Books I have not yet read
Pry at me from the shelf.
They whisper incessantly;
Prayers of liberation
From their vertical captivity.
They wish to be opened:
Cracked spines, dog eared covers.
They want to be manhandled
And feel sunlight, dust, air
On each of their pages.
They yearn for my moistened thumb,
For my to lips murmur their words,
To know my eyes have skimmed across their every line.
They long to travel by metro or bus;
They want their covers to be blunt.
These books have stood there long
And will stay there longer still.
That cryptic Rushdie, the Rand, too long,
And Ulysses, of course. How long has it been
Since I dropped you halfway through?
I owe you better than that, I know,
But your prayers will not be answered tonight,
Though you haunt me -- the ghosts of reads to be --
Hoping that one day there will be nothing
Left for me to read but you.
N.B. I stole the title from a book by Nichals A. Basbanes called A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books.
6 comments:
This...is the story of my life. I can't be expected to give proper feedback on something whose every line I can empathize with.
I really like the personification of the books - it really emphasises the guilty vibe you've got going.
And "the ghosts of reads to be" is such an excellent line. It's interesting how ghosts are usually echoes of things that have happened and you've used the word to talk about the future - I like it, but it colours the rest of the poem in a way that I'm not sure how I feel about.
I agree with that. It's sort of dichotomous to talk about not reading them and the saying they're echoes of a future in which they will be read.
In my draft I used the verb haunt to describe what the books were doing.Tthat led me to think of ghosts, and then of the ghosts of Christmas past, Present, and Yet to Come in Dickens. It was just a stretch from there to have the books become the ghosts of reads to come. I liked the line and kept it, but you're right in saying it doesn't quite fit in with the rest.
Then again, I've been thinking a lot about the books I own that I haven't read lately, and I must admit that my feelings are quite mixed. I want to read them, but I also just like to think about them as they are... as possibilities, that is, as hypothetical books, brimming with potential, never disappointing.
Wow. Your comment's last paragraph I can relate too as much as the poem itself :P
I really liked it. I...dont't even know what else to say. I just really related to it, and loved all the different imagery - "Prayers of liberation / From their vertical captivity" was really good. And then the scenes of reading on metros and wearing in the covers and everything...ugh. I want to read my own books. I want to read the book you gave me for my birthday! I thought I'd be able to read during the semester since it's short stories....but that failed.
Alice Munro is a goddess, and I find there are some similarities between your writing and hers, and for those reasons I hope you will have time to get to her soon!
I really liked this, and don't have much else to say, except that while I was reading I thought Jess had written it.
They all stole my comments. Especially Jess and Marta. And Emlyn.
Especially...all of them. Darnit!
I like this.
It's interesting to read poetry from you, I hadnd't expected it.
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