Ode to a Poetry Pavilion

Pavilion Park Finally Has A Pavilion

Our library park finally has a pavilion!

Since late 2021, we’ve had a build-it-yourself pavilion sitting on the library grounds, waiting to be put together. It’s one of those open-on-each side rectangle deals, with the tin roof. Very nice. We’ve been calling the park behind the library Pavilion Park now for years, and the park has never even had a pavilion in it!

Until today.

A group of four contractors showed up this morning, spread the many, many pieces out, drilled some holes, poured some concrete, climbed up on ladders and tada! We are now and truly a library with a pavilion in Pavilion Park.

I can’t wait until the community begins to picnic or take walks back there. We plan on holding story times, and maybe even a concert or two. Maybe Michael Czarnecki or Ed Pacht would be interested in giving a reading under the pavilion? Maybe Dan and Faith Senie might like to play under the pavilion? We’ll figure that out for the spring - for now, we just wanted to make sure it was erected before the snow flies.

The pavilion has, to me anyway, been the perfect metaphor for some of the best and some of the worst of library culture.

Some of the worst because it took us so long to figure out how to raise the money, gather the workers, and make time and space to do something as simple as erect a pavilion. It wasn’t THAT expensive, but the gears of bureaucracy move slowly and often it feel like libraries are at the very bottom of a town’s priority list. Building it kept getting bumped and bumped again.

Some of the best, however, because the community was inspired to come together after the passing of a beloved patron, and my friend, Joe Forest. Joe was a coach, a teacher and a poet. His frequent visits to our library always results in conversation about politics, literature and social issues. I looked forward to his visits. He gave me the chance to talk about poetry, and sometimes to vent. He let me be myself.

I miss him.

Anyway, when he passed away earlier this year, at his service, he directed that donations be made to the library he loved. And the donations came, boy did they ever. Joe’s final decision in his life was the one that allowed us to be able to finally afford to erect that pavilion, which in the spring will be memorialized as The Joe Forest Poetry Pavilion.

I need to mention that several patrons and local organizations also donated to help us reach out goal.

There’s a lot to say here, and I’ll be saying it slowly over the months. Joe loved this place, this specific place, this place that sometimes feels like the only grounded place in the universe - the only place that isn’t spinning. The only place of certainty.

I wish he was still here, of course. I’d rather that than the pavilion if given the choice. But he didn’t give me that choice, so instead we’ll now - thanks to him - have a place of spoken word, an outpost to rage against the cruel universe or to provide warmth against the backdrop of the enormous evergreen and bittersweet.

That spot will become a place where kids can gather to hear stories, where adults can gather to hear songs and where anyone can sit in a field of wild flowers for just a few minutes to re-center.

To that end, here’s a line from Nikki Giovanni’s poem My First Memory. Thanks Joe, hope you’re reading Simic, or Whitman, or Hall from some cloud someplace. Hope you like our new poetry stage.

My First Memory

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
     wood floor
A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
     too short
          For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big