visiting an old friend

like you i have a shitload of books stacked everywhere in my house, at my desk at work, in cupboards etc etc.  i love each one.  call me a fetishist.  call me obsessed.  call me addicted to books.  i am all of these.  i  keep scraps of old fashioned correspondence, receipts, printed out articles & poems, in a great many of these books.  so that when i take one down i'll find a 20 year old letter from an older poet whom i've not heard from in so many years.  

such is the surprise & delight of the physical object.  yes, i have converted a great deal of reading & writing on the interwebs.  i wouldn't want or need to give up the breadth, reach & yes depth of online poetics.  i am amazed that i can find audio/visual of favorite poets as well as their social media platforms.  we can connect as in the way e.m. forster asked us to ONLY CONNECT.  

some books, okay, a lot of my books i've forgotten where i got them from.  some surprise me by their age.  i remember buying some books, putting them on the shelves, & think to myself i'll read it soon.  next time i take a particular tome off the shelf i'll find the receipt of purchase tucked like a bookmark in the leaves & find with bemused horror that i bought that book 15 years ago.  time has no meaning anymore!  perhaps that is when we discover that we've gotten old.  years pass by with the speed of days to us.  

but then so some books i remember quite well when i took these old friends home.  this morning i pulled from my shelf an early collection of poetry by the canadian poet rob mclennan, The Richard Brautigan AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH [talonbooks; 1999].  that is some title which caught my eye in i think 2000 as i perused the poetry section of the late great Tower Books.  it was a delightful habit of mine to haunt Tower Books/Records/Video before the interwebs.  i'd do that at least twice/thrice a month.  i'd see all kinds of freaks & characters in these places.  i could write my own book about these characters!

Tower Books was also a store for serendipitous discoveries.  such as The Richard Brautigan AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  yes, the title caught my eye.  i thumbed thru it & read a few poems written by a fellow gen x'r.  a young person whose poems were about sex, friendship, smoking, poetry, popular music.  this book was a collection of previously published chapbooks with series titles like 'good town for a bad dancer', 'these trains', 'last leaves', 'work(ing)s', & 'confectionary airs'.  these are poems about the ecstatic struggle of being young & alive in the late 20th C.  i liked what i read & put the book back on the shelf. 

i don't recall what else i did that day at Tower.  surely i went to the magazine section.  a nearly inexhaustible collection of periodicals.  you can go to school at Tower.  it had a wide selection of lit journals, movie mags, music zines, porn [yes, a great variety of porn], etc etc.  i probably scooted off to see the art/photo books too.  & film criticism as well.  what i do remember is getting back to my car without buying a single book or periodical.  

i don't remember seeing any characters at the store either.  it was daytime anyway.  most of the freaks on the dance floor would come out at night for Tower was famous/infamous for staying open to midnight every day including the holidays.  when i got home my mind kept returning to mclennan's book of poetry titled after a famous bay area poet/novelist.  certainly it was the poems.  but also that title with a long AHHHHHHHHHHHHH after the name of the late bay area poet.  also, too, it was the names of many canadian poets mclennan dedicated his poems too.  i've not heard of any of them.  but a poet so dedicated a friend to his fellow brothers & sisters in the art is a poet after my own heart.

that was that.  i got back into my car, pointed my vehicle back to Tower Books on watt ave [long since converted to...damn!  it changed so many times i don't know what that building is now] took The Richard Brautigan AHHHHHHHHHHHHH off the shelf & bought it.  

this book has been in my collection of books for about 21 years.  there are a great number of books i'd wish i bought when i had the chance.  a thick selection of poems & letters by umberto saba i found at City Lights was one of those books i wish i got but didn't.  another collection by the british poet nick drake [not the late singer/songwriter] also found at Tower Books is another a missed opportunity.  mclennan's book is the only one that i purposefully returned to the store to buy.  there might be other books but this was the only collection of poetry i can remember doing so.

so when i was looking for a book to read this morning i took The Richard Brautigan AHHHHHHHHHHH off the shelf & reacquainted myself with poems such as 'raspberry beret' [written after, i think, the song by the late great prince], 'the unavoidable sexiness of smoking' [argue the subject to your heart's content], & 'laundry & gin, tom waits, delaware avenue'  that begins with these lines: 'hang down your head/drinking/gin & tonics until even the cars/stop beneath a william/burroughs print'.  each poem written in specific stanzaic patterns, all lower case, even the prose poems exhibit the felicity of a younger poet with a good ear & eye.  i greeted this book this morning as i would an old friend of whom i have not spoken to in a long time.  i remembered the beauty, mystery, & magic of poetry.  again.