Rick Simonson

Meaning a Cloud
April 3, 2008

There's still something to be written about Julie Bick's March 9 New York Times piece on the part that Seattle seems to play in helping shape the country's reading tastes (so asserted), by reason of Costco, Amazon, and even Starbucks (for its one-two annual book selections) - a piece which is still talked about around here - but that for another day. It was so ... far from coherence about what being here had to do with what they did, much less saying nothing of their impact in Seattle, itself that it's been hard to know where to start. That won't be tried here.

If one is to really look at Seattle, there's more than the 'local authors, abundant writing courses and robust independent bookstores' all mentioned in a single blow. (Again, we're not trying to sort for reasons here, only using this to get somewhere in particular.)

Of those elements, let's take a single one, however robust they (we) may or may not all be, the bookstores. Seattle does still have three large independent bookstores, two of which operate in more than one location. It also has a gaggle of general neighborhood independents, laced throughout a number of city districts, and a number of distinct, unique stores selling used/antiquarian books as a focus/ Then there are the specialized stores, stores dedicated solely/primarily to architecture/design, mysteries, nature, children's, and poetry.

Poetry? Yes, while many cities have specialized stores of the other sorts mentioned, there is only Cambridge's Grolier Bookshop, in all the US, that has a store dedicated only to poetry and poetics. Open Books: A Poem Emporium (www.openpoetrybooks.com) should also have made it into Julie Bick's NYT piece, for while John Marshall and Christine Deavel's lovingly and smartly tended shop is very much a part of the city landscape here, its 500-square-foot space (emporium?) occupying a former garage, they are increasingly getting business from people in distant realms. Well, they should.

Most of the out of town patrons no doubt have stopped by on a Seattle visit. Though it runs with limited hours and isn't in the handiest locale for people visiting the city with limited time and transportation options, it is nevertheless very much a must-get-to place for many from elsewhere. Stocked entirely with poetry and books of poetics, used editions among them, the place wears its literary weight lightly: there is no high-toned, cough cough, literary airs about it, it feels like the relaxed place it is, only a few feet of a busy neighborhood street. Whoever's presiding at the front counter it's always good shooting the breeze.

While my kind of banter there is of a certain sort, no doubt John and Christine, both published poets themselves, endure a lot of advice-seeking poets (actual and would-be), people bending their ear about how closed Seattle is to newcomers, how into the newcomers it gets as according to the feeling-bypassed oldtimers . Both play strong behind-the-scenes roles - each has served on literary boards, there's been a literary journal published, and they have their own chapbook press, Cash Machine Books.

By the time this is read the evening will be past, but this April 3, we at Elliott Bay had the pleasure of hosting John, whose author moniker is J.W. for a reading from his first full-length collection, Meaning a Cloud. Its publication was jured, the winner of Field's Literary Prize.John's poems quietly address everyday life trauma - the sudden injury and the convalesence, the illness and aging of a parent - and does so with language accepting and persevering, gently.

Posted by Rick Simonson on April 3, 2008 | Comments (2)