Limericks from beyond the Rings of Saturn

Illustration by Edward Lear

I must write about Waterman. I must try to do justice to Waterman. Inclination, affection, and duty combine: I must speak and write about Waterman.

23 September 2017, I was in Chicago. I was in a bookstore I seldom visit: Open Books. Open Books does not often “speak to my concerns,” but that day was an exception. I had found, for six dollars, a hardcover of Kierkegaard’s Letters and Documents, volume 25: Princeton edition, jacket intact. I did not yet know that the book is neither rare nor valuable. Nor did I know that, in a year and a half of owning the book, I would not open it once. No, I was exultant: I thought it was probably worth forty-five dollars, and that I would start reading it in the airport on the way back to Texas.

That day I found something else special. I found. It has fifty-six numbered pages. It was warmly inscribed (“Best to Virginia Rick”) in ballpoint pen on 22 April 1966, in Worcester, New York. The book was published by Candor Press in Dexter, Missouri. Here is the cover: