Dec. 15th, 2003

aintbroke: (carry a big wrench)
Processing books, certain things become second nature. You check the brittleness of the pages before the title registers. You learn to stuff, tape, box and glue, how to mend things stronger than they were before. You flip through gently, looking for places the spine has been broken, pages have been turned under, sections have become unsown. It's at these areas of stress that pages really start to go.

It has not become second nature not to read those stressed pages, which probably makes me one of the slowest workers in the library. Today I read random pages about anorexia in the eighteenth century, the Jew of Malta, the un-femininity of George Bernard Shaw's heriones, the social effects of the cost of water in Guate, business plans in Germany and how they differ from ones in Japan, the early years of Che, how an Argentinian cartoonist got his first job; and I've been here less than an hour.

I can tell I've picked up a really good book when I read beyond the stress marks, and on to the next page. My tastes are consistent; stupidly intellectual and award winning. The last eight books I have taken home were Pulitzer winners. I feel silly about it, but there it is. The awards are mostly incidental. The work stands on its own.

I can't find "Psalm: Our Fathers" online, and I have not the time to type it out, but whoah. It is, by all rights everything I dislike in a poem, but forget that. I am the son of shadow and I draw my blinds out of respect but I cleave uneasily to the light
W. S. Merwin, you are my new poetry best friend. Also: Jane Hirschfield. Science, you've got a lot to live up to.

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