Acts of God

Today was the closest we'll ever get to The Devil Wears Prada at Sanford Greenburger. Volcanic ash engulfed European skies -- just as the London Book Fair was about to begin. So as some of us were assiduously attending to our clients' needs (i.e., glumly going about our business as our fellows dashed off abroad), others were madly canceling flights, rebooking through Bournemouth, through Glasgow, through Paris, through the Chunnel, via Liverpool, over land, sea, air, foam. I'm not sure whether my colleagues actually will make it to London, but they gave it their all, trying to get there.

Our newest hire, dewy-eyed Rachael, observed wonderingly: "At my last job, they would have said the volcano was my fault!" It's good to know that in book publishing, at least, we can't resort to flying on Donatella's private jet, and sometimes must stand aside as God and Nature, in all their glory, have their way.

My new favorite bar in New York

Because they carded me tonight.

The Mozart Season rises again

Do you know about the Phoenix Award? I have to admit, shamefully, that I did not -- until tonight. Tonight, Virginia Euwer Wolff was named the recipient of the 2011 Phoenix Award for her glorious novel, The Mozart Season.

Could there ever be a better reason for giving a prize than this one? Here is the citation:

The Children's Literature Association Phoenix Award is presented annually to the author of a children's or young adult book, originally published in English twenty years earlier, that did not win a major award at the time of its publication. The award recognizes works of high literary merit and lasting significance.

Jinny Wolff is almost pathologically modest, so I will crow on her behalf. The Mozart Season is a book that bears reading and re-reading. (So great was my respect for her novel that I'd clean my apartment on druggy St. Mark's Place -- vacuum even! -- before I'd allow myself to open her manuscript and read her sentences.) Read it if you have a chance.

Hats off to the 2011 Children's Literature Association committee for their far-sighted choice; three cheers for the 17-year-old boy who composed that stunning violin concerto; and kudos to the brilliant Virginia Euwer Wolff for writing a book that will rise again and again.

Poetry Friday: What's truly English?

My walk to work takes me through Central Park. It's like walking through a picture book: dog-walkers, joggers, school children, the turning of the seasons. I passed a host of golden daffodils this morning and thought: Shall I use Wordsworth's well-worn chestnut for Poetry Friday today? Nah. Who can bear to read that one again.

Then came to mind "Oh, to be in England, Now that April's there!" a poem I once had by heart but which now mercifully is gone from memory.

No to Browning, no to Wordsworth, but England seemed to be in the air. Hence the below, from that great unsung Irish laureate, Spike Milligan:

TEETH

English Teeth, English Teeth!
Shining in the sun
A part of British heritage
Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, Happy Teeth!
Always having fun
Clamping down on bits of fish
And sausages half done.

English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!
Hear them click! and clack!
Let's sing a song of praise to them --
Three Cheers for the Brown Grey and Black.

Thanks again to the brilliant anthologist Wallace Tripp, in whose Marguerite, Go Wash Your Feet! I first found this poem.

Poetry Friday: Missing Bologna

Yesterday was the end of the Children's Book Fair in Bologna. Many have waxed lyrical about the beauties of the place, the bounty of the food, the flowing of the wine, the vaulting of the porticos. So I won't spend too much time on those. What I miss: the hardware store with its smaller-scaled Italian household goods; the candy/jam/grappa shop where I would have bought Easter chocolate; the mermaids; the waiters; the vacuum-packed parmigiano from Tamburini.

But to be honest, what I miss even more is the community. Many is the international dinner where you are seated next to someone whose language you do not share. It's hard to communicate, even if you're doing business in common. So what do you do? If you're very lucky, you're at a dinner where the guests sing or declaim or recite in their own language. Does it matter if you don't understand the words? It does not. What matters is the tone, the sound, the feeling, the surprise.

I hosted a dinner once where, after antipasta and pasta and carne and insalata and dolci and caffe and vino bianco e rosso and of course aqua minerale (gazata o non-gazata), I asked the participants if they would grace us with a little rhyme from their own country. It doesn't take much for Europeans to come up with poetry. We went around the table and we each recited a nursery rhyme. Some of the rhyming patterns were shared, country to country. Mostly we didn't understand the Swedes and Finns, but we all understood that we'd reached deep into ourselves to find first the cadence and then the words of an old rhyme. This was mine:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.

When we're next in Bologna, what will be yours?

Poetry Friday: Wasn't today the quintessence of Just- spring?

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far and wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles

far

and

wee

-- E. E. Cummings

(And yes, I'm daring to use the capitals in his name: http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm)

The Bunny is coming out of hibernation

Soon, soon.