Many chapters ahead for bookstore
Last Updated: Nov. 12, 2005
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Geeta Sharma-Jensen
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The amazing thing about the small, scruffy and scrappy bookstore and
gallery that we know as Woodland Pattern Book Center in Riverwest is
not that it's there, but that it's there - still.

It looks like it won't be closing shop anytime soon, either.

The bookstore has endured for 25 years, and like the postal service,
it refuses to let either rain or snow or giant bookstores or rank
capitalism or the Internet or a consolidating publishing industry
keep it from its mission.

"For twenty-five years Woodland Pattern has celebrated the
contemporary imagination and, thanks to your support, will continue
to do so . . . " it vowed quietly in small print in its November
newsletter.

And last week, as it prepared for its 25th anniversary celebrations,
its director Anne Kingsbury - she's been running the place at least
as long - sat in an armchair among the wobbly book stacks and
promised again that Woodland Pattern would continue "celebrating the
imagination," and that's how it would survive, would hope to survive.
61346Woodland Pattern Book Center

Click to enlarge

Photo/File

Karl Gartung and Anne Kingsbury met when she was a teacher and he was
her student. They moved to Milwaukee and in 1980 opened the decidedly
out of the mainstream Woodland Pattern Book Center.
25th Anniversary Events
Nov. 18: Writers Lisa Jarnot, Terri Kapsalis, Peggy Hong, filmmaker
Jennifer Montgomery; readings and a screening
Nov. 19: Writers Keith Waldrop, Rosmarie Waldrop, Roberto Harrison,
Kiki Anderson; readings
Nov. 20: Wanda Coleman, Martha Bergland; readings
Nov. 20: Emcee Hal Rammel

"We've always wanted not necessarily to be the biggest, just the
best," she said. "I think what makes us a little different from other
literary centers is that we've presented different art forms where it
intersects with text or literature.

"As new things (such as the Internet) open up, we want to be open and
free to investigate that. But I guess literature and the world where
it crosses into other things - that's what we want to celebrate. We
want to get past the idea that people are creative only in one thing
. . . The poet Derek Walcott, for instance, is also a very
accomplished painter."

So, the center, which stocks around 27,000 books for sale, has also
curated art shows, hosted jazz musicians, held poetry slams, taught
neighborhood children how to tell stories, given lessons in making
books, invited major writers to read, invited obscure writers to
read, and even reserved a section of its shelves for Wisconsin
writers who have self-published their work.

The center's anniversary celebrations will be no different. They
begin Friday evening with readings and a film, and continue through
the weekend with writing workshops, readings by poets and fiction
writers and a concert of new music in Milwaukee that Woodland Pattern
is slyly billing as "25th Anniversary Waltz (without the waltz)."

In the center's gallery is "The Bright Glade," a visual and text
exhibit by the poet Thomas A. Clark and his wife, Laurie.

Here, last week, Kingsbury paused at the threshold of the gallery as
"The Bright Glade" lay in various stages of completion. Painted on
one whitewashed wall was the phrase "a domed vest of bracken, leaf
debris and moss." There were other phrases on other walls - to be
read / seen with the visuals. In the center of the room a young woman
sat on a rolled-up carpet and directed a group of giggling and
shouting grade school students in performing stories.

"This is what I'm talking about," Kingsbury said.
Kept his day job

While many smaller bookstores across the country have fallen victim
to competition from mega chains such as Barnes & Noble, Woodland
Pattern has survived - or "managed" as Kingsbury says - for three
reasons.

First, it has never strayed from its niche; it remains a powerhouse
of poetry and small presses. Second, as a long-time non-profit center
that actively takes its programs to the community, it has been
fortunate enough to find some support from arts boards and private
foundations each year. And third, because Kingsbury and her husband,
Karl Gartung, both passionate book and art lovers, doggedly refuse to
let the tiny store they turned into a non-profit book center founder.

"Well, Karl has always kept his job driving trucks," Kingsbury said.
"So that has been an underground subsidy. He had to get a day job for
insurance, benefits. And you know, Karl and I own this building - we
bought it in 1980 and we fixed it - and if Woodland Pattern cannot
pay rent sometimes, well -. " She shrugged, then smiling, added,
"Well, no one is going to foreclose on them."

Kingsbury is an idealistic, enduring woman, her tenacity softened by
a smile and a pair of nearly waist-length braids hanging below
precisely trimmed bangs.

She prods and persuades, hunts for funding sources, draws up charts
and projections in her daily battles to stay afloat. And she often
credits her husband, a poet and volunteer coordinator of the center's
literary programs, with setting the tone and vision of the center
early on.

The pair met in the mid-1960s when Kingsbury was teaching visual arts
at a college in Nebraska and Gartung, about three years younger, was
a student in her class. Gartung, she has remembered, cut a lot of
classes so she had to have "a little talk" with him. After that, he
did well enough on the final to make up for his earlier trespasses,
so she gave him a "C."

That was supposed to be the end of it, but after he graduated they
began dating. They married in 1970 and moved to Milwaukee a few years
later when she got a job at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Passion for poetry

Gartung always had a passion for poetry, and it soon became important
for him to find the works of good, new poets who may not have been
well-known.

When the opportunity came to manage a small bookstore - about 100
books - that three Milwaukee poetry lovers had started in the lobby
of Theater X, he took the job.

That's how he discovered Lorine Niedecker, the Wisconsin poet whose
centenary Woodland Pattern celebrated in 2003 with a conference that
attracted participants from several countries, including the United
Kingdom and Japan.

When Kingsbury was denied tenure at UWM, Gartung went to work as a
truck driver and Kingsbury took over his job at the bookstore.

Soon, the original three founders of the small store moved on to
other ventures; Kingsbury stayed.

By 1980, the couple had moved the store to 720 E. Locust St., its
present address, and achieved non-profit status. They began calling
the new entity Woodland Pattern, after the fictional Midwest cultural
center in Paul Metcalf's epic poem "Apalache."

"We started with less than a thousand books," Kingsbury said. "One
thing that really helped us was that Truck Distribution, which
distributed small press literature, let us take books on consignment.
For quite a few years we were able to build our inventory with that.
It allowed us to build with books we hadn't heard about.

"We've always felt that the small presses are where exciting work is
published. We felt there was a need for a place where these books
could be found. We believed what we had to offer was extremely
important for people. A lot of it is education. It needs to be here.

"I've always felt that people need to be able to choose. So we say
here are some things that you should try out - and you may find a
contemporary classic."
National in scope

Kingsbury and Gartung tried out their multimedia approach their first
year as the new Woodland Pattern center.

That year, 1980, Paul Metcalf gave the store's first poetry reading,
Tom Palazzolo was the first visiting filmmaker, Laurie Anderson was
the first performance artist, and Milwaukeean Jill Sebastian was the
first exhibiting visual artist.

Since then, the center has brought in a host of artists and writers,
among them such exiles as Chinese poet Bei Dao, and in 1995 it
organized its first poetry marathon with 90 Milwaukee writers
participating.

Its work has been noticed; the center is now considered one of the
foremost stores for poetry, especially new poetry, in the nation.

"The reputation of Woodland Pattern is itself national in scope, and
I know of no other center - anywhere in the U.S. - that has carried
on a more intricate and demanding program in the literary arts,"
wrote writer Jerome Rothenberg in 1989.

That reputation, Kingsbury hopes, will help the center secure funds
to keep its four full-time and two part-time employees and continue
its programs.

The revenue from the store might pay for one of those positions,
Kingsbury said.

"It's been touch-and-go many times, many times," she added. "But
we're very appreciative - because when one thing ends we find
something else opens up."

And so, Kingsbury remains calm - and sustained.