Whittling

Underneath that fern, not so convincingly or fetchingly concealed by an old cotton blanket, are four egg boxes full of books that, after a year and half, still don't have a home in this apartment, despite there being shelves in every room but the bathroom. Every few months I attack the boxes looking for something and in the process try to whittle the contents back. Rereading this passage from Lawrence Clark Powell's Islands of Books, I was inspired to take a slightly different approach:

Somewhere in his notebooks Leonardo observed that small rooms are best because they discipline the mind. I have proved for myself the truth of his dictum. My study measures 9 by 9.... When we lived in the canyon my study measured 9 by 12. It was almost completely lined with shelves which held my total private library of 1500 volumes. Now I own twice as many in spite of constant discarding (to my college library), and the smaller room will hold only part of my books. This compels me to discipline my tastes and to choose for roommates only those volumes which I feel that I must see every day. (p. 9)

Roommates. Every day. Okay. Fiction I find fairly easy. If I loved it, I'll keep it. If I think I might get something more from it the next time, I'll keep it. But poetry I find trickier. There are poets I don't take to until a fourth or fifth reading when for whatever reason, they finally get through. They don't do their dishes, they hog the newspaper and then chastise you for not knowing what's going on. But one day they make you the best cup of coffee you've ever had in your life and none of the rest matters. My tastes have also changed somewhat in the last decade or so, and some of the poets I used to blather on about now seem either glib or sentimental. There's a fondness still, but I don't go back to their work anymore. How to choose.

In the process of all the hemming and hawing, I thought I'd share some of the collections that I know I am definitely going to keep for roommates. The first is Dart by Alice Oswald (Faber & Faber, 2002). Concept collections can be deceiving. They sound good on jacket copy, and in grant proposals, but they don't always hold up in the reading. Dart is a great example of how satisfying it is when they do. Alice Oswald spent three years interviewing people who lived and worked along the river Dart, in Devon, England, and transposed it into a long poem that captures the sounds of populations connected by their dependence on the same body of water. There are the voices of fishermen, oyster gatherers, a stone wall builder, a boat builder, swimmers, boaters, a ferryman, a sewage worker, a milk bottler. Parts are recorded more or less verbatim, and others are spun into mythologies almost. By the time I finished it (the first and the second time) I truly did feel as though I'd meandered my way down a river, hovering along the surface and being submerged at times. So, Dart, please stay on. You can steal whatever you want from my closet.