A productive Day

About two weeks ago I started volunteering at the library.  The branch I'm working in has gone from 32 to 11 staff members over the course of a year.  Shelving is the top concern and from what I've been told--at this particular branch--100% of the shelving is done by volunteers.  Now if you can't already tell, I've outed myself as an incomparable nerd: I'm volunteering at a library…

I'll throw in the salt: I kinda like it.

It's a very relaxing environment and I'm around books for a few hours.  I'm not doing much shelving though.  I would think it's normal to attract bookish people with a volunteer position at a library, in my brief experience this is highly detrimental to getting anything done.

I see books that look interesting, authors who I always meant to look into but haven't, and I discover new stuff faster than I can make notes to look into it later.  I was there for about two hours today.  I'm not sure how well my time was spent in regards to doing the library a service but I did leave with six books, to go with the seven others I already have checked out.

One of the librarians who has known me for sometime, and who knows my reading tendencies, asked if I was planning on reading anything of these particular books anytime soon.  She is the same librarian who makes special notes for my books I get that can't be renewed and must be returned within two weeks.  I told her yes, and I was being serious.  "I plan on reading them all tonight."

I meant that, but it's a bit like Thanksgiving dinner when my eyes are bigger than my stomach.  I have such good intentions.

In effort to keep my poetry interest alive and well and not solely focused on Thomas Lux (which certainly isn't a bad thing) I was doing so researching into finding other poets that may be of interest to me.  I learned a very interesting assertion: in some literary spheres 'accessible' in relation to poetry is a bad word.  I roll my eyes at that but what do I know?  It would seem accessible poetry is synonymous with "Billy Collins;" a poet that regularly gets six figure deals because (the horror) he apparently writes stuff that people want to read (the shame).  So of the stack of six books I left with today, it should be no surprise that one is a book of his poems, which I plan to read first.

Another of the six is The Best American Poetry 2006 of which Collins was guest editor.  Assuming Collins is both good at what he does and of interest to me this collection has the potential to be a gateway of sorts for in diversifying my poetry interest.  

A glass of wine and a book is my order for this evening.