“Don’t ever forget that God speaks to us in pleasure, as well as challenges and growth pains. Our genuine desires and yearnings, they don’t feed the greed that is destroying our world if we keep listening.”

—Jennifer Louden, The Comfort Queen’s Guide to Life

It occurred to me as I was watching the last disc of the second season of Lark Rise to Candleford (more about that later) that a number of enjoyable books and movies are set in and around post offices. For instance:

Rita Mae Brown’s series of cozy mysteries starring Mary Minor Haristeen (“Harry”) and her animal companions, Mrs. Murphy (a cat) and Tucker (a Welsh corgi). In the first of the series, Wish You Were Here, Crozet, VA postmistress Harry sets out to solve the mystery of who killed a wealthy local contractor. Her pets, and all the other animals in the books, communicate with each other and help to solve the crimes.

My new obsession favorite show is the afore-mentioned Lark Rise to Candleford, a BBC adaptation of Flora Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novels about the countryside of northeast Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England. These stories were first published in the 1940s as Lark Rise, Over to Candleford and Candleford Green. (They're now printed as a trilogy in one volume.)

According to Wikipedia, Thompson writes in the third person, as narrator “Laura Timmins” and this device allows her to comment on the action without imposing herself into the work. I feel real affection for the show’s characters—young Laura, postmistress Dorcas Lane, Laura’s poor-but-noble family, even the gossipy Pratt sisters. Once I finish with the four seasons of the TV program (two down, two to go), I’m going to hunt up the novels themselves.

The Postmistress is set in both Cape Cod and Europe. The story follows three women affected in various ways by the war. Publisher’s Weekly described it like this: “Weaving together the stories of three very different women loosely tied to each other, debut novelist Blake takes readers back and forth between small town America and war-torn Europe in 1940. Single, 40-year-old postmistress Iris James and young newlywed Emma Trask are both new arrivals to Franklin, Mass., on Cape Cod. While Iris and Emma go about their daily lives, they follow American reporter Frankie Bard on the radio as she delivers powerful and personal accounts from the London Blitz and elsewhere in Europe. While Trask waits for the return of her husband—a volunteer doctor stationed in England—James comes across a letter with valuable information that she chooses to hide.”

In the movie Dear God, a scam artist (Greg Kinnear) must perform community service in order to avoid a prison sentence. While working in the Dead Letter Office, “a mix-up with a letter addressed to God soon has Kinnear and his fellow employees sending gifts and goodwill to the needy,” according to the description on Amazon.com. This sweet movie also stars Laurie Metcalf and Tim Conway.

While looking up descriptions of Dear God and The Postmistress, I happened upon the following two titles, which I haven’t read:

The Post-Office Girl, by Stefan Zweig. Described as “an unexpected and haunting foray into noir fiction by one the masters of the psychological novel,” The Post-Office Girl follows the ups and downs of post office girl Christine, who works in a provincial Austrian post office while also caring for her sick mother.

Then there’s Charles Bukowski’s post office, the story of Henry Chinaski, a postman, whose “three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze and racetrack betting.” I’m not sure this one sounds appealing to me, but it’s described as a “classic.”

Why, I wonder, does the Post Office figure in these stories? Perhaps because the PO is the center of life in many small towns. The postmistresses (or masters) know everyone, and everyone’s business, and the threads of life seem to weave through the PO and out to every corner of the town. What do you think? Where have some of your favorite books been set?

Some of us have more active fantasy lives than others, but all of us have them. Here Karin Gottshall, who lives in Vermont, shares a variety of loneliness that some of our readers may have experienced. [Introduction by Ted Koosner.]

More Lies

Sometimes I say I’m going to meet my sister at the café—

even though I have no sister—just because it’s such

a beautiful thing to say. I’ve always thought so, ever since

I read a novel in which two sisters were constantly meeting

in cafés. Today, for example, I walked alone

on the wet sidewalk, wearing my rain boots, expecting

someone might ask where I was headed. I bought

a steno pad and a watch battery, the store windows

fogged up. Rain in April is a kind of promise, and it costs

nothing. I carried a bag of books to the café and ordered

tea. I like a place that’s lit by lamps. I like a place

where you can hear people talk about small things,

like the difference between azure and cerulean,

and the price of tulips. It’s going down. I watched

someone who could be my sister walk in, shaking the rain

from her hair. I thought, even now florists are filling

their coolers with tulips, five dollars a bundle. All over

the city there are sisters. Any one of them could be mine.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Karin Gottshall, whose most recent book of poetry is Crocus, Fordham University Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from the New Ohio Review, No. 8, Fall 2010, by permission of Karin Gottshall and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

I like poetry—or at least I do when I take the time to read it. Every year I vow I’ll read more, and I make one or two purchases in hopeful expectation of doing so. I keep a small stack of poetry books by my bed, thinking that a poem or two taken at bedtime will be just the ticket. (Usually, however, I doze off while reading the latest novel I’ve checked out from the library and never get to that poem reading. Maybe I should do it first thing in the morning?)

I’ve decided that’s OK, though. I’m not going to make reading poetry into another “should.” And you *shouldn’t* either! Even David Orr, New York Times poetry critic and author of the book Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry (a book I want to read) told NPR’s Linda Wertheimer, “I don’t know that people ought to bother. I think that poetry is one of those choices you make in life that’s…it’s not really susceptible to reasoning or arguments…. I think a better way to approach the question ‘why bother’ [to read poetry] is not to answer it—but rather just to say that if you do bother, it can be worthwhile.” 

So I’m not going to try to convince you to read poetry—but in honor of National Poetry Month, I am going to share with you a few ways you can make poetry part of your life, if you want to.

I continue to love American Life in Poetry with their weekly emailed poems (I post one here every other week), but you can also get a poem-a-day from Poets.org. 

To capture the poems (or parts of poems) you like, start a “commonplace book.” You can also add quotes and sayings that are meaningful to you, and end up with a beautiful and inspiring volume.

Start an online poem notebook here. 

Listen to poems read by their authors here or look for Poetry Speaks, a combination book and cd package, at your library or at a bookstore (or online). I found it thrilling to hear the voices of T.S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay and e.e. cummings reading their own work. 

Do you have a favorite poet or favorite poem? One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost’s A Line-Storm Song. I just love the lines: “Come over the hills and far with me,/ And be my love in the rain.” 

“The true test of poetry is sincerity and vitality. It is not rhyme, or metre, or subject. It is nothing in the world

but the soul of man as it really is.”

—Amy Lowell

When I was in elementary school, my school produced the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. (As a chorus member. I did understudy Lucy, but my friend Roxanne refused to get sick or break a leg so that I could assume the role.) One of my favorite songs from this play is, fittingly enough, “Happiness Is.” The lyrics, written by Clark Gesner, sweetly show how children know that it’s the simple, everyday things that bring happiness, things like: learning to whistle, two kinds of ice cream, five different crayons (obviously written in a simpler time!) or sharing a secret. (If you know the song, it’s playing in your head right now isn’t it? For those of you who don’t know it, click here.) 

There are plenty of things to be happy about in my life, and sure enough, plenty of them are simple. I made a list of some happy things—there’s some overlap with my list of 100 things I love, but it was a good reminder to me how simple happiness can be.

Here’s a partial listing of some of my happy things:

The smell of a horse.

The taste of chocolate.

Taking a nap, wrapped in a cozy blanket.

Slipping into a bed made with fresh sheets.

Sitting outside listening to birds sing.

Getting lost in a really good book.

Starting a new journal.

Waking up in the morning with a free day in front of me. (Yes, it happens, but only if I schedule it.)

Singing along with the car radio while driving with the sunroof open.

Go ahead and make your own list. Then come back here and share some of your happy things—I want to know what makes you happy!