Rain

Janet Inksetter is closing shop after almost thirty years (27 for those counting). A last leisurely browse into Annex Books mixes chats about chestnut flour pattona and literary anecdotes about poets Robin Skelton and Susan Musgrave. All in a radio-like atmosphere where the talk is meant to be overheard in passing. Discourse. Talk about. And talk among. The books and people.

Among the treasures acquired are a copy of Sontag's Under the Sign of Saturn [for the pieces on Barthes and on Benjamin and all the rest too], Hesse's Glass Bead Game [read twice as a teen and in the plans for a later in life rereading/skipping/skimming], Edmund White's biography of Genet [a book the writing of which had to be defended, publicly, so much was the pressure of the call to activism in the face of mounting death tolls], and this find: four little chapbooks by “endwar” [aka Andrew Russ] under the IZEN imprint (Athens, Ohio).

There is a poem on the final page of from i to iran (more subverse) from eye to irony that is entitled “rain”. Three lines: i / ra n / in

Those lines are set in a formation to produce a representation of a hole bounded by letters -- an open space where rain or reader runs in or out of -- a veritable inn of welcome for contemplation. Appropriate for the oddly unseasonable rain that was falling outside the book store continuing to leak memories and bring in people exchanging thoughts, opinions and questions. The shelves open to witness the flow of the run-in-to experience.

And so for day 9
23.12.2006