(Excerpt)
Reading: the very word is like a bell/that tolls me back from thee to my sole self. Actually, Keats wrote Forlorn, but where I wrote Reading on the first line of this clean yellow sheet, the rest of Keats\u27 line came unbidden, and since I\u27m not by nature one to ignore the unbidden, I thought I\u27d better write it down. Now, why did it come? Well, I\u27ll go with \u27\u27words like bells -and I can think of all kinds of bells: reading\u27s a school hell-as in I\u27ve got to get the reading done or in That was a great book we read in class ; it\u27s an alarm, a wake-up call; it\u27s a telephone bell, a door bell, some guest come calling, invited or not; it\u27s a chapel bell, something holy happening, something that engages us full-length, then pulls us beyond supposition. For Keats, forlorn was a funeral bell, tolling to him; for me reading\u27s something I need to do to keep from some kinds of dying. I suspect that\u27s so for you, too
