Last night, when I was packing up all the poetry, a little piece of paper fluttered out of Anne Sexton’s Live or Die, a book I lived and died by at sixteen. It was a poem cut out of The New Yorker.  It was “For Sheridan” by Robert Lowell. I had no idea who he was at the time, and I didn’t really understand the poem. But I felt the poem understood me. That is when I started buying up collections of Lowell’s poems. And now, thirty years later, the love affair continues as I finish reading the exquisite collection of letters between him and Elizabeth Bishop.

I tend not to worry too much about the end of the book and the digital revolution. But I did have the thought that one of things that might be missed if books go the way of screens is the loss of a poem, clipped by a sad teenager, fluttering out of a book many years later to land at the feet of a sad woman.

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It isn’t every day that a poetry dog fight makes the front pages of the New York Times. Makes me feel proud. Makes me feel alive.

Seems that Ruth Padel, the first woman to be elected to Oxford University’s prestigious chair in poetry, resigned. She admitted to having been part of a smear campaign to discredit her main rival Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, alleging at least two known cases of sexual harassment.

My favorite part of the article relays that British  commentators pointed out the “irony of hounding a distinguished literary figure on the basis of long-ago sexual transgressions when many of Britian’s greatest poets were social or political reprobates, by the standards of modern-day Britain.”

I have a few reactions, only half way through my morning decaf:

• refreshing that women poets can keep up with the men, scoundrel-wise
• refreshing to be reminded that most poets, well great poets, are serious shitheads
• refreshing to be reminded that great poetry doesn’t care who writes it.

As a side note, and as gently pointed out to me by Hamilton Cain,  Carol Ann Duffy did not get the post, but was awarded the highest honor in the land: poet laureate. 

When I was in London last year, I happened upon her book Rapture in a little shop on Charing Cross Road (okay, it was a chain store in Notting Hill).  I read the title poem, the first poem and the last. My usual test for buying a poetry book. I bought it, devoured it, and have reread it a few times. I haven’t been able to find her poems on-line, or I’d link one here. Treat yourself. Anyway, I hope they find some dirt on her soon, like she eats babies for breakfast.

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If you have a chance, read David Orr’s superb reckoning with Frederick Seidel’s poetry in today’s NYTBR. I’m still struggling with the rhyme “china vagina.” But, hey, that’s just me. Though I was happily reminded of a guy in my grad school workshop who rhymed Milton Berle with squirrel.

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We’re moving in July and need to reduce our 2,500 volume library by about half. This requires nightly interrogations: will I read this book again, will I read this book in the first place, is this a first edition, sentimental value, signed by the author, completes a set, etc. etc. It is painstaking and sometimes painful work, especially when you find an underlined book from college and are immediately transported to the worst days of your life. Well, mine.

Of course, if these were CD’s we’d just be gleefully downloading. And of course, if I had a Thimble, I could buy any one of these books and download it.

Sidebar: I actually found a Sony Reader in the bathroom at work this morning. I still remember the days when a senior editor at S&S would take like twenty periodicals into the bathroom. I guess today’s businessman fires up his Reader when he takes a shit.

Back to the books. I am happy to report that ALL the poetry, poets’ biographies, letters and diaries made the cut. I am happy to report that 2/3 of the fiction stays and what goes should have left long ago. It’s the non-fiction that’s really taking the hit. Though my special shelf of books on depression and suicide will remain intact.

Every time my husband takes a book from the shelf for scrutiny and discussion, he blows the dust from the top of the book much the way Johnny Carson used to blow open the envelope when he played Carnac The Magnificent. I used to love that.

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