The Biblio File: images of N.E. libraries, for bibliophiles

Madeleine Clark Wallace Library, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts

David Levine on writers: Washington Irving

David Levine (1926-2009) was one of America’s most prominent illustrators during a career that spanned decades. No less an authority than Jules Feiffer described him as "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th century,” although Levine continued to work in the early years of this century as well. Levine’s subjects included himself (above) and people from many walks of life. Authors, scribes and scribblers were a big part of the mix, as these caricatures make clear.   

Lit Toons: Cartoons with a bookish bent

Macanudo

First Lines: Michael Chabon

Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon

"They say it's your birthday" - writers born on March 17

William Gibson  (1948) 

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.  (1911) 
Paul Green  (1894) 
Kate Greenaway  (1846)
Karl Gutzkow  (1811)
Siegfried Lenz  (1926)

Penelope Lively  (1933) 

Gary Paul Nabhan  (1952)

 

Review: "Dog Show," Billy Collins

By Paul Carrier

When I finish reading a book and start searching the house, the public library or a bookstore for a replacement, my thoughts don’t normally turn to poetry.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against poetry. It’s just not my favorite genre. But if I come across a volume that is (a) slim, and (b) about dogs, and (c) written by Billy Collins, well, the search is over.

Collins, who served as poet laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, has been described by The New York Times as “the most popular poet in America.” I can’t speak for America, but he’s certainly right up there in my book.

The collection that caught my eye during a recent bookstore visit is titled Dog Show. It’s an almost pocket-sized volume (5 1/2 inches by 7 1/2 inches) spanning 74 pages, with watercolors by Pamela Sztybel. Dog Show contains some two dozen poems and a comparable number of watercolors featuring dogs (although in one poem, two cats stare at a writer who is trying to write about dogs).

Back in 2005, the Poetry Foundation had a now-defunct prize called the Mark Twain Poetry Award, which was given to Collins that year. In a news release announcing Collins’ win, the Poetry Foundation said: “Billy Collins has brought laughter back to a melancholy art. He shows us that good poetry need not always be somber poetry.”

I’m not sure any of these poems will make you laugh. But they are whimsical and poignant, witty and thoughtful and gentle. Some of them will certainly make you smile.

One poem, A Dog On His Master is told from the point of view of a pooch who knows he’s aging faster than his human, with a predictable result looming down the road. In another poem, the writer says he or she is happiest while fixing the dog’s breakfast.

 we hold our mutual gaze,

me reading his mind and he reading mine.

A poem entitled Le Chien ends with the writer lamenting not having taken a picture of a Parisian dog one night outside a butcher shop. The photo, if it existed, would sit over the mantle back home.

I could stand before the image of that very dog,

a glass of wine in hand

submitting all of my troubles and petitions

to the court of her dark-brown, forgiving eyes.

The book opens with a two-page dedication to more than 80 dogs, who are listed alphabetically, from Addison to Zeke. (My favorites: Mona Lisa Lisa, River Valley Chieftain, and Willie, the last of which happens to be our dog’s name.)

That is followed by a quote from the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “God . . . sat down for a moment when the dog was finished in order to watch it . . . and to know that it was good, that nothing was lacking, that it could not have been made better.”