Rick Simonson

A Tale of a Tree of Meaning
April 28, 2008

If intentions are rightly kept, these will be but the first of many words devoted, in some time or another, to the writing of British Columbia poet, typographer, translator, essayist Robert Bringhurst.

There are various books to refer to, but to say that his collection of essays, The Tree of Meaning (Counterpoint), published here in the U.S. this past spring but in Canada by Gaspereau Press two years ago, is one of those few books of thoughtful writing that can genuinely re-arrange the way one reads anything, be it words on a page, a hillside, or the ways of the world. In the foreword to the U.S. edition by Jim Harrison, he cites the few critical intelligences where genius is applicable. To the names Roberto Calasso, Walter Benjamin, and George Steiner, he adds Robert Bringhurst. Jim Harrison is picky - this is a short list.

More of that, the book and what it bears, for another story.

Here to tell a tale of how this book came my way before it appeared in the Counterpoint Press winter 2008 catalog. By the time that catalog was in hand - last year's fall PNBA Show - this was a book we were waiting for.

I told this story to a publishing friend the other day. It's a story of how we sometimes give away something we feel is rare and precious, and how that act can be 're-paid.' Actually, Lewis Hyde's The Gift carries the spirit of it. I'm not sure the word 'sacrifice' applies, but it has something of that feeling.

First, go back about three years. Attending a book conference in Vancouver, there was an array of Canadian presses with books displayed. Amazing how a universe so near (and in English) is so distant from our usual line of sight. They know our work much more than we know theirs, too. There are many delights and surprises, none surpassing the beautiful books there from Gaspereau Press (www.gaspereau.com). I still remember my Elliott Bay colleague Karen Maeda Allman pulling me over to see them.

She showed me one book in particular, a sturdy, beautiful little book titled The Solid Form of Language - an essay by Robert Bringhurst. Karen couldn't have known what she led me to: a return to the work of an extraordinary poet/translator/thinker. His own poetry, hard to come by, is superb. He's been know for his workon typography, and for an astounding immersion in explicating, translating, and re-presenting the work of Haida mythtellers from a century ago. It's landmark work: A Story Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Mythtellers and Their World, Nine Visits to the Mythworld: Ghandl of the Qayahl Laanas, and Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller: Skaay of the Qquuna Qiiighawaay (all available in the U.S. from Nebraska, the first in paper and more readily available ...) These books I had paid attention to ... and then moved on.

The Solid Form of Language is a beautiful object, and its contents measure up, both in substance and through the array of scripts, fonts, alphabets, languages. Seventy pages and your mind dances, taking it all in. Your hand (the feel, texture of the book), your eye are also pleased as they seldom are.

Personal pleasures aside, Elliott Bay figured out how to get copies to sell. A major wholesaler had copies for a while. Then we set about getting copies direct. Solid Form sold and sold. We had it as a holiday 'pick' for Christmas 2005 ... and ran Gaspereau out of stock (with help from others). I assumed that was that. Who reprinted little things like this?

Jump ahead a few years to summer 2007, and some back and forth going with a colleague elsewhere about books and aesthetics. It occurred to me, the perfect book that would better say what I was trying to. From home I brought my copy of A Solid Form of Language in, re-reading it before doing so. I was going to send it away. For whatever reason (age, stage of life), I had no great compunction in sending away this rare and beautiful thing, my only copy. I wasn't lending it. Something of it said, you should send it. Where it was going, I felt, knew as much as one can, it would be appreciated - the book, the gesture of sending it. That appreciation can be as rare and precious as the offering itself - so I have slowly come to learn.

My action was not all altruistic - back of my mind I had it that I could go online and find a copy. It wasn't until acknowledgement came - the words of wonder, a sense that other eyes were opening in marvel to what your eyes had - that I realized, after taking the words of thanks in, that I would go online and find myself another copy. So much for living without.

Google the key words and, surprise, the first place one is directed is Gaspereau's website. To greater surprise, there was A Solid Form of Language yet again - now in a third edition. And to even greater surprise - to holy day exclamating - there was a whole other major book out, and one more on the way. The book that'd been out - since 2006 - was their edition of The Tree of Meaning. (Its understated Canadian subtitle, Thirteen Talks, I prefer to Counterpoint's Language, Mind, and Ecology, though I get why that was done.) Also shown on the Gaspereau website was a forthcoming essay collection, for autumn 2007, Everywhere Being is Dancing.

Impatient for anything to come all the way from Nova Scotia, I put in a call to one of the great bookstores of North America, Munro's in Victoria. Strange universe: Munro's is closer by fish or bird miles than such other Northwest worthies as Village or Powell's. But they're in a different world altogether with publishers, rights, distribution, pricing, everything. Still, business can be done. Personal copies of these Bringhursts were ordered. Then, back to Nova Scotia, we set about ordering what we could for the store.

As it turned out, The Tree of Meaning's U.S. rights were spoken for (Counterpoint), and would/should be honored. That would wait, where the store was concerned. We ordered a good stack of A Solid Form of Language, and ordered, sample-like, some other titles. The Gaspereau folks were of good assistance about it. Most notable of the books we got in was also a gem: Victoria poet/philosopher Jan Zwicky's beautiful (in all ways) book of poems, Thirty-Seven Small Songs and Thirteen Silences.

Even though a credit card had been involved, it was still a moment akin to opening a wrapped present when the Munro's package arrived. Having A Solid Form of Language back was good - hello, little friend. Holding The Tree of Meaning (whose Canadian edition is, in every way, something to behold - again texture, feel, type), I had a feeling my reading world, to say nothing, once again, of perception itself, was about to be altered. (It was.)

The steps by which we come to books we come to know, love, be changed by are many - many acts, many moments, that make it all so. Some are more our doing, some the doing (in great part) of others. Here, this - it's put in your hand, is sent in the mail with your name on it. Working as those of us who work in bookstores, libraries, or publishing do - with so much coming at us in a practiced, processed way, it's sometimes possible to forget, allow for, or acknowledge these other ways of accident and erstwhile intent.  This was one, I realized, where in giving away the one copy I had, and thought I might have, I was led back to this same book, and more - so much more than I could have imagined. Over thirty years of doing this, such surprises are still here.

Posted by Rick Simonson on April 28, 2008 | Comments (1)