Poem of the Week | September 28, 2015

This week we feature a new poem by Julia Thacker. Thacker’s poems and stories have appeared in AGNI, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The North American Review and others. Twice a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has received a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe (now the Radcliffe Institute), and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
 
Author’s note:

In my imaginary anthology Libraries I Have Known and Loved, the first poem would have to be Ode to the Bookmobile. Once a week that tiny converted milk truck of books crawled up the alley of the housing project where my brother and I spent our chaotic childhoods, as reliable as the seasons. With sticky hands and Popsicle-smeared faces we entered its sanctum of wonders, often hunkering down right there on the floor, each with a new found book as the engine ticked beneath us.
 
Whether a milk truck-turned bookmobile or a vaulted cathedral of volumes, a library for me is not only a keeper of history and literature but also a place of refuge. There is a religiosity to the silence and peace of reading rooms. There is an open door policy and books are free; for some, it’s a heaven on earth.
 
My first inspiration for this poem was a haunting photograph of an abandoned and decaying library interior re-posted on Instagram. After much digging, I discovered the image was actually a miniature diorama created by the artist Lori Nix. My thoughts then turned to my uncle who migrated to Detroit from the Appalachian mountains and worked in an auto plant for over thirty years. In the aftermath of tragedy he found sanctuary in the reading room of his neighborhood library, now shuttered and fallen to ruin. I thought about what is lost each time a library closes its doors, and about the spirits that still linger there.