I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the role of the library in your life as a 21st century reader and/or writer. I taught a summer class this past June, and when I needed to mark papers or work on my notes, I often retreated from the summer sun and my always-on computer screen to the basement of Gorgas Library here on the University of Alabama campus. The basement of Gorgas approaches my Platonic ideal of librarity (or librariousness, if you prefer): cool silence, greenish tile floors, flickery yellow fluorescent lights, indestructible but much-graffiti’d wooden and green metal furniture, creaky and ticking pipes crisscrossing the low ceiling, and of course aisle upon aisle of books, many of which (e.g., a 1932 history of Catholicism in Montana) may never be read again, but all of which stand ready, patient, in case you want them. I love it down there. When my mind wandered from my students’ papers, I got to thinking about how my relationship to libraries has changed over time. I wonder how yours has, too.

Back in the day, I spent a lot of time browsing in the stacks at libraries, discovering new writers by checking out the shelves surrounding those I already knew and liked. I never do that any more. I do my browsing online now, reading web sites, blogs, reviews, seeing what people who bought what I have in my shopping cart also bought, etc., and then when I’ve compiled a list of things I think I might want to check out–in both senses–I print out a list of call numbers from my library’s catalog, and I go over there to pluck those books from the shelves. I always stop and scan the “new books” shelf near the library entrance, yes. But mostly, when I go to the library these days, it’s the last step in the search process, not the first. (Or I’m going just to sit in that basement. Even if, in x years, all texts have turned digital and accessible from anywhere, any time, there will still have to be libraries, for people to use as refuges from the madding crowd.)

This of course begs the question of text-delivery technologies. If I’m going to read a novel or a book of poems, I want to have the book in my hand–I just do–and I’m happy to trot over to the library to get it. But if I just want to check a reference, or scan something to refresh my memory of it, I’d much rather just be able to click through a digital copy of the book on Google Books without having to leave my desk. In short, if I’m seeking an aesthetic experience, I prefer my books to come in three dimensional, analog form. If I’m just seeking information, I find digital texts much more convenient.

(I am aware that I have just posited a difference between “aesthetic experience” and “information” without explicating the nature of said difference. Sorry, not going to try, have to mow the lawn.)

Much is being said and has been said about Google Books and intellectual property rights and information wanting to be free and Kindles and the death of print and so forth. (When I attended library school ten years ago, the program’s official name had recently been changed to “Information Sciences,” but we all still called it library school, and you know, I bet people still do.) You’re probably familiar with a lot of those discussions, and I’m not qualified to add much to them anyway. I am curious, though, about how other writers and readers of literature use libraries these days. And so an unscientific survey. Please feel free to answer all, some, or none of these questions, and/or to invent your own questions, and answer those instead.

Do you go to libraries? Which ones? How often? What do you do there? How has your library use changed over the last twenty years? If you could read everything online or on one of those Kindle thingies (I’ve never seen one; have you?), would you? It might be useful for our porpoises if you would state your approximate age when weighing in; I’m curious too how much the responses of twenty somethings will differ from those of sixty somethings.

April is a month of heightened awareness.  In addition to National Poetry Month, April is also Heartworm Awareness Month, National Pet First Aid Awareness Month, Mathematics Awareness Month, Sexual Assualt Awareness Month, STD Awareness Month, Alcohol Awareness Month, Autism Awareness Month, National Donate Life Month… I’m sure there’s plenty more to be aware of, but, honestly, I’m already overwhelmed by this list of worthy causes.

Against such pressing issues, what use is poetry?

With that question in mind, I’ve decided to dedicate several of this month’s posts to organizations and individuals whose work proves that poetry really can make a difference in our world.

Today, I want to talk about the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, a program “founded on the principle that all people can benefit from quality and sustained experiences in the arts and humanities.”

According to their website: “APAEP grew from one poet teaching in one prison, to a pool of more than 35 writers, artists, scholars and visiting writers teaching in twelve correctional facilities in Alabama.  Course offerings have grown from poetry and creative writing to Southern literature, photography, African-American literature, Alabama history, drawing and other art classes.”

One of the goals of the project is to develop the general libraries of the 17 Alabama prisons in which it is active. APAEP accepts donations including older edition textbooks and slightly damaged books that would not otherwise be sold.  Since 2001, over 14,000 volumes have been made accessible to the 30,000 men and women incarcerated in the state of Alabama.

According to one beneficiary of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project: “I, quite simply, have fallen in love with writing . . . The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project has given me the opportunity of a lifetime. ”

Donors include Alice James Books, BOA Editions, Copper Canyon Press, The Feminist Press, Natural Bridge, Sarabande Books, Lotus Blooms Journal, Ausable Press, Five Points, Poets & Writers and many more.  If you or your press would like to find out more about becoming involved in this worthwhile venture, visit the APAEP website here.

The writer and activist Audre Lorde once wrote:  “…poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, made first into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”  I applaud the APAEP for helping to make poetry available to 30,000 Alabamans who otherwise might not have access to this powerful and positive mode of expression and survival.

Although there are still many small presses in America, their poetry lists are ignored by almost all bookstores. In this era of media consolidation, corporate monsters like Barnes & Noble and Borders dominate the field, with independent operators going out of business left and right. It’s not all bad, however, since readers can now order books through Small Press Distribution and Amazon (another corporate beast), or directly from the publisher. Before the internet, most Americans outside major cities and college towns had almost no access to anything beyond Stephen King and Danielle Steele.
With a population of only four millions, Norway has almost no small presses, Cathinka told me, although every library is required to purchase every poetry book published in the country. What a startling concept! I’ve taught at Bard College for three years and the library there doesn’t carry any of my four volumes of poetry. “Maybe you should move to Norway,” Cathinka joked. Yes, maybe I should start learning Norwegian.
Being roughly the same age, Cathinka and I remembered with fondness the many zines that accompanied the punk scene, their wise-assed, often nihilistic humor and indifference to any slicked-up production standard. These types of rebels have mostly migrated to the internet, we agreed. I told Cathinka that when I lived in Saigon from 1999 to 2001, I would pass out home-made chapbooks, stapled-together cheapies that were obviously inspired by the zines I had seen in the States during my college days. Check out these recent Vietnamese chapbooks by poets Ly Doi, Bui Chat and Khuc Duy, with the chopped dog drawing done by yours truly:

[I'm in Paris at the moment, typing on a French keyboard that's driving me nuts. Where the A should be, there's a Q, etc, so I must cut this post a little short...]