Best Poems - Books

Paper Aeroplane – Simon Armitage

“The man sitting next to me on the flight
was reading a blank book, keen eyes
panning left to right across empty leaves, fingers
turning from one white space to the next.  

Sometimes he’d nod agreeably or shake his head,
or painstakingly underline some invisible text
with red ink, or decorate the margin
with an exclamation mark or asterisk.

It was a hefty-looking tome, hand-stitched
but wordless front and back and down the spine.  
Coming in to land he laid the silver ribbon-marker
between two bare pages to save his place.  

I was wearing noise-cancellation headphones,
listening to fine mist, when he leaned across
and shouted, ‘Forgive the intrusion, but
would you sign this for me? I think it’s your best.'”

Stanzas Composed In Rev. J. Mitford’s Library –  Bernard Barton

“O! I methinks could dwell content
A spell-bound captive here;
And find, in such imprisonment,
Each fleeting moment dear;—
Dear, not to outward sense alone,
But thought’s most elevated tone.

The song of birds, the hum of bees, 
Their sweetest music make;
The March winds, through the lofty trees,
Their wilder strains awake;
Or from the broad magnolia leaves
A gentler gale its spirit leaves.

Nor less the eye enraptur’d roves
O’er turf of freshest green,
O’er bursting flowers, and budding groves,
And sky of changeful mien,
Where sunny glimpses, bright and blue,
The fleecy clouds are peeping through.

Thus sooth’d, in every passing mood,
How swift each gifted page,
Rich with the mind’s ambrosial food,
The Muse’s brighter age!
How sweet, communion here to hold
With them, the mighty Bards of old!

With them—whose master spirits yet
In deathless numbers dwell,
Whose works defy us to forget
Their still surviving spell;—
That spell, which lingers in a name,
Whose every echo whispers Fame!

Could aught enhance such hours of bliss,
It were in converse known
With him who boasts a scene like this,
An Eden of his own;
Whose taste and talent gave it birth,
And well can estimate its worth.”

Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint
The poet, patriot, sage, or saint,
Nor sparing wit nor learning:
Now, if you’d know the reason why,
The best of reasons I’ll supply—
‘Tis bread to the poor vermin.

Of pepper, snuff, or ‘bacca-smoke,
And russia-calf they make a joke.
Yet why should sons of science
These puny, rankling reptiles dread?
‘Tis but to let their books be read,
And bid the worms defiance.”

“I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-seven
years at my trade,
and served five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printer’s Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers’ errors.

First: I hold that
all books and all
printed matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and these are
their most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer’s trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish professors
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.
Two: silent, cool sabotage
by the printer,
the manual laborer
whose protests
have at times taken this
historical form,
covert interferences
not to be corrected
censoriously by the hand
of the second and far
more ignorant saboteur,
the textual editor.
Three: errors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.
Third: I hold that all three
sorts of error,
errors by chance,
errors by workers’ protest,
and errors by
God’s work,
are in practice the
same and indistinguishable.

Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and

therefore also divine.”

“Did you know that boiling to death

was once a common punishment

in England and parts of Europe?

It’s true. In 1542 Margaret Davy,

a servant, was boiled for poisoning

her employer. So says the encyclopedia.

That’s the way I like to start my day:

drinking hot black coffee and reading

the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica.

Its pages are tissue thin and the covers

rub off on your hands in dirt colored

crumbs (the kind a rubber eraser

makes) but the prose voice is all knowing

and incurably sure of itself. My 1956

World Book runs to 18 volumes and has red

pebbly covers. It begins at ‘Aardvark’

and ends with ‘Zygote.’ I used to believe

you could learn everything you’d ever

need by reading encyclopedias. Who

was E.B. Browning? How many Buddhists

in Burma? What is Byzantine art? Where

do bluebells grow? These days, I own five

sets of encyclopedias from various

eras. None of them ever breathed

a word about the fact that this humming,

aromatic, acid flashback, pungent, tingly-

fingered world is acted out differently

for each one of us by the puppet theatre

of our senses. Some of us grow up doing

credible impressions of model citizens

(though sooner or later hairline

cracks appear in our facades). The rest

get dubbed eccentrics, unnerved and undone

by other people’s company, for which we

nevertheless pine. Curses, outbursts

and distracting chants simmer all day

long in the Crock-Pots of our heads.

Encyclopedias contain no helpful entries

on conducting life’s business while the ruckus

in your skull keeps competing for your

attention; or on the tyranny of the word

normal—its merciless sway over those

of us bedeviled and obsessed,

hopeless at school dances, repelled by

mothers’ suffocating hugs, yet entranced

by foul-smelling chemistry experiments,

or eager to pass sleepless nights seeking

rhymes for misspent and grimace.

Dear girl, your jolly blond one-year-old

brother, who adults adore, fits into

the happy category of souls mostly at home

in the world. He tosses a fully clothed doll

into the inflatable wading pool in your

backyard (splash!) and laughs maniacally

at his own comic genius. You sit alone,

twenty feet from everyone else, on a stone

bench under a commodious oak, reading aloud,

gripping your book like the steering wheel

of a race car you’re learning to drive.

Complaints about you are already filtering

in. You’re not big on eye contact or smiling.

You prefer to play by yourself. You pitch fits.

Last week you refused to cut out and paste

paper shapes with the rest of the kids.

You told the kindergarten teacher you were

going to howl like a wolf instead, which you did

till they hauled you off to the principal’s

office. Ah, the undomesticated smell

of open rebellion! Your troublesome legacy,

and maybe part of your charm, is to shine

too hotly and brightly at times, to be lost

in the maze of your sensations, to have

trouble switching gears, to be socially

clueless, to love books as living things,

and therefore to be much alone. If you like,

when I die, I’ll leave you my encyclopedias.

They’re wonderful company. Watching you

read aloud in your father’s garden, as if

declaiming a sermon for hedges, I recall

reading about Martin Luther this morning.

A religious reformer born in 1483, he nailed

his grievances, all 95 of them, to a German

church door. Fiery, impossible, untamable

girl, I bet you too post your grievances

in a prominent place someday. Anyway,

back to boiling. The encyclopedia says

the worst offenders were ‘boiled without

benefit of clergy’ which I guess means

they were denied the right to speak

to a priest before being lowered into scalding

water and cooked like beets. Martin Luther

believed we human beings contain the ‘inpoured

grace of god,’ as though grace were lemonade,

and we are tumblers brim full of it. Is grace

what we hold in without spilling a drop,

or is it an outflooding, a gush of messy

befuddling loves? The encyclopedia never

explains why Margaret Davy poisoned her employer,

what harm he might have done her or whether

she dripped the fatal liquid on his pudding or sloshed

it into his sherry. Grievances and disagreements:

can they lead the way to grace? If our thoughts

and feelings were soup or stew, would they taste

of bile when we’re defeated and be flavored

faintly with grace on better days? I await the time

and place when you can tell me, little butter pear,

screeching monkey mind, wolf cub, curious furrow

browed mammal what you think of all this.

Till then, your bookish old aunt sends you this missive,

a fumbling word of encouragement, a cockeyed letter

of welcome to the hallowed ranks of the nerds,

nailed up nowhere, and never sent, this written kiss.”

A Book – Adelaide Love

“A book, I think, is very like
A little golden door
That takes me into places
Where I’ve never been before.

It leads me into fairyland
Or countries strange and far
And, best of all, the golden door
Always stands ajar.”

Dirge For An Era – Phyllis McGinley

“O! do you remember Paper Books
   When paper books were thinner?
It was all so gay
In that far-off day
When you fetched them home
At a quarter a tome
   To dip in after dinner
Or carry to bed in a handy packet,
Bosomy girls on every jacket.
And never a taint of culture
   Sullied that wholesome air
But only bodies
In Bishop’s studies
   And blood on the bill-of-fare.
As the type grew blurry the plots grew thick.
But what do we get now?
Moby Dick.

Cluttering bookstore counters,
   In stationer’s windows preening,
The Paperbacks
Now offer us facts 
On Tillich and Sartre
And abstract artre
   And Life’s Essential Meaning,
Confessions by St. Augustine
   Instead of murderous men
Or man a yard
Of Kierkegaard
   And the myriad laws of Zen
Or books about bees and how they hive,
Cheap at a dollar-
Ninety-five.

You pack your trunk and you’re at the station
But what do you find for a journey’s ration?
Books by Aeschylus, books by Chaucer,
Books about atom or flying saucer,
Books of poetry, deep books, choice books,
Pre-Renaissance and neo-Joyce books,
In covers chaste and a prose unlurid.
Books that explore my id and your id,
Never hammock or summer-porch books
But Compass, Evergreen, Anchor, Torch Books,
Books by a thousand stylish names
And everywhere, everywhere, Henry James.

O! do you remember Paper Books
   When paper books were thrilling,
When something to read 
Was seldom Gide
Or Proust or Peacock
Or Margaret Mead
   And seldom Lionel Trilling?
Gone is the sleuth that cheered our youth
   And the prose that galloped pure.
The flame of our pleasure burns to ash
Since shops are swept of their darling trash
And all we can buy for petty cash
   Is paper Literature.”

Lady of the Books – Augie Medina 

“Oh the things she read!
They only found out after she was dead
She had smorgasbord tastes
No book went to waste 

Romances, histories, even light porn
Poetry and a ‘how to’ on the growing of corn
Math texts, travel guides and biographies
Books on cooking, wines and good cheese
Even Bach on counterpoint, would you believe?
Universal knowledge she wished to achieve

Books on the shelves and scattered on the floor
This was the scene when they walked through the door
A natural death but she had dressed to the nines
In full length dress and jewelry that shined

In the curious way that things sometimes turn out
No one ever learned what she was about
But if you want and know where to look
You’ll find her just known as Lady of the Books.”

Who Hath A Book – Wilbur D. Nesbit

“Who hath a book
Hath friends at hand,
And gold and gear
At his command;

And rich estates,
If he but look,
Are held by him
Who hath a book.

Who hath a book
Hath but to read
And he may be
A king indeed;

His Kingdom is
His inglenook;
All this is his
Who hath a book.”

To My Books – Caroline Norton

“Silent companions of the lonely hour,
Friends who can never alter or forsake,
Who for inconstant roving have no power,
And all neglect, perforce, must calmly take—
Let me return to you, this turmoil ending,
Which worldly cares have in my spirit wrought,
And, o’er your old familiar pages bending,
Refresh my mind with many a tranquil thought;
Till happily meeting there, from time to time,
Fancies, the audible echo of my own,
‘Twill be like hearing in a foreign clime
My native language spoken in friendly tone,
And with a sort of welcome I shall dwell
On these, my unripe musings, told so well.”

The Bookworm – Thomas Parnell

“Come hither, Boy! we’ll hunt to-day
The Bookworm, ravening beast of prey,
Produc’d by parent Earth, at odds
(As Fame reports it) with the gods.
Him frantic hunger wildly drives
Against a thousand authors’ lives:
Thro’ all the fields of wit he flies;
Dreadful his head with clust’ring eyes,
With horns without, and tusks within,
And scales to serve him for a skin.
Observe him nearly, lest he climb
To wound the bards of antient time,
Or down the vale of Fancy go
To tear some modern wretch below:
On ev’ry corner fix thine eye,
Or ten to one he slips thee by.

See where his teeth a passage eat:
We’ll rouse him from the deep retreat.
But who the shelter’s forc’d to give?
‘Tis sacred Virgil as I live!
From leaf to leaf, from song to song,
He draws the tadpole form along,
He mounts the gilded edge before,
He’s up, he scuds the cover o’er;
He turns, he doubles, there he past,
And here we have him, caught at last.

Insatiate Brute! whose teeth abuse
The sweetest servants of the Muse.
(Nay never offer to deny,
I took thee in the fact to fly.)
His roses nipt in ev’ry page,
My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage;
By thee my Ovid wounded lies;
By thee my Lesbia’s Sparrow dies;
Thy rabid teeth have half destroy’d
The work of Love in Biddy Floyd;
They rent Belinda’s locks away,
And spoil’d the Blouzelind of Gay.
For all, for ev’ry single deed,
Relentless Justice bids thee bleed.
Then fall a victim to the Nine,
My self the priest, my desk the shrine.

Bring Homer, Virgil, Tasso, near,
To pile a sacred altar here.
Hold, Boy! thy hand out-runs thy wit,
You reach’d the plays that Dennis writ;
You reach’d me Phillips’ rustic strain;
Pray take your mortal bards again.

Come bind the victim,—There he lies,
And here between his num’rous eyes
This venerable dust I lay,
From manuscripts just swept away.

The goblet in my hand I take,
(For the libation’s yet to make)
A health to Poets! all their days
May they have bread, as well as praise;
Sense may they seek, and less engage
In papers fill’d with party-rage;
But if their riches spoil their vein,
Ye Muses! make them poor again.

Now bring the weapon, yonder blade,
With which my tuneful pens are made.
I strike the scales that arm thee round,
And twice and thrice I print the wound;
The sacred altar floats with red,
And now he dies, and now he’s dead.

How like the son of Jove I stand,
This hydra stretch’d beneath my hand!
Lay bare the monster’s entrails here,
To see what dangers threat the year:
Ye Gods! what Sonnets on a wench!
What lean Translations out of French!
‘Tis plain, this lobe is so unsound,
S——prints, before the months go round.

But hold, before I close the scene,
The sacred altar should be clean.
Oh! had I Shadwell’s second bays,
Or Tate! thy pert and humble lays,
(Ye Pair! forgive me, when I vow
I never miss’d your Works till now)
I’d tear the leaves to wipe the shrine,
(That only way you please the Nine)
But since I chance to want these two,
I’ll make the Songs of D’Urfey do.

Rent from the corpse, on yonder pin
I hang the scales that brac’d it in;
I hang my studious morning gown,
And write my own inscription down.

This trophy, from the Python won,
This robe, in which the deed was done,
These Parnell, glorying in the feat,
Hung on these shelves, the Muses’ seat.
Here Ignorance and Hunger found
Large realms of wit to ravage round;
Here Ignorance and Hunger fell;
Two foes in one I sent to hell.
Ye Poets! who my labours see,
Come share the triumph all with me:
Ye Critics! born to vex the Muse,
Go mourn the grand ally you lose.”

With them I take delight in weal,
And seek relief in woe;
And while I understand and feel
How much to them I owe,
My cheeks have often been bedew’d
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.

My thoughts are with the Dead; with them
I live in long-past years,
Their virtues love, their faults condemn,
Partake their griefs and fears;
And from their sober lessons find
Instruction with a humble mind.

My hopes are with the Dead: anon
With them my place will be;
And I with them shall travel on
Through all futurity;
Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
Which will not perish in the dust.”