Shut Not Your Doors to Me Proud Libraries
Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything;
A book separate, not link’d with the rest, nor felt by the intellect;
But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm’d Libertad!
It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,
With joy with you, O soul of man.
—Walt Whitman
Nikki Geovanni was one of the most celebrated poets of her generation and has popped up regularly in Poetry Month entries here. She has been associated with the Female Beats, and both Women’s Liberation and Black empowerment.
My First Memory (of Librarians)
This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
wood floor
A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
too short
For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big
In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like
a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall
The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books—another world—just waiting
At my fingertips.
—Nikki Geovanni
Albert Rios.
Alberto Rios was the first Arizona Poet Laureate and the author of many poetry collections, including A Small Story about the Sky in 2015. In 1981, he received the Walt Whitman Award for his collection Whispering to Fool the Wind and he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020.
Don’t Go Into the Library
The library is dangerous—
Don’t go in. If you do
You know what will happen.
It’s like a pet store or a bakery—
Every single time you’ll come out of there
Holding something in your arms.
Those novels with their big eyes.
And those no-nonsense, all muscle
Greyhounds and Dobermans,
All non-fiction and business,
Cuddly when they’re young,
But then the first page is turned.
The doughnut scent of it all, knowledge,
The aroma of coffee being made
In all those books, something for everyone,
The deli offerings of civilization itself.
The library is the book of books,
Its concrete and wood and glass covers
Keeping within them the very big,
Very long story of everything.
The library is dangerous, full
Of answers. If you go inside,
You may not come out
The same person who went in.
—Alberto Rios
Mark Strand was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 1979 and the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004. He served on Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors from 1995 to 2000.
Eating Poetry Ink
runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams,
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
—Mark Strand
Finally one from the Old Man when he was not so old back in 2006 when post 9/11 hysteria and the Gulf War coughed up the so-called Patriot Act, then the most dangerous assault on American civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts. Everyone was afraid to raise a peep in protest. When the American Library Association learned that their members could be served secret warrants for the usage records of their readers and could be fined and imprisoned as national security threats themselves if they said anything about the warrant or search, they defiantly declared that they would not cooperate or violate their users’ privacy. The Feds ranted and raved, issued dire threats, and launched a secret disinformation plan to smear librarians as traitors. The librarians did not blink. They refused to comply with secret warrants. As far as I know, none were ever successfully prosecuted. Although it was likely that the NSA or other spook organization got what they wanted by hacking library computer records, the stand of the Librarians was truly heroic. I was so impressed, I committed poetry.
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The Janitor as Poet from a 2004 newspaper clipping.
Librarians at the Breach
2006
Who would have thought it?
That prim spinster,
severe hair in a bun pincushion
for a slanting pencil,
erect index finger epoxied to permanently pursed lips
sssshing to the recalcitrant
in a thousand cartoons.
That iron gray matron
of the Cheyenne Carnegie Public Library
hovering date stamp in hand
taunting my nightmares
demanding my two cents a day
for the Teddy Roosevelt biography
days AWOL under a corner of the davenport.
That pale, tweedy nebbish of the stacks,
guardian of arcane tomes,
leather books with marbled edges
unmolested for decades
but ever ready for his urgent call.
That smiling story lady
perched on her high stool
rapt, worshipful and fidgety
acolytes at her feet
sing-songing the words
of dreams upon the pages.
Who would have thought it?
That these unlikely heroes
would be called to unsheathe
Excalibur from stone
and set upon a Quest of Virtue,
would need to set once more
Liberty’s Red Cap upon the pole
and storm again the Bastille,
would resurrect the half-forgotten promises
of Jefferson, Madison, Adams et. al.
against aspiring despots.
Who would have thought it, indeed?
—Patrick Murfin
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