The Handler, The Source,
The Listening Books

'The Handler, The Source, The Listening Books'
is a poem inspired by Walter Arnold's photo
'Time Enough At Last'.

The photo is part of the Art of Abandonment series by Walter Arnold, where the surreal meets the familiar. The series demonstrates mastery of color, texture, composition, ambience, and storytelling through photography.

Scenes in the series carry an eerie comfort in places forgotten. At times, it is as if your childhood home has become a haunted relic, yet somehow there are no signs of unfriendly ghosts.

Time Enough At Last
By Walter Arnold

Arnold's work can be viewed and purchased here:

Cossitt Library
Main Website

'Time Enough At Last' was featured in 2025 on rattle.com's Ekphrastic contest, wherein curated artwork is used as source inspiration (with title hidden from the writer). Though the poem below was not selected as a winner, I believe the artwork compelled me to create something truly unique for my catalog.

The Handler, The Source, The Listening Books
An ode to unknown heroes of the Cuban Missile Crisis
By Rich Kern

Writer's Analysis

Since this work is a bit dense and abstract, I believe there is some benefit to include an analysis.

When writing "The Handler, The Source, The Listening Books" I first wanted to capture the particular feeling I got from Walter Arnold's photography. It is like being on a narrow bridge between two precipices. On one side you have this surreal enchantment quality, and on the other side there's a gritty realism that evokes the suspicion that a once-in-a-lifetime moment may have really happened there.

The combination of an anxious historical context, mystical animation of the books, and the secret spy meetup between all of it, creates a resonance of those specific counter-directional feelings.

For quite some time, I studied the picture trying to decipher the book titles and deduce the content that might be within them. And a coherent moment was formed in my mind, which I then supplemented with some research.

The photograph contains an odd combination of books: facts about sugar trade, astronomy, war analysis, etc. Since these books seemed unlikely to be sorted next to each other for simple organizational purposes, I assumed an underlying story could correspond to their arrangement.

And yet the most central title 'A Magic Place' by Iris Bromige, appears to be significantly out of place among this collection. This further adds to the eventfulness of the scene. There must be a reason that specific book ended up here as well.

And who left their glasses behind?

Given the attributes of the books (age, condition, titles, and content) there is a faint trail of clues which converges on some of the details of the Cuban Missile Crisis. So this established a plausible regional and time setting for the poem.

In the poem, a Cuban defector with key intel meets a U.S. intelligence agent. The glasses are part of the defector's disguise. The ripped page of the book in the background is a secret signal.

The nearby books in the meeting place have recently become animated. They are no longer inanimate objects. The magic of human emotion has brought them to life and granted them free will. Specifically, it was the potent abundance of anxiety about a looming war.

The poem adopts the perspective of how the books eavesdrop on the frightening details exchanged at the meeting. The books have their own range of emotion about impending nuclear war. And we hear the books directly, but not the humans.

In 1960, Cuba confiscated refineries owned by Texaco, Esso, and Shell. The timing of this aligned with the United States' significant reduction in a recurring purchase quota of Cuban sugar. This had a drastic impact on Cuba's economy.

In 1961, The U.S. attempted an invasion of Cuba, known as the Bay of Pigs. After it failed, the U.S. moved on to covert acts of sabotage within Cuba, known as Operation Mongoose. Tactics included leveraging the Mafia and defected Cuban Citizens in elaborate plots to sow disorder.

The Soviet Union stepped in to fill the purchases fo the sugar quota. In exchange they were granted permission to build nuclear missile bases on the island. The growing partnership between Fidel Castro and Nikita Khruschchev was worrisome for the United States as reports of longer range missiles, capable of hitting major U.S. cities were discovered. The U.S. invested in intelligence operations to uncover details about the growing threat. Pressure increased when a spyplane was shot down.

In October 1962, President Kennedy was forced balance several delicate channels of communication. Firstly, on the national stage, he delivered a speech that boasted of the nation's resolve and condemned the Soviets as moving in cowardice and secrecy. Secondly, he processed intel through a covert network which provided information about numbers of silos, types of missiles, their range, and the defense weaponry that would protect key sites. Thirdly, Kennedy negotiated directly with Soviet Premier Khruschev through written letters and other secret channels.

It's noteworthy that Kennedy's choice of language was carefully calculated at every move. For example, there was a deliberate effort to refer to any naval blockade surrounding Cuba as a 'quarantine' rather than the more incendiary term 'embargo', which might have tipped the balance of tensions too far. Publicly, the U.S. had desires to maintain friendly relations with Cuba in spite of the economic withdraw. Yet, given the recent history at the time we can see why the Kennedy's took a hard lean into plausible deniability tactics as well.

A mutual disarmament with the Soviets was agreed when the U.S. privately promised to withdraw its nuclear missiles from sites in Turkey. This was meaningful to the Soviet Union, since its initial presence in Cuba was a response to that. The U.S. also pledged not to invade Cuba. This gave the U.S.S.R. enough motivation to agree, and it removed its missiles from Cuba. The peaceful outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis is often seen as a one that could have erupted into World War 3.

I can imagine the difficulty studying a textbook or enjoying a leisure novel within the zeitgeist of that time. It was an age of much more limited information (and limited distraction as well).
I picture the minds of readers subconsciously transmitting some residual apprehensions into each page they flipped.

The details of that spy conversation in the poem, we as the reader, do not get to learn in full. We can infer bits and pieces, but what is most important is the perspective of the books. I chose to animate the books by leaning on the surface reaction a reader/viewer might have to the words 'magic' and 'miracle'. It was a tactical decision to say something about our relation to books as humans.

Books are places where we discover knowledge and explore our feelings. And I think I'm allowing this piece to claim we are our own catalysts for that experience. Somehow, an event that breaks the known rules of the universe can be the result of our collective responses. That perhaps, we really do manifest reality from our subconscious. In this case, there is simply so much anxiety about war, the books themselves gain self-awareness. It is as if our overload of spirit was distributed to them.

If our humanity can not be a source of magic,
then what is magic?

Given the time setting and war precipice theme, I thought fit to include language on a apocalyptic scale: 'tribulation', 'fallout', 'mighty hand'. Additionally, there is of course extensive use of spy termswhich are easy to pick out.

Since the books have become sentient observers, I also used language that a self-aware book might comprehend. When a book cries, water doesn't come out, but rather letters fall off her pages.
And a book can show its exhaustion by its lean, or excitement by flapping its pages.

There is a punctuated structure that the books relate to as well. When books are in the right spot, they are not just home, but sorted. Though they can communicate with one another, consciousness is still quite rudimentary for some of them.

These punctuations, 'The Premise', 'The Call', 'The Listeners', etc. are echoes of synapse for those who not as awoken. They are still piecing together what it means to experience how to think freely.

Books, sentient or not, communicate with humans based on their position, condition, and other properties. An open book is ready, and crumbling book is dying. A lost book has perhaps an extra little story to tell about why it is where it is.

There is also no firm rhyme or meter but rather each stanza is given freedom to have internal and end rhyme, rhythmic flow, alliteration, etc as needed. At times, there is internal rhyme that links back to the previous stanza. But largely, the 'Characters' (i.e. the Books) would not agree on form. They all have different formats. So it does not make sense for one technique to dominate here.

The humans who are participating in the action of this poem are 'The Handler' (who is a secret agent for the U.S.) and 'The Source' (who is a defector from Cuba with information of value).

We can imagine The Handler as covert but comfortable, on his own turf, willing to smoke a cigarette while he rips a page in a book as the secret signal to show the defector he is there. Perhaps he doesn't believe the source will show.

We can imagine The Source as worn from a long incognito travel, with fear at each new step of the way, and worried that the he won't be able to negotiate properly the conditions of the exchange. And the stakes for him are exile.

I included several references to a major speech Kennedy made during the missile crisis. Most notably is the line 'Under a cloak of secrecy and deception' which comes directly from Kennedy's speech criticizing the Soviets tactics. But Kennedy himself also had to use covert operations in order to deescalate. This is not a chastizement. Realities of war are complex and layered.

Names of nation leaders appear in the poem as well. And several of the books carry within them their own allusions when it's their turn in the story.

Summary: This title by Iris Bromige is part of the focal point of the image. It is fiction story about relocation after difficulties achieving ambitions in the arts. A struggling actress and a writer with a debilitating injury learn to navigate through interpersonal tensions. It features some romance and mystery and is set in Wales.

Animation: In the poem, this book has a deep emotional response to the prospects of nuclear war. She fears the calamity of end times. Due to her genre, she is most most likely to have this sort of response.

Summary: This work by Frank Ledyard Walton analyzes the industrial and economic tactics deployed by the U.S. to create a winning advantage during World War 2. These included women entering into the industrial workforce, increasing production of tanks and weapons, and rapid development of sonar and radar. The 'miracle' of the title here is not one of metaphysical reality, but of a militaristic outcome which was forged by unprecedented and unlikely new heights of production.

Animation: In the poem, this book takes on productivity as a value system and economics as a virtue. It is staunch, confident, and assumes itself to align with the will of the Creator. Work is righteous. The enemy is evil.

Summary: For this poem, I did not attempt to derive content of a specific astronomy text but rather allowed it to stand in for the entirety of the subject matter. When I think of Astronomy in the 50s and 60s, I think of people at chalkboards wearing ties, black rimmed glasses, and short hair slicked to the side. They dream of pointing that rocket to the moon.

Animation: Astronomy in the poem embodies this. The book feels shock that something so pure as the math of stellar bodies could be exploited for ballistics and used by people to harm one another. He is the stand-in for all the times scientific progress becomes corrupt. He is also the idealist who is jaded for the first time.

Summary: These books tie in directly to the trade and purchase activity of sugar between the United States and Cuba. In the 50s, the United States Cuban Sugar Council published these books as collections of data and utilization. In a Presidential address by Eisenhour in 1960, it was declared that the U.S. would reduce sugar purchase form Cuba due to its increasing embrace of Communism. The U.S. knew that this meant Cuba would seek to fill the quotas from other nations, including the Soviet Union, but sought to reduce its own risk and dependency. Prices were also increasing above the global market value.

Animation: In the poem, this book feels guilt. As a non-fiction book he is bound to report the truth, but wishes it were not so. He regrets his role, however small and unwitting, that contributed to the crisis at hand. We can imagine him later grappling on what it means to have sentience at all? Is there such a thing as free will or is it all deterministic?

Summary: This work by Boris Pasternak is critical of Soviet policies between the Russian revolution and World War 2. Though Pasternak was Russian, it is said that the CIA played a role in publishing the work and submitting it for a Nobel Prize, because elevating it would be evidence of dissent and unrest within the Soviet Union's populace. Pasternak won the prize but declined because he faced government censorship and exile.

Animation: Though this book does not appear in the photo, I've added it because I believe it represents a certain sympathy for the defector that should be present. He jumps off the shelf in eager congratulation, 'Pozdravleniya!', for deciding to negotiate for better conditions with the Americans. This book is the only one in the poem with the life experience to relate.

Summary: This title also does not appear in the photo. But I've assigned it as the title of the book between the glasses and 'A Magic Place'. The title fits because it can lean on the imagery of astronomy and our perceptions of extra terrestrials in the 1950s and 1960s. But 'Alien' referring to an unfamiliar individual can more simply mean immigrants. It is a book that was smuggled along with the defector on his travel.

Animation: This book represents our human need to cling to the stories we tell ourselves. In the poem it shows it is willing to sacrifice itself to protect another book who is weeping, even if that protection is futile. When we read books we gradually destroy them with wear and tear. Books remain willing to give of themselves until they wear down into oblivion and flake away.

Though I have other poetry contest winners in my collection, I've decided to showcase this work because it details some elements of the elaborate process of writing, inspiration, contemplation, fact checking, techniques, etc.

I also did not anticipate this work to send me into something quite so exhaustive. A poem can be any length. But once I saw some connections, I had to follow it to its end.

That need to proceed is the essence of writing.
And for that I am thankful.

This poem was written in early 2025 about events that happened half a century prior. But we are still playing out those some interactions today. Cubans have been recruited with misleading contracts in order to fight for Russia against Ukraine. Tensions remain between the U.S. and Russia. And we still talk of nuclear war.

The books of this poem took it upon themselves to hold the confidential information that they weren't supposed to hear in the library that day. They collectively agreed not to compromise the details to their readers. They made this agreement with faith that the information would be used to help bring peace. This poem says that even inanimate objects can reach a collective ethical effort for peace.

What then, do we as humans, ask of ourselves?