Fulfilling my obligations to my long-neglected TBR one book a time. Want to know why? I explain it in the first post here. Posting striking lines daily on BlueSky

This week I read the last of the books I’ve bought on holiday. I deliberately left this one for last because it is extra meaningful. Sue and I have been in the habit over the past few years of travelling for our anniversary in mid-September. Prior to this year, we had mostly gone to the States so we could catch some baseball and work on our bucket list of seeing a game in every stadium. Sigh. One day we’ll go back, I hope.

In 2023 we went to San Francisco. It was our 25th anniversary and we wanted it to be a little bit more special than usual. We had both always wanted to visit. Both of us for the cultural history and Sue for the food and for me, I have always wanted to buy a book (or several) at City Lights. It did not disappoint. Nothing about the trip disappointed. Everything exceeded our wildest expectations.

A travelogue of our visit would likely only be of interest to me and Sue so I’ll spare you the details and skip to where I actually sank to my knees when I reached the top of the poetry stairs in City Lights. I bought a bunch of books that day, many of which I had read about but had no idea were still in print like Leonora Carrington’s “The Hearing Trumpet” and Mina Loy’s “Insel.” The apple of my eye though were the Pocket Poets books for which the store is famous. So many of the poets we know and love are only in the public eye because of Ferlinghetti and his commitment to sharing these voices. I picked up and put down so many individual volumes. I finally settled on this anthology because I figured it would give me a taste and that we would return to San Francisco soon and I could buy more.

I will admit that this anthology had a little more Allen Ginsberg in it that I was expecting. It also has only a couple of women poets, though one of those is the amazing Diane di Prima. Still, this little volume was a joy to read every morning. The perfect way to start the day. And now, I want to go back. Please America, get through these dark times. Don’t lose forever what made you awesome.

My desire to return to San Francisco is what is driving my creativity this morning.