National Library Week Verse—National Poetry Month 2020

National Library Week Verse—National Poetry Month 2020

April 21, 2020

What happens when National Poetry Month and National Library Week collide?  Poetry about libraries, librarians, and readers, of course.  Most libraries are physically closed during the Coronavirus lock down but are doing valiant service finding ways to continue to serve their users many of whom are going bonkers and craving books like a crack head in withdrawal.  

Here is a sample of the verse libraries inspire.

Walt Whitman.

You knew that good old Walt Whitman who often felt the sting of censorship and the condemnation of the gate keepers to approved American culture would have something to say.

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.

Nikki Geovanni is one of the most celebrated poets her generation who 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

Alberto Rios.

Alberto Rios was the first Arizona Poet Laureate of 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.

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

The Janitor as Poet from a 2004 newspaper clipping.

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, 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 users 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.

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

Rosa Parks Halloween 2005—Murfin Verse

Rosa Parks' mug shot in Birmingham.  I echoed this quote, which she repeated often in slightly different wording, in my poem.

On October 24, 2005 Rosa Parks died in Detroit, Michigan at the age of 93.  She was revered as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement for sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to give her seat to a white man.  A young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. was selected to lead the long campaign that led to one of the first great victories in for the Civil Rights Movement in the South.

After her death that year, she was widely honored including the then unheard of honor for a woman and a private citizen who never held high civil or military office of being laid in state in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol.  Tens of thousands filed silently by her flag draped coffin on October 31—Halloween.

Rosa Parks in her elder years in Detroit was much honored as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

I was inspired to write a poem by news coverage of the solemn event. With unwarranted audaciousness, I chose to write in her voice.  I had recently listened to some extended interviews and could clearly hear her soft, breathy tone and gentle Southern accent in my head.  I knew then, and I know now, that there will be some that take great offense—particularly because I have her voice comments about crime and young men in her troubled Detroit neighborhood.  But I had also heard her make similar comments in life.

I have read this work several times and it has appeared in this blog before.  But it seems an apt moment to revisit it.

Tens of thousands waited in long lines to pay their respects to Rosa Parks as the laid in state in the Capital Rotunda on Halloween 2005.

Rosa Parks on Halloween  2005

I didn’t hold truck with Halloween.

I was a good Christian woman.

Ask anyone who ever knew me,

            they will tell you so.

Back in Detroit young fools,

            with pints and pistols

            in their back pockets

            burned the neighborhood

            each Halloween.

Hell Night they called it

            and it was.

Heathen business, I say.

I passed on a few days ago.

Time had whittled me away.

Small as I was to begin with,

            I had no weight left

            to tie me to the earth.

Now I lay in a box on cold marble.

The empty dome of the Capital

            pretends to be heaven above.

A river of faces turns around me,

            gawking, weeping, murmuring.

I see them all.

Maybe those old Druids,

            pagan though they were,

            were right about the air

            between the living and the dead

            being thin this day.

More likely that Sweet Chariot

            has parked somewhere

            and let me linger a while

            just so I could see this

            before swinging low

            to carry me home.

It makes me proud alright.

I was always proud.

Humility before the Lord

            may be a virtue,

            but humility before the master

            was the lash that kept

            Black folks down.

We grew pride as a back bone.

All of this is nice enough.

But let me tell you,

            since I’ve been gone,

            I’ve seen some foolishness

            and heard plenty, too.

They talk all kinds of foolishness

            about that day in Montgomery.

All that falderal about my feet being tired.

It wasn’t my soles that ached.

It was my soul.

It wasn’t any sudden accident either.

No sir, I prayed at the AME church.

I went to the Highland School

            for rabble rousers and trouble makers.

I met with the brothers at the NAACP

            who were a little afraid

            of an uppity woman.

Another thing.

That day was not my whole life.

There were 42 years before

            and fifty more after.

There was plenty of loving and grieving,

            sweat and laughter,

            and always speaking my mind

            very plainly, thank you.

Sure, there were parades.

There were medals and speeches, too.

But there were also long lonely days.

Once, up in Detroit,

            I was beat half to death

            in my own home

            by a wild eyed thug.

He didn’t care if I was

            the Mother of Civil Rights.

He never heard of Dr. King

            or the bus boycott.

All he wanted was my Government money.

            so he could go out

            and hop himself up some more.

That a young Black man

            could do that to an old woman,

            any old woman,

            near broke my heart.

That I could step out my door           

            and see copies of him

            lolling on every street corner

            made me mad.

We may have changed the world,

            like they kept saying.

We didn’t change it enough.

We didn’t keep the hope from

            being sucked out of the city.

This business in the Capital  

            is alright, I suppose.

And it was nice enough to be brought

            back to Montgomery, too,

            laid out in the chapel

            of my home church.

But clearly some folks have

            gone out of their minds.

Why, in Houston the other day,

            before a World Series game,

            they had the crowd stand silent

            in my memory.

It was a sea of white faces

            who paid a seamstress’s

            wages for a month for a seat.

It seems the only Black faces

            were on the field

            or roaming the aisles

            selling hot dogs.

And, Lord, the two-faced politicians

            that came out of the woodwork!

The governor of Alabama

            cried crocodile tears

            as if he would not be

            happy to have

            a White Citizen’s Council

            membership card in his wallet

            if it would get him some votes.

Somebody roused George W. from his stupor,

            told him in short easy words

            who I was,

            and shoved him out

            in front of the microphones

            to eulogize me.

He looked uncomfortable and confused.

I understand he had other things

            on his mind.

What these politicians had in mind

            was patting black folks on the head.

“See,” they say, “Mrs. Parks and Dr. King

            took care of everything.

They asked for freedom and we gave it to them

            a long, long time ago.

What more can you ask?

Now stand over there out of the way

            so we can get down to the business  

            of going after real money.”

It plain tires me out.

Little children, Black and white,

            who study me in school,

            do not think the job is over.

Your own bus seat must be won every day.

And while you are at it,

            have the driver change the route.

—Patrick Mufin