Wednesday
Dec142005
It's a Poetry Day
Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 03:58PM
'Ron' said something over at his place the other day that I heartily agreed with....
...and I thought of it again last night when I pulled out a book to find a poem. Feeling the same way about books, it was hard for me to get rid of so many of them when I left Calgary and so the few that I kept have become, in their way, even more important to me.
Most of the poetry was left behind by my dad when he left 'us' and, because I was the reader (and maybe because I'm the only one who cared about them), they became mine. I think most of them were from his years in university because they're all pretty much dated before and up to my birth (we moved 'west' when I was just under a year old).
For example - Al Purdy's 1965 Cariboo Horses, the 1959 edition of ee cummings 100 Selected Poems and so on.
The one I grabbed last night was the 1969 edition of the New Yorker Book of Poems. It's a hardcover book, over 800 pages, holding a price tag inside of $10.00. The pages are fine paper, the watermarked kind, the sort that we use only now for important documents - creamy, ridged, holding a weave that can be seen when held up to the light.
I don't know if the New Yorker still publishes these, although I know that the one I have is its first (and I can't be arsed to look) but the one in my hand includes the following in its 'foreword'...
And so, in honor of the brave and steadfast Cabot - who's recently noticed the world outside the window that he no longer is able to access and sits for hours brooding at the blinds - this one seemed fitting for today...
Now books are different. I'll never throw those out. One day, I aspire to having a house that has a 'library', tall wooden bookshelves that encircle the room.... And most of the ones I have are full of memories for me. Where I was when I bought or received them, when I read them, little bound signposts.
...and I thought of it again last night when I pulled out a book to find a poem. Feeling the same way about books, it was hard for me to get rid of so many of them when I left Calgary and so the few that I kept have become, in their way, even more important to me.
Most of the poetry was left behind by my dad when he left 'us' and, because I was the reader (and maybe because I'm the only one who cared about them), they became mine. I think most of them were from his years in university because they're all pretty much dated before and up to my birth (we moved 'west' when I was just under a year old).
For example - Al Purdy's 1965 Cariboo Horses, the 1959 edition of ee cummings 100 Selected Poems and so on.
The one I grabbed last night was the 1969 edition of the New Yorker Book of Poems. It's a hardcover book, over 800 pages, holding a price tag inside of $10.00. The pages are fine paper, the watermarked kind, the sort that we use only now for important documents - creamy, ridged, holding a weave that can be seen when held up to the light.
I don't know if the New Yorker still publishes these, although I know that the one I have is its first (and I can't be arsed to look) but the one in my hand includes the following in its 'foreword'...
We would like to believe that these nine hundred poems broadly represent almost a half-century of poetry and are among the best poems that appeared in The New Yorker between 1925 and 1969.
And so, in honor of the brave and steadfast Cabot - who's recently noticed the world outside the window that he no longer is able to access and sits for hours brooding at the blinds - this one seemed fitting for today...
Kindness
Your kindness is no kindness now;
It is unkindness to allow
My unkind heart so to reveal
The difference that it would conceal.
If I were, as I used to be,
As kind to you as you to me,
Or if I could but teach you how
To be unkind, as I am now,
That would be kindness of a kind-
To be again of a like mind.
Catherine Davis
in Poetry
Poetry 
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