Brian Doyle. Who here has heard of him? I am embarrassed to say that he did not even appear on my radar until a few weeks ago. I can't recall where we crossed paths, except I think it was a Goodreads pop-up for One Long River of Song: "If you liked that, then you will love this." I immediately set out to find everything about him, and discovered he died a few years ago, of brain cancer, at the age of 60. Where had he been all my life?!? I felt like I had missed the proverbial boat but, then again, through the magic of books and the Internet, he was now my new best friend.
I immediately Amazoned (yes, I made it into a verb!) him to my friend Roxanne, as a "belated* birthday present. I had him Amazoned to me, so that I could transport him across county lines, and deliver him to Dar in St. Augustine as an *early* birthday present. I want to give this book to everyone I know. It is my new love language:
"Brian Doyle lived the pleasure of bearing daily witness to quiet glories hidden in people, places and creatures of little or no size, renown, or commercial value, and he brought inimitably playful or soaring or aching or heartfelt language to his tellings. A life’s work, One Long River of Song invites readers to experience joy and wonder in ordinary moments that become, under Doyle’s rapturous and exuberant gaze, extraordinary." ~ David James Duncan
And this, from Doyle himself, as a brief bio/teaser:
Brian Doyle lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is inundated by the laundry of three teenagers and finds that the deeper thickets of marriage are more interesting than the open woodlands of serial affairs.
Hmmm. We should all do this; construct a mission statement in one sentence, less than 50 words, to encompass our life, hopes, and dreams.
SusanM lives in Pembroke Pines, Florida, where she is in a constant struggle to balance her Pollyanna self with her Eeyore alter-ego, and whose brain is so full of song lyrics that she can hardly remember her To Do List.
Your turn... :-)
P.S. All this to say: READ THE BOOK!
SONG: Blue River by Eric Andersen
BOOK: One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle
POEM: What Do Poems Do? by Brian Doyle
I was, no kidding, a visiting writer in a kindergarten recently,
And the children asked me many wry and hilarious questions,
Among them is that your real nose? and can you write a book
About a ruffed grouse, please? But the one that pops back into
My mind this morning was what do poems do? Answers: swirl
Leaves along sidewalks suddenly when there is no wind. Open
Recalcitrant jars of honey. Be huckleberries in earliest January,
When berries are only a shivering idea on a bush. Be your dad
For a moment again, tall and amused and smelling like Sunday.
Be the awful wheeze of a kid with the flu. Remind you of what
You didn’t ever forget but only mislaid or misfiled. Be badgers,
Meteor showers, falcons, prayers, sneers, mayors, confessionals.
They are built to slide into you sideways. You have poetry slots
Where your gills used to be, when you lived inside your mother.
If you hold a poem right you can go back there. Find the handle.
Take a skitter of words and speak gently to them, and you’ll see.
QUOTE: "Modern storytellers are the descendants of an immense and ancient community of holy people, troubadours, bards, griots, cantadoras, cantors, traveling poets, bums, hags, and crazy people." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
No comments:
Post a Comment