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Archive for the 'Poetry' Category

Lucky Solstice

Published December 20, 2008 Bookstore Lore , Italian literature , Novelists , Poetry 1 Comment

You could say the luck began back around Thanksgiving time. Mark Doty had been announced the winner of the National Book Award for his poetry collection Fire to Fire. We’d already scheduled a reading from his memoir Dog Years. How fortuitous now that our audience could congratulate him on this great honor. When the poet read from his memoir, he read each word with the breath and sound of poetry. Just now an old golden lab and a young man are walking through the light snowfall on upper Main Street, Sag Harbor. A sign of Beau, perhaps? or just another daily ritual of caring this dark afternoon? Mark spent time with each question from the audience, answered each generously, encouragingly, the poet teacher sharing his gifts. Here, he seemed to say, you try…

Some weeks later, storyteller and novelist Gioia Timpanelli lit the candles for Santa Lucia on her feast day, December 13. The patron saint of Siracusa offered her eyes to the world. “Here,” she might have said, “take them, and see.” Gioia’s new novel What Makes a Child Lucky takes place in Sicily, in a time of great hunger, or as the introduction suggests: “anyplace at anytime.” Gioia spun out the story as we sat rapt in its charms. Lucky us, we were able to make an audio recording thanks again to Tony Ernst at WPKN independent radio. Check the link for this and other special programs: http://eastendink.blogspot.com

Books bring light to our lives. .. Bright Solstice to all!

New Friend from Far Away

Published October 9, 2008 Poetry , Writing Leave a Comment
Tags: Long Quiet Highway, memoir writing, Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend From Far Away, Writing Down the Bones

She entered the crowded bookshop carrying a huge plant, lavender chrysanthemums, a gift, joyful. Several in the audience had been in her workshops over the years. Others were meeting Natalie Goldberg for the first time. She greeted everyone warmly. Natalie had traveled a long way, from Santa Fe to the East coast. Her visit would ultimately bring her to Lenox, Massachusetts to give a workshop, but this night she was on home ground, Long Island. She read from Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, one of her memoirs. The scene she chose was her high school English class in Farmingdale. Her teacher, the poet Vince Clemente had turned the lights out so students could listen to the rain, in the quiet, in the darkened room. For the young Natalie, struggling in soulless suburbia, this moment, this gesture, this teacher “saved her life.” For those of us in the audience lucky enough to know Vince and his generous ways sharing his love of poetry, always crediting the masters, Natalie’s tribute was especially moving. The whole evening’s presentation was magical.

After reading from her poetry collection, Top of My Lungs, Goldberg continued with selections from her new work, Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir. She was generous answering questions from those who sat in rapt attention, and when she finished, no one moved. We’ve had a lot of readings over the years at Canio’s Books, but we’ve never seen this response. No one wanted to leave. We all just sat, perfectly comfortable in the cramped space, transfixed. No one knows how many books, poems, works of art Natalie Goldberg may have inspired, but this night, we’re certain she inspired a whole lot more. If you missed this memorable event, we have a few souvenirs: signed copies of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within; Long Quiet Highway, Top of My Lungs; and Old Friend From Far Away. What great gifts these would make to an aspiring writer, or for one writing who needs new inspiration. What a great gift Natalie gave us this night: a new friend from far away.

Poetry Prevails Against a Storm

Published September 7, 2008 Poetry Leave a Comment

Dire forecasts of a tropical storm, maybe even a hurricane striking our area were not enough to dissuade poet Molly Peacock. In the face of ominous predictions, (some could say they were a bit overblown) Molly traveled the length of Long Island to meet her devoted audience and read her poems as planned. She’s from Buffalo, she said, and lives in Canada where you learn to endure bad storms. Similarly undaunted, local poetry fans filled the house despite the bad weather. So what if the sky opened up and let loose a torrential downpour? At least we’re hearing good poetry. Molly presented a generous reading from her new collection Second Blush while the rain lashed against our windows and flooded local streets. Author of a number of non-fiction works including How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle, and a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece, Molly Peacock is editor of The Private I: Privacy in a Public World. She also has an essay included in the Best American Essays of 2007. She’s now at work on a biography of the 18th century collage artist Mrs. Delaney. Molly described her subject as an example of how one’s entire life is a creative act. Canio’s Books has available a limited number of signed copies of Second Blush .

Blue

Published June 12, 2008 Poetry 7 Comments
Tags: Canio's Editions, DeKooning's Bicycle, Poetry, Robert Long, Robert Long Memorial Fund

“On an afternoon so mirror-like and bluish/It seems Windexed.” That’s a line from Robert Long’s poem “Littoral Landscape” included in the now out-of-print collection What Happens. The poet is describing a September sun, but even on dry spring days I see it that way. And even though Robert is gone now, he died in October 2006, we still feel his presence in the voice that rings clear from the pages of his collection, Blue, published by Canio’s Editions in 2000, and from the pages of DeKooning’s Bicycle, unfortunately, also out-of-print, although we have copies available at the shop. This lyrical set of essays about the artists and writers of the East End has the sensibility of some of the earlier poems, paeans to the landscape that continues to entice us, inspire us, amaze us.

There are a million ways to describe the color blue: “the milky sky’s headache…” or “An hour of blue/ At once dense and slick.” These from the eponymous poem from Blue. There’s “the driveway’s cool blue gravel” from “Imperfect Sunset;” and the “painted powder blue room”of the muse in “Where The Muse Lives;” or the “green-blue light/Of Union Square Station, 1968” from “Tie City.” The “Chagall blue of the gas stove,” in “Storm” or “the day of achingly blue skies,” in “Fumetti.” No matter how you paint it, blue’s the most beautiful, mysterious, fluid color there is.

Friends of Robert Long have created a memorial scholarship fund in his name. In April we gave out the first awards to three deserving high school seniors who showed promise in writing fiction, poetry and prose. We plan to continue to make these awards and to offer grants to working writers. In this way, we hope to continue to encourage writers, just as Robert received a grant that helped him complete the manuscript of Blue. To make a donation to the fund, please send a check to the East End Arts Council, 133 East Main Street, Riverhead, NY 11901.

David’s Desk

Published May 31, 2008 Bookstore Lore , Poetry Leave a Comment
Tags: book-binding, David Ignatow

It’s more than just a checkout counter. In fact, we don’t even call it that. It’s the front desk, but it’s not just any desk. It’s David’s desk. It is old. Its big blocky shape measures almost three by five feet. Its veneer is only lately starting to chip. Within each brass knob, a sunflower radiates. Two pull-out shelves allow us extra work space since the desktop is usually stacked with book catalogs, copies of PW magazine, and of course, books we’re featuring. Terms like “point of purchase” might be more familiar to some of our marketing friends, but we know it as the former writing desk of the poet David Ignatow. A generous gift from his daughter Yaedi, we received the desk sometime after the poet’s death and are proud to have it command its rightful spot in the shop. You could say the desk has found a comfortable home here, one that may even be a bit familiar to it, if it could sense such things. This desk had been in the family book-binding business in New York City in the late 1920s and 30s. Having endured the Great Depression, the business continued for decades. Those were the days when books were objects to be folded, collated, stitched and trimmed, then packed for distribution. David had the pleasure of taking on one of Paul Blackburn’s chapbooks, The Nets, which he bound for free. See Ignatow’s One Among the Many: a Poet’s Memoirs for more of his reflections.

In later years, David Ignatow was one of the many poets to read at the bookshop and his volumes are included in our poetry collection: Ignatow Poems: 1934-1969, for example. Meanwhile, the desk gets a daily workout. Drawers opening and closing. The cash drawer. The supplies drawer. The big file drawer, its dovetailed corners just beginning to show some gaps, still serves as a reminder of a tradition we hope to maintain. Hard work for the sake of books does have its rewards.

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