A Ritual to Read to Each Other: When you can’t read

This year we’ve been sitting with William Stafford’s poem A Ritual to Read to Each Other. But what do you do when you can’t seem to read at all?

I lost my father in September, and suddenly reading wasn’t difficult; it was impossible. Words blurred. Having lost a loved one before, I knew sight and comprehension would (and did) return, but what to do in the meantime?

Go simple. Go familiar. Be surprised.

There are seasons when a break from reading may be helpful: a time to explore, to play, to rest. I have taken those breaks and am grateful for them. This was not one of those times. This was a time to gently redirect myself. To sample both comfort food and new dishes. And I knew it was working because when we took a trip to the coast at the end of the month, I was able to read, beach-side.

The Little Island, by Margaret Wise Brown, illus. Leonard Weisgard
This one had been on my list for months, but it finally came in through Interlibrary Loan. It’s the only picture book by Margaret Wise Brown to win the Caldecott Award. Her friend and frequent collaborator, Leonard Weisgard, painted the spot in Maine where she had a summer home. I read it over and over and over. Its descriptions of seasons are soothing, and the interlude with the kitten contains Brown’s understated humor. It also dares to ask big questions.

‘Then you must take it on faith, what I tell you,’ said the fish.
‘What’s that?’ said the cat—‘Faith.’
‘To believe what I tell you about what you don’t know,’ said the fish.”

Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger
After weeks with a picture book and an audiobook, I was ready to read story again, but it had to be a re-read. After Tweetspeak covered David Kern’s new book, I revisited one of his podcasts, Close Reads, and found that he and his pals had discussed Enger’s best-known book over seven episodes. It’s a Western with miracles. It’s a loving family caught up in the after-effects of a double murder. It features a girl named Swede who writes epic cowboy poetry: “There’s nothing like good strong meter to make a poem mind its manners.” And there’s nothing like rhyming couplets to make the world seem right-side-up again, even when Sunny Sundown finds himself in a heap o’trouble.

Jane on the Brain: Exploring the science of social intelligence with Jane Austen, by Wendy Jones
I listen to audiobooks, usually fiction, when I walk in the dark, but I was not ready to absorb a new story. This nonfiction book is Jane fandom through a neuroscience lens. When my emotions were as extreme than Marianne’s, when my thoughts were no more coherent than Catherine Morland’s, this book took me by the limp hand, poured me a cup of tea, and served familiar dishes on unfamiliar plates. It felt like an academic book club, one I enjoyed even when I didn’t agree with the author’s conclusions.

The throughline of my ebbing and flowing? Poetry. I read at least a poem every day. Some days that was all I read. Some days I only was able to process a line or two, but that was enough. Like these from “Night Before Christmas,” a poem about snow at the beach by Thomas Whitbread.

I went home, not unwilling to be warmed.
The snow was in me, come what fire would.

October’s Pages

Poetry

Four Infinitives, Thomas Whitbread

Picture Books and Early Readers

The Little Island, Margaret Wise Brown, illus. Leonard Weisgard
Gustavo, the Shy Ghost, Flavia Z. Drago
Saturday, Oge Mora (Join us for Children’s Book Club next Friday, November 13)
We’re Going on a Goon Hunt: A Petrifying Parody, Michael Rex

Grownups

Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger
Jane on the Brain: Exploring the science of social intelligence with Jane Austen, by Wendy Jones
Searching for Certainty, Shelly Miller
The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen (a gift from a poetry friend)

For Discussion

1. When have you been unable to read? What helped you start again?
2. What is a beloved book you have reread? Why did you return to it?
3. Share your October pages. Sliced, started, and abandoned are all fair game.

Photo by USFWS Mountain-Prairie. Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more from A Ritual to Read to Each Other

“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

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Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

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