Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

Because I love poetry. Because I love Bill Murray. Because I love Billy Collins. All this made this article a wonderful morning read. What We Miss Who says it's so easy to save a life? In the middle of an interview for the job you might get you see the cat from the window of the seven- teenth floor just as he's crossing the street against traffic, just as you're answering a question about your worst character flaw and lying that you are too careful. What if you keep seeing the cat at every moment you are unable to save him? Failure is more like this than like duels and marathons. Everything can be saved, and bad timing pre- vents it. Every minute, you are answering the question and looking out the window of the church to see your one great love blinded by the glare, crossing the street, alone. --Sarah Manguso

"Pastoral" The little sparrows  hop ingenuously  about the pavement  quarreling  with sharp voices  over those things  that interest them.  But we who are wiser  shut ourselves in  on either hand  and no one knows  whether we think good  or evil.  Meanwhile,  the old man who goes about  gathering dog-lime  walks in the gutter  without looking up  and his tread  is more majestic than  that of the Episcopal minister  approaching the pulpit  of a Sunday.  These things  astonish me beyond words. --William Carlos Williams 

Life has me by the seat of the pants lately and I feel like I can barely catch my breath. But busy is good. But, I'm going to try try trying to write here more. I miss this place. “In the Library”  There’s a book called A Dictionary of Angels . No one had opened it in fifty years, I know, because when I did, The covers creaked, the pages Crumbled. There I discovered The angels were once as plentiful As species of flies. The sky at dusk Used to be thick with them. You had to wave both arms Just to keep them away. Now the sun is shining Through the tall windows. The library is a quiet place. Angels and gods huddled In dark unopened books. The great secret lies On some shelf Miss Jones Passes every day on her rounds. She’s very tall, so she keeps Her head tipped as if listening. The books are whispering. I hear nothing, but she does. --Charles Simic from The Voice at 3...

"A Goodnight" Go to sleep--though of course you will not-- to tideless waves thundering slantwise against strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls' cries in a wind-gust broken by the wind; calculating wings set above the field of waves breaking. Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests, refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food! Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white for the one purpose, feather upon feather, the wild chill in their eyes, the hoarseness in their voices-- sleep, sleep . . . Gentlefooted crowds are treading out your lullaby. Their arms nudge, they brush shoulders, hitch this way then that, mass and surge at the crossings-- lullaby, lullaby! The wild-fowl police whistles, the enraged roar of the traffic, machine shrieks: it is all to put you to sleep, to soften your limbs in relaxed postures, and that your...

Many are the gifts of Farmers. Wayne, the head of the Farm department, always mystified me with his ability to rattle off stanzas on command. Filthily clad in jeans and flannel, gnarled hands, smelling like cows and manure or haying season, Wayne would show up for breakfast--always late--and occasionally surprise everyone with a poem or two. I didn't even know Updike wrote poetry until Wayne shared this:  "Hoeing" I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived   of the pleasures of hoeing;   there is no knowing how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise. The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing   moist-dark loam--   the pea-root's home, a fertile wound perpetually healing. How neatly the green weeds go under!   The blade chops the earth new.   Ignorant the wise boy who has never rendered thus the world fecunder. --John Updike  

Sweet B1 and I spent so much time together; before B2 and her married, before sweet Everett came along, we were housemates. And in that time she shared many wonderful poems and poets with me. On a car ride into town one weekend afternoon, B1 recited this entire poem, and I fell in love with it on the spot.      "How to Like it" These are the first days of fall. The wind at evening smells of roads still to be traveled, while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns is like an unsettled feeling in the blood, the desire to get in a car and just keep driving. A man and a dog descend their front steps.The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk. Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find. Thi s is how dogs deal with the prospect of change. But in his sense of the season, the man is struck by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid until it seems he can see remembered faces caught up amon...

I was introduced to so much stuff when I lived at the Farm; this amazing 5 years of my life where pop culture fell away and I was stuffed with things I'd not yet really experienced: folk music, scores of poets off the beaten track, novels I'd never heard of. I'd like to pretend that I didn't fight it tooth and nail at first, but eventually, it started to stick... And now I miss those days of sitting around and reading poetry aloud, or listening to a song with a friend and really hearing it. So, in honor of my Farm-cation (Farm education) I will post things I met and fell in love with when I was living in New England, over this next week while I'm at the Farm. I head out for my 11 hour roadtrip tonight, so will begin today. Thank you, B1 for Sharon Olds: "I Go Back to May 1937" I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the    red tiles glinting like...

"Christmas Poem"     Says a country legend told every year:      Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see what the creatures do as that long night tips over.     Down on their knees they will go, the fire of an old memory whistling through their minds!    I went.  Wrapped to my eyes against the cold     I creaked back the barn door and peered in. From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,                    and the beasts listened -               yet they lay in their stalls like stone.                      Oh the heretics!        ...

Shopping at the grocery store for my Christmas meal; while I went with the asparagus, I couldn't help pausing over the green beans and remembering a sunny day spent meandering through a garden, snapping off beans as I went, furtively eating the beans like candy . Thanks Mary Oliver, you always make things more lovely. "Beans " They’re not like peaches or squash. Plumpness isn’t for them. They like being lean, as if for the narrow path. The beans themselves sit qui- etly inside their green pods. In- stinctively one picks with care, never tearing down the fine vine, never not noticing their crisp bod- ies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, for the fire. I have thought sometimes that something –I can’t name it — watches as I walk the rows, accept- ing the gift of their lives to assist mine. I know what you think: this is fool- iciness. They’re only vegetables. Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and ...