Popular Poems About Books

"... a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste." - R Austin Freeman, "The Art of the Detective Story"

I try for taste, you understand,
and read sonnets,
collect novels that reap plaudits.
I accept manna from God's hand.

But often my taste reflects the dark mass
of office girls and workshop boys,
and so I fly like Lucifer, alas,
to folk fiction and pulpy joys.

Elysia's bookshelves...

after Paul S…
 
Baroness Orczy
(pronounced Or-tsey)
believed in the First World War
to a point where she aimed to enlist
a hundred thousand women to
encourage men to go enlist;
she also believed  
in the innate superiority  
of aristocracy
(I should have guessed that, I suppose,
based on The Scarlet Pimpernel).
 
We don’t always impose  
our own beliefs
on those who lived
a hundred and more years ago,
for good reasons.
If Hitler was a rotten sort,
your typical German was...

I told him, take it all—  
Just give me my books,  
My refuge, my solace, my world.  
Turning each page, tuning out the noise,  
It’s just me and Bukowski’s words for the night.  

While others sing nursery rhymes,  
I read Poe to my children.  
I thought it vital that they, too,  
Could quote the verses that stir the soul—  
To fall deep into the poetry,  
Let it seep into their hearts.

When I read, I am whole,  
But you, you called it an addiction.  
Of all the cravings I could possess,  
Books are the only...