One fourth of the bookcases that were in our condo, what we were able to bring with us.
Another six boxes of books given to Paul, our bookseller friend. We could have built more bookcases, of course. A thousand flash decisions. What are these books for? Are they wall decoration? Well, yes, partly. But that’s not it. One by one I sort, as quickly as I can or I won’t get rid of anything. Boethius? Will I ever read (at) The Consolation of Philosopy again? There goes the Canby biography of Walt Whitman. There goes all of D.H. Lawrence, even Lady Chatterly’s Lover, the last remnant of my former husband’s dissertation subject. There goes all but a representative sample from books by good friends. Gone, gone. We are mortal. Our books are mortal. Why did I keep Marius the Epicurean? God knows. It’s a quite old copy. Better maybe to rid yourself of unproved youngsters.
I have to assume so much is missed. This line from a short essay by my friend Lia Purpura.
Of course the ethereal texts are always there, on the Internet. Like phone sex maybe, missing the texture, the shape, the object-ness of the book. As valuable as the raw fact-check of it is the sense of it as a thing, contained between covers.
My undergrad notes. They make the book and the poem forever mine.
Covers crumble, pages soften and fox, glue bindings give way. When you commit to an object, you have to commit to the finality of objects. When the words are floating in space, translated to x’s and o’s, you can imagine they can live forever. But drafts and unused poems I wrote years ago and stored on my defunct computers are no longer accessible. Programs change, computers change.
Here you can see the other two small bookcases we were able to bring. I’ve left a little space in them for new books.
The lesson for myself, as I look at these shelves we have left, is this: enough is enough. I can’t possess the whole of literature. I can’t possess a thousand bookcases. Why did I want to own so much? Partly because my memory is lousy. I want to see the book’s spine and remember that book, remember the tone, the feel of having read it. I want not to forget it. Partly because a book is inspiration. Partly because they have been my dear companions. And the new poetry books? For inspiration, and for stretching my own boundaries by reading a blatantly strange new writer. Some of these new folks will be flashes in the pan, but still, they’ll contribute their essence to my soul, as Whitman might have said.
I see that the books I have are of my generation. I have no idea what a very young and not so white writer might save. Maybe the love of the book-object, like the love of cars, is also of my generation. I can’t see the shape of the future. It is in process, and I am somewhere in the whirl of it, myself.