Recently San Francisco Center for the Book had their yearly fund raising dinner which features an auction of prints, book arts ephemera, and other donations to the center. My favorite item up for bid was an evening with Richard Lang as “the Poetry Jukebox.” Richard, the proprietor of SF Electric Works, has memorized 129 poems and will recite them by number or author. To get the crowd fired up for the bidding and the rest of the auction, Richard gave a small sampling of his repertoire — first by author (the poem below by e. e. cummings, with a very sweet last line) and then by number (Mary Oliver’s Happiness) and finally a verse by Dante (in Italian!).
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too nearyour slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously) her first roseor if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands— e. e. cummings
Richard in his jukebox,
taken by Steve Woodall
You can see some of the prints
that were auctioned here