Susan Glickman

  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Poetry
    • On Finding a Copy of Pigeon in the Hospital Bookstore
    • Poem about your laugh
    • Punish your book
    • Summertime
  • Fiction
    • Background
    • Extract from The Violin Lover
  • Nonfiction
    • Klibansky Award Speech
  • Children’s Books
  • A Note on Teaching Poetry
  • Other Writing
    • Angels, Not Polarities
    • Dictionnaire des idées reçues
    • Found Money
    • Maiden or Crone
    • My Life with Northrop Frye
    • Obituary for Zitner
    • On the Line
    • Second Person Impersonal
    • The Better Mother
    • The Violin in History
  • Editing
  • News
  • Bio
    • Stuff about me floating around the web
  • Cartoons
  • My Art
You are here: Home » Editing » Found Money

Found Money

Found Money

 

 

In 1973 I was living in Athens, nominally studying archaeology but more importantly falling in love.  Falling in love with Greece, with travel, with freedom, and with my own youth — until then, a rather weedy thing, solitary, ink-stained and derivative, lurking in libraries plotting the perfect term paper, but now striding along in dusty sandals declaiming poetry, plucking fresh figs and pomegranates from roadside trees, bargaining with fishermen for octopus pink and transparent as silk, and generally feeling immortal

This was my period of Found Money and with it came the existential revelation:  ye shall find whatever ye seek.

The Greeks are a generous and sensual people, not much given to fretting. (This elegant unconcern was engagingly demonstrated during the last Olympics, when nothing was built until the very last minute, driving uptight North Americans completely around the bend.) My experience in Athens during my residence there also suggests that the indigenous Hellenic lack of anxiety extends to money or, at any rate, to small change. One sunny day — they all seemed to be sunny that year — as I was walking home from the National Museum of Archaeology and a lecture on kouroi, those awkwardly touching statues of naked boys which clearly demonstrate the influence of Egyptian art on early Greek sculpture, my eye fixed on a sudden glitter on the cobblestones. It turned out to be a small coin. As I bent down to pick it up I found another, and then another, quickly amassing enough loot to buy a loaf of fresh bread.

Leaving the bakery with my prize I saw a whole spill of copper and silver at the curb, and happily pocketed that treasure as well. I decided that somebody must have been feeling momentarily benevolent, sowing the streets with cash, and thought no more of it. But about a week later I had the same experience again, and soon found that whenever I felt short of money, all I had to do was look around and Lo! Money would come to me. It became a kind of game: scrutinize the sidewalk two days in a row, then skip one; search for cash three days in a row, then skip two. But it didn’t matter what arbitrary pattern I imposed. Every time I went prospecting I was rewarded.

There were a lot of bakeries in my neighborhood and at one, I discovered an anise-scented, honey-soaked gingerbread that seemed nothing less than μάννα εξ ουρανού (manna from heaven). To discipline my appetite for this new sweet, I decided that I would only be allowed to buy it on days when I found money, and only once I found enough for its purchase.  I had thought that imposing this quota would keep me from eating too much cake but alas, it had the opposite effect, making what had been a rather whimsical game into a compulsion. I looked for, and found money, every day.  However, even at nineteen years old, it wasn’t good for me to eat cake every day. To keep fitting in my jeans, I had to stop looking for money.

It may seem odd that I didn’t think of doing something else with the money I found. But the sweetness of unsought-for wealth seemed commensurate only with the delights of that particular cake.  No other reward made it worthwhile to patrol the fragrant streets of an Athenian spring with my nose to the ground like a demented bloodhound.And, frankly, I was glad to be released from servitude.

Released from my compulsion to find money, I was better able to enjoy the sights and sounds around me: Seville oranges, shining in the glossy trees like inedible coins, flower stalls spilling over with gardenias and jasmine, almost too sweet to breathe, children flying kites and old ladies airing their caged birds. There was so much to see everywhere! And though my belly rumbled sometimes (after all, I was still young), my eyes were hungrier than my stomach. I was free, once again, to enjoy Athens. Free as the Greeks, who let their money lie wherever it fell — something I always do myself now. I like to walk away from my own dropped coins, relishing the thought of someone else’s thrill as they pick it up, and wondering what serendipitous gift it will buy them. It is my own private homage to that golden year, and a way to infuse a little good fortune into a stranger’s day.

 © copyright Susan Glickman 2004

 

  • A Note on Teaching Poetry
  • Angels, Not Polarities
  • Dictionnaire des idées reçues
  • Found Money
  • Maiden or Crone
  • My Life with Northrop Frye
  • Obituary for Zitner
  • On the Line
  • Second Person Impersonal
  • The Better Mother
  • The Violin in History

Categories

  • Books
  • Reviews
  • The Blog
  • Uncategorized

Awards & Prizes

The Violin Lover, Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2006.


WINNER 2006 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction!


The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 1998.


WINNER 1999 Gabrielle Roy Prize Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures


WINNER 2000 Raymond Klibansky Book Prize Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada For a transcript of the Klibansky acceptance speech -- please click HERE

Recent Comments

  • Susan Glickman on Beautiful setting of one of my extinction sonnets by Ronald Beckett, performed by the Arcady Ensemble
  • Susan Glickman on Beautiful cover by David Drummond for my new book of poetry, due out April 2019.
  • Eva Bednar on Beautiful cover by David Drummond for my new book of poetry, due out April 2019.
  • Jenny Koster on Beautiful setting of one of my extinction sonnets by Ronald Beckett, performed by the Arcady Ensemble

Archives

  • September 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • May 2021
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • July 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Recent Posts

  • I think I forgot to post a link to this interview I did with John Degen for his blog, “the book (& bird) room”: https://www.jkdegen.com/blog/2023/4/26/interview-with-a-not-very-serious-birder
  • Blog post on The New Quarterly’s site about writing the essay “Gargoyles”, with a few thoughts about the difference between poetry and prose.
  • Fabulous cover design by David Drummond for my new book of poetry, due out in September 2023.
  • A poem of mine read online
  • Wonderful review of Artful Flight by Brian Bartlett in The Malahat Review

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Categories

  • Books
  • Reviews
  • The Blog
  • Uncategorized

Recent Comments

  • Susan Glickman on Beautiful setting of one of my extinction sonnets by Ronald Beckett, performed by the Arcady Ensemble
  • Susan Glickman on Beautiful cover by David Drummond for my new book of poetry, due out April 2019.
  • Eva Bednar on Beautiful cover by David Drummond for my new book of poetry, due out April 2019.
  • Jenny Koster on Beautiful setting of one of my extinction sonnets by Ronald Beckett, performed by the Arcady Ensemble

Recent Posts

  • I think I forgot to post a link to this interview I did with John Degen for his blog, “the book (& bird) room”: https://www.jkdegen.com/blog/2023/4/26/interview-with-a-not-very-serious-birder
  • Blog post on The New Quarterly’s site about writing the essay “Gargoyles”, with a few thoughts about the difference between poetry and prose.

Archives

  • September 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • May 2021
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • June 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • July 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
© Copyright - Susan Glickman - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed