Finding Poems at The Haunted Bookshop
Deciding what to keep, and what can be passed along to others.
I recently visited The Haunted Bookshop in Sydney, British Columbia, a few minutes before closing time. Thanks to the kindness of the owners, I was able to spend some time in the poetry section as they chatted with other visitors and gradually closed up the store.
The books of verse were from many writers, most of whose names I didn’t recognize. Many were inscribed, sometimes by the giver of a gift, other times by the poets themselves. The books had obviously once been treasured, but now they were here with all the other used books, looking for new readers and new owners.
We don't see bookshelves in our friends' houses and apartments as much as we once did. We can no longer gauge a person’s thoughts from the books they have around them. However, we can still learn something from what they have chosen to remove, and how they have chosen to remove it.
It's not a bad fate, perhaps, to be carried to a used book store and accepted for resale by a shrewd judge of a book's value. The books of verse are so thin, and in such good condition, it's as if they haven't been read at all. They make good gifts, so I bought myself two of them.
One was The Collected Poems of James Elroy Flecker, published in 1947, and compassing a lifetime's work in 162 pages. When I opened it gently, the binding fell open to a page that had clearly been consulted more than once.
The book had been inscribed in March 1958 by a reader in Oxford, a long distance from twenty-first century Canada in both space and time. It tells us a story beyond the words themselves. What did the owner feel when the book was taken to the bookstore? And what do they have around them now?
Mine be the ancient song of Travelers: I hate this glittering land where nothing stirs: I would go back, for I would see again Mountains less vast, a less abundant plain, The Northern Cliffs clean-swept with driven foam, And the rose-garden of my gracious home.