Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 63)

them into a garbage can to haul to the curb, then flinging them, often one by one, onto the common trash hill my neighbors and I have built. In fact, the ribs on my left side are still tender from the effort to finish the job this past weekend. I keep reminding myself it’s foolish to regret a lost book. All but a few of those I’ve thrown away are probably available in new editions, in a library, in a used-book shop somewhere. And a book is just a temporary transition, after all, between two minds, the writer’s and the reader’s. So what have I lost, really? But each book had its own story of how it had come to rest on one of my shelves. The Tain and the other volumes we found on that first trip to Europe came home in Marsha’s yellow suitcase, the one we emptied of clothes as we traveled to make more room for books unavailable in those days in the States. The American Merchant Seaman's Manual had been my father’s. The thin volume of poems by grammar-school students, including the first poem ever published by a promising young versifier named Wystan Hugh Auden, was the very touching gift of an organization I had served that knew of my love for his later poetry. Now nothing but pulp, they have a new story to tell me of how quickly things pass. (And, of course, my own books rotting among the work of so many other writers have their own lesson to teach me about the glory of this world.) One of the books I lost was The Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop. Her villanelle, “One Art,” repeats a line I’ve learned is true: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” But she insists, over and over again, it’s never really a “disaster.” I know she’s right about that, too — though surrounded by my past, corrupting page by page, I find it a difficult truth to accept. Oct. 27, 2005 Two Cities When the levees crumbled in New Orleans, the flood that inundated the city and killed hundreds left some neighborhoods untouched and others ruined. As the dry sections have sprung back to life — like the Louisiana irises and other marsh plants that are turning parts of the city green again — the traces of Hurricane Katrina are quickly disappearing. Residents have returned, streets are crowded with traffic, and restaurants are jammed. But along the lakefront, in the Lower Ninth Ward, and across New Orleans East, a curfew remains in effect from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. Abandoned cars strew the roads. Shattered windows gape unrepaired from walls stained white by the salty flood. Roofs are still pierced with the holes punched out by families trapped in their attics by rising water. Each house continues to announce in blue paint the grim tally of the living and the dead found by rescue teams after the water subsided. And everything is glazed with dust as gray as ash — all the color has been drained from these once vibrant neighborhoods. Floodwaters in a Gentilly neighborhood yard, New Orleans. Winter 2005-06/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 63

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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