Karen Swallow Prior - Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

BOOKED

literature in the soul of me

karen swallow prior

T. S. Poetry Press New York

T. S. Poetry Press

Ossining, New York

Tspoetry.com

2012 by Karen Swallow Prior

All rights reserved.

This book includesreferences to the following brands and sources: American Pie isfrom the album American Pie by Don McLean, United Artists, 1971; Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret is by Judy Blume, Yearling, 1950; Rape Fantasiesis by Margaret Atwood, originally published in Dancing Girls, 1977; Go Ask Alice is by ananonymous author, Prentice Hall, 1971; ThatWas Then, This is Now and The Outsiders are by S. E.Hinton, Viking/Penguin, 1971 and 1967; Harry Potter is a copyrightof Bloomsbury Publishers; Twilight is by Stephanie Meyer, copyright Little, Brown andCompany; King of the Wind is by Marguerite Henry, Rand McNally, 1948; SearsBack-to-School Catalogue, Christmas Wishbook, and Sears Kenmore arecopyrights of Sears Roebuck and Co.; Middlemarch is by George Eliot,William Blackwood and Sons, 1871; Humpty Dumpty Potato Chips are atrademark of Humpty Dumpty Snack Foods; Endgame is a play by Samuel Beckettwhich opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 1957; The Blue Lagoon is a moviereleased through Columbia Pictures, 1980; Fear of Flying is by Erica Jong, Holt,Rinehart and Winston, 1973; StarWars is a copyright of LucasfilmLimited; Beauty and the Beast is a film by Walt Disney Animation Studios; Sybil is by Flora RhetaSchrebier, Regnery 1973; Dr. Seuss TheFoot Book is by Theodor Geisel,1968; Richard Scarrys Busy, BusyWorld is by Richard Scarry published byGoldencraft, 1970; The Mouse and theMotorcycle is by Beverly Cleary,HarperTrophy, 1965; Clifford the Big RedDog is by Norman Bridewell, published byScholastic Books in 1963; Casey The UtterlyImpossible Horse is by Anita MacRaeFeagles, published by Scholastic Books in 1962; Harriet the Spy is by Lousie Fitzhugh,Harper and Row, 1964; Ramona theBrave is by Beverly Cleary, William Morrow,1975; the Nancy Drew series was created by publisher EdwardStratemeyer; Charlie and the ChocolateFactory is by Roald Dahl, Alfred A. Knopf,1964; Where the Red Fern Grows is by Wilson Rawls, Doubleday, 1961; The Black Stallion is byWalter Farley, Random House, 1941; PippiLongstocking is by Astrid Lindgren, VikingPress, 1950; The Lion, The Witch, and TheWardrobe is by C. S. Lewis, Geoffrey Bles,1950; Tiger Beat isa publication of Laufer Media, Inc.

Cover image by Kelly Langner Sauer.kellysauer.com

Names, identifying features, and events havebeen altered and in some cases compressed for the sake of bothnarrative flow and protection of others privacy.

ISBN 978-1-943120-02-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData:

Prior, Karen Swallow

[Memoir.]

Booked: Literature in the soul of me/KarenSwallow Prior

ISBN 978-1-943120-02-4

In memory of Mrs. Lovejoy

for offering her students

Great Expectations

TABLE OF CONTENTS

John Miltons Areopagitica

CharlottesWeb

Gerard Manley Hopkinss Pied Beauty

Great Expectations

Jane Eyre

Tess of theDUrbervilles

GulliversTravels

Death of a Salesman

MadameBovary

John DonnesMetaphysical Poetry

The Poetry of Doubt

Books Promiscuously Read:John Miltons Areopagitica

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truths superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

Emily Dickinson

My fingers slid across smooth book spines,skimming the familiar titles lined up on the shelf, firmly andtightly, like little soldiers standing at attention. Soon I spottedthe name of an old friend: King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. Ithad been many, many years since Id read this bookthe tale of aroyal Arabian horse and the adventures he shared around the worldwith a Moroccan stable boy named Agbaand countless other horsestories by Henry. It had been nearly as many years, too, since Idstood in this space, a nearly sacred place, the library of mychildhood. Maybe it really was sacred, the reliquary of mysoul.

The relics, these books on the shelves inthis quiet alcove, brought me here, a small-town public librarynestled in the corner of a building not unlike a cathedral. CumstonHall is a Roman-esque Revival style edifice of gothic proportions,built at the turn of the century as a gift to the town of Monmouth,Maine, from Dr. Charles M. Cumston, who had been a teacher at thefirst public high school in America. When I was growing up in thistown, I thought of Cumston Hall as an enchanted castle, a placefilled with history and story and mystery. It was home not only toall of these books, but also to a seasonal theater company thatbrought to life many of the stories within the pages of thesebooks, to stuffy town meetings that sucked the life right back out,and to luminous stained-glass windows, mysterious windingstairwells, jutting balconies, mural-laden walls, ceilings paintedwith glorious cloud-cushioned cherubim, andnaturallyrumors ofhaunting ghosts. The library ensconced its childrens books in atower-like room, which made browsing the bookshugging those luckyones chosen to be carried home for a spellall the moremagical.

The power of these books brought me, not onlyback to this physical space but also to this place in my life, foron this trip I was returning to my hometown and to the library ofmy youth as a doctoral candidate in English literature, a lifecentered professionally on books. But my relationship with bookswas much more than professional; it wasispersonal. Deeplypersonal. Books have formed the soul of me.

I know that spiritual formation is of God,but I also knowmainly because I learned it from booksthat thereare other kinds of formation, too, everyday gifts, and that Goduses the things of this earth to teach us and shape us, and to helpus find truth. One such gift is that my soul was entrusted to twogood parents, one a mother who loves books and who readconsistently to her children as we were growing up. Just as weeklyattendance at church and Sunday school was part of what it meant tobelong to my family, so too was my mother reading to each of us, mytwo older brothers and me, every night at bedtime. These ritualswere part of our lives well past the age when most of my friendswere no longer tucked into bed, or read to, or made to go to churchby their parents. Even into my brothers teen years our mother madethe rounds to each separate bedroom, reading a section nightly frombooks of our choosing.

Im not sure when we felt we had outgrown thebedtime stories, but I do know that my brothers and I each came tofeel we had outgrown church. The bedtime stories, however, ceasedlong before compulsory church attendance did. Even friends orcousins who slept over on Saturday night knew they would beattending church with our family come Sunday morning. For most ofthem, this was the only time they ever went to church, sonaturally, I was apologetic. And embarrassed. We New Englanders mayderive from Puritan stock, but the stoic independence more than thereligious piety has survived into the current age. I made up to myfriends by entertaining them during the service: snickering at thedrops of spittle that seeped from one corner of the pastors mouthwhile he preached, making naughty puns on the names of theparishioners, and singing the hymns in a high, quavering old ladyvoice only the friend next to me could hear. Anyone needingevidence of the human souls need for formation need look nofurther than a sneering child seated on a church pew on a Sundaymorn.

Although being raised by God-loving parentsis no guarantee that one will love God oneself, it certainly helps.I did love God, even if it didnt always show, but for much of mylife, I loved books more than God, never discovering for a long,long time that a God who spoke the world into existence with wordsis, in fact, the source of meaning of all words. My journey towardthat discovery is the story of this book. I thought my love ofbooks was taking me away from God, but as it turns out, books werethe backwoods path back to God, bramble-filled and broken, yes, butfull of truth and wonder.