When Rueben Martinez, another MacArthur Foundation recipient, was a child, he lived in a town without a public library and with parents who didn’t read to him.

Still, Martinez’s teachers inspired a love of literature, and when he became a barber in the Los Angeles area, he provided books for customers to read.

Noticing the books he lent out were rarely returned to him, Martinez started selling books in his barber shop. Now, his Santa Ana, Calif., bookstore — called Libreria Martinez Books and Art Gallery — is among the largest commercial sellers of Spanish-language books in the country.

Martinez, 64, regularly tours schools and appears on Spanish-language television, urging parents to read to their children, and his shop serves as a touchstone for community activities promoting literacy.

“I made more money cutting hair than selling books,” said Martinez. “But the joy of my life is what I’m doing now.”

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A man in thought walking Unhappy with himself Unhappy with all the desperate Need he couldn’t combat Muttering the beginning of a poem He had read in frenzy, in a meaningless Reading binge, is stopped suddenly

By a blue black Siamese kitten – That old superstition about being crossed By a cat that he believes in, as he believes In ghosts and apparitions, stops him.

And then as suddenly he Finds the kitten running towards him And rubbing its silky sleek fur Over his ankles, his meowing Joins her meowing, becomes poetry And his bitter curled lips Break into the first unforced smile Of the day.

Day is taking earth Into it’s speedily length- -ening arms.

In a grove of pine trees And their spearing shadows I wait for this embrace of lovers To end, for the horizon’s Door to close, for city towers To preen like high class Whores as those mostly unseen Stars hurtle farther away

From the half moon yet to Come on blinking behind The clouds, like an exit light Above an empty (except for me) Theatre’s double doors
And for the boogeyman Night, with his sack of crickets Singing all night in wells, To come.