Turning pages is...

The New York Society Library is the oldest library in New York.  It was founded by King George before the American Revolution.  I belong to the library, and I wrote this poem there.  The NYSL is one of the great treasures of NYC.  If you want to see it they have a web page: http://www.nysoclib.org

b"h

June 2013

Turning pages is about as symbolic

As you can get...  I need not explain;

The obvious analogies leap to mind

With alarming alacrity.  I sit here at

The mahogany table in the Reference

Room.  I refer to nothing other than

This.  You might think that I am

Turning pages, but I'm not -- not one.

Outside is New York.  There is nothing to

Say about it.  Human beings do what

You expect them to do.  Some come into

The Library -- and yes, they read -- and

Yes, they turn pages... even as I 

Try not to understand what that means. 

Reviews

[New Dawn]

When I was fourteen I was finally allowed into the adult library - in contrast to the childrens library it was an old victorian building with stained glass windows and mahogany tables. The librarian always looked at you as if you were about to steal something - but I loved the place. on a saturday afternoon you could walk in from the busy high street into immediate silence - the doors themselves were incredibly thick so all traffic noise ceased. I spent a lot of time there and was heartbroken when they relocated to a newly built building with bright lights, computers and cheap flat pack furniture - it all smelt so wrong. The old library is now an art college - perhaps if I ever get to New York I can visit this fantastic Library - it sounds much like the one I lost !

[Firestone Feinberg]

Sorry about your library. People are always making 'improvements' that make things worse. There are five libraries like the NYSL in the USA. I'm almost cetain there's one in your area of the UK. It's called a 'subscrption' library. Otherwise, come over here! :) David

[John]

With the decline in the status of the book, the library is rapidly in danger of becoming a museum. There have been attempts to 'diversify': the cafe, the IT hub, the audio/video collection are attempting to draw in new users, or customers. The notion of the library as a place of relaxation and undisturbed reading really no longer applies. But there is a generation of readers who regarded it as a kind of second home which allowed them to read and borrow books that were either unavailable elsewhere or prohibitively expensive to buy. The note under the title of this poem would suggest that we are going to be offered some lines in praise of this particular institution and perhaps of libraries in general. I think that is what we get, but not in any kind of conventional way. The first thing that strikes you is the speaker's brusque, impertinent tone: He has no need to explain; he is referring to nothing; he is not turning a page. Well, then, what is he doing? Just sitting in the Reference Room of a library at a mahogany table. For me the table wood is a crucial detail. It is symbolic of the prestigious well established institution represented by the New York Society Library itself and the status of the city in which it is located. Which brings us to the second stanza. The aggressive voice doesn't let up. (A crack at a stereotypical New York attitude? Hardly from a life long New Yorker.) But nothing to say about the city?! New York, New York, so good they named it one, two, twice. New York, a nightmare from which I am still trying to awake. We are not seriously expected to believe this. I think what the poet is attempting to do is not to impose 'his' meaning, but allow both the city, and previously the library, speak for itself. So at the end of the poem, he acknowledges that turning a page is just another human action like sitting down to eat or turning on the television, even if we, readers and writers, have to stop ourselves from saying that it must mean something.

[Firestone Feinberg]

A few days ago I was cleaning out by book-bag and I came across this poem. Although I had forgotten all about it I soon remembered writing it; in the New York Society Library one afternoon — perhaps six months ago or so. The library is decidedly old-fashioned. Absolute silence is maintained. (Cell-phones are not permitted.) In the Reading Room the silence is so profound that even one’s slightly-more-than-silent turning of a page draws annoyed glances from other readers — usually over the thin rims of their required spectacles. The Reference Room is similar, but because it is on the lobby floor and because it is open to the public, the atmosphere is more relaxed. One still dares not to talk there — an occasional whisper is rather tolerated — and the issue of page-turning-noise is less of a social concern: perhaps that has something to do with the oversized books that populate the room — huge and heavy reference volumes of all kinds.

Everything in the library is antique. The rooms all appear to be at least a century old — and the furnishings are often quite older than that. John’s highly-perceptive review picks up on the flavor (or maybe the flavour) of the library itself. The single word, ‘mahogany', imparts to his sensitive ear the actuality of the place, and its time, and its temper, and its tempo. One does become quite aware of turning pages there — not in the also-silent stacks — but in the utterly sacrosanct Rooms — such as The Reading Room, The Reference Room, The Whitridge Room, and other revered rooms in The Temple. Perhaps I take it all too for-granted; I have forgotten what the wilderness of the New York Public Library’s branch-libraries is like these days. After reading John’s wonderful words, I not only learn much about my own poem — as if reading it for the first time — but I come to realize, again, how fortunate I am to have such a refined refuge in a city that is anything but still.

The NYSL is a subscription library which means one has to pay a very reasonable fee to join the library membership and take advantage of the library’s collections, services, and spaces. There are five such libraries in the USA. I imagine that there are many more in Europe.

It seems I’ve forgotten to say much about the poem itself and its review and its reviewer. The Library outshines all else. And this comment has gone on quite long enough. If you are still here, good-bye — and do fare-thee-well. Sincerely, David.