“Rewriting, like being a sports fan, is about the art of the possible” 🤩
Why the Vancouver Canucks tell you everything you need to know about writing | News from the New York Antiquarian Book Fair | New poetry | Reflections on William Carlos Williams | And more 🪻
Hello and welcome to another Friday round-up from the world of BookGo and beyond. We’re continuing to celebrate National Poetry Month this week, and while one famous poet once pooh-poohed April as “the cruellest month, / Breeding lilacs out of the dead land,” I’m feeling more in the spirit of the lines he cribbed that from:
“The General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
By Geoffrey Chaucer
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. Well it’s fair to say he had a bit of trouble with spelling did old Geoffrey Chaucer (check out this translation by Nevill Coghill if you prefer), but the rhythm trips along at a merry old pace, and maybe you get the sense of that wanderlusting spirit of those adventurers ready to “goon on pilgrimages” and seek out “sondry londes”!
And that’s why April rarely feels cruel to me: there’s the “yonge sonne” peaking its head out from behind the clouds, the “swich licóur” of spring rains, and of course – great books to read and poetry to celebrate. So with that in mind, let’s find out what’s in store this week.
We’ve got a packed agenda as ever. Nancy kicks us off with a report from her recent trip to the 64th New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. A whirlwind tour through some of the rarest books from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first shows just how rich the tapestry of literary history is and how bright the future of physical book collecting, reading, and writing will be. 📖
Next up, in honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve got another work to share from you from the BookGo family vaults: a beautiful short ballad “Eden’s Moon” by Callum Tichenor. We will be featuring more of Callum’s work as FreeReads in the weeks and months to come. 🖋️
Then we’re continuing our ongoing look at the seemingly surprising connections between medicine and writing with another exploration of a doctor-author. This time, Tom explores the writing of Modernist poet and long-term neighborhood doctor William Carlos Williams. As a bonus, we’ve also got a quick-fire interview with H. Robert John, neurosurgeon and co-author of the upcoming Squawk 7700! 🧬
Following that, in our regular segment on The Agony of Genius, Michael explores how supporting the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks has taught him everything he ever needed to know about writing – or at least how to bear the pain of it! 🏒
And finally, Tom closes out with yet another round of one to watch, read, and sip this week. Some more Chaucerian “swich licóur” to whet your whistle, perhaps? 🥃
With so much to cover, then, let’s get BookGoing! ☀️
The 65th New York International Antiquarian Book Fair
The ABAA from A to Z: From Abe’s Five Dollar portrait to Mao Zedong’s Little Red book
By Nancy Merritt Bell
The list of banned books grows long these days, so it was heartening to see long lines of booklovers attending the Antiquarian Book Fair last week, to ogle tomes that survived centuries – even their own banishment. From April 3 to April 6, with previews on April 2, it was ABAA week in New York City. No, not ABBA, the Swedish super-group, as one young visitor to the Park Avenue Armory enquired hopefully. This ABAA is much older and quieter than Stockholm’s fabulous foursome, but maybe even worth more. ABAA is the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, and this book fair, over the course of 65 years, has become the world’s leading antiquarian book fair.
This year’s incarnation was busier than others, being the largest so far with more than 200 dealers represented from over 20 countries. Exhibitors arrived at the armory from Argentina, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and filled the oddly modern, white Ikea-esque kiosks with their ancient tomes and paper artifacts. France, with 17 dealers, was very well represented along with the 35 from the United Kingdom alongside 106 U.S. booksellers.
New Yorkers were also well represented. Finding refuge from the spring rains and the many ills that plague the Big Apple, the number of attendees was in fact record high. Among them, there was a huge uptick in the number of young visitors and collectors. There was also an astonishing range of items on sale from across all forms, from old pop-up books to banned books to ancient, illuminated manuscripts, and of course Harry Potter books.
For me, it was book heaven, and it came appointed with a bibliophilic angel: Emma Walshe. My friend, colleague and book guru, Emma is a rare book specialist with Peter Harrington of London. She specializes in economics, philosophy, politics, and the sciences, with a particular focus on works by women in these fields. Emma completed her BA and MSt degrees in English at Oxford, and has also worked in the auction house and in archives sectors. Yes, proof there is life and a fabulous career after earning a degree in English!
While the books Peter Harrington had on exhibit were ancient, Emma quietly informed me that the shop was new at least by UK standards; founded in 1969, it was considered an upstart alongside the old boys like Henry Sotheran Ltd. – also exhibiting at the fair – which first started to gather their tomes about 200 years earlier in 1761.
But youth was not wasted on Peter Harrington. They had a great location, just north of the main doors, and some real finds including The Little Red book collection by Mao going for just $1.2 million. The books looked quite small, simple, even innocent, set out of harm’s way on a high shelf. But the book itself, collecting Mao’s thoughts and quotes, drove the Cultural Revolution through China from 1966-1976 and changed the world – and still does. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, tried to suppress the book, but he and the naysayers only increased the number of yaysayers. And so, the books’ survival – and its staggering price – was a testament to the awesome powers of banned books.
Yes, there was interest in these books Emma assured me, but the hot seller at the antique book fair, which seemed like a contradiction in terms, were books on American history and politics. One very popular item was not a book at all but a photograph at the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop. It was the “Lincoln Photograph” by Anthony Berger in which the seated President struck the “famous 5-dollar bill” pose. Take out your wallet and have a look – and be sure that fiver is a lot less than the photo inspiring it, going for $9,000.
The image was taken by Anthony Berger at Mathew Brady’s Washington gallery in February of 1864. Here, Lincoln wasn’t the heroically tall figure, face worn down to worry and wrinkles, but much more human: as Robert Todd Lincoln later said, this “the most satisfactory likeness” of his father ever. A real standout in the photo is the famous “Brady Chair” which Lincoln gave to Brady and upon which five more US presidents sat for portraits. In 2015, the chair sold for $449,000 at auction, almost half a million dollars more than the photo itself.
Another dealer had on display things rarely shown at all: banned and suppressed books and posters. Brooklyn’s own Fugitive Materials had a stunning array of posters, postcards and books on subjects from abortion to sex trade workers. They’d set themselves up as a kind of anti-rare book shop of shops with a mission to disrupt “informational privilege through archiving, publishing, and bookselling.” One very cool item was a brochure from Tech Guys, the group who fought the United States Department of Defense’s policy which denied security clearances to those thought to be gay—and this piece of literature and history was only $30.
There were many amazing items for sale everywhere, including a book that didn’t look like a book but a jewelry box you could read from. It was a hefty Gothic Revival edition of The Parables of our Lord from 1847, designed by H. Noel Humphrey, and full of delicious pictures and – now that I was acclimatized to the prices at the fair – was a real bargain at $1,800. I spied it at Type Punch Matrix’s exhibit, a wonderfully eccentric shop from Washington D.C. Ogling the handsome book, I could imagine a young Victorian lady on the stroll with it, enjoying the gorgeous illustrations, and also using it as a weapon to thump some young Victorian guy who was putting the moves on her.
Type Punch Matrix has had on exhibit far more fragile “moveables” and pop-up books, such as the brightly colored Environmentalist Pop-Up Help the Animals of Africa by Robert Sabuda, 1995, going for just $30.
And as ever the kids’ books included here – at the Peter Harrington exhibit and everywhere – the Harry Potter canon. The first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London: 1997) was going for $173,000 at Peter Harrington. My rare book guiding angel, Emma, had told me their edition had all the necessary points of a first edition, mistakes and all: it is a Bloomsbury imprint, 10-down-to-1 number line, the list of magical school supplies on p. 53 with “1 wand” appearing twice, and the endearing misprint of “Philospher’s” on the rear. But Type Punch Matrix had their first edition on sale for $3,500, even if it was made in the US.
There were bargains to be had at the Antiquarian Book Fair if you looked around--and if you don’t mind American editions. What was priceless was to see these thousands and thousands of books, posters and pamphlets live on, even if they were once banned, burned, or just dog-eared, or even priced out into the stratosphere: they prove Plato was right and that “the life of ideas is eternal.”
— Nancy
Read more about the 65th New York International Antiquarian Book Fair
https://www.abaa.org/blog/post/new-york-book-fair-highlights-2025
https://arthurious.com/i-visited-new-yorks-largest-antique-book-shows/
https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/a64367857/abaa-antiquarian-book-fair-new-york-2025/
🆓📚🎉 BookGo FreeReads 🆓📚🎉
In BookGo FreeReads, we feature excerpts and full works from BookGo’s wider network of family and friends.
Eden’s Moon
By Callum Tichenor
I put the rings around my eyes Upon your fingers at the shades – I took the heart out of my chest And burnt it in the alder glades. I sold my skin to milk and dust Returned my tears upon the sea And waited vacant as the air For you to come over to me. Now better than me greeting you When lights flow off the arching eve And better than me trailing you At morn before you take your leave I’ll marry you my darling one, And leave for aye the light of noon. For I have had another fruit That ripens under Eden’s moon.
BookGo will feature more of Callum’s poetry in the coming weeks and months.
Word Doctors: William Carlos Williams 👨⚕️
By Tom Elliott
A few weeks ago I wrote that we would be exploring some of the many authors who also worked as medical doctors, in anticipation of the release of Squawk 7700. We began with the life and work of John Keats, and you can read all about how his medical training filtered into his poetry here:
In this edition, continuing the theme of National Poetry Month, I have a poem from the great Modernist American poem William Carlos Williams, who as well as being a leading poet in the Imagist movement alongside Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), also worked for more than forty years as a medical doctor serving his local community in Rutherford, New Jersey. In fact, it was only while studying medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (a former home of yours truly) that he first met and befriended Pound and began to develop his more innovative and experimental poetic style.
Though his later poetry proved highly influential for the Beat generation of poets in the 1950s, it is one of his earlier works that I was thinking about today, very appropriate for this time of year: “April,” published in the collection Sour Grapes in 1921. (For those counting, that’s our third April-themed poem of the week.) Here it is:
April
By William Carlos Williams
If you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together. But there the sun coming up out of the nothing beyond the lake was too low in the sky, there was too great a pushing against him, too much of sumac buds, pink in the head with the clear gum upon them, too many opening hearts of lilac leaves, too many, too many swollen limp poplar tassels on the bare branches! It was too strong in the air. I had no rest against that springtime! The pounding of the hoofs on the raw sods stayed with me half through the night. I awoke smiling but tired.
Reading this quiet but complicated ode to Spring, it makes sense to learn that Keats himself (as another medical-student-poet) was a huge inspiration for Williams: “Keats was my God,” he wrote. As in much of Keats’ work, we have in Williams’ poem here a representation of the awesome power of the natural world as it overpowers the speaker. There is “too much of sumac buds,” too much of everything in fact. Note the anaphora (repetition): “too many… too many, too many… too strong.” It suggests that nature is an almost unbearable and overwhelming force that threatens to overwhelm the speaker: “I had no rest against that springtime!”
Again, as with Keats, we can also glimpse some of Williams’ medical training filtering into his imagery in the poem. The landscape of spring is carefully anatomized, and the turns of phrase seem decidedly diagnostic. The “sumac buds” are “pink / in the head / with the clear gum upon them,” like a patient flushed with color or reeling from some unforeseen build-up of “gum.” Elsewhere, the “poplar tassels” are both “swollen” and “limp” – I won’t even begin to speculate about which part of the body that implies…! Even the “lilac leaves” appear as if upon an operating table, ready for dissection with their “opening hearts.”
It is also this embodied language which makes the closing section of the poem so powerful for me, as the elements of the natural world come to have both a physical and psychical effect on the speaker, escalating almost to a violent conclusion but then returning in the final line to the simple, everyday image of the speaker’s waking smile:
The pounding of the hoofs on the raw sods stayed with me half through the night. I awoke smiling but tired.
In these lines, Williams capture two ideas with which many of us will be deeply familiar: how many of us have had a sense, at some point, of the sublime power of nature? At the same time, though, how many of us have also happened to wake up simply tired – but with a little smile? It is this mediation between the sublimity of the natural world – with its sun that arises “out of nothing beyond the lake” – and the quiet everyday action of waking up that gives the poem its true power.
And this, for me, is what makes Williams such a compelling poet. Williams said that he was “determined to use the material I knew” and focus on “local conditions” as a writer, crafting a familiar-sounding voice out of his everyday life in Rutherford, NJ, inspired by his interactions with people and patients. Is it too much to wonder, then, whether precisely this idea of localism is contained in the double meaning of the opening three lines of the poem?
If you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together.
At one level it’s an existential reflection: an almost nostalgic lament of the fact that the speaker (I) and the reader (you) have chosen not to enter “another state” of mind or of matter – a place of quiet rest, even death. At another level, though, it’s just a geographical description about the state they’re in: New Jersey? Pennsylvania? Perhaps, if they’d gone somewhere else, the speaker implies, the landscape would look a little different, the experience would feel a little, things might feel a little quieter.
It’s in this focus on the local, the specificity and detail of the prosaic everyday, that Williams finds his poetic voice. It’s a voice colored as much by his day-to-day work as a neighborhood doctor as by his lifelong love of literature. And it’s this that makes poetry so compelling to me.
— Tom
Copyright notice: Sour Grapes was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain in the USA.
As stated, we’re celebrating a whole host of medical authors at the moment because we are very excited for the arrival of Squawk 7700, written in collaboration with neurosurgeon H. Robert John, whose years of experience helped create this thriller about homicidal air passengers and the investigative and medical teams doing everything to stop them. As so many professionals are readers and writers at heart, we asked the author a quick-fire round of questions about his habits, hopes, and practices. Check it out below!
BookGo Interview with H. Robert John
1. What books are on your nightstand?
Outlive by Peter Attia, Bible by various authors
2. What is your favorite mode of reading?
Holding a book in my hands
3. What is your favorite mode of writing?
Sitting at a computer
What is the best advice anyone ever gave you about writing?
“Don’t say more than your data does.” (My writing was mostly peer reviewed medical studies).
5. What is the best adaptation of book-into-film you ever saw?
The Harry Potter movies
6. If you were a character in a book, who would you be?
The Sundance Kid
7. What is your day job? How did you come to it?
Retired. And through years of hard work!
8. What made you want to be a writer?
I needed a non-physical hobby, and writing fiction requires minimal research!
9. Is there any book which you wish that you wrote?
In the words of Kamala Harris “nothing comes to mind”
10. You are having a dinner party: what 3 authors would you invite?
CS Lewis, PG Wodehouse, King Solomon
The Agony of Genius: Lessons in Life and Writing from the Vancouver Canucks! 🏒
By Michael McKinley
The Vancouver Canucks of the NHL have taught me almost everything I know about disappointment. Sure, I was disappointed in kindergarten when I figured out that time eventually runs out on us all (my Irish DNA kicked in early), and I was disappointed when I first got fired from a job, or first dumped by a girlfriend. But it is the Canucks, with their inability to win a championship, who have truly rewarded my continued faith in them by returning epic disappointment to me.
So how does this connect to writing? Well, we sports fans know that rooting for a team means rooting for a happy ending. Your team wins, and in the triumph of victory, your faith in their story is rewarded. If they do not win, then in your disappointment you must decide to cheer for them again next season, and this is a type of rewriting.
You could always choose to cheer for another team, and in doing so, find another ending. Would it be happier than that which you have had? I don’t know. My team has never won it all, and yet I stick with them. Am I insane? Or do I believe their story will one day end the way I want it to end? With the Stanley Cup raised high above their Canuckleheads? Yes, I guess I do. It’s my continual rewrite.
Being a sports fan, then, is being a great rewriter. You want your story to end in triumph, but the control of that narrative is out of your hands. So you must continually revise your expectations to accommodate reality—your team’s and your own.
It’s like when you are looking at editing your book. Did it end the way you wanted it to end? Or expected it to end? If so, your team won. If not, then unlike the sports fan, you can revise the story to change the outcome. This, to me, is my favorite part of writing. You have already created the story, so now you can sit back and look at how you can make that story better. Truer to your impulse for creating it in the first place.
Rewriting, like being a sports fan, is about the art of the possible. When you look to revise a work, again you return to the original inspiration for your story. Did you fulfill it? What is missing? What is working? What can you do to make it complete? Why should we care?
Sports fans have all those questions aswirl in their minds, as well, but the difference is, while we can answer them, we cannot affect them. We cannot make our teams win simply by cheering for them. But we believe we can and will rewrite this belief from cradle to grave if we must… until our team wins — or time runs out for us.
That’s why, in the end, I will put my faith in the re- of writing. You can make the good triumph and the bad suffer on the page, in the way you cannot on the ice. Will I stop cheering for the Canucks, and hope that they will one day figure it all out? No. Probably not, even as this NHL season comes to a close, the Canucks are eliminated, after finding a way to lose their playoff position in the last 20 games of the 82 game season. There is nothing I can do about it except rewrite their story for next year. Or to change teams.
However, will I rewrite the story I have created on the page to make it end with a win, in whatever way that win connects to the story (i.e. Hamlet wins but everyone dies in the end)? Yes, I will. That’s the power rewriting gives us, as hope connects with your imagination to create a new reality. So, once you type “The End,” then the fun begins, as your imagination is unleashed to make what you have created even better in the “off season” as it were. And when the season starts again, when your work is ready to meet the marketplace, then everything is once again possible. Just like it is for the sports fan, with the difference being that your rewriting has already made it a win.
— Michael
Watch One 📺, Read One 📖, Sip One 🍹
By Tom Elliott
Another week, another round up of things to watch, read, and sip over the course of the weekend.
📺 One to watch: The White Lotus, created by Mike White (2021 – 2025)
I know I know I’m late to the glamorous hotel party, but I’ve finally caught the White Lotus bug – just in time for the release of its season three finale this week. Admittedly, there have been some grumbles about the handling of that finale (no spoilers from me but there are in these reviews from Sopan Deb in The New York Times and Michael Hodan in The Guardian). But as someone coming to the series fresh in the last few weeks I’ve been largely taken by the show’s smart exploration of intergenerational tension, its at times outrageous and at times rather subte fatalistic plotting, and its pertinent (if somewhat obvious) class commentary.
If you haven’t yet seen it, each season of the anthology series takes place in different upscale hotel: the first in Hawaii, the second in Sicily, and the most recent in Singapore. Mike White’s writing is sharp throughout, and it uses the well-trodden ground of a remote hotel murder mystery (see Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None for the perfect example of the form) to bring together changing casts of well-measured caricatures who will have you squirming in your seats. The journey through each season is worth the trouble, and if you’ve got a problem with where it ends up we can talk about that when you get there…
📖 One to read: “The Lotos-Eaters,” by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1832)
Continuing a theme and connecting poems of the past with performances of the present, my pick for something to explore on the page this week is the middlingly long poem by former English poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” an excerpt of which is quoted late on in the first season of The White Lotus. Here are the lines, spoken by hotel manager Armond in Hawaii:
Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labor be?
Again, no spoilers, but the lines ring true with The White Lotus’ exploration of the divide between the wealthy and elite hotel guests and the native Hawaiian islanders required to serve their every need. The Lotus-Eaters feature originally in Homer’s Odyssey, in an episode when Odysseus and his crew land on an island and his men encounter a group of humans who feed on lotus. They offer Odysseus’ men “sweet fruit,” and as a result his men lose “the will to come back.” As Emily Wilson describes in her recent and wonderful translation of The Odyssey:
They wanted only to stay there,
feeding on lotus with the Lotus-Eaters.
They had forgotten home.
The desire for a life devoid of labor, represented by the leisured classes, is the focus of The White Lotus’ critique. Tennysson’s poem, drawing on its classical roots, explores the experience of these mariners, required to row their master home to Ithaca, and reminds us of the ongoing tensions between those required to serve and those enjoying the servings. A fitting background to The White Lotus on scree
Illustration of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters” by W. E. F. Britten (1901)
🍹 One to sip: Ramos Gin Fizz
Of course, if I was sticking with the lotus theme, my tipple of choice this week would be a Blue Lotus Tea. It has been used as a psychoactive drink, a natural medicine, and an aphrodisiac for thousands of years. But since it’s not currently approved for human consumption in the United States (though it is legal to grow, sell, and purchase), I’ll stick to something you can find in your local cocktail bar.
The choice is something similarly floral and with another storied history: the Ramos Gin Fizz, invented by Herbert C. Ramos in that cauldron of intercultural cocktail combinations: nineteenth-century New Orleans. It’s one of the longest cocktails in terms of time required for creation, traditionally demanding a full fifteen (fifteen!) minutes of shaking. It combines the delicious sweet flavour of orange blossom syrup with gin, lemon juice, lime juice, egg white, sugar, cream, and soda water, making for an incredibly frothy, sweet and sharp fizz.
While Ramos invented the drink in the late 1880s, it wasn’t until after prohibition that it secured its place in cocktail history, when he sold it to the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, where you’ll still find it on the menu today, alongside that city’s even more celebrated concoction, the Sazerac, but that’s a story for another Friday…!
Find the recipe here. See whether you can hold out the requisite fifteen minutes of shaking before you think your time might be better spent drinking After all: “why should life all labor be?”
That’s all for this week! We’re loving every minute of this BookGo journey, and we’re always looking to connect with more readers and writers. If you like what we’re doing, let us know in the comments below, and please give us a hand by liking, sharing, and –if you haven’t already – subscribing to BookGo!
See you next Friday! 💖