 1926, Fowler's was just that. Henry Watson Fowler initially aimed his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, as he wrote to his publishers in 1911, at "the half-educated Englishman of literary proclivities who wants to know Can I say so-&-so?" He was of course obsessed with, in Swift's phrase, "proper words in their proper places." But having been a schoolmaster, Fowler knew that liberal doses of style, wit, and caprice would keep his manual off the shelf and in writers' hands. He also felt that description must accompany prescription, and that advocating pedantic "superstitions" and "fetishes" would be to no one's advantage. Adepts will have their favorite inconsequential entries--from burgle to brood, truffle to turgid. Would that we could quote them all, but we can't resist a couple.