Living in More Than One World

When I heard that two-time Pulitzer Prize winner W.S. Merwin had been named the new Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress, I thought of our shared roots in Scranton, Pa. I was born and raised there and Merwin lived in the city from ages 9-14. His connection was covered by the local media, including the Times-Tribune and neighboring Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre.  Last year I blogged about the city’s transformation, and I returned for the first time in a year and a half two months ago, when I was one of the featured authors for the inaugural event Jewish Authors of Northeastern Pennsylvania. On my final day in town I walked through the reshaped courthouse square area, and saw the new Piazza dell’Arte sculpture paying tribute to Merwin and others from the worlds of the arts and humanities with ties to Lackawanna County.
At the author event I discussed my book, Living in More Than One World: How Peter Drucker’s Wisdom Can Inspire and Transform Your Life. There is also an important Scranton connection for Drucker. Forty six years earlier, in May 1964, he delivered the commencement address for the University of Scranton, within walking distance of my event, at the Jewish Community Center. At the time, he was 54 and a longstanding bestselling author. I was 12, living a short distance from where he spoke, and unaware of who he was. Part of my talk at the event was about how our lives intersected years later.
As for Merwin, he describes his changed, more positive feelings for Scranton in this 2008 Fresh Air interview. The Times-Tribune story says took part in a poetry series in the area about 20 years ago. What a wonderful touch it would be, if in his new capacity as Poet Laureate, he would make a return visit to Scranton to complete the circle.

Although it’s been over for nearly a week, you can still find lots of material online to vicariously experience the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which is billed as the largest of its type in the world. Edinburgh is a lovely city, and I’m sure it was a great setting for this 17-day celebration of the written and spoken word.  There has been considerable coverage before, during and after the event in the British media; such as this September 1 report on guardian.co.uk and another, Scottish-centric one on the same day from the [Aberdeen] Press and Journal. Among the hundreds of authors featured this year were Garrison Keillor, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Karen Armstrong, Alexander McCall Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Margaret Drabble and Richard Dawkins. The media page of the festival’s site has lots of interesting material, including photos, blogs, and audio/video from 2009 and earlier years. I also liked the Staff Tops 10s lists. There are a number of archived stories about the festival from EdinburghGuides.com. Of course, J. K. Rowling is closely associated with Edinburgh and she read from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and answered questions at the 2004 Edinburgh Book Festival. The longtime director of the festival, Catherine Lockerbie, is stepping down this year and the occasion was commemorated in a poem by the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Read more about it (and the text of the poem) at Magnus Linklater’s August 18 story on timesonline.co.uk, Carol Ann Duffy’s tribute to departing head of Edinburgh book festival. Next year’s festival dates are August 14-30, 2010. My new goal: to not just attend, but to be booked for a future Edinburgh International Book Festival.

On July 11th, the day of my book signing at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago, I met three highly interesting people who were also either signing or performing: Amy Krouse Rosenthal, George Watsky and Mieka Pauley. I had never met them before, and had not even heard of George or Mieka. When I found out that Amy would be at the Chronicle Books booth that morning, I knew that I wanted to meet her, as I had enjoyed her book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. I had a nice conversation with her after she finished a signing for one of her children’s books. Be sure to check out her compelling short video, The Beckoning of Lovely, shot last summer in Chicago’s Millennium Park. I discovered George and Mieka in a providential way. A friend had told me earlier in the day that I should meet a friend of hers, an editor at a library-related publication that had a booth at the conference. When I went to find her soon after I finished my signing, I was told she would be at the LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage. When I arrived, she was not there, but I quickly became mesmerized by George’s poetry performance, in which Mieka accompanied him at times on guitar and vocals. Although I only caught the tail-end, they continued with an impromptu performance (separately) at the booth of their representatives, the Auburn Moon Agency. They also talked with those of us who assembled. What was amazing was that neither had performed together before George’s appearance on stage. Check out the material on each of their websites. I would gladly pay to see either of them perform again. And yes, I did find the editor later on. Amy, George and Mieka are each cool, super-creative people I could have easily missed out on meeting if circumstances had been only slightly different. If anyone at the conference (or perhaps any similar recent gathering) has had similar experiences, please let me know so I can share them with other readers of this blog!

It’s back to guardian.co.uk today for a double-treat: its extensive, ongoing coverage of the Guardian Hay Festival in Wales, running from May 21-31, as well as The Book that changed my life, in which Nicole Jackson interviews 28 festival participants, who each provide a paragraph on their crucial reading. The event is primarily literary, but features a wide array of public figures: authors, poets, comedians, architects and politicians.  There is also Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The main page has a considerable amount of video and podcasts, as well as blogs and articles about the festival. One of the presenters has proved unexpectedly timely: poet Ruth Padel, who in controversy resigned her position as the first female Professor of Poetry at Oxford University only nine days after being elected.  Read more in the Guardian’s May 26 interview, Ruth Padel: Oxford poetry smear campaign could have been a conspiracy. She is also the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and you can see a video of her reading from Darwin: A Life in Poems. The Book that changed my life surveys a cross-section of people, including the novelist Zoe Heller, historians Simon Schama and Antonia Fraser, and Alain de Botton, whom I featured in an earlier post. I’ll leave it to you to read the books that changed their lives and those of the other interviewees, but suffice to say that it’s a pretty eclectic and surprising list. It would be wonderful to attend this festival in person, but for most of us that’s not practical. Thank goodness we live in an age when technology allows us the next best thing.

David Whyte has for many years been a great example of living in more than one world. He is a successful poet, author, speaker and business consultant. Check out Colleen Smith’s insightful profile/interview, David Whyte’s nonprosaic world, in the Denver Post. She was writing in advance of his appearance at a bookstore in Boulder, Col., promoting his latest book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self & Relationship. You can read selections from his poetry on his site, which has quite a bit of interesting material. Whyte’s quote ending the Denver Post story is instructive, as it contrasts the hard times we are living in, with the value provided by poets: “I often think of poets as makers of identity, so these are good times for poets, who speak not only for the individual, but for society and for the future at the horizon about to appear.”