The Examined Shelf
I recently read Mark Athitakis’s piece in the Washington Post on the perils of organizing one’s bookshelf. While we agree on the joys of meandering through one’s books, reuniting with forgotten titles, I find that returning, again and again, to attempt the impossible feat of perfectly organizing one’s personal library is not a terrifying premise bound for failure, but an evolving joy in and of itself. The piece that follows was written during my MFA, in a class with JoAnn Beard.
The method is never the same. Once, I put all the dead white men’s collected works on the bottom shelf, once grouped anthologies and relegated them to the living room. Today, I am putting my poetry books (at least the ones that fit on this shelf in the office) in alphabetical order, by shelf, based on what in them moves me the most. Image is the first to fill up; there is also sonic sensibility, visual form, and poetic voice, whatever that means. The point is less about ease of finding a particular title, and more about laying my hands once more on these books. It is a gift, the laying of hands. Not all text allows this. The Torah requires a silver pointer and can only be kissed by prayer shawl. These books are less choosy with their magic, so I kiss their battered foreheads and hug them tight. I’ve neglected many of them, it’s true. I haven’t been in the office much this summer, and I’ve never been good at keeping in touch, even when the only barrier is a closed door. I forgive myself their dust. If nothing else, this is a reunion, a rediscovery. My copy of Richard Siken’s Crush isn’t missing after all. It is my second copy: the first, I stole from Neil, then gave to Kaara, never to see it again. Lauren bought me this copy at Newbury Comics in New Hampshire four years ago. It was the weekend M told me he loved me for the first time. I do, in fact still own Adrienne Rich’s notebooks. So many patient loves, so many eyes that watch my back as I labor over my desk. I flip through the covers my fingers choose, seeming to have missed them most of all. I marvel at how much or how little my handwriting has changed, the brilliance of my college junior notes, or their miraculous stupidity. It is a miracle, being stupid with a dear friend. The shelf’s sides are starting to give. They stretch like the seams of old jeans as I slide just one more book into its new place. It’s not that I built it myself: that bookshelf is wobbling in the next room with all of my novels and pictures of my nieces. This is the shelf I bought just out of college, thinking more of its beautiful irregularity, box-like polished wood stack haphazardly on top of itself, than of function. Still, it has survived so many moves, hugging walls in Minneapolis, Cambridge, Mount Vernon.
As ritual dictates, I become overwhelmed at some point, with books spilling from my lap. The oldest, collected works of a Romanian poet, Tudor Arghezi, is threatening dissolve. I catch the sheets loosed from its spine and tuck them back into bed. Franklin is banished to his red bed by the front door, for the good of our relationship: once, he left a disrespectful stain on Ordinary Light and we didn’t speak all night.
The illusion of organization never lasts. A bookshelf always has its secrets. Certain books will disappear and reappear– suddenly, two copies of A Contemporary Field Guide of Poetics where there was one, then seemingly, none. I decide to send RebeccaLynn the extra copy, her birthday is coming up, and I’ll be seeing her next month when I’m back in Boston. It was an hour north, and four or so years ago, when I first read a Jericho Brown book. It was a blizzard out, my flight had been cancelled, and my birthday was a week away. M lent me The New Testament and made me banana pancakes. This is when I knew he was a true love. I hold my copy and thank the language for staying beautiful when my true love didn’t. There are so many I still haven’t read, and their waiting astonishes me. The un-staling work, the ability to refuse time’s inevitable erosion of meaning.
I try to make out author signatures and inscriptions on title pages, hoping I have lived up to those kind words. There are still volumes stacked next to the bed, in the coffee table, hidden behind the crockpot. I’m not worried, they always find me when I need them again, and I always need them again.
The Lifting Dress, half-stolen from, half-gifted by Hieu, sits next to any number of borrowed or adopted collections. I lose touch with my people the same way I lose touch with the books, but can still see my handwriting sit next to theirs, and the typed text. And I am so grateful for this, as I slide the last slim chapbook in its place: how love, reshuffled and lost and reshuffled, still allows itself to be found. While the meaning shifts, it still fits.