My Books, My Life: Maginal Notes & Underlines From Poetry Books (A-R)

My Books, My Life:
Marginal Notes & Underlines
From Poetry Books (A-R)
Clayton Kent Lowe
(b. 1936- d. 20xx)


Agee, James
The Collected Poems of James Agee, edit,Robert Fitzgerald (1970)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore, Washington, D.C. (June 17, 1981)

“To those living and soon to die who tell truth or tell of truth, or who honorably seek to tell, or who tell the truths of others . . . “
- James Agee, “Permit Me Voyage: 1934”

Akhmatova, Anna
Selected Poems Translated by D.M. Thomas (1976)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Cols., Ohio (December 6, 2000)
It was not the touching of her body that was her father’s sin, it was the wounding of her soul - ckl (12/26/00)

“We are brief guests of the earth, as it were,
And life is a habit we put on.”
- Anna Akhmatova, “There are Four of Us,” 1961

Ammons, A. R.
Sphere: The Form of a Motion (1974)
Bought: Gift from David & Lee (December 25, 1995)
“Walhalla living room - fire in fireplace, snow on ground outside (7:30 pm, December 25, 1995)

“ . . . . most of our writers live in New York City
densely: there in the abstractions of squares and glassy
floors they cut up and parcel out the nothingness they

think America is: I wish they would venture the rural and
see that the woods are undisturbed by their bothering
reputations and the the brooks have taken to flowing

the way they always have and that the redwing pauses
to consider his perch before he lights in a cedar . . . .”
A. R. Ammons, Sphere 38, 1974

Arnold, Matthew
The Works of Matthew Arnold
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Cols., Ohio (August 12, 1997)

Underlined (August 15, 1997) - ckl
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, 1851

Auden, W. H.
Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden (1959)
Bought: No place listed (April 23, 1974)

Auden, W. H.
The English Auden: Poems, Essays & Dramatic Writings (1927-39)
Bought: Gift from Neil & Marge (December, 1978)

Underlined (January 4, 1978) - ckl
“When people are anxious, leisure becomes a vacuum to be forcibly filled--never be alone, never stop to think. Half the machinery of the world is running to-day not to satisfy any real want, but to stop us remembering that we are afraid.”
- W.H. Auden, How to be Masters of the Machine (April 28, 1933)

Auden, W. H.
Thank You, Fog: Last Poems by W. H. Auden (1974)
Bought: No place listed (December 25, 1974)

Underlined (11:15 pm, December 26, 1974 - The Farmhouse) - ckl
“But Time, the domain of Deeds,
calls for a complex Grammar
with many Moods and Tenses,
and prime the Imperative.
We are free to choose our paths
but choose We must, no matter
where they lead, and the tales We
tell of the Past must be true.”
- W. H. Auden, Aubade
And decisions had already been made when the above was underlined that consequently altered my family’s lives - ckl (1 am, June 11, 2006)

Bachelard, Gaston
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language & the Cosmos (tr1969)
Bought: Time and date lost, first half of book xeroxed
Part of this copy read in Tobermory during the summer of 1989 - ckl

Bachelard, Gaston
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language & the Cosmos (tr1969) Bought (second copy): SBX, Columbus, Ohio (June 29, 1991)

Baudelaire
Flowers of Evil (1857, 1861 - 1958 tr. Jacques Leclercq))
Bought: Chapter I (November 10, 1984)

Benet, Stephen Vincent
Western Star (1943)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus, Ohio (May 19, 1981)

Berryman, John
Collected Poems: 1937-1971
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (April, 2004)

Berryman, John
The Dream Songs (1959)
Bought: Student Book Exchange - Cols., Ohio (August 29, 1978)

Blake, William
Milton: A Poem by William Blake (1805-1810)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (No date)

Blake, William
Poems and Prophecies
Bought: Wycliff Books - Columbus, Ohio (September 26, 1983)

Blake, William
A Selection of Poems and Letters (edit., J. Bronowski, 1958)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Cols., Ohio (March 30, 1981)

Underlined August 15, 1981 - ckl
“ . . . . he sometimes spoke as if no one had thought of the things he thought about. His visual imagination made everything that he said more than life-size, and as disturbing as a dream which is unreal because it is too real. He never tried in the least to fit into the world; simply, innocently, and completely, he was a rebel.”
- J. Bronowski, Introduction

Blake, William
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Bought: The Book Rack - W. Henderson Rd., Cols. (November 11, 1980)

Bly, Robert
The Light Around the Body: Poems by Robert Bly
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (January 9, 1980)

Underlined November 1980 - ckl
Source of my OSU “506” Syllabus Quotation - ckl
“For according to the outward man, we are in this world, and according to the inward man, we are in the inward world . . . . Since then we are generated out of both worlds, we speak two languages, and we must be understood also by two languages.”
- Jacob Boehme, The Two Worlds

Our streets and backyards
Filled with snow last night
And glistens now in the morning sun
Fresh and clean
As a new sheet on a
Winter’s night bed.
- ckl (November 26, 1980 - Walhalla)

Bly, Robert
Silence in the Snowy Fields
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (July 10, 1980)
Began: 11:36 pm, July 27, 1980 (Walhalla)
Rain following an earlier earthquake felt in Columbus, Ohio - ckl
Finished: 11:45 pm, August 2, 1980 (Walhalla)

Bronte: Emily, Anne, and Charlotte
Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters
Bought: No time, nor date

Brooke, Rupert
The Works of Rupert Brooke
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Columbus (February 22, 1997)
Began: 11:30 pm, October 30, 1997 (Walhalla)
Halloween eve - ckl

Browning, Robert
The Selected Poems of Robert Browning (1942)
Bought: No time, nor date

Burns, Robert
Robert Burns’s Complete Poetical Works (1900)
Bought: August 26, 1975

Burgess, Anthony
Byrne: A Novel (1995)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Columbus (October 17, 1999)

Byron, George Gordon Lord
The Poems of Byron
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Cols. (August 2, 1979)

“When a man hath no freedom to fight
for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and
of Rome,
And get knock’d on the head for his
labours,
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous
plan,
And is always as noble requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And if not shot or hang’d, you’ll get
knighted.
- George Lord Byron, Stanzas, November 1820

Byron, George Lord
The Selected Poetry of Lord Byron
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore (September 7, 1979)

Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Sassvedra)
Don Quixote of La Mancha
Bought: Lawton, Oklahoma (1975)
Began: 11 pm, April 10, 1975
Not yet finished (Last read 1:30 pm, July 5, 1975)

Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (July 25, 1974)

Chmielarz, Sharon
But I Won’t Go Out in a Boat (1991)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road (February 16, 1995)

Ciardi, John
Lives of X (1971)
Bought: Whetstone Library - Columbus, Ohio (July 27, 1994)

Ciardi, John
Selected Poems (1984)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (September 18, 2003)

Clare, John
The Works of John Clare
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Columbus (February 22, 1997)
Began: Introduction (7:15 am, April 17, 1997)
North end of Lake Windermere, Ambleside, England - ckl

“Perhaps most interestingly for the modern reader, with our intense consciousness of green issues and the lost rural past, Clare is valued as the verse-spokesman for the villager and the village community. Even more than Wordsworth he is the champion of the local and the particular, the marginalized and the undervalued, both in the human world and in all those fragile and vital areas of nature, threatened then (and now) by human predation and exploitation.”
- John Goodridge, Introduction to the Works of John Clare, 1994

Margin note while reading John Clare’s “Address to Plenty”
A white swan just whirred in for a landing on Lake Windermere - ckl

“O here’s thy comfort, Solitude,
When overpowering woes intrude!
Then thy sad, thy solemn dress
Owns the balm my soul to bless:
Here I judge the world aright;
Here see vain man in his true light;
Learn patience, in this trying hour,
To gild life’s brambles with a flower;
Take pattern from the hints thou’st given,
And follow in thy steps to heaven.”
- John Clare, Solitude
Read: (8 am, September 17, 1998) - Cottage #2, Tobermory, Ont. - ckl

Cohen, Leonard
The Energy of Slaves (1972)
Bought: No place listed (February 6, 1975)

“I left a woman waiting
I met her sometime later
she said, Your eyes are dead
What happened to you, lover

And since she spoke the truth to me
I tried to answer truly
Whatever happened to my eyes
happened to your beauty

O go to sleep my faithful wife
I told her rather cruelly
Whatever happened to my eyes
happened to your beauty.”
- Leonard Cohen
Read: (11 pm, May 11, 2003 - Mother’s Day)
Anchorage, Alaska - My journeys led northward as I knew they always would - ckl

Cohen, Leonard
Selected Poems 1956-1968
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (March 27, 1982)

“It is not malice that draws me away,
draws me to renunciation, betrayal:
it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee.
Gold, ivory, flesh, love, God, blood, moon -
I have become the expert of the catalogue.

My body once so familiar with glory,
my body has become a museum:
this part remembered because of someone’s mouth,
this because of a hand,
this of wetness, this of heat.

Who owns anything he has not made?
With your beauty I am as uninvolved
as with horses’ manes and waterfalls.
This is my last catalogue.
I breathe the breathless
I love you, I love you -
and let you move forever.”
- Leonard Cohen, The Flowers That I Left in the Ground
Read: (June 17, 1992) -Tobermory, Ontario - Cottage #2 - ckl

“I’m still sort of friend,
I’m still a sort of lover.
But not for long:
that’s why I’m telling this to the two of you.

The fact is I’m turning to gold, turning to gold.
It’s a long process, they say,
it happens in stages.
This is to inform you that I’ve already turned to clay.”
- Leonard Cohen, The Cuckold’s Song
Read: (11:45 pm, June 24, 1992)
Tobermory - After a call to Robin in Columbus - ckl

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge: Poems and Prose
Bought: Village Books - Linworth, Ohio (January 10, 1987)

“Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty!”
- Coleridge, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
Read: (June 6, 1987)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Inquiring Spirit: A Coleridge Reader
Bought: Student Book Exchange - Columbus (October 10, 1978)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
The Selected Poetry and Prose of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (August 27, 1979)
Read introduction: 6:30 am, March 2, 1982

Crane, Hart
White Buildings: Poems by Hart Crane
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (March 1, 1981)

“I am not ready for repentance;
Nor to match regrets. For the moth
Bends no more than the still
Imploring flame. All tremerous
In the white falling flakes
Kisses are, --
The only worth all granting.

It is to be learned--
This cleaving and this burning
But only by the one who
Spends himself out again.”
- Hart Crane, Legend
Read at 5 am, March 3, 1981 on Shelly’s 17th birthday - ckl

Creely, Robert
Selected Poems (1976)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus (September 4, 1979)

Cummings, E. E.
Complete Poems: 1913-1962
Bought: No place listed (December 29, 1972)
Shared early on with Shelly - ckl

“Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain”
- e. e. cummings, “My Father Moved Through Dooms of Love”

cummings, e e
six nonlectures
Bought: No place listed (July 3, 1973)

Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy (Trans. The Rev. Henry Francis Cary,
Bought: Volunteers of America - Columbus (September 15, 1981)

Dickey, James
James Dickey: Poems 1957-1967
Bought: Wycliff Books - Columbus, Ohio (January 13, 1998)
Robin M. has 1st copy - autographed by Dickey ? (We heard him read at the Cultural Arts Center in Columbus after he had been held up by the Columbus Marathon and arrived late - ckl

Donne, John
John Donne: A Selection of His Poetry
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (March 31, 1981)

Durrell, Lawrence
The Poetry of Lawrence Durrell
Bought: No place listed (February 4, 1975)

Eliot, T. S.
T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems 1909-1962
Bought: Gift? (December 25, 1973)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus (November 18, 1981)

“Rhodora! if sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being . . . “
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rhodora
Underlined on Mary 11, 2003 - ckl

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Washington, D.C. (June 24, 1981)

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
Starting from San Francisco: Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Washington, D.C. (June 24, 1981)
Began: 4 pm, June 24, 1981 (The Dubliners Pub - Washington, D. C.)
Finished: June 24, 1992 (Bed - Cottage #1, Tobermory, Ontario)
Heading back to house on Walhalla on Sunday morning - perhaps the last I’ll leave here for there . . . - ckl

Frost, Robert
The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969/1972)
Bought: No place listed (March 24, 1973)
Self inscribed with the poem:

“The milkweed brings up to my very door
The theme of wanton waste in peace and war
As it has never been to me before . . .”

“He seems to say the reason why
so much
Should come to nothing must be
fairly faced.”
- Robert Frost, Pod of the Milkweed

Giovanni, Nikki
Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (December 7, 1998)
(ADD: “Hands” which I read in church on Mother’s Day - ckl)

Goldman, Michael
First Poems (1966)
Bought: No place listed (September 20, 1973)

Goldsmith, Oliver
The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith (1911)
Bought: Volunteers of America - Columbus (June 17, 1980)

“A time there was, ere England’s griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintain’d its man;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life requir’d, but gave no more:
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.”
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1770

Goodman, Paul
Hawkweed: Poems by Paul Goodman
Bought: Volunteers of America - Columbus (December 11, 1979)

Goodman, Paul
Collected Poems
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (November 9, 1985)

Goldman, Michael
First Poems: Michael Goldman
Bought: No place listed - Gift? (December 25, 1973)

Graves, Robert
Robert Graves Poems 1965-1968
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (September 2, 1994)

Gunn, Thom
My Sad Captains and Other Poems
Bought: University of Georgia Bookstore (April 17, 1972)
Rediscovered in Walhalla garage, December 1994, among mom’s boxes - note inside says: To Neil from Clay, Jan and kids - ckl

Gunn, Thom
Collected Poems
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (August 6, 1999)
Several quotations, marginal notes and underlines yet to include - ckl

Hardy, Thomas
Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy
Bought: No place listed (May 15, 1978)

Heaney, Seamus
Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (2000)

“There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shed of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles.
- Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist, 1987
Marginal note: cf. “the pond” by Aunt Frances’s yellow house back from the pines on Melbourne Street in Vestal, New York - Spring, 1943 - ckl

Henley, William Ernest
Poems by William Ernest Henley (1920)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore (November 24, 1979)

Herrick, Robert
Hesperides: Poems by Robert Herrick (1887)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore (September 1981)
A previous existence - ckl

Hirsch, Edward
The Night Parade: Poems by Edward Hirsch (1989)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Columbus (February 6, 1995)
Began: 12:30 am, February 11, 1995 (Walhalla bedroom)
Finished: 5:30 am, February 18, 2003 (Walhalla downstairs study)

“Sometimes it is enough just to remember
There was once a time before we knew about time
When the self and the world fit snugly together.”
- Edward Hirsch, Proustian
See also “Evening Star” on Georgia O’Keeffe in Palo Duro Canyon - ckl

Houseman, A. E.
A Shropshire Lad (1932)
Bought: No place, no date

Hughes, Ted
Birthday Letters (1998)
Bought: Border’s Books - Henderson Road, Cols. (May 29, 1999)
Began: 12:15 am, March 30, 1999 (Walhalla bedroom)
Eddie in blue room next door - ckl
Finished: 12:45 pm, April 28, 1998 (Walhalla plant room sofa)
First book completed this year (1998) - ckl

Hughes, Ted (Photographs by Fay Godwin
Remains of Elmet (1979)
Bought: No place listed, no date

Jeffers, Robinson
Cawdor (1928) and Medea (1946)
Bought: No place listed (August 22, 1978)

Jeffers, Robinson
Selected Poems (1963)
Bought: Gift from Jan (July 10, 1971)
Inscription: From your wife - ckl

Jeffers, Robinson
The Women at Point Sur and Other Poems (1977)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio ( March 4, 1978)

“Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my soli-
tude and slain it.
No peace but many companions . . .”
-Robinson Jeffers, Prelude
Began to read 9:30 pm, June 6, 1978 - ckl

Johnson, E. Pauline (Tekahionwake)
Flint and Feather (1972)
Bought: Half Price Books - Morse Center (March 24, 1980)

Jong, Erica
Here Coems & Other Poems (1975)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus (July 5, 1979)

Keats, John
The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats (1899)
Bought: No place listed (August 26, 1975)
(Original book plate inside cover is from Yale University Library, 1928)

Keats, John
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Complete Poetical Works
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (July 30, 1996)

Kenji, Miyazawa
A Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist (1989)
Bought: Half Price Books (December 1993)

Olds, Sharon
The Father (1994)
Bought: Half Price Books - Brice Road, Cols., Ohio (December 28, 1994)

Ovid
Ovid in Love
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (November 26, 2002)
(Translation by Guy Lee, Illustrations by John Ward)

Pavese, Cesare
Hard Labor (1979)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (December 14, 1993)
Read: Introduction (10 pm, January 19, 1994)
Souffle’s 15th - couch floor by fire, Walhalla, -10 degrees outside, Watched A Man in Love today - ckl

The Biography of a Grizzly and An Enemy of the People all in one . . . ckl
“But if his isolation needed friends, his pride and shyness (especially with women) made him keep them a a distance, where, he hoped, they would understand his loneliness without asking him to leave it. In return, he was thoughtful and affectionate, a kind of self-effacing friend. He prized solitude, his own rich inward life, but he lacked the true hermit’s vocation; all his life he wanted a home, a wife, children, even while knowing that he needed solitude more . . . .

“He wants to be alone -- and he is alone -- but he wants to be alone in a circle of friends aware of his loneliness . . . “
- William Arrowsmith, Introduction

Oliver, Mary
American Primitive (1983)
Bought: Half Price Books - Columbus (April 5, 1990)
Read in Tobermory the summer of 1990 - ckl

“you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
- Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

Oliver, Mary
New and Selected Poems 1991-1992
Bought: Little Professor Bookstore - Lane Avenue (June 17, 1993)
Began: 7 am, July 1, 1993 (Tobermory, Ontario)
Sitting rock by harbour - ckl
Finished: December 23, 1993 (Walhalla)
Living room rug in corner - my 57th Christmas but 12 hours away - Soufflé & I at Walhalla - ckl

“She knows how people always plan
To live their lives, and never do.
She will not tell me if she cries.”
- Mary Oliver, A Letter From Home

Parini, Jay
Town Life (1988)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road (June 30, 1998)
Began: 10:30 am, July 1, 1998 (Walhalla living room couch)
Finished: 5 pm, July 10m 1998 (Walhalla)
Paul David spending the night at Walhalla after “Big River” - ckl

“He vows to quit his salaried position
one fine day, returning to this spot
to sip forever as the mountains rise.”
- Jay Parini, Passing Through Vermont on Three Martinis
And so I did in my own way - ckl

Piercy, Marge
Hard Loving (1969/72)
Bought: Gift from Gail - ckl
Began: July 10, 1975
Inscription:
May the long-time sun shine on you,
All love surround you,
And the pure light within you,
Guide your way on - Love, Gail

Piercy, Marge
To Be of Use (1973)
Bought: No place listed (July 9, 1974)
Of seminal influence on my life at that time - ckl
Began: 5 am, July 10, 1974 (age 38)

“With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth . . . “
- Marge Piercy, A Work of Artifice

“Wherever you find yourself eating
is home, the center
where you must make love,
and wherever you wake up
is here, the right place to be
where we start again.”
- Marge Piercy, The Spring Offensive of the Snail

Plath, Sylvia
The Collected Poems (1981)
Bought: Warehouse Books (May 17, 1989)
Began: August 5, 1993 (Cottage #64, Tobermory, Ontario)
Blanket in the sun - ckl
Last Read: 3 pm, September 1, 1993 (Cottage #2, Tobermory, Ont.)
Blanket-sun after swim in outdoor Lodge pool with Jack Sponable -ckl

“each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions . . . “
- Sylvia Plath, Tale of a Tub

Plath, Sylvia
The Collected Poems (1981), second copy
Bought: Village Book Store - Linworth, Ohio (March 28, 1999)
Began: 3:45 am, April 16, 1999 (Walhalla bedroom)


Plath, Sylvia
The Colossus and Other Poems (1968)
Bought: Half-Price Books - Morse Center (March 24, 1990)
Began: April 7, 1990
Finished: July 29, 1991 (Tobermory, Ontario)
End under a milky gray sky topping my weaving willow while smells of a campfire from the cottage next door fills the air - age 55 - ckl

Plath, Sylvia
Crossing the Water (1971)
Bought: Chapter One (November 5, 1982)
Began: 8 pm, December 17, 1982 (Walhalla)

Pope, Alexander
The Poetry of Pope: A Selection (1954)
Bought: Volunteers of America (March 4, 1982)

“Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.”
-Alexander Pope, Ode to Solitude, 1717-1736
Read 9:30 pm, June 29, 2006 (Walhalla study) while listening to iTunes on iMac - ckl

Pound, Ezra
Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (1957)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus (August 21, 1980)

Pushkin, Alexander
The Poems, Prose, and Plays of Alexander Pushkin (1936/1964)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (December 13, 1994)

Pushkin, Alexander
Pushkin Threefold: Narrative, Lyric, Polemic and Ribald Verse (1972)
Bought: Student Book Exchange - Columbus, Ohio (November 1, 1978)
Began: February 9, 1979 (2337 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio)
Cold, crisp, snow-frozen night - ckl
Finished: September 12, 1991 (Dunks Bay, Tobermory, Ontario)
The afternoon sun bright-white in the sky full of mare’s tails clouds swirling in a vivid blue sky - a gull passes my blanket as he walks thru the sand - the silvery blue bay is calm except for a regular shimmering beat of surf turning under on the shore - The pines on both shores a yellow green in the sun with rust colored patches of autumn mixed in.- ckl

“What is there to regret? If you knew,
If you could imagine
The servitude of stifling towns!
There people in throngs behind a barrier
Do not breathe the morning cool,
Nor the vernal perfume of meadows;
Of love they are ashamed, thought they persecute,
They trade their freedom,
Bow their heads before idols
And ask for money and for chains,
What have I given up?”
- Alexander Pushkin, The Gypsies, 1824

Pushkin, Alexander
Eugene Onegin (1831)
Bought: Village Book Store - Linworth, Ohio (October 12, 1991)
Began: 7:45 am, October 19, 1991
Finish: 8:06 am, October 27, 1991 (Walhalla)
Time on the set back clock - summer’s heat still lingers in the folds of Autumn’s tattered -colored frocks - ckl

“To me, Onegin, all this glory
is tinsel on a life I hate;
this modish whirl, this social story,
my house, my evenings, all that state -
what’s in them? All this loud parading,
and all this flashy masquerading,
the glare, the fumes in which I live,
this very day I’d gladly give,
give for a bookshelf, a neglected
garden, a modest home . . . “
- Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (XLVI)

Rich, Adrienne
Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1971
Bought: No place listed (March 17, 1975)
Begin: March 18, 1975 (Natchez Trace, Tennessee)

“Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you . . . “
- Adrienne Rich, Trying to Talk with a Man

Finish: 2:30 pm, March 19, 1975 (DesArc, Arkansas)
Spend the oncoming night at campgrounds at Lake Wister, Oklahoma - ckl

“There was a profound indifference to the objects of our pleasures and of our fictitious needs; there was still . . . so intense a passion for the freedom of the fields . . . that he would certainly have escaped into the forest had not the most rigid precautions been taken . . . “
- Adrienne Rich, Meditations for a Savage Child (I)

Rich, Adrienne
The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (March 18, 1979)
Began: April 14, 1979

Rich, Adrienne
Leaflets: Poems 1965-1968
Bought: Student Box Exchange - Columbus, Ohio (August 19, 1968)

Rich, Adrienne
Necessities of Life (1966)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio ( March 4, 1978)
Begin: March 4, 1978

Rich, Adrienne
Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974 (1974)
Bought: No place listed (July 31, 1975)
Began: August 8, 1975 (Farmhouse, 2814 Kenny Road, Columbus, Ohio)
A month and a half before Jan tells me she’s leaving me - ckl
Finish: July 15, 1989 (Tobermory, Ontario, Canada)

Rich, Adrienne
Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (March 4, 1978)
Began: March 4, 1978

Rich, Adrienne
The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970
Bought: April 7, 1976 (4th or 5th copy)
Began: May 2, 1976

“In a flash I understand
how poems are unlike photographs
(the one saying This could be
the other This was
The image
isn’t responsible
for our uses of it
It is intentionless
A long strand of dark hair
in the washbasin
is innocent and yet
such things have done harm”
- Adrienne Rich, Photograph of the Unmade Bed

Rilke, Rainer Maria
Duino Elegies (1978)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (May 11, 1980)
Begin: 11:30 pm, May 30, 1980
End: November 9, 1986 (Walhalla)
Early morning Sunday sun now moving out of the frame of the blue bedroom window - ckl

Rilke, Rainer Maria
Rilke On Love and Other Difficulties (1975)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (February 23, 1979)
Began: February 24, 1979 (Neil Avenue)

“A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Letters on Love
Partially used in the vows between Robin and Clay during wedding ceremony in Chillicothe on the evening of December 27, 1980 - ckl

Rimbaud, Arthur
Complete Works (1976) This edition
Bought: Volunteers of America - Columbus, Ohio (August 28, 1981)
Began: 7:30 am, September 24, 1981 (Walhalla)

Roethke, Theodor
The Far Field: Last Poems (1964)
Bought: No Place Listed (April 7, 1976)
Began: April 30, 1976

“Lust fatigues the soul,
How to transcend this sensual emptiness?
(Dreams drain the spirit it we dream too long.)
- Theodor Roethke, The Longing

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
Poems and Translations (1912 original edition)
Bought: No place listed (August 26, 1975)

My Books, My Life: Marginal Notes & Underlines From Novels(T-Z)

Tanizaki, Junichiro
Some Prefer Nettles (1928)
Bought: St. Stephens Book Store - Columbus (January 6, 1998)
Began: 11:30 pm, January 20, 1988 (Walhalla)
Finished: 11:20 pm, February 1, 1988 (Walhalla)
Warm rain out window - ckl

“It’s got so that to some extent every woman tries to make herself look like an American movie star and naturally takes on a little look of your courtesan. It’s happening in Shanghai too.”
- Junichiro Tanizaki, Some Prefer Nettles

Tarkington, Booth
The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)
Bought: The Book Rack - Columbus, Ohio (June 21, 1980)
Began: 4 pm, August 8, 1980 (Walhalla Road - Columbus, Ohio)
Finished: 1 pm, August 10, 1980 (Sunday afternoon on porch of Walhalla, humid-milky blue sky day - ckl)

[For quote see page 139 on the “automobile - used in syllabus for 506/606 courses at OSU]

Thackery, William Makepeace
Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (1847-1848)
Bought: No place nor time listed
Began: 6:30 pm, September 2, 2004 (Walhalla bedroom)
Bush speaks at the Republican convention tonight - ckl
Finished: Quit reading on page 296 (10:30 pm, January 16, 2005)
Tried reading it in parallel with Beth M. from MACS’s Cafe - we both gave up on it. - ckl

Thurm, Marian
Henry in Love (1990)
Bought: No time nor place listed
Began: 1:40 am, June 24, 2004 (Walhalla bedroom)
Finished: 9:30 or so pm, July 31, 2004 (MACS CAFE , Columbus, Ohio)
Walk back up High Street to Walhalla ahead, Blue Moon, yet to rise - ckl

“It occurs to me that no one’s asked me if I’d seen that last Mary Tyler Moore show, which I did, probably more than once. And the image of Kate and Darian, Cynthia, Nina, and Day, all with their arms wrapped around each other, is a pleasing one to me. All of them in my house, my bedroom, a constellation of mourners standing over me and weeping until at last they slowly and reluctantly come apart . . . “ - Henry in Love

Note in margin:
Thinking here of Jack Leigh, not me. My turn will come in due time - ckl


Tolstoy, Leo
Anna Karenina (1876)
Bought: No place listed (August 16, 1975)
Began: 7 am, April 16, 1976 (My apartment on S. Neil Avenue)
Break record against the wall later that evening when angry at Robin - ckl
Finish: 5:10 pm, April 23, 1977 (North Neil Avenue apartment ?)
The last night of Columbus’s “Cultural Explorations” Conference, I a member of the committee of one hundred - League of Women Voter’s sponsored - ckl

Underlined at 6:30 am, May 11, 1976
“As he saw all of this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and say to him: ‘No, you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re not going to be different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation of a happiness which you won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.’”
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Trevor, William
Felicia’s Journey (1994)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (January 6, 1997)
Began: 12:04 am, January 25, 1997 (Walhalla bedroom)
Finished: 5:20 pm, February 4, 1997 (Walhalla living room couch)
Inside all day fighting a cold that began last week, breaking into sneezing this late rainy-sky day. Closing note: Look to the sun and lift your face to the gently falling down rain - The true pleasures are Elemental - ckl

Tyler, Anne
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)
Bought: Gift from Robbie, Christmas, 1982
Began: 10 pm, December 31, 1982
Finished: 10:45 pm, January 26, 1983 (Walhalla bedroom)
Kim & Paul moving into their own home Saturday; David visiting Shelly, Jan and Michael in Pittsburgh - then on to see Scott & Karen in New York City. Rob in bed beside me asleep. - ckl
“There ought to be a whole separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words -- for perfect, absolute truth. It was the purest fact of her life: she did not understand him, and she never would.” - Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Ullman, James Ramsey
The White Tower (1945)
Gift to Scott Lowe (December 25, 1973)
Classic adventure novel read when I was, perhaps, in my late teens or early twenties - ckl

Updike, John
Bech: A Book (1965)
Bought: St. Stephen’s Book Store - Columbus (December 12, 1985)
Began: 10:45 pm, January 9, 1986 (Walhalla)
Finished: 8:30 pm, January 17, 1986

“In short, one loses heart in the discovery that one is not being read. That the ability to read, and therefore to write, is being lost, along with the abilities to listen, to see, to smell, and to breathe. That all the windows of the spirit are being nailed shut.” - Bech

“Difficulty of women sleeping on trains, boats, where men are soothed. Distrust of machinery? Sexual stimulation, Claire saying she used to come just from sitting on vibrating subway seat, never the IRT, only the IND. Took at least five stops.” - John Updike, Bech, 1965

Updike, John
Brazil (1994)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (January 6, 1995)
Began: 10:50 pm, February 20, 1997 (Walhalla bedroom)
Up to speed after 2 week cold - swam 1st time again this morning - ckl
Finished: 2:20 pm, March 2, 1997 (Walhalla bedroom)
Re-arranged yesterday, first time since Robin left four years ago - ckl

“’Women, too, resent the tyranny of sex, and the necessity to make lasting social attachments of what was meant by nature, perhaps, to be a passing fit. Women and men occupy two different realms - their mating is like the moment when a bird seizes a fish.’” - Brazil

Updike, John
The Centaur (1962)
Bought: Salvation Army - Columbus (November 24, 1979)
Began: 10:45 pm, January 30, 1983 (Walhalla bedroom)
One day after Kim & Paul move into new home at Gerbert - ckl
Finished: 11:27 pm, February 25, 1983 (Walhalla bedroom)
Out earlier in the evening to see: “The Verdict” with Robin - ckl

“This mile or so, then, was a rural interspace, a remainder of the country’s earlier life. We would pass the old race track, abandoned and gone under to grass, and several sandstone farmhouses each accompanied, like a mother with a son, by a whitewashed springhouse of the same stone. Quickly crossing the harsh width of a three-lane highway, we would enter on a narrow path the museum grounds, and an even older world, Arcadian, would envelop us.” - The Centaur

Updike, John
The Coup (1978)
Bought: Salvation Army - Columbus (January 18, 1980)
Began: 5:45 pm, February 26, 1981 (David’s “green” room, Walhalla)
Finished: 4:15 am, March 11, 1981 (David’s room, Walhalla)
The day my open letter ad to Dan Rather (CBS) about El Salvador is to appear in The Lantern at OSU - ckl

My Underline:
“So these gestures of economics are like the reaching gestures on Géricault’s painting of the raft of the Medusa, gestures that will never grasp their objects, because the raft is sinking. Your Communism is such a failed gesture. In the industrialized countries of Western Europe, where Marx reasoned the uprising must come, the Communist party officials wear suits with vests, and sidle forward for their share, as you Americans say, of the pie.”
- John Updike, The Coup

“So the nation of Islam was just another gangland after all. In the strength of his disillusion Oscar became a trainee with the Chicago police, and with unfeigned enthusiasms helped bop long-haired protester heads at the 1968 Democratic Convention, at the same time as his repudiated brother was fomenting the revolution that overthrew Edumud IV and brought Islamic socialism to Noire, renamed Kush.”
- John Updike, The Coup

Updike, John
Marry Me (1971)
Bought: Salvation Army - Columbus (July 26, 1980)
Began: 10 pm, June 23, 1985 (Walhalla Ravine porch)
Finished: July 4, 1985 (Walhalla porch)
Still diffused light gray sky seen through the trees on the ravine - ckl

“She saw each thing only as something to tell him about, and without him there was nothing to tell; he had robbed her of the world.”
- John Updike, Marry Me

Updike, John
Memories of the Ford Administration (1992)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (February 10, 1995)
Began: April 26, 1995 (Walhalla bedroom)
Breezy, sunny, warming to 60s today - ckl)
Finished: 1:50 pm, May 2, 1995 (Blue bedroom - Walhalla)
A return to the blue bedroom and new mattress for the first time since Robin moved her bed out in 1993 - ckl

“However much Carter wanted to be liked, we could not quite like him: the South couldn’t quite like him because he was a liberal and an engineer, the Northeast liberals couldn’t because he was a Southerner and a born-again Christian, the Christians were put off because he had told Playboy he had looked upon a lot of women with lust, and the common masses because his lips were too fat and he talked like a squirrel nibbling an acorn. Blacks like him, those blacks who still took any interest in the national establishment, but this worked in his disfavor, since the blacks were more and more seen as citizens of a floating Welfare State concealed within the other fifty, and whose settled purpose and policy was to steal money from hard-working taxpayers. Carter and the other liberal Democrats were white accomplices to this theft, this free ride. Furthermore he told us things we didn’t want to hear: We should turn our thermostats down and our other cheek to the Iranians. Our hearts were full of lust, we were suffering from a malaise. All true, but truth isn’t what we want from Presidents. We have historians for that. - Memories of the Ford Administration.

Updike, John
A Month of Sundays (1974)
Bought: Chapter I - Columbus (February 26, 1983)
Began: 8:15 pm, March 6, 1983 (Walhalla)
Finished: 6:43 am, March 7, 1983 (Walhalla)
End as tangled black limbs from Walhalla ravine become more clearly outlined as the earth turns and begins to immerse itself in the steely blue morning light - ckl

“For we do not want to live as angels in ether; our bodies are us, us; and our craving for immortality is, as Death’s great philosopher Miguel de Unamuno so correctly and devastatingly remarks, a craving not for transformation into a life beyond imagining but for our ordinary life, the mundane life we so driftingly and numbly live, to go on forever and forever. The only Paradise we can image is this Earth.”
- John Updike, A Month of Sundays

Updike, John
Of the Farm (1965)
Bought: The Book Store - Columbus (August 2, 1985)
Began: 12:10 am, August 3, 1985 (Walhalla)
Finished: 11:16 am, August 8, 1985 (Lakefront Howard Johnson’s, Cleveland, Ohio) Watching a boat on Lake Erie from my 9th floor hotel room window. - ckl

“’Well I don’t wonder,’ my mother said, ‘living in that air-conditioned city where the seasons are all the same. Here on my farm every week is different, every day is a surprise. New faces in the fields, the birds say different things, and nothing repeats. Nature never repeats; this August evening has never been before and it will never be again.’”
- John Updike, Of the Farm
And it hasn’t . . . Katie Lowe is born on the 15th the following Thursday - ckl

Updike, John
Rabbitt at Rest (1990)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Linworth (February 28, 1994)
Began: 7:12 am, October, 1994 (Walhalla bedroom)
Hopefully to Philly & Douglassville this weekend to visit Shelly & Michael and A.J. and to talk to David - hung up in pain on Saturday - ckl
Finished: 4:15 am, November 23, 1994
So it goes the day before Thanksgiving, 1994 - Kim, Paul, Dani & Paul David ‘s second year at Paxton - Shelly, Michael & Aaron’s 1st Thanksgiving (and they’re in Florida) - Scott, Karen, Katie & Amelia are in their new place on Brown Avenue - and David in Chestnut Hill - Heading to Mom, then Eddie’s today, Cheri & all at Aunt Martha’s tomorrow. Rob in Chillicothe, naturally. - ckl

Updike, John
Rabbit is Rich (1981)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel - Columbus (September 22, 1994)
Began: 3:30 am, September 23, 1994 (Walhalla bedroom -self)
Finished: 4:30 am, October 24, 1994 (Kim & Paul’s bedroom - Paxton)
We move inextricably - not to our own ends - but to the beginning of the cycle out of which we first emerged. Nothing is ever lost, it merely changes form. -ckl

“Beneath them, through the scratched oval of Plexiglas, there is the South, irregular fields and dry brown woods, more woods than he would have expected. Once he had dreamed of going south, of resting his harried heart amid all that cotton, and now there it is under him, like the patchwork slope of one big hill they are slowly climbing, fields and woods and cities at the bends and mouths of rivers, streets eating into green, America disgraced and barren, mourning her hostages.”
- John Updike, Rabbit is Rich (1981)

Updike, John
Rabbit Redux (1971)
Bought: Volunteers of America - Summit (February 24, 1994)
Began: 11:50 pm, August 28, 1994 (Walhalla bedroom)
Overhead fan - Soufflé buried under rocks outside on the Ravine - thunderstorms earlier - ckl
Finished: 10:52 pm, September 12, 1994 (Chateau #14 - Tobermory)
On the eve of my entry into my third year of abstinence - The memory of my last afternoon in the Green Room still having its hold on me, making completion of this novel and the above scene one more of the ironic interstices of my life and my literary meanderings. -ckl

My underline:
“The open country south of Brewer, the Amish farms printed on the trimmed fields like magazine covers, becomes the ugly hills and darker valleys north of the city, where the primitive iron industry had its day and where the people built of brick, tall narrow-faced homes with gables and dormers like a buzzard’s shoulders, perched on domed lawns behind spiked retaining walls. The soft flowerpot-red dark like dried blood. Though it is not yet the coal regions the trees feel darkened by coal dust.”
- John Updike, Rabbit Redux

Updike, John
Rabbit, Run (1960)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Cols (June 6, 1994)
Began: 11 pm, June 18, 1994 (Cottage #2 -bed- Tobermory)
Finished: June 26, 1994 (Cottage #2 - Tobermory)
Blue sky again, on couch, cooler - the Chee-Cheemaun preparing another run. - ckl

My underline:
“But he is going east, the worst direction, into unhealth, soot, and stink, a smothering hole where you can’t move without killing somebody. Yet the highway sucks him on, and a sign says POTTSTOWN 2. He almost brakes. But then he thinks. If he is heading east, south is on his right. And then, as if the world were just standing around waiting to serve his thoughts, a broad road to the right is advertised, ROUTE 100 WEST CHESTER WILMINGTON. Rout 100 has a fine ultimate sound. He doesn’t want to go to Wilmington but it’s the right direction. He’s never be to Wilmington . . . . He doesn’t drive five miles before this road begins to feel like a part of the same trap. The first road offered him he turns right on. A keystone marker in the headlights says 23. A good number. . . . Trees overshadow this narrower road.”
- John Updike, Rabbit, Run

Updike, John
Roget’s Version (1986)
Bought: Bookman’s - Tucson, Arizona (November 9, 1997)
Began: 8 am (MT), November 10, 1997 (Tucson, Arizona)
Tim & Sarah Gassen’s living room couch - Copper Street - ckl
Finished: 8:30 am (CT), November 11, 1997 (The Sunset Limited) Heading to Savannah from Tucson, Arizona - somewhere now near Huston, Texas and the former Kay Kinney - ckl

“I think the way people were designed originally the tribe used to raise the children, on the young mother had them. There was an overall program and everybody shared it. Now, there is no tribe. There is no overall program. It’s hard.” - John Updike, Roget’s Version (1986)

Updike, John
Toward the End of Time (1997)
Bought: Dalton Bookstore - Chicago (September 9, 1998)
Began: 10:55 pm (CT), September 9, 1998 (Union Station, Chicago)
AMTRAK “3 Rivers” - Chicago to Fostoria, Ohio - 2 hours late
Finished: 7 am, September 19, 1998 (Cottage #2, Tobermory, Ontario)
Michael and I at Grandview last night with Katherine, Suzie, and Deb - see pictures - ckl

My underline:
“Malls have become a public habitat soaked in slovenly intimacy; its customers step naturally from huddling around television in their living rooms to cruising these boulevards of superfluity where fluorescent-lit shops press forward temptations ranging from yogurt-coated peanuts to electric-powered treadmills . . . . I was the only person in sight wearing leather shoes and a necktie. Deirdre parked me outside Banana Republic and at the end of my ordeal took me into Brooks Brothers and bought me a striped shirt that answered some gangsterish beau ideal of her own. She has, it almost made me weep to think, a splinter of feeling for me somewhere in her polished brown machine of a body. Easy weeping is another sign of dotage . . . “ - John Updike, Toward the End of Time (1997)

Vercors
Sylva (1962)
Bought: Phoenix Books - Owen Sound, Ontario (June 22, 1992)
Began: 8:30 pm, June 27, 1992 (Cottage #1, bedroom, Tobermory)
Finished: 11:15 pm, July 6, 1992 (Walhalla bedroom)
Cool night under blankets - ckl

My underlines:
“This evening I am walking alone - I always walk alone, but this evening, “I don’t know why, the rustle of the leaves under my boots exacerbates my loneliness. Can it be that it is beginning to weigh on me? And yet, I could continue to walk untiringly if the last light of day were not fading fast. I am strolling slowly back toward the house, its calm and comfort already beckoning as I inhale the scent of moss and mushrooms. No, this lonely life does not weigh on me, I still love it as much as ever. I am happy, peaceful, infinitely calm” - Vercors, Sylva

“That to hope that one might acquire understanding and at the same time preserve one’s instinct was an absurd wish. That every conquest made by reason or by the will involves as a corollary the surrender of an innate but unconscious knowledge. And this relinquishment, I told myself, is the price we pay for our freedom.” - Vercors, Sylva

Vesaas, Tarjei
The Bridges (1966)
Bought: (January 31, 1974)
Began: 10 pm, February 14, 1974 (Rightmire Boulevard, Columbus)
Finished: 8:45 pm, February 22, 1974 (Rightmire Blvd. - wind & snow)

“We lie like longing beside the footpaths.
We lie like fear above the hurrying highway where life goes to waste, where man hurries and hurries after emptiness. We are beside the houses in which they shut themselves away: the fortresses they have built in order to shut themselves in with their brief joys.
We are the thin, complaining wind that brushes past, searching for what cannot be present.
We are the wind behind the wind -- that searches in defiance, in case something is to be found all the same.
We are where everyone is, and where no one was. We search night after night.” - Tarjei Vesaas, The Bridges (1966)

“The Wings of Time” from Peter on phonograph player - ckl


Vesaas, Tarjei
The Boat in the Evening (1968)
Bought: St. Stephens Books - Columbus (November, 1980)
Began: May 30, 1983
Finished: Not yet finished

Vesaas, Tarjei
The Current Cycle (1934)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus (April, 1981)
Began: 11:30 pm, April 25, 1988
Finished: 12:14 pm, May 23, 1988

Vidal, Gore
Julian (1962/64)
Bought: Trade or Swap - Philadelphia (March 25, 1989)
Began: 11:20 pm, April 16, 1986
The afternoon with Kim, Dani, Paul David & I at the O’Shaughnessey & Hayden Run Falls, also stopped by the open house at 6,000 Dublin Road (for sale again) - ckl
Finished: July 3, 1989 (Cottage #2 - Craigies - Tobermory, Ontario)
Night sky a silver gray backdrop against the willow as mist and the smell of rain comes in from off the harbor at Tobermory - the wind increases - ckl

“I shrugged, ‘The golden age ended. So will the age of iron, so will all things, including man. But with your new god, the hope of human happiness has ended.’

‘Forever?’ He taunted me gently.

‘Nothing man invents can last forever, including Christ, his most mischievous invention.’
. . . . With Julian, the light went, and now nothing remains but to let the darkness come, and hope for a new sun and another day, born of time’s mystery and man’s love of light.”

- Gore Vidal, Julian, 1962/64

Vidal, Gore
Myra Breckinridge (1968)
Bought: Salvation Army - Columbus (September 15, 1979)
Began: 11:30 am, September 3, 1984 - Labor Day
Finished: 10:43 am, September 10, 1984 (Walhalla living room)
Emma at my side - on floor in the living room - cool & gray outside - breeze coming in through the porch door. Rob, Amy, Bob in Avalon, NJ -
ckl

“Incidentally, I noticed a quotation scribbled in one of the margins of the notebook. Something she (I hate to say “I”!) copied from some book about Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I don’t suppose it’s giving away my secrets to say that like so many would-be intellectuals back East Myra never actually read books, only books about books. Anyway the quotation still sort of appeals to me. It is about how humanity would have been a lot happier if it had kept to ‘the middle ground between the indolence of the primitive state and the questing activity to which we are prompted by our self-esteem.’ I think that is a very fine statement and one which, all in all, I’m ready to buy, since it is a proven fact that happiness, like the proverbial bluebird, is to be found in your own backyard if you just know where to look.” - Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge

Warner, Sylvia Townsend
Four in Hand: A Quartet of Novels
Lolly Willowes (1926)
Mr. Fortune’s Maggot (1927)
Summer Will Show (1931, 1936)
The Corner That Held Them (1948)
Bought: No place listed (May 20, 1986)
Finished: None yet read (only first few pages of Lolly Willowes)

Watkins, Paul
The Forger (2000)
Bought: Christmas gift from Neil & Marge (2002)
Began: 2 am, January 2, 2003 (Walhalla bedroom)
Finished: 7:43 pm, August 5, 2006 (Cafe Table across from Mall Clock at Easton)
The light from the setting sun highlighting the faces of the people crossing through its beams as they head toward the Easton clock high above the entrance to the enclosed Mall. ckl

"I understood better now how difficult it must have been to live in the shadow of a man like Pankratov. He was built for always moving on, leaving no attchments to tear up his heart with regret. I wondered how many people he had left behind in his life. Even his own artwork, when he felt himself become attached to that, was fed to the flames rather than become a weakness."
- Paul Watkins, The Forger (p. 173)

Watkins, Paul
The Story of My Disappearance (1998)
Bought: From Neil & Marge (December 25, 2003)
Began: March 17, 2004 (Walhalla bedroom)
Finished: 9:30 pm, March 31, 2004 (Walhalla living room)
Room full of silence - ckl

“Out on the water, I discovered, everything is what it is. The life is too hard and too dangerous for it to be any different. That is why people who go to sea fall in love with it. Because what you do is who you are. And what you think becomes known, whether you say the words or not.”

“I knew than that even if she did fall in love with me, as I was falling for her, she might never tell me so. She might never say the words -- at least not the great declarations of love, without which I had once believed it was impossible . . . . She had lived too long among lies. Each friendship was filtered through the lies she’d told before. She’d had to find some other currency than words, even if I was the only person to whom she could tell the truth. She might prove she loved me, but she would have to show it, and in her own way. The clues of her devotion would be clear once I learned how to see them.”

- Paul Watkins, The Story of My Disappearance, 1998

Wells, Rebecca
Little Altars Everywhere (1992)
Bought: Gift from Robin Craig (March 14, 1997)
Inscription: “Clay, One of the greatest directors of our time.”
Began: 1:45 pm, March 17, 1997 (Franklin Cty Court House, Court Rm 7B)
Finished: 3:35 pm, March 27 (Twin Lakes, Shawnee Hills, Ohio)
At the top of the hill of pine woods at Twin Lakes in Shawnee Hills, Ohio - The breeze turning cool - the shadows falling on the pungent moist-dry needles, longer - ckl

“Your first dive into the water in the morning is the finest thing in the world. It’s never too cold. It’s Louisiana summer creek water,not some northern-state water--where I’ve never been, but I know it’s so cold it takes your breath away and would give Daddy a heart attack. Little Spring Creek is the kind of water that lets you wake up slow, lets you roll over on your back and float and stare at the clouds without getting the shivers, without having to swim fast to keep from freezing to death. Mama says, This is the kind of water that spoils Southerners for any other part of the country.”

“This is the thing about living in a small town. I once dated Kidd Gerard. I broke the man’s heart while he was at Auburn, sending me telegrams once a week. I know he’ll do what I ask, even though he hasn’t kissed me on the lips in twenty-two years. I always tell my two daughters: Don’t ever underestimate the power women have over men. And don’t ever let them know you have it either.”

- Rebecca Wells, Little Altars Everywhere, 1992

Welty, Eudora
The Ponder Heart (1953)
Bought: The Book Store - Columbus, Ohio (August 1, 1979)
Began: 10:30 pm, August 2, 1979 (3742 Hoover Avenue - Endwell, NY)
Finished: Not yet finished

West, Nathanael
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
Bought: No place listed (February 24. 1979)
Began: 2 am, March 31, 1979
Finished: Not yet finished or just not noted.


==========================================================================

There was the outward me, the insecure, easily intimidated by money and authority me, who joked and cut up and clowned his way through socially difficult situations. Then there was the inward me, who retreated into books and words and sometimes images created by hand and sometimes created by camera. And finally, there was the sexual me who throughout life never overcame his obsessive fixation on the mysteries contained within the genitalia of the female adults who surrounded the edges of my being.

==========================================================================

My Books, My Life: Marginal Notes & Underlines From Poetry Books (S-Z)

Salter, Mary Jo
Sunday Skaters (1994)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road (November 28, 2000)
Began: 1 am, November 29, 2000 (Walhalla bedroom)
Finished: 10:35 pm, December 10, 2000 (Walhalla)
A week’s gone by that’s taken “Ripley” from the earth and Kim into a separate apartment from Paul - ckl

“The most inalienable right of man
is to go to hell in his own way . . .”
- Mary Jo Salter, Frost at Midnight

“Your days that spun unnumbered through their arc
from now on make their mark.”
- Mary Jo Salter, Lines Written on Your Face

With warts, lumps, brown spots, sores, empty space between your teeth, eyes weakened, ears given out, you doze in movies and classrooms - your longest sleep yet ahead - ckl

Sandburg, Carl
Harvest Poems 1910-1960
Bought: June 8, 1979

Sandy, Stephen
Man in the Open Air (1988)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Cols., Ohio (February 6, 1995)
Began: 10 pm, February 6, 1995 (Walhalla bedroom)
5 degrees or so - ckl

Santos, Sherod
The City of Women (1993)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (October 25, 1999)

Sexton, Anne
All My Pretty Ones (1961)
Bought: January 10, 1973
One of several copies I’ve had - ckl

Sexton, Anne
The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)
Bought: March 17, 1975
Began: March 19, 1975

Shakespeare, William
The Sonnets (1609)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore (March 30, 1981)

Great Sonnets (Edited by Paul Negri)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (January 21, 1998)

Stafford, William
Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems (1977)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (March 7, 1995)
Began: August 19, 1999 (Walhalla living room)
Raining -Theresa here - CKL

Stevens, Wallace
Poems (1947)
Bought: One (June 6, 1981)
Began: July 6, 1983

Swenson, Karen
A Sense of Direction (1989)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (April 20, 1998)
Began: 11:25 pm, April 20, 1998 (Walhalla bedroom)

Tennyson, Alfred Lord
Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems (1961)
Bought: No place, No date

Tennyson, Alfred Lord
Locksley Hall
Bought: November 29, 1979

Tennyson, Alfred Lord
The Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1897/1900)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus, Ohio (March 12, 1980)

Millay, Edna St. Vincent
Collected Sonnets (1959/1960)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Washington, D. C. (June 17, 1981)
Began: June 14, 1992 (Tobermory, Ontario, Canada)
Finish: June 17, 1992 (Cottage #2 - Tobermory)
Warm, gusty winds from front bedroom window of Cottage #2 - ckl

Thomas, Dylan
Collected Poems ( 1957)
Bought: Gift from Neil & Eddie (December 18, 1972)
Second time began: July 14, 1989 (Tobermory)

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
- Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

“Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
- Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

Thomas, Dylan
Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices (1954)
Bought: Beo’s - Wellington, New Zealand (May 20, 2000)
Began: 7 pm, May 20, 2000 (St. James Theatre - Wellington, NZ)
Waiting for Ballet’s presentation of “Dracula,” this copy of book one of many previous copies - ckl

Thomas, Edward (1878-1917)
The Works of Edward Thomas (1994)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Columbus (February 22, 1997)
Began: March 1, 1997 (Walhalla)

“Open you eyes to the air
That has washed the eyes of the stars
Through all the dewy night:
Up with the light . . . “
- Edward Thomas, The Trumpet

Unamuno, Miguel de
The Last Poems of Miguel de Unamuno (1974)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (September 16, 1996)
Began: 4:30 pm, September 16, 1996 (Walhalla)
Walhalla living room couch by window - rainy late afternoon - ckl

“Dante’s journey home is also Unamuno’s, with the sole difference that the modern poet has no other Vergil as guide than his own wavering between faith and despair, darkness and light.”
- Edita Mas-Lopez, Introduction

Updike, John
Collected Poems 1953-1993
Bought: Little Professor Bookstore - Lane Avenue, Cols. (June 17, 1993)
Began: Preface - 11 am, July 7, 1993 (Cottage #64 - Tobermory)
Cool breeze - ckl

Updike, John
Facing Nature (1985)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (July 16, 1997)
Began: July 16, 1997 (Walhalla)

Valéry, Paul
Selected Writings (1950)
Bought: November 15, 1993

Villon, François
The Poems of François Villon (1965)
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (December 21, 1979)

Walker, Alice
Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning (1975)
Bought: Half Price Bookstore - Bethel Road, Cols. (January 4, 2000)
Began: 7 am, March 20, 2000 (Port Elgin, Ontario, Canada)

“’Oh, he was a quiet man,’ they told the romantic young girl, ‘and he loved women not just to lie with but he would stand up with them when no one else would. A quiet young man. A woman could speak in his company. A man could touch his shoulder with his hand and call out his own heart for review.”
- Alice Walker, Introduction

Wakoski, Diane
Greed: Parts 8, 9, 11 (1973)
Bought: No place, No date
Began: July 10, 1989 (Tobermory)
My 43rd birthday, read parts of this at Cinda’s son Michael’s memorial service in Grove City - ckl

Wakoski, Diane
Inside the Blood Factory: New Poems (1968)
Bought: Public Library - Endicott, New York (May 21, 1999)

Wakoski, Diana
The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems (1971)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (January 13, 1995)

Wakoski, Diane
Virtuoso literature for two and four hands (1975)
Bought: No Place listed (June 22, 1975)
Began: 4:30 pm, June 22, 1975

Wakoski, Diane
The Man Who Shook Hands (1978)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (August 6, 1983)
Began: August 25, 1991 (Tobermory, Ontario, Canada)
Finish: August 27, 1991 (Tobermory)
Cottage on couch mid-day as the wind makes rushing sounds as it sweeps across the by - ckl

Wakoski, Diane
Trilogy (1974)
Bought: George F. Johnson Memorial Library - Endicott
Began: May 26, 1999

Wakoski, Diana
Waiting For the King of Spain (1976)
Bought: My Back Pages - High Street - Columbus (April 27, 1977)

Warren, Robert Penn
Audubon: A Vision
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (May 16, 1994)

Warren, Robert Penn
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce: A Poem (1983)
Bought: Columbus Metro Library (May 24, 1994)

Whitman, Walt
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (1959)
Bought: March 17, 1975
Began: Dark - March 18, 1975 (Camping at Natchez Trace, Tennessee)
Many passages read aloud during trip out West to Big Sur and back to the Farm House in Columbus - ckl

Wilbur, Richard
The Poems of Richard Wilbur (1965)
Bought: Half Price Books - Bethel Road, Columbus (January 22, 1995)

Williams, William Carlos
Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962)
Bought: St. Stephens Bookstore - Columbus (May 2, 1979)
Began: 2 pm, May 14, 1979 (Tobermory, Ontario)
Again on a sleeping bag on the grass by cottage #64 in the wind - ckl

Wordsworth, William
Favorite Poems (1992)
Bought: Village Bookstore - Linworth, Ohio (January 21, 1998)

“Therefore let the moon
shine on thee in they solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me . . . . “
- William Wordsworth, Lines
Composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour, July 13, 1798

Wright, James
Saint Judas (1959)
Bought: Columbus, Ohio (August 21, 1973)
Began: 10:30 pm, December 2, 1981 (Walhalla)
Finish: 11 pm, December 2, 1981 (Walhalla)
In bed with Muffy cradled under my left arm - ckl

Yeats, William Butler
Selected Poems and Two Plays
Bought: Salvation Army Bookstore - Columbus (June 11, 1980)

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
Bratsk Station and other new poems
Bought: Student Book Exchange - Columbus (November 22, 1978)

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
From Desire to Desire (1976)
Bought: Columbus Metropolitan Bookstore (November 17, 1999)
Began: 11:15 pm, November 17, 1999 (Walhalla)

WCBE 90.5 FM: "Superman Returns," "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," "The Devil Wears Prada"

WCBE 90.5 FM #273-Final
“Superman Returns,” “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont,“ “The Devil Wears Prada”
It's Movie Time co-hosts, writers, producers:
John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Air Time: 3:01 pm & 8:01 pm, June 30, 2006
Streaming Live on the web and on-demand at: http://www.wcbe.org

The Script

Clay

“Superman Returns” because he forgot to tell Lois goodbye . . .

John

“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” should have stayed at the Regent Palace . .

Clay

“The Devil Wears Prada” and Meryl Streep looks great in stilettos . . .

HIT MUSIC THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle:

"It's Movie Time" in central Ohio with John DeSando and Clay Lowe.''

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

John

I'm John DeSando

Clay

and I’m Clay Lowe

John (“Superman Returns” 126 words)

Clay, I’ve always thought I’m like Superman: heroic, above the crowd, strong, selfless. The excellent new film Superman Returns reveals that HE is just like ME: weak, self-absorbed, self-righteous, mortal, and wobbly with women.

Superman exhibits human vulnerability when he faces Lois’s having a boyfriend and child (This kid is unworldly strong. Could the Man of Steel have acted like a real man that night?)

Clay

Well, SOMEBODY sure supercharged her.

John

The special effects are, well, special: Superman flies like Baryshnikov, and the universe, from the titles on, looks as real as a night at the Palomar Observatory. Superman Returns confirms the messianic motif and the idea that men, such as Lois’s boyfriend, struggle with an idealized superman in the sub consciences of the women they love.

Even Lex Luthor loses that battle.

Clay (“Superman Returns - 129 words)

Folks, Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” is as true to the themes of John Milton as it is to the themes of the Gospels.  Conflating the stories of the biblical Samson and the four Synoptics, Superman is shorn of his god-like powers, not by a conniving woman, but by the hungry-for-power villain Lex Luthor.

Except for a painfully slow start (a Bryan Singer trademark), Superman Returns does finally get up to speed, and if you’re any kind of fan, you’ll end up cheering him on in the aisles.

If you still miss Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve give yourselves time to warm up to the new Lois and Man of Steel, because these days you have to take your heroes where ever you can find them.

Democrats, please take note.

John (“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” 130 words)

Oh, Hillary, you should have been  Palfrey.

In Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, the idea of an elderly lady moving to a London residential hotel regretting the loss of her late husband and wanting to be near her grandson demands a supply of tissues. However, Joan Plowright carries enough dignity and understatement in the titular role to override the clichés.

Mrs. Palfrey’s accidental friendship with hunky, struggling writer Ludovic has the naughty hint of Harold and Maude. Alas, no intergenerational sex, just growing respect and support. The inattention of her real grandson, Desmond, allows her peering neighbors to believe that Ludovic is Desmond. But don’t think for a minute the film is in Oscar Wilde territory, for it has none of the playwright’s wit.

Yet, the spirit of an older woman still valuable and loveable serves as a sweet counterpoint to our youth-obsessed times.

Clay (“The Devil Wears Prada” - 131 words)

“Well, folks, Meryl Streep plays a slightly older women in The Devil Wears Prada, but loveable and sweet she is not.  Neither is she as phony as Sigourney Weaver’s exec in “Working Girl,” nor is she as ruthless as Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street.”

Streep’s Melinda is, however, super sleek, faultlessly coifed and as steely cold to her associates as Vice President Dick Cheney is to the press on a bad hair day.

Not quite up to the challenge of being on screen with Meryl Streep (who is?),  Miranda’s girl Friday (Anne Hathaway) is able to prove she can stay above the fray and save the day even when on the receiving end of Miranda’s nastiest barbs.

If you’re into summer high fashion and gloss, you’ve found it.

But enough of superheroes, noble old ladies, and young ingénues on the way up, John because it’s grading time.

John

Holy Hilfiger, Hooray!

HIT DRUMS, THEN UNDER FOR

John

“Superman” soars to an “A” for marrying ACTION to AFFECTION. . .

Clay

“Superman Returns” gets a “B” because it’s too long BEGINNING but not BAD when it gets up to speed . . .

John

“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont” earns a “B” because BRIT comedy was BRIGHTER at the Ealing Studios. . .

Clay

“The Devil Wears Prada”  gets an “A” because it will make you feel AWFUL ABOUT the way you dress . . .

John

Clay, Mrs. Palfrey DOES make me want to return to my beloved London with my beloved Russian interpreter, who by the way smartly sees my similarity to SUPERMAN, especially at the robust Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly.

I'm outta here.

Clay

John, I’m afraid your robust peccadilloes at the Palace are of far more interest to your paramour than they’ll ever be to us . . .

I’m outta here too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT MUSIC, THEN UNDER FOR

Richelle

The award winning "It's Movie Time" is co-hosted, written, and now produced by John DeSando and Clay for WCBE 90.5. FM

MUSIC DOWN AND OUT

Copyright 2006 by John DeSando & Clay Lowe