During April, in honor of National Poetry Month, I read 77 Love Sonnets by Garrison Keillor. (Here’s a link to purchase this collection at an Indie Bookstore.) A modern collection of sonnets is, unfortunately, rather hard to come across. I was delighted last year to find out that Garrison Keillor was publishing a collection of his sonnets, and I bought it right away. I had been reading from the collection somewhat sporadically, and decided to read the collection from front to back in April. Many of them are about romantic love, and others are tributes to a variety of other people/things. All of them are lovely.
Here is one of my favorites:
November
How is your bookstore doing? people ask, and I say,
“Holding its own.” And they smile and say, Great.
A bookstore is like an old father. If he has a nice day,
Goes for a walk: fine. It’s enough to perambulate,
No need to run a six-minute mile.
A bookstore is for people who love books and need
To touch them, open them, browse for a while,
And find some common good – that’s why we read.
Readers and writers are two sides of the same gold coin.
You write and I read and in that moment I find
A union more perfect than any club I could join:
The simple intimacy of being one mind.
Here in a book-filled sun-lit room below the street,
Strangers – some living, some dead – are hoping to meet.
Beautiful poem! I will add this book to my ‘TBR’ list. Thanks for writing about it.