Poem # 28: Books

The old public library has bricks outside
and books inside. Perhaps there’s a brick
for every book. I haven’t read all the books
or counted all the bricks. There’s no reason
for counting the bricks (someone must
have done so before the walls were built),
but it’s the kind of thing that certain people do,
like a patient in a waiting room counting tiles
in the ceiling, or a convict counting flecks
in every cinder block, having finished counting
all the cinder blocks themselves. And the bars:
beneath counting, I imagine; but named,
each one, and fondled daily. Do the flecks
stay still? An insect might impersonate one,
or a thrown object might give rise to previously-
nonexistent flecks. Such a number might be,
as it increases, as vivid and dramatic as a movie.
I hope I never know. As for books, I have met
people – Richard Howard, Susan Sontag,
Frank Kermode – who could make you think
they’d read every single book the library
might hold. It’s a trick, I know: a melding
of personality with the surrounding intellectual
mood. Perhaps they’re like convicts
in a larger cell – this present day, this world –
and only such superior minds can see the walls,
and know that measuring time is counting
every fleck, whether you complete the task
or not. I have, myself, made lists of books
(a kind of wall, I suppose, as in a dollhouse-library),
and worked my way proudly through each brick –
that is, each book; in such an effort,
books are similar to bricks. I once knew
a poet, Thomas Lux, whose Yonkers apartment
was furnished, basically, with books, some arranged
as tables, stacked books with opened books
upon them. I am now surrounded with books,
all of them also entered into an online database
so that when I’m shopping for more books
I can use my iPhone to see if I own a book
I’m eyeing in the store. I buy books faster
than I read them, and perhaps half by now
of what I own I’ve never actually read.
But it’s comforting to know the books are there,
waiting, perhaps speaking to each other silently,
four walls of books collected through a lifetime;
many with random photographs-as-bookmarks
in them, or notes (my own and previous owners’),
or receipts from all the bookstores in all the towns
I’ve been to, most of those shops long closed,
since many people these days are as likely
to count bricks as they are to read a book.

*

A bit different...Ashberyesque, in fact (although I can't meander quite as well as he can in a poem; this stays more or less on its "subject," which is rare in the Ashbery canon). Also, to connect to a comment I made earlier about repetition in poetry: a fugal effect, a reduction of sounds -- "book," here, forming a bass line beneath the chatter.

The pastiche -- I'd like to see a book of poetry that's all a series of imitations of other poets' styles. What would be the unavoidable fingerprint or DNA of the poet as he passed through other voices?

My early career was copycatting James Wright, or sometimes Walt. Bishop has also possessed me; and Plath, and several others. Read enough of any poet, especially someone with a distinctive line or peculiar source of imagery, and they'll infect you for a time.

Two more days of this! It's been an interesting game; I hope to keep at it, fairly regularly -- but not every day. Never mind the products: the process has been good for me, like swimming every morning or doing yoga. My brain has lost some of its flab, I think.