Those of us ever on the trail of The Book – that elusive Platonic Ideal, the title of which we may not even suspect – have visited bookshops like the one described by Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) in his essay “On the Doorstep of Valhalla”:
“His shop was a curious
illustration of Malthusian theory, for he sold books (if at all)
arithmetically, but bought them geometrically. As far as I could tell, he also
bought indiscriminately; he put his new purchases in flat cardboard boxes of
the kind used for peaches and kiwi fruit, and piled them up dangerously between
the shelves so that most of them became inaccessible, or accessible only at the
risk of being crushed by a falling pile of such boxes.”
This recalls a bookshop I
knew in a small, once prosperous industrial city in upstate New York. Located on
a corner in a residential neighborhood, it appeared to have been a small
grocery, with large show windows and a pressed-tin ceiling. The arrangement of
books in the shop seemed to confirm Ramsey’s theory of randomness. The chaos
was not complete. Given enough time and sufficient indifference to dust and cat
fur, a patron could uncover treasure. I found a pocket-sized, two-volume edition
of Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets published by Oxford University
Press in 1929, with an introduction by Evelyn Waugh’s father, and an equally compact
OUP edition of Gulliver’s Travels – all for six dollars. There were few
shelves and no category labels or designated aisles. Most of the books and
magazines were stacked on the plank floor or on tables and desks.
In the bookshop he visits
in England, in an “industrial town, now denuded of its industry,” not unlike
the town I remember, Daniels conducts an experiment: “Would I be able to tell
whether the poetry of poets of whom I had never previously heard was any good?”
The proposition is interesting. So much of our reading is preceded by marketing
and critical judgment, whether formal or word-of-mouth, and guided by
extra-literary considerations. How often have you chosen a book of poetry, or any
volume, without preliminaries? A cold read is rare, and usually results in
disappointment. Most poets are quickly forgotten, and rightly so: they can’t
write.
For obvious reasons, I can’t
recreate the controls Daniels sets up in his experiment, but I propose an
alternative method. I will give you five anonymous excerpts from poems by American poets,
most taken from my shelves. Cheat, if you must, and look them up online to
identify their authors. But at least for your first reading, try to clear your mind
of the usual props that support the texts we read. Ask yourself: based on two or fours lines, would I go on reading these poems? I acknowledge the unfairness
of what I’m proposing, but stay naked, in a readerly sense:
1.)
“I curse the libertine of verse
Whose meters lurch when
they should tread.
What joy to leave that
fool behind,
Wooden ears on a wooden
head!”
2.)
“What was the wish of
Icarus?
To fly, or to be seen to
fly?
What was the wish of Eve?
To know, or hope that,
knowing, she could teach?”
3.)
“None of the beaten end up
how we began.
A poem is a gesture toward
home.”
4.)
“These are inverted
horoscopes we cast,
It is ourselves we summon
from the past.”
5.)
“. . . a house,
nonetheless, a destination,
a house rising, imagine,
word by word,
from words, one’s words
(find the word for it, wordsman;
say, if you can, what the
years were, one’s life).
Daniels concludes his
essay open-mindedly: “A question remains that I am technically ill-equipped to
answer. Is it true that undisturbed on the dusty shelves of obscure bookshops
lie poems of some merit?”
[Daniels’ essay is collected
in Good and Evil in the Garden of Art: Discrimination as the Guarantor of
Civilization (Criterion Books, 2016).]
ADDENDUM, 10-3-20:
1.) Henri Coulette: “The Wandering Scholar”
3 comments:
Haven't looked up any of these. I think I've read the first one, but can't think where. Anyway if I came upon it now for the first time, I'd read on with appetite because those lines show energy and point and humor. Sounds a bit like Robert Graves on a clear day.
I'd keep reading the second, less savory, selection -- just to see where the poet's going with these questions. It would be too hasty to call the verse "intelligent" on the strength of so short an excerpt, but it's promising.
The third bodes ill, that portentous note, the second line straining for aphorism. But I've seen good poets hit dud notes, and so I'd keep reading until I had an ample sample.
The fourth sounds like William Meredith -- is it, or who? Anyway, I'd read on. Of course, I'd read on.
The fifth is, I suppose, connective tissue in a long argument. "A dull passage," Turtle would say, and so would I. I'd cast my eyes over the before and after of it before deciding.
Still haven't looked them up but meant to ask, that fifth excerpt, is it from the Four Quartets, or just ersatz?
I would read all of them, but I could only identify 3 out of 5 via Google (had never heard of any of them before). Could you provide the names/titles for those few interested in new poetry?
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