Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Extra day!  I always think it's the strangest thing, leap year, and can't let it go by without marking it here.  Even though I don't have much to say except I've been reading some good books, and visiting bookshops, and working on my own book.  I'm about to take a break from that for, say, a month, since I am at the point with it when it looks pretty good to me.  Meaning I can't see what else it might need.  I hope a month away will make that crystal clear when I return to it with fresh eyes.  Maybe I will post the foreword here at some point to help me put my intention to make it a public document, a real book, to be read by others, out to the universe.  Meanwhile I have a ton of studio work to do - sixty paintings need framing and I've done about ten so far; and the catalogue for my next show needs to be finalized.  It's nearly ready, I'm just dithering over a few minor but important details.  There is more, much more, but I am working steadily and looking forward to the approach of spring, for real.  We've had a few hints about it here and there.  Spring fever means I'm out and about, and a few days ago we ended up at Stone Soup Books in Camden:


Ryan caught me browsing in the jam-packed shelves.  Stone Soup is two small rooms, full from floor to ceiling as you can see, and nearby storage, so if you don't see what you're looking for, ask the proprietor Paul and he'll check elsewhere.  I am assembling a hardcover set of Virginia Woolf's diaries, to read sometime this year, perhaps in the fall, and Paul had volume two tucked away.  I also bought that Jennifer Bartlett book I'm holding.  She's a painter I've been interested in for a long time but know zero to little about.  Glad that's about to change.  I also bought a volume of Shelley's verse, and a few other books to read.  I didn't find any New York School additions to my collection.  Truth be told, I am stalled out in that regard anyway.  Ashbery and I are no longer keeping company, and I have nothing to report about the others in the group, having made zero inroads with Koch, or new ones with Schuyler.  I've read all the Schuyler books I own at least twice already, over the last decade-plus, and my enthusiasm for writing a post about them after reading them again is low.  I prefer to dip into them and revisit old favorites at this point.  Here's what I currently have on hand:


These books have brought me hours and hours of joy, even at their most difficult.  Something about his poetry gets me right where I live, and always has.  I've quoted him often over the years, and even though I know I'm repeating myself I'll say again that this time of year always reminds me of these lines of his, from his long poem The Crystal Lithium, in Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 1993, p.117):

"...January, laid out on a bed of ice, disgorging
February, shaped like a flounder, and March with her steel bead pocketbook,
And April, goofy and under-dressed and with a loud laugh, and May
Who will of course be voted Miss Best Liked (she expects it)..."

By nearly all accounts Schuyler was a difficult person at best, with recurring episodes of mental illness, a moochy personality, and a mean streak clearly evident in his diaries and letters to others.  And yet.  As with all of us, there is another side to him.  The gardener, the heirloom rose enthusiast, the reader, the friend, the lover.  Not to mention that he turns out exquisite verse, decade after decade, in spite of everything else.  I will always honor him for it.  His very life goes to show that you can be something of a mess regarding the day-to-day of things, and yet still win the Pulitzer Prize for your work.  If I had unlimited funds to collect first editions, I would love to seek out all of his.  Friends such as Fairfield Porter, Alex Katz, and others I also admire, designed dust jackets for many of his first editions.  Alas, most of them are beyond my reach.  I have to be content with what I can get my hands on, in reprint.

That's all for now, I am heading out into this extra day to see what I can make of it.  On we go.