Friends of the Libraries' Guest Columnist Features A library in Eden By Wendy McVicker October 9, 2005 The Athens Messenger

They are building a new library in Eden. That is, my alma mater, a small college in the Midwest, is building a new library. The one I used was shared with a theological seminary across the street, named Eden.

My college had been a Catholic girls' school, led by a somewhat renegade band of Sisters until sometime in the 1960s, when the nun running it left the order, married a Jewish businessman from New York, and turned the school into a freewheeling co-ed liberal arts haven, a place where suddenly, by the early 1970s, frisbees were flying over the patchy lawns and men in skirts sashayed through the cafeteria on their way to class. Art projects appeared (I remember discovering a tiny Stonehenge in the grass), and the ghost who haunted the old chapel was probably stunned by the thudding of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones over her head.

Entering this maelstrom, I immediately sought calm in the library. A relatively new building at the time, it had a series of alcoves where tall windows looked down over lawns and trees, and where the architect had fashioned struts that echoed the shapes of tree and branches, although I suppose they were also meant to suggest a more religious tree-like form. What drew me was not the religious imagery, but the secular quiet, the hush I associated with the library of my hometown, a cool brick building with marble floors and pale light falling onto walls of books. In that quiet I could meet other thinkers and dreamers, and commune with them in my own way. By those tall windows, in the subtly fragrant hush of paper and leather and soft chairs, I could read and think and scribble and daydream for hours.

Those libraries gave me space for thought. I could range freely over the shelves, pulling out anything that caught my eye, and spending as much or as little time with it as I wanted. If someone said, "Read this," (and many did), that only gave me new vistas, new tributaries to explore, new ways to stretch my ability to make connections and enfold everything into my universe.

I think now that those library experiences must have nudged me on the way to becoming a poet, introducing me to language smiths working in many tongues and making me desire silence as well as words in a poem, the white space that illuminates the words within it.

Libraries are oases, little Edens, places that encourage contemplation and revelation. It is right that we enter these places without paying at the door, that we enjoy them without commercial interruption. It is right that we, as a society, tend these gardens, so that the thinkers and dreamers among us (and aren't they in each of us?) have a place to grow.

Wendy McVicker is a poet known to many Athens County students through Poetry in the Schools programs.