Ah, as a fellow retiree, lazing about in somewhat easy pleasures a lot of the time, I began to worry there, Max, but by the end felt more or less at home with your shelves…
Doug
On Aug 19, 2015, at 8:57 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Ignorance
>
> All my long life, I’ve
> fretted at my ignorance.
> Student summers when free,
> I’d start over in the library,
>
> sampling dictionaries,
> encyclopedias
> for first steps in knowledge -
> universal, hopefully.
>
> Before history, prehistory.
> Before languages, Language.
> Before art history, Art.
> Daunting? you bet!
>
> Then I learned: postpone
> what’s Minor, find what’s Major.
> Summer I now gave up to
> Leonardo, Michelangelo,
>
> Russell’s (slick) History
> of Western Philosophy,
> Bach, Beethoven,
> Brahms, Tchaikovsky.
>
> Shakespeare and co
> were set authors each term
> and looked after so.
> Summers called friends
>
> to the beach, me
> to the library.
> What did I learn?
> Ignorance is incurable.
>
> Thenceforward, cut corners,
> teacher of the little I knew,
> remaining a smatterer
> informed by the book review.
>
> The books themselves
> when I retired loomed
> up again, threatening:
> last chance, now or never.
>
> I lined them up: Homer,
> Plato, Sophocles, Dante,
> Cervantes, Gibbon, Hugo,
> Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.
>
> They’re staring at me now.
> I stare back and shrug.
> How long have I got?
> Treat them with severe ignore?
>
> After many a summer
> dies the autodidact.
> Some quick dipping,
> skimming and skipping -
>
> that’s about all they’ll get.
> After me, anyone’s welcome
> to shelve those classics
> where I didn’t begin -
>
> with a long strong
> concentration span.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Done in by creation itself.
I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
Robert Kroetsch.
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