January 5: Quite Illiterate, Good Reads, Linda Nemec Foster, "Talking Diamonds," New Cartoon

…I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.  My favorite author is my brother D. B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner.  My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey.  It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that’s always speeding.  Only, he’s married, the cop, so he can’t marry her or anything.  Then this girl gets killed, because she’s always speeding.  That story just about killed me.  What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while.  I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don’t knock me out too much.  What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it…

Holden is literate, whether he admits it or not.  His brother is an author.  The only subject Holden doesn’t fail at school is English.  And Holden wants to be friends with writers like Ring Lardner and Isak Dinesen.  He loves writers who are funny and serious, who aren’t phonies, who touch upon deep truths about the human condition.

Today, I want to talk about a writer like that for Good Reads Saturday.  Her name is Linda Nemec Foster, and she is a poet.  Last summer, I did a poetry reading with Linda, and she embodies what Holden describes in the above passage about his favorite authors.  She is earthy and funny.  She doesn’t take herself too seriously.  But when she touches upon something real and true in her poems, you feel like you’ve just had a great conversation with a good friend.

Foster’s book, Talking Diamonds, is full of great conversationslike this.  One of my favorites is about the end of the world and the beginning; angels blowing trumpets and statues weeping salt tears; mothers planting gardens and daughters picking flowers:

The Third Secret of Fatima

She knows it has nothing to do with the end

of the world.  Angels blowing trumpets.  Plaster statues

of the Virgin weeping salt tears.  Whore of Babylon,

dressed in purple and scarlet, alone in the desert.

Nothing to do with the number of days left

to us:  as unreliable as the number of rooms

in heaven.  Or the color of their walls, or if

they have windows facing west.  She’s convinced

that the secret is ordinary.  Like something in her life

she’s forgotten.  The exact architecture of her face

as she fades into sleep.  Whether or not she is happy.

As she plants the garden, still no clue.  Only

dirt; a disconcerting sense of growth where she

least expects it.  At the edge of the garden,

her daughter appears almost unnoticed.  She

holds a fist of wildflowers.  She wears her mother’s face.

Linda Nemec Foster is a terrific poet; her work, full of mystery and honesty.  After reading her book, I feel as though I have just gotten off the phone with her, shared something personal and meaningful with a close friend.

Saint Marty doesn’t have Linda’s number, but he has the next best thing.  He has Talking Diamonds, a great love letter for the poet in every person.

Confessions of Saint Marty