Public Library, Tulia, Texas

Janelle Curlin-Taylor

June 23, 2024

When I think of Tulia I think of the pillars of support in my young life.

Dr. Richards, our physician, driving twelve miles at dawn

Treating our childhood illnesses before work.

Mr. Hurd and Mr. Jones, pharmacists who reassured us of their knowledge.

The courthouse whose long, stone steps led up to my first public library.

When I think of the Library I remember the librarian,

Her hair in a tidy bun, rimless glasses, sensible shoes.

A woman who had read everything 

And was eager to share.

When I think how she was eager to share I remember 

The Arabian Nights with those 1001 stories

Including poetic descriptions too graphic

For my sex-averse mother.

When I think of my mother, I marvel how she expanded

The education of my tiny school with her own extraordinary early schooling: 

Latin in first grade, Georgia O’Keefe teaching art in the basement,

And the miracle of the Book of the Month Club.

When I think of the Book of the Month Club I remember

“Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”  illustrated by Edward A. Wilson.

My first formal instruction in poetry and my 

Introduction to the world of the Transcendentalists.

When I think of the Transcendentalists – Lexington, Concord, Cambridge, Harvard

I marvel that one could walk the distance between them.

How on the Great Plains 60 miles to Amarillo and a book store,

120 miles to grandparents and aunts and uncles, all in a day's work.

When I think of all in a day's work I marvel at our Tulia librarian

Sure of her vocation to teach the children of Swisher County

To love all the books by all the authors:

Black and White, Christian and Other, near and far.

When I think of all the authors in my first public library I grieve

the censorship gripping the democracy that gave birth

to the Transcendentalists, the Tulia librarian, my mother.

How our Civics curriculum consisted of reading the Constitution.

Now, today,  all those years later,

the shredder and the thought police are

Destroying our future, our present and our past.

My first librarian would be aghast.

Janelle Curlin-Taylor, a Texas poet living in Tennessee, inherited the poetry gene from her grandfather and mother. Published in various Texas journals and anthologies, she is grateful to Texas Poetry Assignment for keeping Texas and poetry close.  She is married to California poet Jeffrey Taylor.