It's a stretch to say that librarians inspire artists. I mean, librarian as muse? I'm not really seeing it, on a career-wide basis. Individually, of course, each of us can serve as someone's muse. But it is no stretch at all to say that librarians encourage artists. Information supports inspiration and carries it forward, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
Saturday one of our regular patrons, the Poetry Man, asked me an irregular question. “I want some information about Robert Frost’s life,” he said. “Did he know Yeats?”
I went to the biography database we subscribe to. “Their lifetimes overlap, and Frost lived in England for awhile, so it’s possible,” I told him.
He looked at me. I think he was trying to form a question, but couldn’t. He walked away.
He came to the desk a few times, asking for the correct spelling of words, words like cheap and idea and illustrate, so I knew he was writing a poem. That is his usual activity and type of question.
He came back to the desk a little later. “Is there anything else about Frost in that article?” he asked me.
“What kind of information are you looking for, sir?”
“Maybe about his family,” he said hesitantly. “Was he a family man?”
I looked through another article, more personal, less scholarly. “Look,” I showed him, “this one says he had several children, all girls. His son died.”
“He did? When did that happen?”
I finally printed out the whole article and we looked through it. He reads slowly and I still wasn’t sure what he was after, so I gave him the highlights.
“He taught school, gave lectures, he farmed….” I said. “Then he moved to England and bought a farm there. But it says he went into London and was stimulated by conversations with Ezra Pound and some other famous poets.”
“Ah!” he said. “That’s what I want to know. Did he have a life? See, I was reading about a famous artist, maybe Van Gogh?” He looked at me questioningly. I shrugged my shoulders, not sure what he was asking. “This artist was a wine person, you know, someone who can smell the wine and tell something about its taste. He went out and talked to people, had a life.”
I pondered this off desk. When I came back for another shift, my colleague asked me if I had talked to Poetry Man.
“Yes,” I said. “He wanted to know about Robert Frost, whether or not he had a life.”
“Bless his heart,” she said. “He asked me, too. He said he didn’t know whether to go out in nature, or to hang out with people, talk to them. I told him it depended on what sparked his creativity, what inspired him.”
“And then the words to be spelled?” I asked her.
She smiled. “Yes,” she said gently, “and he was pacing back and forth, talking with his hands, so I know he’s writing another poem.”
Remember I was wishing we had an artist-in-residence at the library?
I think we do.
I wonder if the naming of "frequent patrons" happens at every library. The name of Poetry Man reminded me of two we had at the public library where I worked previously: Northern Man (had a New York accent which stood out to the ears of us Southerners)and Dictionary Man (called for spellings and definitions before yelling incoherent strings of words and numbers and hanging up). Another was Crazy Christian Man who called for general information but would often tell us to tear the pages out of our phone books that had listings for abortion counseling and clinics. He would also ask personal questions about if we'd been to church or to a Christian student center.
Posted by: Deborah | August 16, 2005 at 10:30 AM