Read Online The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nicholson Baker
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Humorous, Fiction - General, Man-Woman Relationships, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), General & Literary Fiction, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Poets
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I'm not sure.
Last night I watched two episodes of Dirty Jobs and then went upstairs to bed after thinking that my poetry was not for shit, frankly. If I may be pardoned the expression. I got in bed, and I realized that what I wanted was to have some Mary Oliver next to me. If I had some Mary Oliver I would be saved. I didn't want to read any more of the Cambridge Book of Lesser Poets edited by Squire, and I didn't want another chapter of my friend Tim's book on Queen Victoria, I wanted Mary Oliver, so I went downstairs and got my new paperback copy of her New and Selected Poems, Volume 1 and went back upstairs again. And I immediately felt more sure of what I was doing because I was reading Mary's poems. They're very simple. And yet each has something. I like almost every one of her poems. That's not even true of Howard Moss or of Louise Bogan. It's certainly not true of somebody like Tennyson or Swinburne.
At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published. Think of that. Of course yes, Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we're living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no recognition at all. They get tons of money but no recognition as artists. Which is probably much healthier for them and better for their art.
I LOOKED INTO THE FRIDGE dipping my knees to ZZ Top while my dog Smacko slept on the floor. He's used to the TV, and he's used to loud music. It bothered him when he was a puppy, but he's smart and he knows somehow that the sounds aren't real. What bothers him now are ear mites and fleas.
Roz was very good at combing his undercarriage for fleas. He was my dog before she moved in, but even so she loved him to distraction. I would sit in a chair and she would sit on the floor with Smacko on his back next to her, and we would talk as she went hunting through his fur with her fingers. She'd find the fleas even when they were hiding in the fur just around his tiny turret. When she got one she would drop it in a glass of soapy water. Smack would narrow his eyes in sleepy pleasure at being groomed. I don't groom Smack nearly as much as Roz did, and I should. Everyone says this summer is a very bad one for fleas.
Louise Bogan said that Theodore Roethke made her "bloom like a Persian rosebush" during their long happy sex weekend together.
If I had a ponytail, which I don't, I'd cut it off with four slow scissorcuts and bury it in the garden with the rubber band still around it.
6
I WOKE UP THINKING a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.
For days I had a dissatisfied feeling. I couldn't focus. I was nervous about Switzerland. I'm going to be in a panel discussion there on "The Meters of Love," with Renee Parker Task, who's a hotshot among young formalists. Just the kind of thing I'm bad at. Being empaneled. All yesterday afternoon I thought about timed backups, and search results, and mermaids, and women wearing clothes, and women not wearing clothes, and I felt unlyrical. And then I got in bed and I read a short biography of Nathalia Crane in an old textbook, and I read a poem by Sara Teasdale, and I thought about turtles. And then, in the back of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, I wrote, "Suddenly there is lots to read." I also wrote: "Mary Oliver is saving my life."
One thing I really like about books of poems is that you can open them anywhere and you're at a beginning. If I open a biography, or a memoir, or a novel, when I open it in the middle, which is what I usually do, I'm really in the middle. What I want is to be as much as possible at the beginning. And that's what poetry gives me. Many many beginnings. That feeling of setting forth.
Now. I want to
Last night I watched two episodes of Dirty Jobs and then went upstairs to bed after thinking that my poetry was not for shit, frankly. If I may be pardoned the expression. I got in bed, and I realized that what I wanted was to have some Mary Oliver next to me. If I had some Mary Oliver I would be saved. I didn't want to read any more of the Cambridge Book of Lesser Poets edited by Squire, and I didn't want another chapter of my friend Tim's book on Queen Victoria, I wanted Mary Oliver, so I went downstairs and got my new paperback copy of her New and Selected Poems, Volume 1 and went back upstairs again. And I immediately felt more sure of what I was doing because I was reading Mary's poems. They're very simple. And yet each has something. I like almost every one of her poems. That's not even true of Howard Moss or of Louise Bogan. It's certainly not true of somebody like Tennyson or Swinburne.
At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history ever published. Think of that. Of course yes, Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we're living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no recognition at all. They get tons of money but no recognition as artists. Which is probably much healthier for them and better for their art.
I LOOKED INTO THE FRIDGE dipping my knees to ZZ Top while my dog Smacko slept on the floor. He's used to the TV, and he's used to loud music. It bothered him when he was a puppy, but he's smart and he knows somehow that the sounds aren't real. What bothers him now are ear mites and fleas.
Roz was very good at combing his undercarriage for fleas. He was my dog before she moved in, but even so she loved him to distraction. I would sit in a chair and she would sit on the floor with Smacko on his back next to her, and we would talk as she went hunting through his fur with her fingers. She'd find the fleas even when they were hiding in the fur just around his tiny turret. When she got one she would drop it in a glass of soapy water. Smack would narrow his eyes in sleepy pleasure at being groomed. I don't groom Smack nearly as much as Roz did, and I should. Everyone says this summer is a very bad one for fleas.
Louise Bogan said that Theodore Roethke made her "bloom like a Persian rosebush" during their long happy sex weekend together.
If I had a ponytail, which I don't, I'd cut it off with four slow scissorcuts and bury it in the garden with the rubber band still around it.
6
I WOKE UP THINKING a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.
For days I had a dissatisfied feeling. I couldn't focus. I was nervous about Switzerland. I'm going to be in a panel discussion there on "The Meters of Love," with Renee Parker Task, who's a hotshot among young formalists. Just the kind of thing I'm bad at. Being empaneled. All yesterday afternoon I thought about timed backups, and search results, and mermaids, and women wearing clothes, and women not wearing clothes, and I felt unlyrical. And then I got in bed and I read a short biography of Nathalia Crane in an old textbook, and I read a poem by Sara Teasdale, and I thought about turtles. And then, in the back of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, I wrote, "Suddenly there is lots to read." I also wrote: "Mary Oliver is saving my life."
One thing I really like about books of poems is that you can open them anywhere and you're at a beginning. If I open a biography, or a memoir, or a novel, when I open it in the middle, which is what I usually do, I'm really in the middle. What I want is to be as much as possible at the beginning. And that's what poetry gives me. Many many beginnings. That feeling of setting forth.
Now. I want to
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