twelve
by John Yamrus
i’m sure it goes without saying that i’m an avid reader…i’ve got books everywhere…laying all over the house, in various stages of completion. there’s no need for me to carry a book from room to room, because there’s already a book waiting for me when i get there.
but i’m not only an avid, compulsive reader…one who more often than not has been known to annoyingly move his lips when he reads…but i’m also an avid and compulsive reader of book dedications.
over the course of my 71 years…most of them spent reading books and their dedications, i’ve read all kinds and most of them are forgettable, but every now and then one stands out. noir novelist Cornell Woolrich once dedicated one of his early books to his typewriter:
To
Remington Portable No. NC69411
dedications can almost be grouped into loose types. there’s the one Eliot did for The Waste Land, which he dedicated to Ezra Pound:
il miglior fabbro
translated, it means “to the better craftsman”…but did he have to do it in Italian? it reeks of Left Bank Elitism, but, hell, he was in Paris, and he did know Sylvia Beach and Hemingway and James Joyce and Virginia Woolf…he almost had no choice but to do it in Italian.
then there’s Thomas Wolfe (the elder, the good one)…he dedicated Look Homeward, Angel to Maxwell Perkins, for my money the greatest editor who ever lived. that one was a bit of a cautionary tale…that dedication. writing a book and dedicating it to your editor can open up a whole can of worms, like it certainly did for Wolfe…a professional mis-step that dogged him for the rest of his life!
those are just two examples of the practical type of dedication…part paying a debt and part business (don’t ever forget, at the end of the day writing is a business).
there’s also the homey type of dedication…the one where the book is dedicated (depending again on the kind of book it is…what it’s about)…those kind are most often dedicated to the dog, the wife or the kids, or all three at once. those are usually practical, workman-like dedications, mostly utilitarian in form and focus.
and you can’t ever leave out the funny dedication…those often do double duty: first, to show that the author is a regular kind of guy/person, and second, they can pretty much be seen as just another part of the body of the book. those often go something like this:
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this book is dedicated
to
the lovely Miss Laura Simms
who rocked my world
in 9th grade
at a party at Bill Fabini’s house
in the Fall of 1972.
every one of those dedications have a purpose and a function, but what can you make of Woolrich dedicating his book to his typewriter? nobody benefits there…he’s not paying a debt or settling a score or trying to look cool or intelligent or anything…he’s just dedicating his book to his left hand guy…his partner in crime…his Sancho Panza…he’s dancin’ with the one who brung him…and that’s really, really neat. he didn’t make any points from it…it didn’t further his career or solidify any connections (personal or professional)…it just is what it is. maybe that’s why i like it. maybe that’s why whenever i read other dedications to other books, i always hold them up to the high standard set by Cornell Woolrich.
maybe that’s also why every single one of my 35 or 36 books are dedicated to my wife…i’m paying a debt…i’m being homey and folksy and sometimes even funny…and i’m also in a strange sort of way acknowledging that the best dedication that can ever be done, has already been done, and every single one of us should just give it up and dedicate all our books to
Cornell Woolrich
and
Remington Portable No. NC69411
In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction and a children’s book). He has also had nearly 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A book of his SELECTED POEMS was just released in Albania, translated into that language by Fadil Bajraj, who is best known for his translations of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Pound and others.
A number of Yamrus’s books and poems are taught in college and university courses. His most recent book is SELECTED POEMS: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT (Concrete Mist Press, 542pp).
