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Books and Libraries: Poems
An enchanting book about books: a beautiful hardcover Pocket Poet collection of poems from around the world that testify to the passion books and libraries have inspired through the ages.
Ever since Gutenberg, books have captured the love, imagination, even the veneration, of readers everywhere. Few human-made objects rival the book in evoking such bone-deep affection. Emily Dickinson called these page-packed parcels “Frigates” that “take us Lands away.” They are “the deli offerings of civilization itself” (Alberto Rios). Such affection naturally extends to the consummate book places–the libraries and bookshops where one can best hear “a choir of authors murmuring inside their books / along the unlit, alphabetical shelves” (Billy Collins). The poets collected here range from the writer of Ecclesiastes in the third century BCE through such canonical writers of British and American literature as William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, and Robert Frost to more recent poets writing in countries across many time zones, including such luminaries as Jorge Luis Borges, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, and Derek Walcott.
Ever since Gutenberg, books have captured the love, imagination, even the veneration, of readers everywhere. Few human-made objects rival the book in evoking such bone-deep affection. Emily Dickinson called these page-packed parcels “Frigates” that “take us Lands away.” They are “the deli offerings of civilization itself” (Alberto Rios). Such affection naturally extends to the consummate book places–the libraries and bookshops where one can best hear “a choir of authors murmuring inside their books / along the unlit, alphabetical shelves” (Billy Collins). The poets collected here range from the writer of Ecclesiastes in the third century BCE through such canonical writers of British and American literature as William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, and Robert Frost to more recent poets writing in countries across many time zones, including such luminaries as Jorge Luis Borges, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, and Derek Walcott.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published October 7, 2021
37 people are currently reading
517 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
January 7, 2022
A bibliophile’s delight. Poems about books reading and libraries. Pure self-indulgence
December 9, 2021
Such a great collection for a book lover — wide variety of poets with a range of topics and focal points all related to books and reading. One of my favorites was actually penned by the editor, Andrew Scrimgeour.
Excellent addition to my Everyman's Library .
Excellent addition to my Everyman's Library .
December 18, 2022
Simply marvellous!
July 22, 2022
I love reading it to unwind before sleep. It is an anthology of poems about books and libraries. I like that I can open to any random page to start reading it. This is truly a collection of poems for bookworms. There is a huge variety of style from different poets.
I have many favourites, here's one:
📜THE LIBRARIES DIDN'T BURN📜
despite books kindled in electronic flames.
The locket of bookish love still opens and shuts.
But its words have migrated to a luminous elsewhere.
Neither completely oral nor written - a somewhere in between.. Then will oak, willow,
birch, and olive poets return to their digital tribes -
trees wander back to the forest?
I have many favourites, here's one:
📜THE LIBRARIES DIDN'T BURN📜
despite books kindled in electronic flames.
The locket of bookish love still opens and shuts.
But its words have migrated to a luminous elsewhere.
Neither completely oral nor written - a somewhere in between.. Then will oak, willow,
birch, and olive poets return to their digital tribes -
trees wander back to the forest?
March 22, 2022
A lovely gift. Beautiful collection of poems around a theme. Lovely to browse through, dip into, read aloud. A lovely physical book itself, too.
July 28, 2024
I love the book and the look of words
the weight of ideas that popped into my mind
I love the tracks
of new thinking in my mind.
Maya Angelou
A lovely collection about books and libraries and love of reading.
March 9, 2022
This book of poems is a great read for writers and bibliophiles. My two favorite pieces in this book, are by Maya Angelou and Frederick Buechner. I highly recommend it.
March 13, 2022
3.5 stars
March 16, 2022
Beautiful beautiful poetry. Oh, how it makes the heart soar.
December 30, 2024
For a poetry collection all about books and libraries - things I love - there sadly were surprisingly few poems in this collection that I found really memorable.
August 15, 2024
3.5
personally a mixed bag... some of the poems bored me out of my mind, while others fascinated. favorites were 'My Books' by Iku Takenaka and 'Reading the book of hills and seas' by T'ao Ch'ien.
So we line our walls with [books], spend the milk money on them, read them aloud, converse with them, argue with them, annotate them, learn from them, raid them, edit them, translate them, write more of them... - from the introduction
Readers may be divided into four classes:
1. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied.
2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through time.
3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
-from Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, by S.T. Coleridge
personally a mixed bag... some of the poems bored me out of my mind, while others fascinated. favorites were 'My Books' by Iku Takenaka and 'Reading the book of hills and seas' by T'ao Ch'ien.
So we line our walls with [books], spend the milk money on them, read them aloud, converse with them, argue with them, annotate them, learn from them, raid them, edit them, translate them, write more of them... - from the introduction
Readers may be divided into four classes:
1. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied.
2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through time.
3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
-from Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, by S.T. Coleridge
Read
April 19, 2025Some poems are a pleasure for the reader's heart.
November 25, 2023
there are no words i can add to this beautiful collection, so here are some of my favorites:
“The house was quiet and the world was calm. / The reader became the book”
—Wallace Stevens
“I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, / straining in circles of light to find more light”
—Billy Collins
“The words still vibrate in their remembering fingers.”
—Juan Manuel Roca (translated by Raúl Jaime Gaviria)
“Ah, at the thought of my books / I feel like I’m being strangled.”
—Iku Takenaka (translated by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto)
“Books are door-shaped / portals / carrying me / across oceans / and centuries, / helping me feel / less alone.”
—Margarita Engle
“So much can be heard / in the stillness / of the snow-swept slopes / of an open book”
—Andrew D. Scrimgeour
“The swarms of books, / the streams of words, cloaked in oblivion’s ice, / sleep soundly.”
—Joseph Brodsky (translated by George L. Kline)
“If you go into a room and find it full of books—and without even taking them down from their shelves—they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.”
—W. E. Gladstone
“In this mausoleum of words / every page guards / an uncertain memory, / a dusty immortality”
—Kostas Koutsourelis (translated by Sapphire [Ramona Lofton])
“The untongued dead / Wince at the touch of the lucky living.”
—U. A. Fanthorpe
“The silence of them that if you listened wasn’t silence, / It was the murmur of stories held for years on shelves”
—Ian McMillan
“And when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again and dwells among us and within us, full of grace and truth.”
—Frederick Buechner
“Strangely light / strangely sweet / strangely familiar / and yet unknown / your fragrant memories / fill my heart / like the pleasant scent of / old books.”
—Tarannum Riyaz (translated by Jaipal Nangia)
“The house was quiet and the world was calm. / The reader became the book”
—Wallace Stevens
“I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, / straining in circles of light to find more light”
—Billy Collins
“The words still vibrate in their remembering fingers.”
—Juan Manuel Roca (translated by Raúl Jaime Gaviria)
“Ah, at the thought of my books / I feel like I’m being strangled.”
—Iku Takenaka (translated by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto)
“Books are door-shaped / portals / carrying me / across oceans / and centuries, / helping me feel / less alone.”
—Margarita Engle
“So much can be heard / in the stillness / of the snow-swept slopes / of an open book”
—Andrew D. Scrimgeour
“The swarms of books, / the streams of words, cloaked in oblivion’s ice, / sleep soundly.”
—Joseph Brodsky (translated by George L. Kline)
“If you go into a room and find it full of books—and without even taking them down from their shelves—they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.”
—W. E. Gladstone
“In this mausoleum of words / every page guards / an uncertain memory, / a dusty immortality”
—Kostas Koutsourelis (translated by Sapphire [Ramona Lofton])
“The untongued dead / Wince at the touch of the lucky living.”
—U. A. Fanthorpe
“The silence of them that if you listened wasn’t silence, / It was the murmur of stories held for years on shelves”
—Ian McMillan
“And when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again and dwells among us and within us, full of grace and truth.”
—Frederick Buechner
“Strangely light / strangely sweet / strangely familiar / and yet unknown / your fragrant memories / fill my heart / like the pleasant scent of / old books.”
—Tarannum Riyaz (translated by Jaipal Nangia)
August 21, 2022
I love the Everyman poetry series and, as with others that I've read, this one does not disappoint.
As with all anthologies, not all the poems work for me. On the whole, however, this was another great collection to immerse myself in.
I enjoy the smallish size of the book, it's attached golden thread bookmark, and the space in the margins to draw, sketch, and write my own thoughts.
The drawback with this anthology is that I was unfamiliar with most of the poets. Adjacent to each poet's name, I would have liked knowing their nationality and chronology of when they lived
e.g. WB Yeats (Irish, 1885-1939).
As with all anthologies, not all the poems work for me. On the whole, however, this was another great collection to immerse myself in.
I enjoy the smallish size of the book, it's attached golden thread bookmark, and the space in the margins to draw, sketch, and write my own thoughts.
The drawback with this anthology is that I was unfamiliar with most of the poets. Adjacent to each poet's name, I would have liked knowing their nationality and chronology of when they lived
e.g. WB Yeats (Irish, 1885-1939).
January 12, 2022
I always love the size of these little books. So although the font is a bit harsh for older eyes, these poems about libraries of renown and small little know or personal libraries and the books there in are a great testimony to how great it is to be a bibliophile or bibliomaniac. I greatly loved each of these poems and the prose poems as well. This is one of those books to keep and dip in and out of sporadically, I Love it!
September 14, 2023
The ultimate ode to book lovers and librarians!
It contains such an array of poems all about books, libraries, bibliophiles, authors etc. written by a collection of many writers throughout history. It really touched at the heartstrings and delighted my own bookshelf heart to read the similar sentiments others have when it comes to the written word.
These are perfect pocket-sized poems to be enjoyed over and over again.
It contains such an array of poems all about books, libraries, bibliophiles, authors etc. written by a collection of many writers throughout history. It really touched at the heartstrings and delighted my own bookshelf heart to read the similar sentiments others have when it comes to the written word.
These are perfect pocket-sized poems to be enjoyed over and over again.
October 29, 2024
Some poems in this collection were really good, some were boring. I liked the division of the poems into categories/chapters.
Books, too precious to keep,
too tough to destroy, too
dangerous to trust, too
charged with truth, too
silent in face of violence, too
volatile for the screen, books
are thoughts in transit, they gather
as they go more and more rolling beauty.
Who knows who shall know?
Whom will the finger touch?
- Tessa Ransford
Books, too precious to keep,
too tough to destroy, too
dangerous to trust, too
charged with truth, too
silent in face of violence, too
volatile for the screen, books
are thoughts in transit, they gather
as they go more and more rolling beauty.
Who knows who shall know?
Whom will the finger touch?
- Tessa Ransford
April 28, 2022
My first pocket-poets edition and it was such a delight. Scrimgeour’s preface brought smiles to my face. I think this one might be a book I pick up yearly. For all the book lovers out there, this is a treat :)
June 17, 2022
Small format collection of poems about reading and libraries. I should have loved this but I didn’t. Too many of the poems were too esoteric, confusing or just plain boring. Many were from non-English sources in translation and often from ages past. Nothing memorable.
January 15, 2023
Awesome collection of poems, one of my favorite in the series I think. I really liked quite a lot of the poems. My only hang-up was that the editor didn’t include dates of the poets, so I didn’t have a reference of their era, and they do that in all the other collections.
April 16, 2023
Every night before bed a Poem
Before putting out the light, closing my eyes, wishing goodnight,
Forgetting the Day, the World, my Life.
Snug under a blanket, with Dutch winds howling outside,
With time on my hand
And in that hand a book
And in that book a Dream.
Before putting out the light, closing my eyes, wishing goodnight,
Forgetting the Day, the World, my Life.
Snug under a blanket, with Dutch winds howling outside,
With time on my hand
And in that hand a book
And in that book a Dream.
December 13, 2021
As a reader who loves books about books, this poetry collection was perfect for me. Not every poem was a win though, but it was an enjoyable read overall.
December 27, 2021
I don’t know how rare this lol
Considering it’s a collection of different poets/authors.
Some I really enjoyed and some I found boring so 🤷🏻♀️
Considering it’s a collection of different poets/authors.
Some I really enjoyed and some I found boring so 🤷🏻♀️
January 21, 2022
What a wonderful collection of poetry. I intended to take my time with it, but it just sucked me right in. I’m looking forward to re-reading certain selections.
January 26, 2022
um livro contendo poemas - de todas as eras e geografias - sobre livros e bibliotecas? como é possível resistir?
(representante nacional: adília lopes, ah)
(representante nacional: adília lopes, ah)
February 13, 2022
A beautiful book of poems about books, writing, libraries, and librarians. Like most books of poetry, some I didn't like so much, some I loved. Especially liked the ones about librarians.
March 23, 2022
I found this in our little bookstore downtown and I’ve enjoyed each and every poem. It’s a beautiful little book, especially for bibliophiles like me who can identify with every page.
April 19, 2022
If you like 1) books about books and 2) poetry (and I would think the overlap on that venn diagram might be substantial), this collection is a winner. Wonderful variety of styles.
July 7, 2022
Lovely.
September 6, 2022
3.75 / 5
Love the concept and the method of grouping within the anthology, but not many of the actual poems were very impactful to me.
Love the concept and the method of grouping within the anthology, but not many of the actual poems were very impactful to me.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews