Tag Archives: used bookstores

Take a Step Out of Your House

Today, the first day of National Poetry Month, I reaped the ultimate reward of the used book collector. I opened up this dogeared Rilke traslation and out fluttered someone’s efforts. I haven’t read it yet, but I desperately want it to be good. I’m going to share a poem with you every day, and I think this is a good one to start with. So many people think they don’t “get” poetry, but take Ol Rainer’s advice on this one, and take a walk out of your comfort zone.

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The Way In

Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Robert Bly

 

Whoever you are, some evening take a step

out of your house, which you know so well.

Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,

whoever you are.

Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves

from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes

slowly, slowly, lift one black tree

up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.

With that you have made the world. The world is immense

and like a word that is still growing in the silence.

In the same moment that your will grasps it,

your eyes, feeling its subtlety, will leave it.

Place I’d Like to Move Into: Shakespeare and Company

About a million years ago, when I was hip and moving around a lot in Europe and feeling generally very good about my life, I visited a dear friend in Paris and she took me to Shakespeare and Company. I remember Paris fondly and I had a great time and everything, but this used bookstore is why I want to go back RIGHT NOW.

The place is every stereotype of a used bookstore exploded. The owner, George Whitman, opened the place in 1951, and worked there until he died at the age of 98. He was behind the counter the day I was there, along with a lot of impossibly good looking expatriates.

Cramped, overstuffed shelves loom over your head, and any false turn could result in your stumbling into some unshaven auteur’s bedroom (there are murphy beds there for people who move to Paris to write and need a place to stay while they get situated). I think we were there three hours until Kristina made us go to eat coq au vin or go look at the Notre Dame or something very French. Continue reading