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)