Grace Full

Two days before Thanksgiving. I am thankful today for books and the time to read them. Here are a few that I have been chewing on.

• Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead - a story of an Iowa pastor at the end of his life told in journal form. Utterly compelling quiet character trying to be a better man. Amazingly drawn.

• N. K. Jemison’s The Fifth Season - I am midway through this fantasy tale of a powerful sect set apart and oppressed for their inherent connection to the planet they live on.

• David Batchelor’s Chromaphobia - no lie: the idea that black&white&neutral color schemes are far more literal metaphors than their adherents are comfortable with appeals to me. This is research reading for my next poetic manuscript.

I won’t lie about focus, however. It is not nearly as easy to fall into a book as it once was. Generalized anxiety plus screen-training prevents this. Once of the first poems I memorized was by Emily Dickinson (no surprise there)… and I miss the times in my life when I was able to set sail in the pages of someone else’s literature. Now, I rarely lose myself except during creation. I will continue to work on intentional lostness… not through meditation but through investment in someone else’s world. These have been the most fruitful journeys of my life. Not ego eradication so much as dropping the ego into new rivers of self. A dunking worthy of a new baptismal sect. Here’s the Dickinson. Like so many of hers—seemingly simple. But it is not what it appears.

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry –

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll –

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears the Human Soul –

-ED