Tree Swenson, the executive director at Hugo House, wants to make it clear that the Zine Archive and Publishing Project library was not sold to the Seattle Public Library. She notes that ZAPP managing director Graham Isaac amended ZAPP’s original statement to reflect that fact. Not only that, Swenson adds, but “we haven’t signed anything with the library. There’s nothing that has been signed.”

Stepping back a bit: ZAPP was founded 21 years ago in the Hugo House’s basement. The zine library and community meeting house for independent media-makers moved upstairs into a drier space — the Hugo House basement was prone to flooding — but for years it was a central focus of the House’s mission. In 2013, Swenson decided to reclaim the ZAPP space for classrooms. At the time, I wrote that “Swenson didn't set a deadline for ZAPP's departure, just urged the committee to start the conversation about what ZAPP's future would look like.”

But the deadline came and went, and Seattle Public Library took the ZAPP collection — something between 20,000 and 30,000 zines, minicomics, and assorted publications — into climate-controlled storage. Swenson says the library “not only provided free storage, but when they had to close the storage facility where they’ve been keeping it, they paid to move it to another facility.”

That’s where things have stood. ZAPP’s collection, which is still technically a Hugo House asset, has been under SPL’s care, and ZAPP (the organization) has done outreach and fundraising, in the hopes of getting a home together. Swenson says ZAPP, Hugo House, and SPL met in January of this year, “and at the time we were all kind of on the same page,” she tells me. Swenson says everyone agreed that “if the library can house [the collection] so it’s not only warm and dry but climate-controlled, if there can be some ongoing program that ZAPP volunteers would provide, that would be the best outcome. It’s too valuable to take risks with.”

As she answers questions on the phone, Swenson digs through the contracts signed by ZAPP and Hugo House in March of 2014 when the collection moved out of the House. “At the time, we said we intend to give this collection to ZAPP when they can demonstrate they have somewhere that the collection can be housed,” Swenson explains.

When she first tells me about the arrangement, Swenson says she thinks it was set to last for two years. When she actually finds the dates on the paperwork, she sees that the agreement for the collection was only supposed to be for one year. She reads from the document: “If the effective date does not occur on or before one year after the date at the top of the agreement…each one will have a right to rescind the agreement.”

So three years later, and two years after the scheduled end of the contract between Hugo House and ZAPP, everyone is trying to figure things out. “I have been hoping that ZAPP would be able to become a robust organization,” Swenson tells me. “I know how hard that is. How many years did it take to get Copper Canyon [the nonprofit poetry press Swenson co-founded] to the point where I was able to afford running water?”

So what inspired ZAPP’s statement about the state of the collection? Early in March, SPL expressed an interest in accessing the archives, in order to assess exactly what they’ve been housing for the past three years. Isaac reached out to Swenson several times about SPL’s wishes, but Swenson admits that she didn’t get back to Isaac, noting that Hugo House is in the process of a complex multi-year move into a new home in its old location. “I’m in the middle of trying to keep Hugo House safe and sound so I haven’t been able to get back to Graham,” she tells me, but “I just want to stress that I have nothing but the most appreciation for Graham, and for all the volunteers who’ve done great work over years.”

For her part Andra Addison, the director and public disclosure officer at Seattle Public Library, has less to say. In a brief email, Addison says SPL and Hugo House “are in the final stages of an agreement to transfer the Zine Archive Publishing Project (ZAPP) to the Library. Part of the work to finalize this transfer involves an assessment of the collection itself that will help inform the future of the collection and how it will be available to the public, researchers, and new zine authors.”

Just got an email from the Zine Archive and Publishing Project's Managing Director, Graham Isaac regarding ZAPP's closure. It's billed as an "Official PR statement." We're reprinting the statement in its entirety, using their bolds. There has been one update to the statement, which I detail below in an update on this post.

Effective immediately Seattle Public Library will be taking over storage, programming, and access to ZAPP's collection of over 30,000 zines. The collection was donated by the Richard Hugo House to SPL without ZAPP's knowledge or consent, taking advantage of an veto-option expiration clause in a contract with ZAPP. Said contract stated that RHH maintained formal ownership of the collection until such a time as ZAPP found a permanent home for it. As such, in the years since leaving RHH, the entirely volunteer-run crew at ZAPP have been searching for a space that could safely and permanently house the growing archive, all while fundraising, consulting with experts in non-profit growth, and maintaining a presence in the community through tabling, programming and releasing compilation zines. We were not given a deadline or any indication that this deal was in the works; there was a good-faith agreement that RHH would support ZAPP in its efforts. ZAPP as an organization will close, and the funds we have raised to date will be donated to Short Run Festival, Hollow Earth Radio, and the IPRC in Portland.

So what does this mean? On the upside, the Zines will be safe, and eventually available to the public and browsable once again. We here at ZAPP have held this as our goal since RHH decided to use the former ZAPP space for a classroom, and it is good to know the zines will be safe and accessible. SPL has begun assessment of the collection and will be deciding the exact wheres and hows of making the zines publicly available as this process goes on. We are cautiously optimistic that SPL will do this incredible collection justice.

However, ZAPP has always operated with a goal of complete independence, and many of the volunteers, donors, and supporters over the years have helped out with a fully independent ZAPP in mind. It is not unreasonable to think that had knowledge of this sale been available beforehand, many folks would have kept their money. For years we were working methodically to find a space that was big enough, safe enough and would give the archive room to grow. In 2015 we had a record fundraising year and we continued to build and structure the organization so it could be sustainable for years into the future. That said, as an official organization, it no longer makes sense for us to continue without access to the zines. We trust that the larger community and communities that met, started, or grew out of ZAPP will continue to thrive in various iterations for years to come.

We do not plan to make this a legal fight, as once again, the zines are safe. But given all the hard work put into ZAPP over the years, as well as all the support and donations we've received, it is important that we make it clear: we did not give up the archive, it was taken from us.

Both I, personally, and ZAPP collectively want to thank everyone who donated zines, time, money, energy, or just stopped by to say hi over the last twenty-odd years.

I have emails out to Hugo House and Seattle Public Library. I'll let you know when they respond.

UPDATE 2:20 pm: Isaac amended the original post to clarify that the collection was not, to his knowledge, sold by the Hugo House to Seattle Public Library. He changed the word "sold" to "donated." The original text read, "The collection was sold by the Richard Hugo House to SPL without ZAPP's knowledge or consent, taking advantage of an veto-option expiration clause in a contract with ZAPP." Nothing else has been changed.

• If you're looking for a fun way to support the Short Run Comix & Art Festival, you should consider joining their Mini-comics club, which supports the festival's micropress.

Help support Short Run’s Micropress by joining our Mini-comics Club! Want mini-comics delivered to your door every month? Donors at the $120 level will receive a Short Run tote bag and 1 mini-comic every month to fill it up. We have curated a selection of Pacific Northwest artists who represent the look and feel of Short Run.

• Tickets for the May 23rd Seattle appearance of Arrested Development and Transparent actor Jeffrey Tambor went on sale yesterday. Seattle Arts and Lectures is bringing him to town to celebrate the publication of his memoir Are You Somebody?

• Cory Doctorow is launching an online ebook retailer codenamed Shut Up and Take My Money, which he bills as the world's first "fair trade" online store.

As an author, being my own e-book retailer gets me a lot. It gets me money: once I take the normal 30 percent retail share off the top, and the customary 25 percent royalty from my publisher on the back-end, my royalty is effectively doubled. It gives me a simple, fair way to cut all the other parts of the value-chain in on my success: because this is a regular retail sale, my publishers get their regular share, likewise my agents. And, it gets me up-to-the-second data about who's buying my books and where.

• Amazon is not just threatening bookstores anymore. Turns out, according to Naked Capitalism, Amazon might be putting 12 million non-book retail jobs at risk, too. Amazon's growth is increasing, mall retail stores are collapsing, and Amazon only needs half as many employees as brick-and-mortars.

• This tweet is making the rounds:

Kafka's diaries show the real fun side of writing. pic.twitter.com/h7UWC7UFVR

— Matt Haig (@matthaig1) March 19, 2017

• Regarding that tweet, to aspiring writers: for God's sake, don't suffer for your art. Just write every day, no matter how difficult it may be. You will improve and it will get easier. Writing doesn't have to be a Kafkaesque experience.

G&O Family Cyclery owner Davey Oil, an early ZAPP coordinator, just published the news in a moving public post on Facebook:

Just got an email from ZAPP, the Zine Archive and Publishing Project, that the organization is finally folding.

The zine collection will be in good hands, at the CEN branch of Seattle Public Library.

The independent nonprofit called ZAPP will cease programming and has found worthy places to donate their remaining budget.

ZAPP, the freewheeling zine library founded in the Hugo House basement, parted ways with the House back in 2013. It is one of the largest zine and minicomics collections in the world. Seattle Public Library has been minding ZAPP's physical collection for years, while ZAPP volunteers tried to garner enthusiasm to make ZAPP its own stand-alone nonprofit entity.

We've reached out to SPL to find out their plans for the collection; we'll let you know when we hear back.

Our sponsor, Friends' of the UW Libraries, gala event "Literary Voices", on May 3rd, is one of those amazing, inspiring events that are too far and too few between on our literary calendars. This year, they've got a keynote address by the inimitable Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News, Barkskins, and the short story "Brokeback Mountain".

The event is a fundraiser that pays directly for student employee scholarships. You are either helping to create the librarians of tomorrow, or get the librarians of today the support they need to run one of the most robust, impressive University library systems on the West Coast. Tickets are easy to get, both for individual tickets, and for buying a table to invite all your friends. Find out more, and see a list of the amazing authors you can dine with, on our sponsor's page.

Sponsors like UW Libraries make the Seattle Review of Books possible. Did you know you could sponsor us, as well? Get your stories, or novel, or event in front of our passionate audience. We have two dates for March we'd love to sell, and they're currently discounted. Take a glance at our sponsorship information page for dates and details.

Once in a while, I take a new book with me to lunch and give it a half an hour or so to grab my attention. Lunch Date is my judgment on that speed-dating experience.

Who’s your date today? Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, by Randa Jarrar.

Where’d you go? The Chaco Canyon Organic Café in West Seattle.

What’d you eat? I had the smoky yam and kale quinoa bowl($9.95) and a cup of coffee.

How was the food? Seattle is an emotional disaster zone right now, with the dozens of days of gray skies and the below-average temperatures and the occasional bursts of sun that make people act even weirder than usual. No matter how sunny it gets, we know that there's another gray wall around the next bend. So it felt really good to eat something that is wholly healthy and incredibly delicious. You know sometimes you'll eat a bowl of something good and it feels like pure nutrients, like you can envision the vitamins and minerals floating through your body like an elementary-school film strip on nutritious eating? This was that. It actively made me feel stronger, both emotionally and physically. If you're feelng terrible right now, you should try this meal. The garlic tahini added a rounded flavor that the kale and yam couldn't supply on their own, and I also doused the whole thing in hot sauce. It's the meal you need right now.

What does your date say about itself? It's a story collection by an author who is previously best known for her novels. Here's a blurb from author Peter Ho Davies:

These vibrant, funny, earthy, and above all, yearning stories are a revelation.... Like a female, Arab American Junot Díaz!

Is there a representative quote? Here's the first paragraph of the first story, "The Lunatics' Eclipse:"

The neighborhood got its first dose of Qamar the summer of her ninth birthday, when she sat on the rooftop of her Alexandria apartment building for ten days and waited for the moon to come down. She did it for her neighbor Metwalli; he promised he'd be hers forever if she only brought him the moon. Metwalli was twenty-four and had no idea that Qamar would take his pledge to heart.

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes, although I must admit that this first story didn't wow me as much as I wanted it to. Jarrar is an excellent stylist and her prose is first-rate. But this first story feels very typical of an early-2000s short story aesthetic: bring several strands of magical realism together, introduce some bizarre coincidences, and then end the story at exactly the moment before it's revealed whether the fantastic elements are real or just fanciful. I loved the places this story went, but I hated how familiar the structure and tone felt. I'm eager to read more and see if Jarrar has some other tricks in store for her readers.

Each week, the Sunday Post highlights a few articles good for slow consumption over a cup of coffee (or tea, if that's your pleasure). Settle in for a while; we saved you a seat. You can also look through the archives.

The Fate of the Critic in the Clickbait Age

This one’s close to home. Arts culture and reviews are on the decline as news publications go digital-first — criticism just doesn’t drive the clicks and pageviews that are the darlings of the modern editorial office. Some publications are finding creative workarounds, like this Dallas bookstore and this book review site. But if we think the critic’s voice matters, we need to get smart about using data with intuition and experience, not instead of.

The drive to revamp cultural coverage has overtaken major newspapers, including the New York Times, just as the wider public has been rediscovering the virtue of traditional reporting. In the wake of the 2016 Presidential campaign, with its catastrophic feedback loop of fake news and clickbait, people have subscribed in surging numbers to so-called legacy publications. Do these chastened content-consumers really want culture pages dominated by trending topics? Or do they expect papers to decide for themselves what merits attention? One lesson to be learned from the rise of Donald Trump is that the media should not bind themselves blindly to whatever moves the needle.

The Roots of Cowboy Music: The Search for a Black Self in the American West

Carvell Wallace covered the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, walking alone through a sea of ten-gallon hats, exploring the complex cultural roots of cowboy music, and asking what it means to put America first. He’s nailed the tone in this one: straightforward, generous, even a bit sentimental — but not letting anyone off the hook.

To hear Steiger talk about it, ranching — "cowboying," as he called it — is the most natural and beautiful thing in the world. Simple and spiritual. Honest and pure. This view explains why so many people make their pilgrimage to Elko every year, carrying guitars and banjos, fiddles and musical saws, dressed in white hats and turquoise, boots and fringe. They are in love with a lovely thing. It gives them a sense of place, a sense of belonging. It is a celebration of culture. It is, in many ways, a family reunion.

And for me, as always, I just see ghosts.

From Escapism to Activism, the Indie Mag Scene is Woke

Print is a conversation; digital is a crowd. Now that we’re past the delirious early days of our fling with social media, it’s easier to see what the printed page is uniquely good for.

The love affair between print, politics, and protest is no new romance. Shuffle down the mag pile marked “protest” and you’ll find the underground press of the 60s and 70s, and feminist titles like Spare Rib. Reach further back and you’ll find the clandestine press of the French Resistance, British political pamphlets of the 18th century, and much more. But now that digital and social media provide so many other means for political protest and debate, why does print remain an essential part of the political media diet?

Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?

Why? For a multitude of reasons — unconscious bias, a clubby educational system, assumptions about where genius comes from — that boil down to “because they can be, and they make a lot of money while they’re doing it.” Thanks to Susan J. Fowler and other women who are speaking up, that’s changing. Liza Mundy interviewed dozens of women who’ve survived and succeeded in the tech industry for this story.

“Until we see changes in the way we work, I don’t think we’re going to crack this nut,” Correll says. “I worked with one company that insisted that the best way for good ideas to emerge was to have people on teams screaming their ideas at each other. When you watch these teams work, they literally scream at each other and call each other names. They believe this dynamic is essential to scientific discovery—absolutely essential. I said, ‘Could you at least say you disagree with someone without saying you think they are an idiot?’ ”

Persisting in Dark Times: Lessons From a War Crimes Researcher

Muira McCammon spends hours daily reading about, looking at, and listening to the documented record of humanity at its worst. She turned her researcher’s eye on the survival strategies of her profession.

I kept asking Seccombe how he handled the psychological taxation of performing document analysis on so many pages of trial evidence about Nazi experiments in human freezing, oxygen deprivation (high-altitude), poison gas, and chemical sterilization. How did he endure the onslaught of details about the removal of bones for anatomical research, Jewish skeleton collections, forced sterilization programs, and the mass murder of civilians? I needed to know what he did to relax at the end of the day. “I try to leave the work behind,” he said, “but sometimes I still get nightmares.”

Nearly a year later, I still write to Seccombe almost weekly. When we really need a break, we tend to discuss our latest “canine-friendly moments.” Neither of us owns dogs. We just like to talk about them.

Seattle Writing Prompts are intended to spark ideas for your writing, based on locations and stories of Seattle. Write something inspired by a prompt? Send it to us! We're looking to publish writing sparked by prompts.

Also, how are we doing? Are writing prompts useful to you? Could we be doing better? Reach out if you have ideas or feedback. We'd love to hear.

In the many years I've lived in Seattle, I've heard a myriod of complaints about the Monorail. It's a toy, people say. Too short. Goes from nowhere to nowhere. Is too old. Is too slow. Isn't the future we were promised.

Built for the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, the one-mile track starts near the Armory, curves through MoPop (sometimes rebrands are eye-rolling, but this one makes so much sense) before heading up 5th Avenue.

The ride is short, only two minutes or so, with a top speed of 45 miles per hour. There are two tracks, and two trains, but unless a major event is happening at the Center only one operates at a time. But you knew all this already, right? There is not much mystery about this tiny transit system, this boutique teacup of a train. It's like a proof-of-concept that never got the green light to go beyond its diminutive domain.

The Monorail has enjoyed fifty-plus years of being a Seattle icon, an avatar on the flag we like to wave. Elvis rode it, after all. It's part of our self-image, or consciousness, and our extended identity.

It's a safe ride — mostly. There was a two-train collision at a choke point at Westlake station once, and after the price to fix a door was quoted at outrageous numbers, the Seattle Opera Scene Shop (which is sadly being closed, displacing some of the greatest artists and craftspeople in our region) came in and manufactured new doors for a fraction of the price. A fire in a electrical system led to a Seattle Fire Department evacuation of a train via ladder. It is a safe ride (nobody has died riding it, to my knowledge), but something about it feels a bit unsafe, as if the car might just list off the rails and slump to the ground. Maybe that's why expansion never happened.

Not that people didn't try. They say the original line was supposed to be be an extended region-wide system, to the airport and beyond. but it wasn't until 1997 that a grassroots effort to expand the Monorail made it to the ballot. Over the years, four votes to fund the initiative and spin up a new transit authority were passed, until a fifth vote dismantled the whole system in 2005. The plan was scuttled by bad management, internal politics, external politics, bad public perception, and the utter disbelief from City Hall that the people could actually mandate the kind of regional transport system they want without being told what they want.

That this plan didn't work ultimately is less painful with the furthering expansion of Sound Transit's wonderful subway system. But it's still fun to think that if the Green Line had been built on time — and, that's a pretty big 'if' to swallow, given the way their agency was run — it would have been twenty-six years old when the Sound Transit line to Ballard opens in 2035.

Maybe the whole thing was a pipe dream to begin, but wasn't that the promise of the original monorail? A little dreamy future in the middle of this town with an identity crises about being taken seriously. But then again, maybe we should have stopped with our plans when they were pre-parodied by a Simpon's episode. It might have saved us some heartache.

But for those of us that love the Monorail — I ride at least once a month or so — there will always be a bit of dream that I could ride all day, along the elevated tracks, through the city, watching the sun sink below the Olympics as I'm taking the train home.

Today's prompts

1. Action movie — The call came at 10:39 am, echoing over the loudspeaker at the fire station. A truck carrying explosive charges for the Space Needle New Years' celebration just crashed into one of the Monorail support posts causing a huge explosion. The support collapsed just before the train approached, and now a car full of tourists was dangling over Fifth Avenue....

2. Meet-cute — It was love at first site, at the World's Fair, and it was a two-way street. Time stopped when they saw each other. Holding their breaths, neither could look away. But one was on the Monorail train about to exit, and the other was on the platform about to board. They saw each other through the glass, the shuffling crowd of the World's Fair pushing and commanding them onward. But there was no way to let an opportunity like this past. Drastic action must be taken.

3. Musical — The players: the young woman who just lost her husband to cancer. The homeless man, a skilled musician, whose personal battles overrode his talent. The precocious twins with perfect pitch and a tap-dance routine. The off-duty cop with a heart of gold on her way to see her sweetheart. The dandy with the pocket square and waxed moustache. The drummer from the streets who plays buckets for change. The setting: a one minute monorail ride, and when the doors open, the rest of the world.

4. Horror film — The drivers all talked about it. That feeling when you crossed Denny, that feeling of a hand suddenly grasping your ankle. Of pulling you, like it wanted you under the train, on the track, in the wheels. And that one driver who swore, after feeling that creepy sensation (five drivers had quit because of it), that she saw a young girl in a pretty dress standing on the tracks. Just standing in the middle of the concrete platform as the train approached. It was too late to break. The driver screamed, but there was no girl on the tracks. "It was her," some said: a girl who was killed in a traffic accident at Denny and 5th, caused when her father looked up out of his window to see the train pass overhead. The girl whose spirit now cursed the line forever.

5. Noir film — Ripe pickings at Bumbershoot. All those tourists with their backpacks. Easy to move among the crowd on the Monorail run and pick a few pockets. Grab a few wallets, a few phones, a few watches. Slip off into the crowd before anyone notices. Standing on the platform at Westlake, getting ready to move through the crowd, a tug comes at the thief's sleeve. A kid. "I saw you," the kid said. "I saw you and I'm gonna tell on you," the kid looked around conspiratorially. "Unless you teach me how to do it too."

We're very sad to share the news that Edmonds poet Joan Swift passed away on March 13th. She was 90 years old. We'll share details of the memorial as soon as we hear them.

If you're unfamiliar with Swift, I would encourage you to read this interview between Tania Pryputniewicz and Swift, which frankly covers topics including Swift's history of sexual abuse, and how her strength informs her work. She also offers her advice to young women who write, and discusses her time as a student of Northwestern poetry cornerstone Theodore Roethke.

Kathleen Flenniken ran a good poem of Swift's titled "Listening to My Bones" a few years ago. It starts with a doctor's visit, in which Swift feels the same kind of nervousness that we all feel when we're sitting in the office. And it ends with Swift's musings on corporeality versus consciousness (or, if you'd prefer, spirituality.) This passage is just phenomenal:

he is listening to the sound of bones

the way NASA turns its telescopes far over our heads on Mauna Kea

and hears the universe move.

Swift is a poet who moved the universe.

We'll have more to say soon. For now, we send our condolences to her friends and families.

Mary Gaitskill discussing her career as a bookseller. This is the first @hugohouse reading at Washington Hall, which is a great reading venue!

A post shared by The Seatttle Review of Books (@seattlereviewof) on Mar 16, 2017 at 7:30pm PDT

Last night, Mary Gaitskill delivered a craft talk at a Hugo House event hosted at Washington Hall. Gaitskill was mostly interested in the intangible elements of writing: that mysterious intangible known as "style" which creeeps in around the words and imbues the text with a meaning that is greater than the sum of its parts. Gaitskill's talk ranged from Donald Trump• to ant decapitations to The Wire creator David Simon's claims that TV shows are a more relevant storytelling tool than the novel, because novels are about individuals while TV shows are about social systems.

Gaitskill demonstrated the importance of style by reading pieces of Pale Fire and Bleak House and Flannery O'Connor's story "Good Country People." The small character sketches she read demonstrated how a tiny passage of a novel, or a paragraph from a story, can contain all the larger themes of the work. My favorite part of the talk came when Gaitskill described Bleak House's Lady Dedlock: "She's proud and she's cold," Gaitskill said, "and she's proud and she's cold, over and over and over again. She's like a playing card, almost." That blending of one of Dickens's most unforgettable characters with a visual from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland demonstrates Gaitskill's most impressive talent: her ability to find the invisible threads that connect elements of our world, and to make them visible, revealing what always been right in our line of sight.

• Come to think of it, it's been months since I've attended a reading where Trump has not emerged as a topic of discussion. This makes perfect sense, of course; it would be weird if writers didn't mention Trump at this point in our history. But still, the thought of four solid years of readings without that man forcing himself into the conversation is a wearying thought.

This post was originally published in January, but we're re-running it because Paterson is making a return engagement for one week only at the University District's wonderful Grand Illusion Cinema, starting tonight. Visit the Grand Illusion's site for screening times, and a little public service announcement: the Grand Illusion is cash-only, so hit up an ATM on the way. Also, in a total coincidence, today is Transit Driver Appreciation Day, so don't forget to thank a bus driver. Our favorite bus driver locally is Nathan Vass, who blogs about his experiences.

A lot of great movies adapted from written works have been released over the last month or so. Silence is a complex and challenging and ultimately rewarding adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel about the demands and responsibilities of faith. Fences is one of the most harrowing family dramas I’ve seen in years, with career-best performances from Denzel Washington and, especially, Viola Davis.

But one original movie in theaters right now, not adapted from a book or play, is a surprising tribute to the importance of the written word. I’m talking about Jim Jarmusch’s new film Paterson, and I’m telling you: if you love books and poetry and writing, you have to see this movie as soon as possible.

Paterson’s premise sounds like the setup for a limerick: Adam Driver stars as Paterson, a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey. The film follows a week in his life, and not a whole lot, really, happens. Paterson is a man who likes his rituals: he walks the dog to the bar every night, and he writes a few lines of poetry into his notebook in the morning, and he likes to sit in the same spot and watch the water go over Paterson Falls. He and his girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) live a quiet life that is mostly content. They could use a little more money, sure, but who couldn’t?

Paterson is a film of echoes. Certain themes repeat themselves over and over: fire, twins, rain. Paterson admires the poetry of William Carlos Williams, the city of Paterson’s most famous literary resident, and Williams’ work reverberates through the film as well. (Williams wrote an epic poem about the city also titled Paterson.) These little instances accrue into a fuller portrait, a pointillist masterpiece.

Paterson doesn’t write his poetry for the sake of immortality. He writes poetry because it’s how he processes the world. Driver reads the lines over and over in a halting voice as Paterson writes in his notebook and the handwritten words appear on screen. We see him sitting in his small office, lined with books by Williams and David Foster Wallace and Frank O’Hara, as he struggles to get the words just so. He seems to meet poets around every street corner: everyone is recording the universe in careful handwriting on lined paper in secret notebooks.

Paterson made me happier than any movie I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s a movie about art for the sake of art, a movie about writing and reading for no reason but for the pleasure of writing and reading. Paterson’s life inspires his art, which in turn inspires his life. There’s probably no big break around the corner for him. He’s probably not going to get a big thick hardcover anthology of his work. But he does it anyway, because he has to, and because it makes him better.

Trust me: you don’t want to half-watch Paterson on your couch while idly flicking through your phone. This is a movie to watch in the theater. Afterward, take public transit home. Bring a book of poetry to read on the bus or the train. Eavesdrop on some conversations. There’s art everywhere — you just have to be ready to receive it.

Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

In your opinion, what movie adaptation is better than the book it’s based on and why?

Caroline, Matthews Beach

Dear Caroline,

I'm currently loving Black Sails, which is not a movie but a pirate-themed series based on historical figures and characters from the children's book Treasure Island. It inspired me to re-read Treasure Island, however, I abandoned it after a few chapters because there was not enough fucking.

Kisses,

Cienna

P.S. I just asked a woman on the bus your question and she said "50 Shades of Grey." Just in case you wanted two terrible opinions.

Bonus Question!

Dear Cienna,

I read romance novels on my Kindle on the bus. Nobody needs to know what I'm into, right? But then, every now and again on my commute I’ll run into a coworker who wants to make small talk about what I’m reading. I'm terrible at lying. Can you give me some good snappy comebacks?

Dahlia, Lower Queen Anne

Dear Dahlia,

Tell your coworkers that you are reading "erotic C-SPAN fanfic," "Bible limericks" or "fresh pet obituaries." Those are three collections of words that no one wants to hear slide out of a coworker's mouth. But if you're not as comfortable making people uncomfortable as I am, you can also say, "I don't know. I'm not really reading it, this Kindle is just a prop to discourage bus folk from making small talk with me." And then smile real nice.

Kisses,

Cienna

Each week, Christine Marie Larsen creates a new portrait of an author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Saturday March 18th: Exit West Reading

Mohsin Hamid writes novels about the world as it is now. His books are structurally adventurous and tuned to provocative issues like immigration, racism, and the War on Terror. His latest novel is about a young couple finding love in a world overrun with homeless refugees and fearful xenophobes.
Piggott Auditorium, 901 12th Ave., 624-6600, http://www.elliottbaybookcompany.com All ages. 2 p.m.