Good Graces
Richard Holinger
One: The Review
Two months before COVID forced everyone inside, I published a volume of poetry, North of Crivitz. The pieces, formal and free verse, featured Northwoods, rural, and small-town settings. The book sold like most first books of poetry written by an unknown—badly. I doubt more than 200 books were sold.
Months later, on Amazon, I saw a lone one-star review:
★☆☆☆☆ Remember Dave Etter
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2021
I dislike that this hack passes himself as a poet and a [sic] attempts to work himself into the good graces of real poets. He had no respect for other poets and recently sold inscribed books by Dave Etter, who considered him a friend.
Stunned. Horrified. Shocked. Confused. Who excoriated me as a poet and person? Who knew about selling my books and would lambaste me as a traitor? What did my book’s worth have to do with Dave, an award-winning Illinois poet I knew as a friend?
I shared the review with friend and novelist Patrick Parks who advised me to write Amazon and have it deleted as hate speech. “It’s not a review,” he said. “It’s an attack.”
I filled out Amazon’s complaint form then searched the internet for E. Lewis, even though believing both actions a waste of time. More than a year later, the review stands; read it for yourself.
I did, however, find E. Lewis.
Two: The Books
Books, literally, lined the walls. Wallpapered them. Three to four thousand. Our cheap, built-in bookcases ran the length of two walls. Most books I bought in my twenties and thirties, when used bookstores were my Ithaca. I collected college and grad school assigned and unassigned texts and books recommended by teachers and friends. Most were first editions, many signed.
When my son bought a house, my wife and I decided to sell ours and live with him. The books needed to be moved or sold. Libraries were no longer the go-to drop-off place for pre-read books. There was limited storage space at the new house. My son only wanted my fly fishing books, and my daughter wanted only the limited edition, signed Leaves of Grass.
I faced a Sophie’s Choice. Books inscribed by poet Dave Etter (for whom I had written many reviews and essays when he published these books), no one in my family wanted.
Even if I could find bookshelf space, to what end? To bookend on a mantel or living room sideboard to impress the unimpressible visitor who never heard of Dave? To impress literary friends who might then be envious or derogatory? To collect dust?
Unlike Sophie giving up half her beloveds, I gave up virtually all of mine.
Three: The Pickup
Because the collection included some truly valuable items, I queried antiquarian and rare booksellers. A bookseller from Uncharted Books came out from Chicago who, after three or four hours, had three or four neat stacks on the floor and named a price. “I can go over each book if you want,” he said.
“Not necessary.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” he asked, meaning the figure he’d given me.
He was paying me to take books out of the house, and if I couldn’t trust an antiquarian and rare book dealer supposedly in love with books, who could I trust?
When he left, I couldn’t tell that any books had been removed.
“Are you sad?” my wife asked, “at seeing your books go?”
Yes, the loss felt like a death in the family.
Four: Dave
To get to his house in the 1980s and 90s, I travel fifteen minutes west to on Route 38, a two-lane highway leading eventually to Dekalb, turn off Elburn’s Main Street and take a couple rights. Dave Etter sits on the front porch of his two-story white house looking comfortable and kickback. He holds a pipe in one hand, a cup of coffee or a glass of beer, depending on the time of day, in the other. I park on the street’s grassy shoulder and walk under the tall, full, green trees to meet him. He delivers a witty welcome then puts out his hand and says in his low, gravelly voice, “Thanks for comin’ out,” like I’d crossed the state to get there. He gives me that half-smile beneath a scraggly Mark Twain mustache, eyes twinkling behind thick-framed glasses. Dave is balding and has the paunch that doctors annually warn against, suggesting exercise and diet.
Occasionally my wife and I are invited to join Dave and his wife Peggy, along with son George and daughter Emily, for dinner in their Victorian dining room. However, I prefer days Dave asks me to come over by myself, when he and I dive into poetry and listen to his favorite jazz musicians (Thelonious Monk more often than not) on his record player in the small, cramped library packed with reading chair, bookcases, and overflowing, disorganized desk. Dave might sign a recently released book, talk about how he’s fed up with the poetry published in literary magazines today, and muse about his favorite Midwestern poets, Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg.
In the last letter I received from Dave, in April, 2006, nine years before he died, he reveals, “Yes, I am very much writing poems and smoking much, much less. Don’t want my heart doctor getting himself all bent out of shape. If I live to be 100—or even 90—I will tell everyone I owe it to smoking my pipe as much as possible and in writing poems—two things they will know nothing about.”
Five: The Reviewer
I need no private detective to find E. Lewis; the internet proves sleuth enough. After culling several misses when googling “E. Lewis,” I try “E. Lewis, Elburn, il” and find an Emily E. Lewis and a Michael Lewis with a phone number and Elburn zip code along with information they also lived in Lanark, Illinois, where Dave last lived.
The Gates Street address sounds familiar as an Elvis classic. I Google Map it, afraid and excited in equal measure at where the red teardrop will point.
And there it is, northwest of Elburn’s downtown. With two fingers I scroll closer, closer, closer, until I’m on top of the house where Dave lived before moving west where houses and taxes were cheaper, and where he died in 2015. Soon after he moved, I asked in a letter what was shaking in Lanark. “Not much, no names or pictures in the papers, no midnight calls for help, no drive-by shootings of East Coast poets living in New Jersey. Dull times, these.”
But his family, or part of it, might still live in the Elburn house. Had Dave’s daughter, Emily, married a Lewis? My hunt for the name ended in a Schwarz Funeral Home obituary for Dave, July 10, 2015:
Dave Etter is survived by his wife, Peggy to who he was married to since 1959. Also, daughter Emily Etter (Michael) Lewis….
E. Lewis=Emily Etter Lewis. Coincidence? Possibly. I wanted it to be. But all indications suggested my selling the books Dave signed had provoked a daughter’s wrath, spurred her to attack me as a poet and person because, to her, I had betrayed Dave’s friendship. It didn’t matter that Dave and I conversed for hours about music and poetry; didn’t matter we shared readings and signings; didn’t matter I wrote several reviews of his books; didn’t matter we shared handwritten (mine) and typewritten (his) letters; didn’t matter that I valued Dave as a friend, mentor, and muse.
What mattered was Emily believed I’d heartlessly and greedily sold the books for financial gain.
Five: The Meeting
It never happened. And never will, unless Emily and I run into each other at the Jewel two blocks from where she lives.
My first instinct upon discovering E. Lewis’s identity was to call her, explain why I sold Dave’s books. Tell her I was sorry.
I couldn’t. And yet, I couldn’t just drop it. E. Lewis’s vitriol nagged; her accusations festered. Was her anger warranted and justified, or was it misplaced and overwrought? Should I feel guilty and ashamed, or attacked and abused?
Six: The Price
Looking on the internet for the title of a poem Dave dedicated to me, I came across an Uncharted Books ad.
ETTER, Dave [SIGNED]
12 Inscribed First Edition Poetry Books by Dave Etter
This is a lot of 12 first edition poetry chapbooks and books by beloved Midwestern poet Etter, including uncommon first editions of Alliance, Illinois and I Want to Talk About You. All are association copies inscribed to Etter's friend, fellow Illinois poet Rick Holinger. All of these books are in very good condition with minor shelf wear.
What follows is a listing and description of each book, then the coup de grace:
Price: $350.00
Maybe I should buy them back. But for whom? Me? Emily? Dave?
Annoyed, confused, and solemn, I left the posting.
Seven: The Three Graces
I am struck by E. Lewis’s use of “grace” in her Amazon review’s first sentence, “I dislike that this hack passes himself as a poet and a [sic] attempts to work himself into the good graces of real poets.” I’m okay with her calling me a hack; she is entitled to her opinion, regardless of whether judging the quality of the poetry—or the personality of the poet.
It’s her use of “the good graces” catches my attention most.
The Three Graces
…goddesses of grace and beauty. They presided over the dance, the banquet, and all social pleasures. Their names are Aglaia, brilliancy; Euphrosyne, mirth; and Thalia, the blooming. They are usually described as in the service of other divinities, and are patrons of music, eloquence, poetry, and all arts that delight and elevate. (From “Facts About All”)
E. Lewis would have her readers believe I purposefully attached myself to Dave to feed off his reputation; squirmed to get inside Dave’s skin to leech there; spent time visiting, reading, and writing about Dave and his work not to “delight and elevate,” but instead to deceive, to burrow into his graces, his home, his family.
No, E. Lewis, just no. I valued and cherished Dave’s “brilliancy, mirth, and blooming.” I loved his baritone laughter flowing out with a tsunami of joy; I loved listening to him read from Alliance, Illinois, filling me as with the rapture of a presence of a divine. No. I was not there to horn in or beguile.
It was there because I loved the man—and his poetry.
Eight: The House Today
I drive to Elburn’s locally renown Ream’s Meat Market. It is fall, described by Dave in a 2003 letter, “so quiet in this part of town you can hear the leaves whisper to each other and tell dirty jokes and repeat old stories. There are no people around. Do they know something I don’t know? Most of the people here are on the government’s Witness Protection Program, and I know they think I am also.”
Leaving town, I impulsively turn off Main Street and inch down a tree-lined street until I see what used to be Dave’s house. It’s newly painted white. It looks happy. I consider walking up to the house and ringing the doorbell. Finding E. Lewis at home, she asks if I want iced tea, coffee or, why not, a beer? We sit on the porch where her father and I once sat. We reminisce, tell stories about her father that make us laugh and cry. An hour later, I say I need to go. We hug and say, Let’s do this again. I wave goodbye. E. Lewis raises her empty beer glass in farewell.
The vision vanishes. I make a U-turn and head back to Main Street. Looking straight ahead, I know that even if I were to check, the house would not be there, would never be there again.
Richard Holinger has appeared in Iowa Review, Hobart, Chautauqua, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize, two-time Best of the Net, one-time Best Small Fictions nominee, and appears in Best Microfiction 2025. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry) and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays). His new chapbook, Down from the Sycamores, is available from Finishing Line Press or
http://www.richardholinger.com, and a short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishers.