More than a Bookstore

Hearts and Minds Bookstore
is located in Dallas, PA.
They are located online too.
They were at IAM's Encounter's
Conference and are always in
Critique of Ransom Fellowship
( highly recommend ).

Their blog this week is on Short
Books for Holy Week.
A great review of a NEW
Wendell Berry book on the
poet -doctor:




The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

You can see where this is going---imagination in place! William Carlos Williams of Rutherford New Jersey? Berry has the eyes to see (and apparently those schooled in mid-20th century poetry know this) that WCW was, in fact, an oddball of sorts: he wrote about common people in a real location, allowing his participation in the local neighborhood--his work, his friends, his neighbors, his church--to influence (indeed, to become to subject of) his extraordinary poems. He was belittled for this by the hot shots, and this is, of course, a part of the story. Berry took great inspiration in this (I wondered, to be honest, why William Carlos Williams wasn't in Imagination in Place as he seemed to exemplify that book's thesis. Now we know---Berry was doing a whole book on this same theme that structures Imagination in Place, using WCW as the great example.)

 I should say that it is only my lack of vocabulary that causes me to say Berry is "using" WCW as an "example." Berry is more subtle than that, more nuanced and insightful and kind. But, still, the Borger short-hand being what it is, I'd explain the book like this: he illustrates how a sense of place (in this case Rutherford and Paterson NJ) shaped and influenced and became fodder for the great work of this too often misunderstood poet and doctor, the fascinating William Carlos Willliams. And how Berry himself does that in his own Kentucky homeland, drawing inspiration from Dr. Williams.