Resetting the heart

I was at the library the other day actually browsing, which I haven’t done in a long, long time. (Maybe before Christmas I went to see what the Friends had for sale.) Our library has been open, with heavy restrictions, for a while but I get the majority of my books via interlibrary loan (get notified, step in, pickup, check out, done) or through Hoopla or Overdrive or Libby (all those wonderful apps that let me access so much). But this day I was actually on a mission looking for some things; double masked and keeping my distance I lingered. I found the three or four things I was hoping to find and then, because it is April, I went to look through the poetry books. I don’t know what happened or when, but that section has been weeded quite significantly. ☹ I know, I know if books don’t circulate, they have to move on, the library has finite space, but it always makes me sad (and mad at myself for not periodically upping the numbers and checking out ten or twenty at a time). I did find Entries (First Edition 1994, Pantheon Books), by Wendell Berry so nabbed it and as I was checking out downstairs it came up as “not found in the system” – I almost missed the alert – then I paused and thought, I’ll just go with it and when it comes back the record will be corrected. Having worked in the library though, I knew this is not how to do it. So, I waited the extra few minutes it took to allow it to be taken to the back (I love mystery of “the back” in any business) as it was readded to the catalog.

At least this book gets a new start, like resetting your heart after a hurt.

Speaking of heart resets, I was a guest at the SHAPE International Library YA Book Club today. My friend, and former colleague, Sophie, invited me as they were reading a book in verse called The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta. In the book the main character, Michael, reads a poem at an open mic” I come from”. (Here’s the author reading that poem.) So, I thought that would be a good jumping off point into a prompt.

I sent some more examples of poems in this type format and two of the members of the book club wrote poems of their own and read them. Very nice work too I have to say; I’m hoping they’ll send them to me as I’d love to read them again. It was a really fun morning, and one of the participants was someone (and her family!) I remember fondly from my time in the SHAPE community. We also talked poetry, poetry publishing, creating your own canon and not worrying too much about your audience, just write, write, write.