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*keeps journaling*
Aug. 17th, 2012 03:39 pmI'm beginning to wonder if it would be possible to break this habit. The one where I find a computer with a good computer (my laptop's doesn't count) and then I write FLOODS OF USELESS WORDS ABOUT MY DAY.
I think ten years' worth of forced journaling has warped me.
Anyway, the other day I sailed into the library and checked out a couple of books on poetry. I managed to buy the Norton Anthology of English poetry from the library's used book store some months ago, see. The anthology starts with anonymous poems of 1300 or so, I believe - you know, 'sumer is icumen in' [Wikipedia]; one of these days I need to acquire the Classical works that precede these, but not yet - not enough historical background for that one. Unfortunately, it's definitely just an anthology - it has the birth/death dates of poets, dates of poems, and some annotations for references, but otherwise it simply presents poems. My dad acquired this poetry book - an instructor's guide, actually! - and for the first three hundred or so pages, it had commentary on poetry, in a way that would introduce common poetic devices to a beginner. After the poems, there'd be a few questions to direct an analysis, and in the back there was even answers, sometimes with amusing anecdotes about the poets or professors and students. I love the commentary; much as I enjoy the poems, I also kind of want to know what others think.
So then I was in the library poking around in the PR section for poetic commentary, and - this point still stuns me - I sailed out of the library again, having checked out a book published in 1845. It's so old that the cover and the back have fallen away from the binding and the component parts are kept together with a length of black ribbon, tied like a package. (The signatures and binding have held together perfectly fine. None of the pages are falling out, even though the tape that holds together the back page is orange-yellow with age.) Intellectually I know that the library has rare book collections and keeps them elsewhere - I work in the library system, I know that my library has restricted sections (for rare/unbound/manuscript/brittle volumes) that are restricted to basically faculty and grad students upon request - and I still can't get over this. No matter how common the book is, it's still a one-hundred-fifty-year-old book! How am I able to just waltz to the thirteenth floor and check it out?! Since it is in the stacks, the entirety of the student body can also check it out, and it is requestable through interlibrary loan (it ships things as far as to the University of British Colombia library, for one).
I think ten years' worth of forced journaling has warped me.
Anyway, the other day I sailed into the library and checked out a couple of books on poetry. I managed to buy the Norton Anthology of English poetry from the library's used book store some months ago, see. The anthology starts with anonymous poems of 1300 or so, I believe - you know, 'sumer is icumen in' [Wikipedia]; one of these days I need to acquire the Classical works that precede these, but not yet - not enough historical background for that one. Unfortunately, it's definitely just an anthology - it has the birth/death dates of poets, dates of poems, and some annotations for references, but otherwise it simply presents poems. My dad acquired this poetry book - an instructor's guide, actually! - and for the first three hundred or so pages, it had commentary on poetry, in a way that would introduce common poetic devices to a beginner. After the poems, there'd be a few questions to direct an analysis, and in the back there was even answers, sometimes with amusing anecdotes about the poets or professors and students. I love the commentary; much as I enjoy the poems, I also kind of want to know what others think.
So then I was in the library poking around in the PR section for poetic commentary, and - this point still stuns me - I sailed out of the library again, having checked out a book published in 1845. It's so old that the cover and the back have fallen away from the binding and the component parts are kept together with a length of black ribbon, tied like a package. (The signatures and binding have held together perfectly fine. None of the pages are falling out, even though the tape that holds together the back page is orange-yellow with age.) Intellectually I know that the library has rare book collections and keeps them elsewhere - I work in the library system, I know that my library has restricted sections (for rare/unbound/manuscript/brittle volumes) that are restricted to basically faculty and grad students upon request - and I still can't get over this. No matter how common the book is, it's still a one-hundred-fifty-year-old book! How am I able to just waltz to the thirteenth floor and check it out?! Since it is in the stacks, the entirety of the student body can also check it out, and it is requestable through interlibrary loan (it ships things as far as to the University of British Colombia library, for one).
