On day 3 of a horrible cold, not that every cold isn't horrible, but you know...
Was at a party with fellow literary types recently when we got on the topic of re-reading books, specifically how often do we re-read. I found out that I was odd man out, since I re-read about as much as I read new books, if not more. And if I was to be honest, I'd have to admit that it's a lot more, probably 60% of the books I read in a year I have read before. I don't have any problem with that, do you?
Here's my poem:
LEAF VS SUITCASE
Buttons at the tip of being re-written
through bulldozer, all my patrons enjoy
five hours in a bus, I skate up the middle
of the ice in order to encounter the universe,
throwing pails of paint where I sleep.
Disney characters do no harm, always spreading
those rodents, garden parties disconnected
from writhing queens, legs cut off and sterile.
I've left harbor and dropped to the floor.
Tear-wet letters no more: what is every lover
now? Twelve stories asleep on the pale brawling
lilt of wooden windows. Newspaper at noon,
striped tie flying like an open summer shirt,
Shit buried all over the place, somebody
ought to gather those simmering vegetables together.
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2 comments:
What about re-reading part of a book, as one re-reads a single poem, or a particularly striking passage in a novel? Aside from obvious contenders (say, the chapter in Moby-Dick on the whale's whitness), I find that I re-read the same dictionary definitions with relative regularity, apparently forgetting the word's precise meaning in the meantime.
Well, I think that's great. I was making a judgement on re-reading vs. not re-reading, I was just mentioning that my habit of re-reading several entire books every year seems a little unique. Why buy the things if you're not going to re-read them?
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