I Like Poetry

I like poetry. My mom read us Dorothy Parker and The Highwayman and Gerard Manley Hopkins, when I was growing up. In college I took a poetry class and learned to love Robert Hass and Billy Collins and my very favorite, Saint Judas by James Wright. And then I discovered the Favorite Poem Project, Robert Pinsky's project with the Library of Congress. There are three Favorite Poem Project books, and the best one is the second, Poems to Read. The Favorite Poem Project invites readers to submit their favorite poems and the reasons why they love the poems, which is what makes the books so fantastic--there are reader comments on almost every poem and they're SO interesting. The comments provide an extra layer of meaning to each poem.

This is one of my newest poetry finds. Enjoy!

Why I Am in Love with Librarians

by Julia Alvarez -- Library Journal, 1/15/2003

I love how they know things
only to pass them on,
how they fade into the faux-wood-paneled
walls of the reference room,
their faces hidden between the covers of books,

how they look up only to help you:
What is the capital of Afghanistan?
How do the Maori bury their dead?
Who invented Barbie? How many were murdered in Guatemala in '84?

—every query worthy of their attention,
any questioner taken seriously,
curiosity the only requirement.
I love how they listen, their lined faces opening,
their eyes already elsewhere:

scanning a plain for the lights of a distant city,
hunting for bodies in the highlands,
searching the web for Barbie—
their minds like those flocks of little birds in winter
swooping over a landscape, looking, looking.

And always when they get back to you,
that sweet smile on their faces,
pride and deep affection for what can be known,
as if Barbie's invention
or the tally of the massacred

could save you, could save the world!
And who knows if Stalin or Hitler
had spent their youth in the library,
history might be rewritten,
re-catalogued by librarians?

Curiosity sends us out
to a world both larger and smaller
than what we know and believe in
with a passion for finding an answer
or at least understanding our questions.

That road is paved with librarians,
bushwhackers, scouts with string
through the labyrinths of information,
helpers who disappear the moment
you reach your destination.

for Joy Pile