WHAT BOOK 

ARE YOU READING 

LATELY? 

Poem for Today - Saturday - October 4, 2014

A GARBAGE CAN

IN BROOKLYN

FULL OF BOOKS

Schweitzer, The Teaching of Reverence Life,

Tich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle ofmindfulness,

Mortimer Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes.

John Stuart Mill in the familiar

formal attire of a Penguin Classic.

A few with psychoanalysis in the titles.

I see how it might get tiresome to have such titles

imploring you day after day to change your life.

It could easily plunge you into the classic

cycle of guilt and self-improvement, mindfulness

followed by depression, each glance at those familiar

spines reminding you of all the mistakes

you've made in the past, and the mistakes

to come. Who wouldn't want to clear the titles

from the shelves and return to the familiar

routine of a comfortable life

undisturbed by thought? A blissful mindlessness.

Throw away every last unread classic

(there's no such thing as a classic

anyway, they now say). Look, the whole mess takes

up only one can, though to undeniable fullness.

But wait. Digging down, I find the serious titles

have risen to the top like cream, or like the life-

preservers they're supposed to be (familiar

wisdom hauling us back up to the familiar

from uncertain depths). Or else these classics

have been placed on top deliberately, as if life

depended on concealing our ... mistakes?

No, just dozens of trash novels flaunting bold titles

and heroines with breasts of unreal fullness‑

like the fantasies our minds are full of,

hidden by good intentions--sound familiar?

What is this bizarre collection of titles

(quasi-porno side by side with classics)

but the unfinished, bound-to-be-full-of-mistakes

bibliography of someone's inner life?

© Jeffrey Harrison (2001)

Pages 200-201

in Broken Land,

Poems of Brooklyn,

edited by Julia Spicher Kasdorf

and Michaeld Tyrell.

New York University Press, 2007