Today was a dream day: apart from one Zoom meeting, the rest of the day was spent reading philosophy. All. Day. Long. When I was 25 I thought this was going to be every day of a philosopher’s life; I was that young. But I’ll take them when I can get them.
This afternoon was devoted to Cornel West on John Dewey’s pragmatism in his brash, brilliant book, The American Evasion of Philosophy. But this morning I was reading Hegel’s early essay, Faith & Knowledge. When I closed the book, I noticed a scribble on the inside page:
I must have acquired the Hegel volume from a used book sale at Calvin College. Kenneth Konyndyk was a beloved professor at Calvin from the “Al & Nick” era (his daughter is none other than my colleague, Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung). Seeing Dr. Konyndyk’s name triggered a twinge of nostalgia: as an undergraduate, I can remembering mailing in my check, addressed to him, for my annual student membership in the Society of Christian Philosophers—my first tangible connection to my now longtime employer.
This inscription got me thinking about a couple of other memorable inscriptions I’ve found in used books.
For years I’ve been a sucker for random issues of old literary quarterlies. For example, here on a shelf beside me is a copy of the Kenyon Review from Spring 1939 (Vol. 1, No. 2!). Here’s a random copy of the Michigan Quarterly Review from 1987 and a treasured copy of Pleiades from 2009 (because therein I discovered Hailey Leithauser’s riot of a poem, “The Old Woman Gets Drunk with the Moon”). But it’s in a copy of The Missouri Review from 1995, dedicated to the theme, “The Beginnings…the Ends…Of Love,” that I found this wonderful inscription from one friend to another.
I might have bought this just for this inscription. It’s such a hopeful artifact of creative friendship and aspiration. I hope Lynda and Deb are still writing, still friends.
This is mirrored by an inscription that, for some reason, breaks my heart. I might be misreading it.
I found it in a little anthology of poetry that had an outsized impact on my life. It’s called Fathers: A Collection of Poems, edited by David & Judy Ray. I’m almost hesitant to admit this because I’m generally averse to reducing poetry to a therapeutic function. But I can still remember picking this up from a used book bin at a particularly volatile season of my life. The book felt like a kind of divine appointment. There were poems in here that articulated feelings that were inchoate, at best, in my own consciousness.
I don’t remember when I noticed the inscription, but here it is:
I had an immediate question: How did this book end up in this bin of discards? What the hell, “Dad?!” How could you cast off this heartfelt gift from your daughter? Holding it in my hands felt like holding a purloined letter. On behalf of Elizabeth, I was spiraling. The worry then went in a different direction: Maybe Dad is no longer with us. A different sadness.
I wanted to let Elizabeth know: this Dad is grateful for the book, and for the sentiment. I plan to bequeath it to my children. And at my funeral, though I hardly deserve it, I dream of one of them reading a poem from it:
By Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?