The strange books travellers find

Selected Poems:
William Carlos
Williams

Unbelievable: the poetry section of Kepler’s, the big bookstore outside the gates of Stanford University, offered only a single copy of one collection of verse by August Kleinzahler, recent winner of the Griffin Prize, living and working just up the peninsula in San Francisco. And nothing by noted Californian poet Carl Rakosi; nothing by Marilyn Hacker. I suppose these stores know what they’re doing.

It was of course his latest collection The Strange Hours Travellers Keep, so I bought it for Arthur Whitney’s daughter Natasha, if only for the title piece (check it out, Arthur) and asked her to show me something she liked. She pulled out a William Carlos Williams poem, and I must have been too tired to get it it, but wisely bought it – Williams has been enjoying excellent but too numerous company on my ‘gotta read ’em one day’ list– and got stuck in to Williams on today’s flight home. Love it; shoulda been reading him years ago.

Way to go, Nattie; thanks for cuing me in to Williams. And what a pleasure to discover (on the plane, yet) the title of Kleinzahler’s poem and eponymous collection to have been taken straight from Williams:

I have discovered that most of
the beauties of travel are due to
the strange hours we keep to see them:
“January Man”