Why People Read

So they can spend their mornings reading in West Village cafes.

And she was reading Freud. In French.

Actually, this post might be better titled, "Why People Come to New York."

Because they can read Freud in French. Or meet people who do.

Poetry in unlikely places

I know magazines are folding and newspapers will soon cease to exist, but what will ever replace the little gems of meteorological narrative non-fiction that appear in the upper right-hand corner of the New York Times each day? Here's what the Late Edition told us this morning, and so far it's all come true:

Today, mostly sunny, not as warm
nor as humid, high 76. Tonight,
mostly clear, comfortable, low 58.
Tomorrow, mostly sunny, nice.

The world is gushing chaos, but somehow gentleness survives.

(The photo was taken on my way home from work today. Tango by the River at sunset.)

Poetry Friday (Memorial Day weekend edition)

Things slow down on Memorial Day Weekend, especially if you stay in the city. So here's a belated Poetry Friday post in commemoration of this weekend, Siefried Sassoon's "Everyone Sang." I know this would better posted on Armistice Day, as that was when it was written -- days after World War I was declared over on November 11, 1918. But in my mind, there is never a day when a poem about the end of war is not welcome.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on—on—and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away … O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

         -- Siegfried Sassoon


(with thanks to Richard Barnes of the New York Times for the photograph of starlings over Rome)

How the Sphinx Got to the Museum

Jessie Hartland's terrific book is coming out this fall. Featured at BEA -- with its own timeline poster -- it will be on the shelves of the Metropolitan Museum and bookstores all over the country this fall.

Margaret Wise Brown Birthday Party

Let's call it the First Annual MWB Birthday Party, because I for one would like to do it again. There were cupcakes, baffled tourists, pleased parents, delighted cupcake-eating kids, random teens, and some stalwart librarians, game artists, and children's book enthusiasts. Dianne Hess of Scholastic Press stole the day by actually dressing like Margaret Wise Brown. Betsy Bird knowledgeably informed us that Margaret and Ursula Nordstrom would have had their protest tea on the north stairs of the Library, as that was the entrance to the children's room. But we had our celebration on the front steps, and we here at Bunny Eat Bunny hope you celebrated the life of this fabulous woman with fur and poetry and sensuality and rash behavior.

Margaret Wise Brown Birthday Sing-in: May 23

Margaret Wise Brown deserves the laurel leaf crown for many reasons -- the last line of The Runaway Bunny, the real moths in the pretend Little Fur Family, Maine -- but the prime reason is this: She once staged a literary tea on the steps of the New York Public Library in defiance of Anne Carroll Moore. Margaret was defiant because Miss Moore had chosen not to include Miss Brown's books in the NYPL's children's collection. Leonard Marcus tells the story beautifully in his wonderful book, Awakened by the Moon, but, in a nutshell:

Miss Moore hosted an annual tea party at the main branch of the library for authors she supported. Margaret and her adored editor, Ursula Nordstrom, set up a tea for themselves on the library steps, which meant that all the included authors and publishers had to step right over the refusées in order to enter the event. Very naughty. Very Margaret.

The 100th anniversary of Margaret Wise Brown's birthday is Sunday, May 23. I'll bring cupcakes if you'll come out to sing Happy Birthday on the steps of the New York Public at 2PM. Isn't it the least we can do for her? And wouldn't she have loved it?

Poetry Friday: Too big to fail

With the presidential Marine 1 helicopter chopping its blades over our offices yesterday, Earth Day didn't feel very green here at Sanford Greenburger. Obama was on his way to scold Wall Street at nearby Cooper Union. Sirens blared, traffic snarled.

But then I received this beautiful message in an email from poet and novelist George Ella Lyon, and the two worlds grafted together.


THE MEADOW DOES NOT KNOW


about the stock market.

Today she is worth

exactly what she was worth

yesterday, a year ago, at creation.

I don’t mean property value,

taxable assets. I mean

milkweed and copper moths

honeybees, cow vetch,

king snakes.

Meadow life

is not money.

What rises

and falls here are stems

and flowers, leaves and fruit.

No zigzag line of profit and panic

but the great wheel turning.

Here God gives of her

extravagance and here, like

flicker, viceroy, dragonfly

we come into our inheritance.

-- Earth Poems, George Ella Lyon