15 may 2008

(68)

*Robert Creeley. For Love: Poems 1950-1960. 1962. 160 pp.

I had this book when I was 15. I recently reacquired it because for some reason I hadn't held on to my original copy. There were poems here I had forgotten about, but as a whole the book has stayed with me for thirty years. I liked that "my lady fair" stuff when I was a kid. Now I see it differently but still like it. Or maybe I like it for the same reason; it's hard to tell.

I have a long term project to reacquaint myself with everything I loved at that earlier time. Recently I bought a vinyl album (having no turntable to play it on!) called "A Memory of Johnny Hodges," because I used to own this record and it's never been released on cd. It's a truly great record in my own memory of it.

I'm closing in on the first 1% of the 9000 books project.

3 comentarios:

Jay dijo...

Terrific blog - as always. I'm enjoying following your progress on your books project. And it's inspiring me to dust off a few old (& new) volumes.

But lately I've wondered something. When we encounter a truly wonderful work -- what are we to do? Should we "use" it to create something else of our own? Or should we simply enjoy it, savor it, and try to remember the fleeting experience? Or should we analyze it -- and our reaction to it? Do we disect it, to find out exactly why it was so excellent? Or should we -- as you are doing -- write about it, perhaps to crystallize our thoughts about it and to create a record? Or perhaps this is just the wrong question to even wonder about. . . .

All the best,
james

Jonathan dijo...

I think "all of the above." Some of the books I'm reading are ones I've written about, or plan to write about in the future, in more formal settings. Some I'll make some more specific "use" of. Others I might never read again. All of it is "usable" in some sense.

Jay dijo...

Thanks!