Reading

Auntie Linda was telling me that she bought a Nancy Drew book for her granddaughter, Halen, and a journal. She wanted Halen to learn how to relax with a book before bed, instead of watching TV. All I can say is, YES!! In honor of reading, books, writing, and anything that keeps kids away (or limits their time in front of) TVs, I'm publishing one of my favorites poems. Go ahead, read it. It won't kill you.


The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

- Wallace Stevens