A few years ago, I had a wonderful and very well meaning Harper sales rep named Kate. She was a Yankee from Wisconsin, or somewhere up there, and we had quite different personalities. Lemuria was the bottom of the pile of bookstores she called on, being her southern most store. This Yankee gal came to deep Dixie to sell books.

Kate loves books and is one of the very best book reps I’ve ever had call on me. For you independent bookstore fans, having a great publisher rep who cares about books, her company and her bookstores makes such a difference. This work, when good, adds to the diversity and quality of the bookstore, and especially to the chosen volumes for sale on the bookstore shelves which reflect the store’s soul.

Kate grew fond of the Blues and Lemuria and she even put up with my orneriness. We also respected each others work and desires to get the right books to the right readers. We grew fond of each other and our work together was good for our readers, our bookstore and her publisher.

As our real book related friendship grew from working together, we began to genuinely share books with each other.

My blog’s purpose is to share with you a special writer, a Kate favorite she shared with me, Jane Hirshfield. To continue celebrating poetry month even after it’s officially passed, I share my favorite touches of Jane’s grace from Come, Thief, her new book of poems.

I thought long and hard about these first lines from “Decision”:

There is a moment before a shape

hardens, a color sets.

Before the fixative or heat of kiln.

The letter might still be taken

from the mailbox. (5)

How interesting it is to write a long sincere letter and then never mail the words. Words written and never shared. Later, when reading what emptiness the writer can feel. What changes in life, if mailed, would have occurred?

From “Vinegar and Oil” (6):

From “Big-Leaf Maple Standing over Its Own Reflection”:

A boat’s hull does not travel last year’s waves.

And later from the same poem:

Lightning, like luck, lands somewhere (8)

From “Tolstoy and the Spider” (33):

From “Sheep”:

and your heart is startled

as if by the shadow

of someone once loved.

Neither comforted by this

nor made lonely.

Only remembering

that a self in exile is still a self

as a bell unstruck for years

is still a bell. (45)

This wonderful business of real book selling is about sharing. In closing, I’m happy to share with you what my real book friend shared with me, my favorite poem by Jane Hirshfield.

From “Fifteen Pebbles”:

Transparent as glass,

the face of the child telling her story.

But how else learn the real,

if not by inventing what might lie outside it. (62)

Epilogue for my real bookselling companions–Also from “Fifteen Pebbles”:

Like moonlight seen in a well,

The one who sees it

blocks it. (60)

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