Daily Dose

From E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904 - 1962, edited by George James Firmage

34

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
--i say though hate were why men breathe--
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

Returning Thanks

A few years ago at the bookstore where I work, I did a display of which I was rather proud.  It was a bit yet before facebook and social media had quite consumed the world's attention.  I certainly was not yet hooked.  Nevertheless, "thankfulness," as a rediscovered bromide was evidently already in the zeitgeist.  I decided to put up a table of books for which we might be individually grateful.  I recruited various coworkers, and even a few customers, to select a book and write up a recommendation or justification for the selection.  Ended up with more "thanks" than I might ever have thought, certainly more than I'd planned.  In addition to the cards for each selection, I made little signs for the display featuring the words, "thank you" in various languages, including American Sign Language.  The whole thing ended up being not only quite interesting, but really rather beautiful, if I do say so myself.

As it turns out, "thank you" is easy.

On this day of days for giving thanks, this way and that, to any and all that have earned them, I thought I might spare a word for what has always been for me more difficult; acknowledging the gratitude of others.  I wasn't raised by wolves. I know how to say, "you're welcome," and do.  I understand the etiquette.  I must confess, however, that I am and have always been embarrassed by being thanked.  However effusive I might be myself, I fairly flee from anything beyond a simple "thank you" for any gift or service large or small I may have made to another.  As I've grown older, I have learned to be a little more gracious, but only just.  (The exception has always been actual applause from an audience, which is one of life's purest pleasures, and somehow more acceptable to me for being... what?  Shared?  Shared, I suppose I mean, with the audience and anyone else involved in a performance, or, if I'm reading aloud and alone, with the authors whose work I am celebrating.  Many more serious and successful performers, professional actors and singers and the like, have claimed to be shy, and while I can't say that of myself, I do understand how it is possible to want recognition and still be shy of praise when it comes.)

Doubtless there is some psychological explanation to be found in my unwritten autobiography, some pathology that might elucidate if not offer the means to understand and amend this peculiarity in my character.  Mightn't it be a class issue, for example?  Or some cultural eccentricity in the kind of language with which I was raised?  "Thank you."  "You're most welcome."  Done.  Simple, direct and effective was always the way when I was growing up in western Pennsylvania coal country.  Hardly a unique experience, I know, but my people have always been suspicious of exaggeration, even or especially in complements, presumably for fear that it might suggest insincerity, or worse, sarcasm.  It's a peasant's suspicion of grand language, and of advantage potentially being taken.  It has been a long-held conviction "back to home," that praise from family or a friend is all but unnecessary, from a stranger barely to be noticed, and from an employer or superior, to use a very old-fashioned word, usually offered in lieu of what's probably owed and earned.  Or as my father might put it still, "Don't trust a man who smiles when he's counting your money."

Yeah, we're kinda folksy like that.

I also grew up with all the adults at the table fighting over who got to pay the whole check in a restaurant.  Trust me, the very idea of separate checks is insulting.  Wouldn't go out to eat if I hadn't the cash in my pocket, damn it. (Seriously, my parents have never had a credit card, or let me, or anyone else buy them a meal but by stealth, unless it was a birthday dinner, or an anniversary, "and that.")

Not just about money, either, mind you.  I watched my grandmothers, and my mother and father in their turn, and now my brother and sister in ours, feeding people, clothing them, sometimes, cleaning other people's houses, and people, driving them to the store or the doctor's, giving them a bed for the night, or a home.  Not to be thanked for it, at least not "over much."  The food was there to be eaten, the clothes to be worn, the cleaning just done "to keep busy," the bed "already made up."  There's never been a stray, four-legged or two, that hasn't deserved a meal, a blanket, compassion.

Say "Thank you" and no more, is the rule.  Say it more than once, or more elaborately for the same favor, and one is likely to get something back about the food otherwise "just going to waste," the clothes otherwise "gone to moths" and the like.

When my father has "helped" someone to get a car, be it his grandchild or the "girl" who sells him his lottery ticket at his favorite gas-station, he's as likely to say "try not to blow it up" as "you're welcome."  When my sister-in-law picks up yet another prescription for my father, she invariably "was going in to the store anyway."  When my mother drove through a blizzard once, to take an elderly friend "a plate of food" for her Christmas Eve dinner, I remember Mum made a point, having been thanked by the recipient, to mention that the pie crust was tough, the beans over-cooked, and so on.

Just the way people do.

This can be a bit confusing, I should imagine, for anyone not raised in a similar milieu, particularly the insistence of denigrating whatever it was; object, kindness, service, that was offered and gratefully accepted.  (Even thank-you-cards, a staple of correspondence in my grandmothers' generation, could be described in conversation as having been "a little much" if the sentiment went beyond the usual, taciturn convention.  Does not mean, by the way, that said card wouldn't have been displayed on the mantle, or later the top of the TV for a week.)

I've tried, as I said, to be better about this.  Really, it shouldn't be so difficult, accepting thanks, and so I've learned to make myself just stand there and take it.  I even smile, try not to wave the words away.  It's not easy, but I'm learning.  How hard can it be, saying "you're welcome," even more than once?  Just be nice.  Smile.  Stands to reason, in yet another phrase from my childhood.  But then, as the thoroughly "rational" Mr. Thomas Grandgrind was eventually forced to admit,  
"Some persons hold...that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart."

It's Dickens I'm thinking of anyway, today, and a gift from a friend, pictured above.  A completely predictable association, Dickens and the Holidays, and predictably enough, I've been reading The Christmas Stories -- and not Hard Times, despite the quote -- all this week before bed. I've also been contemplating where best to hang the marvelous picture of Dickens drawn, framed and presented to me by my friend and coworker, the variously talented, Michael Wallenfels.  He made it for me to thank me for the note and wedding gift I'd given him on the occasion of his recent nuptials.  (I nearly modified the word gift, from habit, with the word "negligible" here, and only just stopped myself.  See?  I am learning.)  

Is it not a noble thing, this picture?!

 I'm sure I thanked him for it when I got it, and probably said no more than, "You're most welcome," when he thanked me again for my wedding present.  It wasn't enough, whatever I said.  "The wisdom of the Heart," as Dickens his whole life took such pains to prove, is perfectly communicable in words as well as actions, and our gratitude to those who teach it us, among our happiest obligations.  

And so, I find myself again hemmed in by the habits of my upbringing, and worried now that I was too dismissive of his thanks for my present to him, and more importantly still, that I've made nowhere near a sufficient fuss being given in return this excellent picture.  

Here the very image of perhaps the chiefest of my household Gods, the very spirit of my library, my only quandary being should I hang him up to watch over my books, or at the desk at work to remind me why I am so happy there, trading in the very books, when I am lucky, that have taught me so much better to accept the gifts I'm given and tell when I am grateful.

In the spirit of the day then, let me close my ramblings here by saying better than I may have before, how grateful I am indeed for such a perfect picture, for friends like Michael and his beautiful wife,  Britt, soon to be the mother of his first child, for all my friends and coworkers in all the independent bookstores where I've been lucky enough to work, for all the friends that books have brought me, and to authors and the spirits of those departed who have made my life better than it otherwise might ever have been.

And as for any hereafter to whom I might give something back for all that's been given me... well, it was nothing.  Think nothing of it.  It was my pleasure.

Honestly. 

Part Six of A Runcible Reading of Edward Lear

Part Five of A Runcible Reading of Edward Lear

Part Four of A Runcible Reading of Edward Lear

Part Three of A Runcible Reading of Edward Lear

Part Two of A Runcible Reading of Edward Lear

Part One of A Runcible Reading of Edward Lear

Again

And another: another evening together, another reading, another poem, another song, and... another.

Someone suggested to me that I might try giving a talk about doing this, a talk for other independent booksellers, to encourage more people to try.  I like the idea.  In fact, there may be an opportunity to do just that.  We'll see.  The suggestion however was that any such class shouldn't be "limited to just reading aloud."  The idea being that bookstores might welcome advice on creating events independent of author's tours and the more usual things that come our way like professional seminars, and school book fairs and the like.  That's a marvelous idea!  Someone should do just that, someone who understands, for example, organizing crafting classes, or fan gatherings, someone who has the patience, creativity and connections necessary for doing locally the kind of inspired community outreach perfectly represented by that extraordinary event, World Book Night.  As booksellers, we need to have all sorts of engagement with our customers, and we specifically need to cultivate these connections in ways that do not depend exclusively on the talents we are lucky enough, some of us, to have come our way from publishers large and small, and authors, local and national.

If bookstores, and specifically independent bookstores are to survive in an era of seemingly constant changes in both publishing and reading, we must be not only flexible enough to adapt ourselves and the way we do business to new models and means, but also be willing to experiment, and, yes, possibly fail, but at the very least not to waste the new opportunities that this new era provides us; from self publishing services and design, to utilizing social media, partnering with small presses and existing community organizations, and expanding the scope of what we may do collectively to include more than what we have traditionally done; at trade shows and the like.  The possibilities are, or ought to be, at least as exciting as the change that can often seem more than a little bewildering, else what's a bookstore for?

I would happily participate in any such discussion.  I do dearly like to talk.  I might, indeed, have something useful to contribute.  Form a panel.  I'll show up.

As for the possibility of me doing something of my own, well, here it is.  This is what I do.  I don't really ever do it alone.  Even when I'm the only one up there at the front, I do not, could not do it without the help and support of coworkers, management, friends, to say nothing here of local media, or the wonderful people who force their children, parents and or spouses to attend one of our admittedly rather respectable shindies.  (Though I do endorse any excuse for the introduction of spirits.  Booze and nibbles make it a party.)  That said, what I do, the thing about which I am myself most passionate is this, exactly the thing, it seems, most people, even most booksellers tell me they neither could nor would want ever to do, read aloud.

Nonsense.  The thing I am passionate about -- appearances to the contrary -- is not the sound of my own rather reedy and unmusical voice.  Years ago, when I was still in drama school and thinking I would one day be an admittedly rather diminutive, gap-toothed Hamlet, I had a voice class specifically to learn the proper way of speaking verse.  That meant Shakespeare.  I had a marvelous teacher.  He was no Romeo himself, by the look of him, by the way.  What he did have was a marvelous, musical baritone that made everything he said, from Othello's asides to ordering lunch, sound like a hot bath feels.  It was magical.  I worked very hard in that class.  I learned how to scan a line, to mark a speech, how to listen.  It was marvelous.  I loved it.  It wasn't very long after I'd been up on my hind legs doing, I believe, Richard the Third's first great speech, "Now is the winter of our discontent..." before my teacher gave me the critique that still stings to this day.

"Brad," he said, rather gently, in that deep, rich, Shakespearean voice of his, "you make everything sound as reasonable as an annual report to stockholders."

And, scene.

When I abandoned the theater shortly thereafter, it was no fault of his.  I saw how professional actors, most of 'em, lived.  Sobering.  Not all that long after that, I became a Rhetoric major, then met my beloved and left school altogether to pursue opportunities in fast food, banquet service, video rental and eventually bookselling.  I like to think that I finally found my métier.

All this autobiography is offered just to show that whatever talent I bring to this business of reading aloud may best be described as more the result of practice and an almost missionary enthusiasm for the sound of the language, than any particular gift for spellbinding.  I have to work at it, still.  

I do believe however not only in the importance of reading aloud for the full appreciation of literature, but also in the very real possibility that while not everyone can do it in public, more can do it than will probably ever try.  My experience of organizing and creating readings at the bookstore has shown conclusively that while there are people who will never read a word when anyone else other than their own small children will hear, there are in fact more potential readers for such events than anyone, including myself might ever have imagined had we not tried.

It's true that I have not just invited, but also cajoled, begged, bullied, and frankly blackmailed not a few people into reading aloud with me.  I've been lucky enough to work with more than a few people with more natural talent than I ever possessed, which has been thrilling.  Actors, musicians, comedians, singers, public performers of every stripe, I've found will often end up, if temporarily working in a bookstore.  Great good luck, that, for the kind of thing I try to do.  There have also been just as many people without any such inclinations or experience, with natural voices no better than mine, and personalities considerably more retiring who have been surprised to find that with the right material and in the friendly and supportive setting of the bookstore,  the experience was not only educational but even fun.  

(If you're one of the people reading this who might be shaking your head in disdainful disbelief, I might collect the necessary affidavits from the now scattered readers who have come and gone; from booksellers and students, and members even of the general public who have surprised us all with a poem, a story, even a song, but I doubt even that would convince you.  I leave you in peace, though I'd be willing to work on you.)

This latest reading presented new challenges to both of my fellow readers, neither of whom was comfortable reading verse.  One of the greatest pleasures for me in doing these readings has been working with forms that might challenge us in new ways.  The rehearsal process, however abbreviated by scheduling difficulties and or other commitments has actually proved to be one of the real joys of doing this.  I am an enthusiast of poetry, but neither a practitioner myself, nor, as my teacher pointed out long ago, a very musical sort of guy.  I haven't, as I've already suggested, a gift.  What I do have is a dogmatic conviction as to the best way to read and hear poetry and that is frankly to speak it.  I'm not saying that it mightn't be better for everyone concerned to hear the poet him or herself reading the stuff they wrote themselves, but then that is not always true, as anyone who has ever attended more than one poetry reading can doubtless attest.  Some great poets were pretty miserable readers.  (My theory being that too many poets, even good poets, either read too little themselves or listen too little to anyone else.)  

I've been nattering on for years to anyone who will listen, to anyone specifically who claims to neither read nor understand poetry to try putting voice to the words, even if it is just in the snug seclusion of some safe corner of their own homes, or alone in the woods.  Doesn't matter where or when or even to whom one reads poetry aloud so much as it matters to say the words and hear them said.  There's pleasure, and meaning in that, and more to follow the more that's done.  Part of the pleasure specific to poetry, but common to all great literature, is in the sound.  Literature is meant to make a noise, and not just in one's head, if for no other reason than to make better sense.

And so I'm back to what it is I would do and would like to do for other people perhaps similarly situated in independent bookstores, in need of some occasion to share with the communities, large and small in which they happen to be and which they mean to serve.  This business of making an event from the very stuff we love, from the books we sell and the people who like us love them, is as simple as starting with the sound, however tentative, however unfamiliar, of one voice raised.  There are children's booksellers doing "storytime" all over the map, you know there are.  Is it such a leap then to start from there, from reading as nearly every mother, every parent or grandparent already does to our children to reading to our friends and patrons and peers?  Is there any reason to think that reading one poem and inviting others to read one as well, and then another read another, and so on, might not easily enough become something other, something more, something new, for being nevertheless as old as the sound of human stories as far back as humans go?  We have the stories already, all around us!  We already love them, our poets, our writers, living and dead.  

All the words need is breath.

It's worth mentioning again just here that these readings are popular, in their modest way, with a minimum of notice and with as little by way of requirements as a chair, a book and someone willing to read it out loud. 

I'd be happy to help anyone who's interested.  I can.  I've done it before.  I mean it when I tell you that if I can, so can anyone else.  If you don't believe me still, I'm willing to work on you.   

Just ask.

Light Ladies

A Caricature

Pretty confident saying this one's from Michael Wallenfels.  And a serious sort of fellow I am.

A Guest Caricature

So, this was Michael Wallenfels' response to mine.  I love the way the man draws, among other things about him.  Such crisp, clean lines, everything tight, everything easy, and such an eye!  I'm telling you, the whole package just works for me.  AND I like the way he draws.  Did I mention that, already?  Anyway, I think his Michael Chabon is actually quite bit like Eric Clapton, no?

A Caricature

A Guest Doodle

Yet another BRILLIANT image from my fabulous coworker, Michael Wallenfels, celebrating the big 100 for the late, great Julia Child.

A Guest Doodle

Much admired coworker and fellow doodler, Michael Walenfels on a specially intimate author's appearance, or as more squeamish folk might call it, "over-sharing."

Guest Doodle

My coworker and most attractive bon vivant/busker/ singer/ artist/host etc., etc., Michael Wallenfels, sees the inner David underneath the outer Santa Claus, and for this, I am forever grateful indeed.

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain, Part Four

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain, Part Three

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain Part Two

A Dog's Tale, by Mark Twain Part One