Poems and Books

My love affair with books began early. Sometimes I wonder if I was born loving books and the written word. In any case, I don’t think I could have escaped it in my family. My parents valued books. I don’t remember a time my mother and father weren’t reading books, magazines and the paper. Poems were, more often than not, our bedtime stories.

I learned very young that there was a world in books, a world where I not only belonged, but thrived. I was lucky enough to have teachers who not only taught the value of reading, but books. I remember the excitement of a new text book and how my teachers guided us through the first opening of those books. Carefully opening the front cover, turning a few pages and sliding my hand over the crisp page, the smell of new and ink and paper, repeating the action until the whole book had been seasoned for use.

I’ve never gotten over that experience. I love new books and find myself repeating the same careful ritual. You can’t do that with a Kindle or Nook. That’s not to say I don’t use those devices, just that the experience is…different. Still pleasing, but doesn’t quite touch the same memory buttons.

Books are very tactile for me. There is something tangible and real to the feel of a book in hand. Books are my obsession. I can’t pass a bookstore without taking, at least, one peek inside and then, like a drug, I end up buying and using. I love to read the blurbs and the first page to see if it interests me. I love the idea of being told a story. Frankly, it’s the same as finding a story in my writing. I can’t walk by old books at antique stores or flea markets, either.

Oh, now, there’s obsession. I could, if left on my own, riffle through every old box of books I see at the outdoor flea market here, spend hours in ideal book leafing, smelling, searching. The very best books are the ones I find that a previous reader wrote in the margins. Then, I have two stories in one book.

I’m so amazed at what I find, being sold for a song. I tote home (to my husband’s dismay) worn musty books to treasure. At his expected question, why? I answer with my thin, shabby answers: It’s Bambi, I loved it as a girl and now I have a copy. I’ve wanted to find this, I grew up on it. It goes with one I found last year and I must have the whole set.

I got the affliction from my father and I blame him, too. What can my husband say? He knows the soft achy part of my heart that’s missed my father, too long. There was always a second hand book place on my bed. Some book I fell in love with from the library, a poem book he thought I’d love. He haunted used book stores on his lunch hours.

When I was crazy about Rod McKuen and everything he wrote, he brought home Sonnets from the Portuguese and Emily Dickinson Love Poems. I never figured out if he was trying to pull me away from what he considered bad choices with ‘newfangled thinking or poetry style. He was from the school of Victorian poetry and did not appreciate free verse too much.

Whereas, though I studied and wrote traditional poetry, I embraced free verse, simply loved it. Even now that is my favorite, especially free verse that rhymes in unexpected places and ways.

Which brings me to a reminder: It is poetry month and Thursday is Poem in your Pocket Day. Celebrate National Poem in Your Pocket Day if you celebrate National Poetry Month no other way. Pick a poem, pocket it and carry it around with you all day, reread it or share it with others. Put a poem somewhere to be found.

Better yet, celebrate the month, buy a poem book and open it carefully, smell the newness, turn a few pages, slid your hand over the page crease, season that book, then enjoy