Secondhand Book
for A.B., first owner
Oil from your fingertips: the paper
drank it in. Traces of your body
vanished into the page that now
my own fingers trace, letting go
more of the oil that little by little
will dissolve the page, our human
touch eroding what we love, invisibly
and without sound. Or maybe
sound, only too small and far
from what we’re trained to hear.
If we had a keen
vision and feeling
of all ordinary life,
George Eliot wrote,
we should die of that
roar
which lives on the
other side
of silence. You
died; we
never met. I lifted your book
from the cardboard box where
it nested with the many others,
its pages already darkened at the edges
like the tulip in the vase, after ten days
falling wantonly away from its name.
On the flyleaf your name still
twines itself in sturdy blue, precise
river of script unbroken between
the letters’ valleys and slopes. What is it
makes me want to tell you
things I’ve never said before?
Inside my skull your other names
unspool: poet, reader, ghost. I touch
the place where your signature holds,
where paper is generous, shares a body
with trees that creak and sway
in any wind as if to prove they too
are touched. I trace your whole
name: here, pressed to a page the color
of beech leaves, overwintered. How
they murmur together, whisper
and hush and maybe roar. They know
the sounds I don’t, the ones that shape
the words I’d say, just now,
if I could, to you.
Hi Kasey! This poem is of a piece with the others you've posted here-- and sketches out the same concerns with the materiality of language, with the name and the sound, and with what is utterly other. That George Eliot quote is wonderful! I think the sentence preceding ("Or maybe sound...) is a little redundant, and steals the Eliot quote's thunder a bit. I'm not sure how well the metaphors of nature (nest,tulip, overwintered beech leaves) flesh out this poem, though they are lovely in themselves. The trinity of Poet Reader Ghost is very compelling, but I feel there is something almost too ghostly about this poem… Maybe I’d like to know more what this particular book is about? This poem makes me think of an observation a friend made to me that startled me at the time—she said *so as a poet, you take the ephemeral and spiritual and make it material.* Yet, I had always thought myself to be in the non-materialist camp… The line that seems central to this poem is: “our human touch eroding what we love”—which is about mortality. But is this of the same order as the tulip that leans and shrivels at the edges even untouched? I admire the questions this poem elicits. Thank you, Kasey!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the lovely poem, Kasey. I like Vasiliki's questions about ghostliness and materiality above. To grossly oversimplify, the poem seems to put at stake the material world and how it can capture faint and unintentional markings of the world of love and human connection.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the speaker has a connection with AB, other than having found his/her book at a bookshop. If that is the case - if AB is an ancestor or whatever - it would add a lot to include that information somehow. Assuming AB is known only from his/her leavings in this book, however, I found some lines/images in the second half of the poem to linger a little too long and make a little too much of what was there. I struggled with "What is it / makes me want to tell you / things I’ve never said before?" It seemed to go a step further than I feel like we had reached; I didn't quite buy that this limited contact with an unknown predecessor would compel the speaker to new and personal insights she would want to share with the 'poet/reader/ghost' (loved that trio). The final sentence seems to describe the same desire for closeness, but with more subtlety. Maybe leave the ending as-is and omit the earlier question. Also, I liked the materiality of the blue cursive signature, but felt it could be treated with a little more brevity and have greater impact. Suggested omissions: "precise / river of script unbroken between / the letters’ valleys and slopes." "I trace your whole / name: here, pressed to a page the color / of beech leaves, overwintered."
It really is a lovely poem. Hope this is helpful!
Kasey, I hope you forgive me for the below....being a visual person, re-typing your poem in a different order allowed me to say what I could not say in words. I love the idea of a silent conversation between two book readers/owners! A sort of dialogue in Braille, in a way. It also reminds me of your poem in which the trees silently speak through their roots.
ReplyDeleteSecondhand Book
for A.B., first owner (question: if the flyleaf only has these two letters, maybe they can be played with in the poem somehow?*)
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary life, we should die of that roar which lives on the other side of silence. – George Eliot
Oil from your fingertips: the paper
drank it in. Traces of your body
vanished into the page that now
my own fingers trace, (*maybe something here about those two letters?) letting go
more of the oil (maybe a different word for oil here?) that little by little
will dissolve the page, our human
touch eroding what we love, invisibly
and without sound. Or maybe
sound, only too small and far
from what we’re trained to hear. I touch
the place where your signature holds,
where paper is generous, shares a body
with trees that creak and sway
in any wind as if to prove they too
are touched. I trace your whole
name: here, pressed to a page the color
of beech leaves, overwintered. How
they murmur together, whisper
and hush and maybe roar. They know
the sounds I don’t, the ones that shape
the words I’d say, just now,
if I could, to you.
Thank you for another beautiful thought/poem, Kasey. And one with your signature trees!
Dear Kasey,
ReplyDeleteThis is a lovely poem with so many rich images and a lovely use of language. Your poem deftly explores a wonderful multiplicity between the “poet, reader, ghost.” This poem also captures the tactile really well. I don’t fully understand the “I” and the “you” relationship that is central to the poem and to its dramatic situation. These lines seem crucial:
“What is it
makes me want to tell you
things I’ve never said before?”
I want to know the answer to this question—or at least get a glimpse of it (not asking for a clear answer but for a better sense of what attracts the speaker to the book. In short, I get that there’s an allure and attraction (a haunting even) but I’m not sure why).
I agree with Claire that it might be interesting to use the Eliot citation as an epigraph rather than remaining embedded in the poem. I feel as though the Eliot quote (and this might just be me) is standing in for some work the speaker might do to clarify the poem’s stakes a bit more.
Finally and a much smaller point, I wonder if you need “human” in “our human/touch.” At this point in the poem it seems implied, maybe?
Thanks for this wonderful poem!
Shannon
Love the suggestion re making the quote an epigraph! And thanks for retyping, Claire - that is so helpful.
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