I have this long post drafted about Maslow’s hierarchy and priorities and this and that. I guess it’s ok. But tonight I sat in a circle with students, faculty, and other friends and supporters of Peanut U, and first we celebrated the artistic achievements of a student graduating this spring, whose art now graces the library’s walls, and then we read poetry.
We read poems about hope and love and friendship and sisters; cannibalism and death; life and rebirth.
And we ate brownies and tangerines and drank lemon soda and cheap wine, and it was good.
And someone even got the quiet joke of the madelines I had purchased (“Look, I have a memory coming on!”).
Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things
She is holding the book close to her body,
carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk,
down the tangled hill.
If a dog runs at her again, she will use the book as a shield. …
—
The book is a shield; the word is good. There are people who “get” why we need the Library as Place; why we need an intellectual center, a barycenter for our literary souls. For those people, I need provide no long-winded discussions of pyramids. For those people, a poem and a brownie will do.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Easter thoughts - 2007
- GMail: Google Stepped In It - 2004
- PUBLIB Graphics - 2004
- Clearly Not Scalia's Duck-Hunting Buddies - 2004
3 Comments
One of my all time favorite poems!
I’m not sure I trust anyone who can be convinced by a poem. Of course, I’m not a poetry-guy, so I’m a little biased.
I’ll take the brownie though. That might persuade me. lol
Incredible. Incredible. I had never read it. Thank you.
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