Max Sad what happens to the left overs ?? even I suspect our local charity
shop (op shop to peasants) would turn  down a lot of mine -would they be
good for insulation?? Cremate them with me might save funeral costs!!!!
P 
Ps strange what one things finds in books!!!!!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 21 November 2006 22:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snap of last week

Dispersal of Books and Effects

Tuesday came the man from Alice's Bookshop,
ran his eye along some of the shelves
and round the leaning squads on half the floor,
filled several cardboard boxes
with what his clients might be tempted by:
not Browning - but dusty Graham Greene
will do for the two-dollar stand outside.

He used to live over the shop, but
when his wife got their third dog, he said: 
two we can pick up when other dogs threaten,
three and we move out of town.

Eighteen acres they've ended up on,
most for his neighbour's sheep,
one for their own garden,
with strawberries his hobby crop.
One boundary is the Campaspe River
famous for flooding, now a trickle.

The future of books is doubtful. The young 
with short concentration spans, 
the narrowly educated ... take doctors,
they seldom cross his door,
not to mention other professions.

And more read screens not paper ...
But lordy, the number of new books that come out!

Little here is new. He will serve
these remnants to the remnant meantime ...

I thank him for his small cheque.

2.
Wednesday's dealer, from 'Grub Street Books',
went to Xavier College and knows Latin,
has good memories of university English
with Vincent Buckley (here are his books,
resellable? I'll keep 'Poetry and the Sacred').

He used to be in antiquarian books.
Nothing of that sort here - Keble's
'Christian Year' looks quaint but unwanted.
Religious folk aren't looking to read.

He takes a trolleyload of boxes
in exchange for cash.
Regretting that I let him take
Catullus and Horace,
I ponder buying them back one day.

3.
Thursday's dealer, 'Basilisk Books',
also did Latin (and Greek) at Xavier.
Of course has less to choose from,
but knows American fiction sells.
People often ask for Gertrude Stein.
Camus, Sartre, Orwell and Kundera:
all currently in demand.

To my surprise he fancies James K. Baxter,
whom perhaps I should have kept.
A convert to Catholicism, I recall.
I promise to send him my joke-dream poem
about picking up hitchhiking Baxter
and ditching him deep into Port Nicholson.

4.
That leaves two small cheques, much detritus, 
old serials no-one values, Tennyson and Browning,
and the old typewriter I kept propping up
the computer to my eye level.
Typewriter, computer, just conduits.

Teaching, I was just a conduit.
A former teacher is ... a paltry thing.
The typewriter is for the hard-rubbish bin.

In a corner, forgotten for years, I find
a giant poster of the good gray Whitman:
'he most honors my style who learns under it
to destroy the teacher' (do I misquote?);

and a dusty bottle: 'New Zealand 
deer velvet liqueur' (also in Japanese) -
still nearly full. How on earth 
did I come by that? I seem to remember 
a musky musty sweetness - deer velvet?
No aphrodisiac, I can vouch for that.

Taking home a few books, I can say to my dogs: 
shall we work through Wordsworth one more time? 

Max Richards
November 2006


------------------------------------------------------------
This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au