Last October Larry Hammer recommended John Hollander's Town and Country Matters, a book I'd never read and which is out of print. So is Louise Bogan's Blue Estuaries. I mentioned to my wife how disappointed I was in this state of affairs, and she made sure Santa was real good to me—hard-bound first editions with dust jackets! Just a quick sample of each, Bogan first:
Heard by a Girl
Something said: You have nothing to fear
From those long fine bones, and that beautiful ear.
From the mouth, and the eyes set well apart,
There's nothing can come which will break your heart.
From the simple voice, the indulgent mind,
No venom breeds to defeat your kind.
And even, it said, those hands are thin
And large, well designed to clasp within
Their fingers (and O what more do you ask?)
The secret and the delicate mask.
32
Please love, please, Ipsithilla sweet,
Right at noon call me and we'll meet
At once; and, love, just one thing more—
Make very sure that your front door
Will be unlocked, that you won't think
You've got to dash out for a drink
Or something. Wait there for our feast
Of nine continuous fucks at least.
But ring me quickly; I'll come flying:
Breakfast is over, and I'm lying
Flat on my back now, and it shows.
Sticking out through all my clothes.
Hollander's poem is, of course, a translation of one by Catullus, and there's only enough of him in Hollander to whet my appetite. But my copy of Charles Martin's superb translation of all of Catullus is in Maryland, so when I spotted Martin's brand new Ovid (The Metamorphoses) I jumped on it even though I'd spent far too much over the holidays. It's just grand: 500 pages of swift and colloquial blank verse with occasional songs interspersed; all those tales I half remembered and more that I'd completely forgotten; an introduction by Bernard Knox and notes by Martin, both useful and both hard to take advantage of because it's so hard to leave the poem.
In fact, besides driving and raking the leaves at my mother's and failing miserably to fix a plumbing problem there, I've done nothing but read poetry the last two weeks.
10:01:24 PM 
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