Allusion is not Illusion
You'll pry my books off my cold, dead body. By the time you shift them all I'll be flat and dessicated.
Currently reading
A view from Library Windows
This was not, as I expected, actually about libraries or books. It is instead, Twenty-six sonnets from the civic center of Sacramento... one for each fortnight of the working year which began in the fall of nineteen-nineteen...
The sonnets show the principal changes of the seasons as observed through the windows of the City Library from the viewpoint of the reference librarian...
In other words, they're boring. But it was interesting as an item of local and historical interest. Oh, and there are cute little drawings pasted in, by James A. Holden, an English artist who immigrated to Oakland in 1904 and served for many years as art director of Pacific Railway Advertising Company.
The paper and printing quality are good, with much wasted space. In fact, the last third of so of the pages are blank (add your own poems?). Vanity project? Girlfriend of a publisher? Dunno.
Here's an exemplary poem from a significant date, November the Eleventh.
CLEAR breathing space close to the city's heart
Where children play on ever verdant grass
And old men rest; where hurrying people pass
On the diagonal 'twixt residence and mart
Nor pause to read the weather; where the art
Of music has its hour, the folk en masse
Gathering to sing or listen; where no class
Predominates, but each may have a part:
This is the plaza. Here before the dawn
A year ago, an earnest crowd was drawn
To celebrate the first act of world peace,
In wistful hope that war might henceforth cease.
Long may the plaza be the open space
Where loyal citizens speak face to face!
7