Two Poets (Part I)-- The Real Reasons

The other day I was freshening up a window display in the bookstore, wedging some of this fall's new children's picture books in among a menagerie of stuffed animals, when a poet I know stopped by. He works in the neighborhood, at a school a few blocks away, and he'd wandered in during his lunch hour.

He's certainly serious about his day job--he's published one book on teaching and is working on another--but I know him as a poet and editor. He spent five years, pretty full ones I gather, publishing a well-thought-of literary journal that featured mostly local talent. My connection is that he published one of my stories, probably the best one I've written, in the journal.

He's a soft-spoken man with curly salt-and-pepper hair--in his mid-fifties, at a guess. He's retiring next year, he says. Presumably he'll have more time to write. He's putting together a collection of his prose poems. His poetry is elegant and erudite, a good workout for the mind without being inaccessible. Most of the pieces in this collection have been published in one journal or another, and he's had one book of poems published already, so he's confident he can find a home for the new volume.

That seems like a good place for a poet to be. I wouldn't know. I've published half a dozen poems, but the form is pretty much a mystery to me. I do a little better with short stories. I've had about fifteen published, of which maybe six or eight still feel pretty O.K. to me. This is enough for a collection, he tells me. I'd like to agree... but then short story collections are supposed to be so hard to sell... and it's not like I'm in love with more than a couple of the stories... Also I guess I feel I'm still a few stories short of a full volume.

My friend is one of the most agreeable people you'll ever encounter, so you won't find him telling you you're full of BS even when you know you are... So he doesn't contradict me. "Maybe so," he says to my demurral, "but there's something about getting it out there." He can't know that I've been toying with this collection idea for years, but I haven't written those last few stories I need to, I haven't even started a new story since... ouch, don't think about it. "There's something about accretion. The more you get under your belt the better you feel."

And a few minutes later, with a half-wave and a wry smile over his shoulder, he's gone... leaving me to ponder the real reasons that story collection isn't finished.

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