Happy New Year one and all.
It’s a bittersweet time for us, this turning of the year.
January 9 marks the one-year anniversary of Scott “Renzo” Renzoni’s death, which has left such a huge hole in our lives here at The Bookstore.
His presence looms, as you might suspect, as large as his absence. He was poet (Vermont), actor (Shakespeare, others), bartender (San Francisco and Lenox), bookseller (Bookstore and Next Door Bookstore), as well as loyal fan of Beat literature (I can still hear him calling ‘hey, daddio!).
To carry on as we have, we must celebrate our dear Renzo, and we invite you to join us. This coming Friday, January 9th at 7 pm, we will host a program of readings. Michael Hammond and Kristin Wold of Shakespeare & Co. will read a selection of poems by the late David Budbill, a fellow Vermont poet.
Haley Barbieri, Renzo’s comrade from down the hill at 70 Kemble Street, and I will read from Budbill’s play/poem sequence “Judevine,” (which Renzo played in several times during his stage career), and some of Renzo’s own poems, particularly the one chosen (blindly) by Billy Collins for the Fish (Irish) Prize just a few years back.
Copies of the new, revised edition of “Judevine: A Place and Its People: The Collected Poems” are available. This edition was just going to press when Renzo died and it is dedicated it to him.
As are we.
It’d be lovely to see you on the 9th. If you can’t make it for the program at 7:00 pm, please come anytime, as Haley and I will be reciting his poems and telling his jokes and stories all the day long.
Thanks for Reading.
Matt
