Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
\nskirmishes against the author
\nraging along the borders of every page
\nin tiny black script.
\nIf I could just get my hands on you,
\nKierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O\u2019Brien,
\nthey seem to say,
\nI would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.<\/p>\n
Other comments are more offhand, dismissive\u2014 Students are more modest Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, And if you have managed to graduate from college We have all seized the white perimeter as our own Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, Yet the one I think of most often, A few greasy looking smears Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O\u2019Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-poetry","tag-poems-about-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cNonsense.\u201d \u201cPlease!\u201d \u201cHA!!\u201d\u2014
\nthat kind of thing.
\nI remember once looking up from my reading,
\nmy thumb as a bookmark,
\ntrying to imagine what the person must look like
\nwho wrote \u201cDon\u2019t be a ninny\u201d
\nalongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nneeding to leave only their splayed footprints
\nalong the shore of the page.
\nOne scrawls \u201cMetaphor\u201d next to a stanza of Eliot\u2019s.
\nAnother notes the presence of \u201cIrony\u201d
\nfifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nHands cupped around their mouths.
\n\u201cAbsolutely,\u201d they shout
\nto Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
\n\u201cYes.\u201d \u201cBull\u2019s-eye.\u201d \u201cMy man!\u201d
\nCheck marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
\nrain down along the sidelines.<\/p>\n
\nwithout ever having written \u201cMan vs. Nature\u201d
\nin a margin, perhaps now
\nis the time to take one step forward.<\/p>\n
\nand reached for a pen if only to show
\nwe did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
\nwe pressed a thought into the wayside,
\nplanted an impression along the verge.<\/p>\n
\njotted along the borders of the Gospels
\nbrief asides about the pains of copying,
\na bird singing near their window,
\nor the sunlight that illuminated their page\u2014
\nanonymous men catching a ride into the future
\non a vessel more lasting than themselves.<\/p>\n
\nthey say, until you have read him
\nenwreathed with Blake\u2019s furious scribbling.<\/p>\n
\nthe one that dangles from me like a locket,
\nwas written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye<\/em>
\nI borrowed from the local library
\none slow, hot summer.
\nI was just beginning high school then,
\nreading books on a davenport in my parents\u2019 living room,
\nand I cannot tell you
\nhow vastly my loneliness was deepened,
\nhow poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
\nwhen I found on one page<\/p>\n
\nand next to them, written in soft pencil\u2014
\nby a beautiful girl, I could tell,
\nwhom I would never meet\u2014
\n\u201cPardon the egg salad stains, but I\u2019m in love.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"