job, “We’ll give it a try!”
“Good.”
Lincoln pours it on: “What a great idea!”
“Maybe. It’ll be expensive and risky.” Despite the hedge, Duddleston’s pleasure with himself dances around his face. “And this could even be the Cubs’ year. They’re hanging in there, despite the injuries. Wouldn’t it be something if they made it to the World Series? Do you know how long it’s been?”
Everyone who lives in Chicago and has avoided dementia can answer that question: “1945.”
Duddleston stands, apparently satisfied that his top deputy has got with the program. “Why don’t you give Bill a call and get it started.”
“Sure thing,” Lincoln says.
And lest there be any lingering question, the owner/editor-in-chief adds on the way out: “Today.”
11
L INCOLN HAS PLANS to join Flam in the evening at an advance press screening of the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man , but throughout the afternoon, even through a long, somewhat disjointed conversation with Bill Lemke (had he been drinking? would the new production rush be Lemke’s excuse to ignore all of Lincoln’s editorial suggestions?), Tony Buford’s trim package silently nags, forcing itself into Lincoln’s attention, like a cell phone left on vibration. Finally, toward the end of the day, Lincoln surrenders and retrieves the envelope from the far corner of his desk, where he’d hoped he could forget it among other unread manuscripts. He opens it and pulls out a rather thin sheath of thick, expensive paper, the kind used for letters from rich people or executives. L , says the title on the top sheet. “ Poetry by Antonio Buford . Copyright 2009.” (Is that title a reference to the unfortunate incident?)
Lincoln skims through the pages. The poems are numbered, and most are contained on a single sheet. The titles are short descriptors of objects, places, or simple activities: “The Brown Easy Chair,” “Shaving in the Shower,” “Masking Tape,” “North Wells Between Grand and Illinois.” Fifty poems in all. Lincoln flips to the end, then returns to one called “The Remote,”attracted by the possibly clever use of an adjective as a noun. No. It’s about the author’s Emancipation Day, when the family got a remote control device for the television and the father could change channels from the sofa instead of repeatedly ordering the son to schlep to the console.
Several pages on, Lincoln dips into “The Morning Paper,” a sixty-word salute to the 6:00 a.m. delivery of the Tribune :
It pounds on the door, rude, oblivious
Reviving the household
Like that first rough CPR stroke
on the chest of a sprawled heart-attack victim .
Lincoln considers several others, “Sharpening a Pencil,” “The DustBuster,” “Maple Leaf.” All the same—short, modestly thoughtful celebrations of the utterly ordinary. The collection could have been called Ode to the Mundane .
Finally Lincoln turns to the front and burrows his way through all fifty poems. He finds the language clean and accessible, and every now and then Buford summons an image that’s mildly catchy. In a couple of instances, Lincoln realizes that he’s been prodded to a fresh regard for an element of everyday life (the “calming” paper clip that “tames clutter, the unruly mind”). Overall, the quality is several grade levels above greeting-card verse. Still, the poems are palliative, thin. Unimportant. Given Buford’s aggressiveness in pushing his work, Lincoln had been expecting something raw that drew on the African-American experience. But nothing in the collection even hints at the poet’s racial identity. Sitting at his desk, holding the overweight pages in his hands, Lincoln thinks the work could easily be the creation of a widow from suburban Milwaukee, writing by the window in her sunset years.
Lincoln is late for the movie, and Flam is cross—he’s finally had his big date, and he’s eager to dish the details. Instead, theyhave to rush to claim
“Good.”
Lincoln pours it on: “What a great idea!”
“Maybe. It’ll be expensive and risky.” Despite the hedge, Duddleston’s pleasure with himself dances around his face. “And this could even be the Cubs’ year. They’re hanging in there, despite the injuries. Wouldn’t it be something if they made it to the World Series? Do you know how long it’s been?”
Everyone who lives in Chicago and has avoided dementia can answer that question: “1945.”
Duddleston stands, apparently satisfied that his top deputy has got with the program. “Why don’t you give Bill a call and get it started.”
“Sure thing,” Lincoln says.
And lest there be any lingering question, the owner/editor-in-chief adds on the way out: “Today.”
11
L INCOLN HAS PLANS to join Flam in the evening at an advance press screening of the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man , but throughout the afternoon, even through a long, somewhat disjointed conversation with Bill Lemke (had he been drinking? would the new production rush be Lemke’s excuse to ignore all of Lincoln’s editorial suggestions?), Tony Buford’s trim package silently nags, forcing itself into Lincoln’s attention, like a cell phone left on vibration. Finally, toward the end of the day, Lincoln surrenders and retrieves the envelope from the far corner of his desk, where he’d hoped he could forget it among other unread manuscripts. He opens it and pulls out a rather thin sheath of thick, expensive paper, the kind used for letters from rich people or executives. L , says the title on the top sheet. “ Poetry by Antonio Buford . Copyright 2009.” (Is that title a reference to the unfortunate incident?)
Lincoln skims through the pages. The poems are numbered, and most are contained on a single sheet. The titles are short descriptors of objects, places, or simple activities: “The Brown Easy Chair,” “Shaving in the Shower,” “Masking Tape,” “North Wells Between Grand and Illinois.” Fifty poems in all. Lincoln flips to the end, then returns to one called “The Remote,”attracted by the possibly clever use of an adjective as a noun. No. It’s about the author’s Emancipation Day, when the family got a remote control device for the television and the father could change channels from the sofa instead of repeatedly ordering the son to schlep to the console.
Several pages on, Lincoln dips into “The Morning Paper,” a sixty-word salute to the 6:00 a.m. delivery of the Tribune :
It pounds on the door, rude, oblivious
Reviving the household
Like that first rough CPR stroke
on the chest of a sprawled heart-attack victim .
Lincoln considers several others, “Sharpening a Pencil,” “The DustBuster,” “Maple Leaf.” All the same—short, modestly thoughtful celebrations of the utterly ordinary. The collection could have been called Ode to the Mundane .
Finally Lincoln turns to the front and burrows his way through all fifty poems. He finds the language clean and accessible, and every now and then Buford summons an image that’s mildly catchy. In a couple of instances, Lincoln realizes that he’s been prodded to a fresh regard for an element of everyday life (the “calming” paper clip that “tames clutter, the unruly mind”). Overall, the quality is several grade levels above greeting-card verse. Still, the poems are palliative, thin. Unimportant. Given Buford’s aggressiveness in pushing his work, Lincoln had been expecting something raw that drew on the African-American experience. But nothing in the collection even hints at the poet’s racial identity. Sitting at his desk, holding the overweight pages in his hands, Lincoln thinks the work could easily be the creation of a widow from suburban Milwaukee, writing by the window in her sunset years.
Lincoln is late for the movie, and Flam is cross—he’s finally had his big date, and he’s eager to dish the details. Instead, theyhave to rush to claim
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