{"id":1893,"date":"2011-07-03T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T22:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/?p=1893"},"modified":"2011-07-03T15:00:36","modified_gmt":"2011-07-03T22:00:36","slug":"what-i-know-must-be-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/2011\/07\/what-i-know-must-be-there\/","title":{"rendered":"what I know must be there"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I have difficulties with poetry, especially at the new-book bookstore, standing in front of the poetry shelves. I don&#8217;t know what is wrong but I can never find what I know must be there. It is very different in front of the poetry shelves of the secondhand bookshop where every other worn volume promises pleasure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Annie Proulx, &#8220;Bird Cloud,&#8221; p 67<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m reading this book, and was surprised to find the above quote in it last night, after a strenuous day spent shopping for poetry books at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stmarksbookshop.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">St. Mark&#8217;s Bookshop<\/a> in New York City. <\/p>\n<p>Motivations: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Support independent bookstores<\/li>\n<li>Spend a beautiful day moving around in the city<\/li>\n<li>Actually handle and browse potential new books before buying them<\/li>\n<li>Check out the poetry available in a shop (rather than a catalog)<\/li>\n<li>Endeavor to find poetry books that I can love (after finding that I&#8217;m not inerested in a large percentage of the books on my shelves at home &#8211; not sure what this means)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Results:<br \/>\nWorking from a list of poets that held some interest, I found a pretty good percentage on the shelves at St. Marks. Enough to buy 10 books. <\/p>\n<p>Purchased:<br \/>\nJames Tate, Return to the city of the white donkeys<br \/>\nFor the ease of reading and amusement factor; also, must own James Tate due to interest in the prose poem<\/p>\n<p>Jackson Mac Low, Thing of Beauty<br \/>\nFor expanding my understanding of what a poem could be; because the covers feel nice; because Anne Tardos explains things<\/p>\n<p>Leslie Scalapino, Objects in the terrifying tense longing from taking place<br \/>\nFor taking a risk buying something that I have a low chance of understanding; because the text mentions &#8220;reality&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Michael Palmer, Thread<br \/>\nBecause I really like Michael Palmer; because the poems seemed readable; because I want to emulate them?<\/p>\n<p>Lisa Jarnot, Night Scenes<br \/>\nTo keep up with Lisa; for the lovely starry end papers; because I enjoy the poems; for &#8220;o library o lawn o carousel&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Will Alexander, Compression and Purity<br \/>\nBecause of the review in SPD catalog mentioning automatic writing, surrealism, and &#8220;disavowal of the autobiographical process.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Robert Creeley, On Earth<br \/>\nFor sentimental reasons?; to read poems of aging.<\/p>\n<p>David Meltzer, When I was a Poet<br \/>\nFor sentimental reasons?; because of the Beats, because I&#8217;m a sucker for small formats<\/p>\n<p>Jack Collom, Cold Instant<br \/>\nFor the giddiness of the workplay, the drawing, and the Colorado connection (might send this one along to my son)<\/p>\n<p>Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw<br \/>\nFor the HTMLGiant review; because I might learn something? (see Scalapino)<\/p>\n<p>Rejected &#8211; mostly because one can only buy so many books of poetry from the new shelf:<br \/>\nNelly Sachs<br \/>\nJoan Houlihan, The Us<br \/>\nJack Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This to Me<\/p>\n<p>Books that made me happy:<br \/>\nAny poetry book with drawing or painting on the pages, especially rough and unaccomplished-looking &#8211; one especially tall large book (Berrigan-related?), can&#8217;t find the title, didn&#8217;t write it down oh well<\/p>\n<p>Aftermath &#8211; overwhelmed:<br \/>\nTrain ride home with no air conditioning, exhausted by the effort, felt weakened and sick and haunted by poets all night <\/p>\n<p>Still wondering:<br \/>\nAm I really interested in poetry? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have difficulties with poetry, especially at the new-book bookstore, standing in front of the poetry shelves. I don&#8217;t know what is wrong but I can never find what I know must be there.&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}