Letters to the Editor
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I get most of my books at library sales...
And I often try to psychoanalyze the people who would buy these particular books, then give them away.
Untitled
Three beat-up milk crates of young-adult schlock,
Seven editions of Benjamin Spock,
Two Gideon Bibles, some Harlequin sleaze,
"The Common Diseases of New England's Trees",
"4-H Woodworking: How to Build Shelves,"
"The New (and the Old) Our Bodies, Ourselves,"
"Hamlet," "The Jungle," "The Sum of All Fears"
"Pat Boone's Guide to Your Teenage Years,"
"The Book of Mormon," Franz Kafka, John Donne,
"Catch-22," "The Battle's Been Won:
Will You Accept Christ?", "Curing the NO!s
in Your Two-Year-Old," rows upon rows
of Time-Life Repair books, "Applying for Visas",
(somebody, somewhere, was a Hare Krishna),
"Paradise Lost," "Weight Loss Secrets Found!"
one missal in Latin, "Notes from Underground,"
"The Rules," "The Fountainhead," "The Works of Graham Greene"
some Danielle Steele novels (but nothing obsence
by Lawrence's been donated, just "Sons and Lovers"),
"I'm OK; You're OK," "We're Not Our Mothers",
Ten "Methodist Hymnals," an assorted mix
of Baltic state guidebooks from '76,
"Color Me Beautiful," "Gone with the Wind,"
"What Should We Think of Original Sin?",
Golden Books, chewed-on books, books about weaning,
"Beowulf," "In His Steps," "Man's Search for Meaning,"
Cliff's Notes on "Deliverance," "The Big Book of Cats,"
"Side Effects," "Native Son," "The 500 Hats
of Bartholomew Cubbins," "The Bell Jar," "Horses:
Castration and Breeding," "Citing from Sources,"
"God's Plan for Your Life: Have You Heard the Call?"
And the scary thing is, I consider them all.
(OK, completely self-indulgent of me. But dammit, I spent twenty friggin' minutes of my thesis defense defending that particular poem. This way, maybe people will read it.
Oh, and I know that titles of books are supposed to go in italics, but I can't figure out how to do that on this site.)