Notebook - Reading in Prison

Notebook
In yesterday’s mail, there was a check for eighty dollars — payment for several poems I submitted to a magazine over three years ago, and which will finally see print in the coming weeks. Eighty dollars can seem like a lot or a little, depending on how you look at it. The poems are short, so it’s a lot. They are the product of years of suffering and observation, so it’s a little. They were easy to write, so it’s a lot. Eighty dollars will buy less than two tanks of gas, so it’s a little. I didn’t write them for the money in the first place, so it’s a lot. I could use ten or a hundred times the amount, so it’s a little. Had the check been for 800 or 8,000 dollars, I would not have thought the payment excessive. But I would have known it was a mistake. Still, I might have deposited the check, just for the fun of it and to see what happened. Would I have spent the money before the check had time to clear or bounce? Hmm. I wonder. * * * I’m still adding to my collection of used books. The other day, I bought a nice selection of poems by Robert Burns that was published in 1926 and reprinted in 1937. A helpful glossary of terms is included. The book was once part of a local high school library — the library card is still in the pocket on the inside back cover. I even wrote a poem about it, as part of the book I’m working on now, Songs and Letters. On the same trip, I found a hardbound copy of Thomas Wolfe’s The Web and the Rock, a 700-page mountain of words I look forward to reading. If it’s half as good as his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, it will still be better than most books. I also found a paperback edition of eleven of Luigi Pirandello’s short stories. I read the first one already, a piece called “Little Hut — A Sicilian Sketch.” And of course there is a pile of others — The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill, and Dry Guillotine by René Belbenoit are a few of the most recent. I also need to get back to Lord Byron’s Don Juan, which is a riot. Suffice it to say, I have stacks of reading material. Maybe one of these days I’ll be imprisoned for something and I can catch up on my reading — an odd thought, but no more unreasonable, really, than several others I’ve had today.	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. —————————— Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. —————————— Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author’s Note Background A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let’s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts
Top of Page Old Notes Current Entry