poking thru my library's for sale books, I found one called Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier. I don't know why it attracted me, except that it's been a kaddishy couple of weeks. I grew up in the Unitarian church, where rituals and ceremonies are half-hearted at best. I know little about the ritual of Kaddish, if ritual is the proper word. this book is an attempt by the author to come to grips with his father's death, and to understand more about Kaddish itself. the book, then, is a journal of his reading and study, and ruminations. a map of his discovery, I guess. I haven't read much but like what I've read. I particularly admire the way it jumps around, as thoughts jump. like any journal, it can be read by skimming, opening any page and reading there. it occurred to me that that's what my book Days Poem does. it spans out, flakes out, leaps about. with Wieseltier's book, you don't know what any page might have on it, because his curiosity shifts his direction all the time. this made me think of Eileen Tabios' big brick of a book I Take Thee, English, For My Beloved. her book is like a Tabios anthology, with interviews, criticism, theory as well as poems. what holds it together, and what I think holds together my book, along with Wieseltier's, is a dogged insistence of attention. what is Kaddish but a ceremonial remembrance. which itelf is a process of understanding. Wieseltier's book goes more than 500 pages, as does Eileen's. I didn't mean to write a defense of big books but, again, taking the freedom to use as much space as you need for a book is a good thing. and I'll reiterate the idea of not knowing where the author is going, how this is a good thing.