As I was folding clothes and half-listening to the news on WAMU just a few minutes ago, I learned of today's loss of Carla Cohen, a local and national saint of the literary world who co-founded Politcs & Prose. While it was known that she was in ill-health and that the store is up for sale, news of her death was like the sounding of a bell, or a fog horn bellowing its sorrowful warning. It can't be ignored. What she and her partner Barbara Meade provided was a rare haven for those who are tickled by and live for words. I am not sure she would appreciate this comparison, but I think it is fair to say that Carla was a sort of St. Francis of the book world.
And as I was writing this, I heard Alan Cheuse reviewing a book called Breathing in Dust, a first book of fiction by writer and poet Tim Hernandez, new to me. I went into the other room to catch more clearly the cadences of Hernandez' writing as read by Cheuse. Out the window I caught sight of a neighbor walking with his daughter who has not yet mastered the art of two-legged locomotion. She staggered to her own rhythm over the lumpy grass in our yard, her blonde head bobbing beneath the ripening crabapples.
I think Carla, though I did not know her personally, would somehow appreciate this scene, the inevitable connections between what is read, what is seen and what is heard, how they all seem to feed each other and in so doing feed our humanity. Carla's service to humanity will be sorely missed, but not forgotten.
No comments:
Post a Comment