It's true, what Nick Hornby said (I'm paraphrasing, of course), that books of poems are meant to be taken down off the shelf then read, one or three at a time, then put back up. Then, maybe the next day, maybe the next weekend, taken down again and read again--just a few at a time, maybe the same ones twice or three times. Maybe--I've moved away from Hornby, by the by--you take it down and look at the scrawled writing in the corners and margins and the thing you underlined and shake your head and sigh because what were you thinking? I mean, really, you underlined that. And then you look for a differently colored pen and do it again.
I'm reading Collins and Simic right now. Collins's new book Ballistics is a lot like his old books, which is to say light, clever--almost obnoxiously so--and full of punchlines. Simic, is still full of stop-and-go enjambment and an aesthetic that makes you think of coal factories and Cleveland or Detroit, one of those decaying urban cities. It makes you think of communists, still meeting in their living rooms, one with another, and making plans and predicting the fall of Capitalism. Always predicting. Always wrong. Even the typeface looks old and sad. Like it should be cracking a little. One poem, undoubtedly in violation of about 100 copywright laws. This one's from 60 Poems, by Charles Simic. It reminds me of Dunn, and a little bit of Collins. And not, I think, of Simic. Except that second stanza, that's Simic. Whatever. Here's the poem:
AGAINST WHATEVER IT IS THAT'S ENCROACHING
Best of all is to be idle,
And especially on a Thursday,
And to sip wine while studying the light:
The way it ages, yellows, turns ashen
And then hesitates forever
On the threshold of the night
That could be bringing the first frost.
It's good to have a woman around just then,
And two is even better.
Let them whisper to each other
And eye you with a smirk.
Let them roll up their sleeves and unbutton their shirts a bit
As this fine old twilight deserves,
And the small schoolboy
Who has come home to a room almost dark
And now watches wide-eyed
The grown-ups raise their glasses to him,
The giddy-headed, red-haired woman
With eyes tightly shut,
As if she were about to cry or sing.
Goodnight, gentle reader(s).
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