On my bookshelf there are a plethora of literary treats and perhaps a couple of distressing inclusions. I have only one bookshelf upon which I openly display my ‘collection’. However I do own enough to open up a small bookshop, so the rest are relegated to the cupboard which has shelves and, more importantly, doors. With these doors I can hide the embarrassing books I own, ones that don’t fit on the bookcase or ones that I simply loathe too much to see mingle with my display. It can be seen that this display (along with my record and film collection) is a replacement for a personality and a façade for culture. But I don’t see it this way. These are just things that I like. A lot. Something for which I throw away my cynicism. Of which there is a lot.
This will not be about collecting though or the phenomenon of the male obsessive. No, instead it will be about three pieces that are located in the very top left corner. Sandwiched in between wood and Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live (a fantastic narrative of pop culture) are three books of poetry. Kahlil Gibran, Dylan Thomas and Oscar Wilde. They are in no particular order. They are simple “best of” type collections. Though Dylan Thomas is most certainly my favourite poet of all, I hold no candle for the other two. They are simply books that I have enjoyed (with the exception of Oscar Wilde whose work I read for a different reason other than the obvious one of enjoyment and enrichment). I view Oscar Wilde as the pinnacle of pretentiousness. Ok, perhaps not Wilde himself but rather the use of Wildean phrase. I am infuriated when someone, seeking social empowerment, quotes Wilde. But I am an English Literature graduate I come across this all the time and is one of the many reasons I find myself constantly irked.
Kahlil Gibran is a poet and a person who has interested me greatly since discovering a few years ago that his poem “Sand and Foam” influenced the song writing of John Lennon. “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you” this can be found in The Beatles song Julia (slightly altered of course). Julia is also incidentally one of my favourite Beatles songs. But that is neither here nor there, just another piece of personal information for you to use as you wish. The music of The Beatles is a massive thing in my life, it shapes the way I feel about a lot of things. Like literature music can do that but you mustn’t use it as a substitute for a personality. A veil to hide behind. But I digress.
Dylan Thomas is my favourite of all the poets who have ever breathed life into verse. I was introduced to Thomas as an A-Level student and my love has grown from there (in fact I still own several copies of the school issued Best of…) Thomas’ poetry made me fall in love with words and peaked my interest in the written form as a possible career path. I’ve always written and read but never with passion allowing the words on paper to play with me and I it. And Death Shall Have No Dominion is to blame. I found something in it that energised me.
Vladimir Nabokov is another writer who has had a profound affect on me. The way he weaves his sentences make the text fly by. It is almost literary rape. Especially in the case of Lolita. You don’t want to read about such subject matter but Nabokov takes you gently by the hand and leads you there and before you realise it has already happened. Something you can’t remove from your mind yet doesn’t leave a bitter taste nor a stinging feeling.
I suppose that is the power a writer posses. Being able to make people read without being outside of the text looking in.
I did want to make this much longer. But my train of thought has been lost completely and I cannot remember the point I was trying to make or if I ever had one. I probably didn’t. So I leave that as it is; massively tangled and uninteresting.
searching for lee mavers 