Conversations have converged on my desk.

In The Philosophy of Literary Form, Kenneth Burke metaphorically describes the exchange of ideas as a never ending parlor conversation to which we may contribute but never provide the last word because we must leave before the conversation ends.

I’ve been taking dips in Catherine Blyth’s The Art of Conversation since 2012.  Her light blue book seems to submerge in my book stack and resurface annually.  Constantly distracted by my life’s demands, I’ve yet to finish it, but yet I find it refreshing each time I return to it.  Blyth says, “The irony of this communication age is that we communicate less meaningfully.  Not despite but because of our dizzying means of being in touch.  So many exchanges are conducted via electronic go-betweens that, what with the buzz, bleeps, and blinking lights, it is easy to overlook the super-responsive information technology that is live-action; up-close-and-personal; snap, crackle, and pop talk–one that has been in research and development for thousands of years.”

I keep a post card with Lucia Galloway’s poem “Conversation” on my desk (pictured above).  I can’t get myself to part with it.  I reread it at least once a week, savoring its first four stanzas of “Not” and its last four of “More like.”

Yesterday, I found three lines in a Cati Porter poem which brought me such pleasure that I copied them in my quote book.

Just the day before I had spent over an hour messaging with one of my grade-school classmates with whom I hadn’t talked in years and last night I talked on the phone for over an hour to my cousin.

Though nothing beats a face-to-face conversation, preferably over food, exchanging words with others in any way brings such a particular pleasure, as Galloway says, “like friends at the shore tossing a beach ball.”